us, or rather infamous, Partry
evictions, an old man of eighty and a woman of seventy-four were amongst
the number of those who suffered for their ancient faith. They were
driven from the home which their parents and grandfathers had occupied,
in a pitiless storm of sleet and snow. The aged woman utters some slight
complaint; but her noble-hearted aged husband consoles her with this
answer: "The sufferings and death of Jesus Christ were bitterer still."
Sixty-nine souls were cast out of doors that day. Well might the _Times_
say: "These evictions are a hideous scandal; and the bishop should
rather die than be guilty of such a crime." Yet, who can count up all
the evictions, massacres, tortures, and punishments which this people
has endured?

CHAPTER X.

[Gothic: The Religion of Ancient Erinn]--The Druids and their
Teaching--The Irish were probably Fire-worshippers--[Gothic: The Customs
of Ancient Erinn]--Similarity between Eastern and Irish Customs--Beal
Fires--Hunting the Wren--"Jacks," a Grecian game--"Keen," an Eastern
Custom--Superstitions--The Meaning of the Word--What Customs are
Superstitious and what are not--Holy Wells--[Gothic: The Laws of Ancient
Erinn]--Different kinds of Laws--The Lex non Scripta and the Lex
Scripta--Christianity necessitated the Revision of Ancient Codes--The
Compilation of the Brehon Laws--Proofs that St. Patrick assisted
thereat--Law of Distress--Law of Succession--[Gothic: The Language of
Ancient Erinn]--Writing in pre-Christian Erinn--Ogham Writing--[Gothic:
Antiquities of pre-Christian Erinn]--Round
Towers--Cromlechs--Raths--Crannoges.

Eastern customs and eastern superstitions, which undoubtedly are a
strong confirmatory proof of our eastern origin, abounded in ancient
Erinn. Druidism was the religion of the Celts, and druidism was probably
one of the least corrupt forms of paganism. The purity of the
divinely-taught patriarchal worship, became more and more corrupted as
it passed through defiled channels. Yet, in all pagan mythologies, we
find traces of the eternal verity in an obvious prominence of cultus
offered to one god above the rest; and obvious, though grossly
misapplied, glimpses of divine attributes, in the many deified objects
which seemed to symbolize his power and his omnipotence.

The Celtic druids probably taught the same doctrine as the Greek
philosophers. The metempsychosis, a prominent article of this creed, may
have been derived from the Pythagoreans,