James Bonwick > Quotes

“Ireland abounds with localities having fairy associations. Joyce gives many. Finn and his Fenians are in Sliabh-na-mban-fionn, the mountain of the fair-haired women; Rath Sithe, the Fenian fortress, is in Antrim; the Fairy's wood is in Sligo. Then there are the Sheegys, fairy hills, in Donegal; the Sheeauns, fairy mounds; the haunted hills, Shean, Sheena, Shane; and Knockna looricaim, the hills of the Cluricane. In Lough Corrib the Leprechauns were said to have been provided with ground meal for supper by hospitable neighbours.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“As so many ghost stories rest upon tradition, it is well to bear in mind what the author of The Golden Bough says -- "The superstitious beliefs and practices which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more archaic type than the religions depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“He deplores the great destruction of Irish MSS. for several centuries before the Norman conquest of Ireland, much information being only preserved by tradition. The country must have been for ages in a fearful state of feud and anarchy before the twelfth century.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“It is the badge of the Order of St. Patrick, founded in 1783, but the national badge since 1801. Pale or Cambridge blue, not green, is the true national colour of Ireland.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Property of the Church even descended from father to son; and, says Dr. Reeves, "was practically entailed to members of certain families.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“A WILD storm of controversy once raged, when Macpherson put forth a work purporting to be a collection of old Gaelic songs, under the name of the "Poems of Ossian," who was the last of the Fenian Chiefs, and who, reported, on his return to Ireland after his enchantment, failed to yield his paganism to St. Patrick's appeals. While generally condemned as the inventor of the lays, the charms of which enthralled even Byron and Goethe, he must surely have been a poet of great merit, if they were of his own composition. But if they were remains of ancient traditions, carried down by word of mouth, Macpherson might at least be credited with weaving them into more or less connected narratives.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“The crann tau-ré, or crois-tau-ré, the Fiery Cross, which was carried through the Highlands thirty miles in three hours, in the year 1745, at the Stuart Rebellion, was known in very remote times among the western Celts, as it still is in India. When dipped in the blood of goats, and bearing a flame, it was the message of alarm among the wild tribes. A serpentine figure was often twisted round the cross in heathen times.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“The river Boyne may have had its name from the goddess Boann, wife of the Irish Neptune, Nodens.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“This was an Irish charm for the toothache:-- "May the thumb of chosen Thomas
in the side of guileless Christ
heal my teeth without lamentation
from worms and from pangs.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“ONE of the most philosophical statements from Max Müller is to this effect: "Whatever we know of early religion, we always see that it presupposes vast periods of an earlier development.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“It would scarcely do to say with Thierry, "In legend alone rests real history--for legend is living tradition, and three times out of four it is truer than what we call History.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“The Irish, like the ancient Jews, held that bad men, especially, could walk this earth after death; and the English law, almost to our day, allowed a stake to be driven through the body of suicides and murderers, to prevent their spirit troubling the living.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Cæsar was positive as to the Gauls and Britons doing so. Strabo, Plutarch, and others said the same. Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius opposed the Druids on account of that cruelty. Yet the Archdruid Myfyr exclaimed--"They never wrought an atonement for sin by the sacrifice of bloody carcases of any kind." The writer has heard the learned Welsh Druid affirm this in most earnest tones. He would not admit so degrading a practice for his Druids.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Druids were so named from Dair, Doire, or Duir--the oak. The Druids were Dairaoi, or dwellers in oaks. There was the Gaulish Drus or Drys, the Gaelic Daru, the Saxon Dre or Dry, the Breton Derw, the Persian Duracht, the Sanscrit Druh.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“The author of The Golden Bough, J. G. Frazer, judiciously reminds us that "the superstitious beliefs and practices, which have been handed down by word of mouth, are generally of a far more archaic type than the religions depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race." A careful reading of the chapter on the "Superstitions of the Irish" would be convincing on that point.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“The deities, when they desired to make themselves visible, appeared as birds. The Fomoré gods were seen as crows or ravens. As Chronos was King of the world at the time of the Golden Age, so Bress, King of the Fomoré ruled awhile even over the Tuatha, who represent the Greek golden race.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Pilgrimages to wells are frequent to this day. The times are fixed for them; as the first of February, in honour of Tober Brigid, or St. Bridget's well, of Sligo. The bushes are draped with offerings, and the procession must move round as the sun moves, like the heathen did at the same spot so long ago. At Tober Choneill, or St. Connell's well, the correct thing is to kneel, then wish for a favour, drink the water in silence, and quietly retire, never telling the wish, if desiring its fulfilment.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“In connection with Irish idolatry, the question of sacrifices to the gods needs some consideration.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Popular holidays are still associated with the ideas of former heathen festivals. May-day in some parts of Ireland has its female mummers, who dance and hurl, wearing a holly-bush. A masked blown carries a pail of water with a mop for spreading its contents abroad. Boys then sing carols, as in France. In the south-east of Ireland a girl is chosen as May Queen, presiding at all May-makings till she is married. May Eve, having its dangers from fairies, etc., is spent in making cattle safe from the milk-thieving little people, by causing the cows to leap over fires. Dairymaids prudently drive their cows along with the mystical rowan stick.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Anna Wilkes in Ireland, Ur of the Chaldees, writes--"There can be no doubt the Towers in the interior of Hindostan bear more than a striking likeness to those remaining in Ireland. These resemblances are to be found in such great quantities in the latter place, that it is impossible but to believe that Ireland was the centre from which a great deal of the religion of Budh developed. This will not appear strange when we consider, in connection with the point, that many of the Saints bear Aryan and Semitic names.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Ossian more properly pictures the opinions of his race in Ireland and Scotland, though they are rather negative than affirmative. He, doubtless, never entered the esoteric circle of Druidism, and is very far from displaying any tincture of mysticism in his verses.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“All Hallow Eve ceremonies are well known, and especially the passing through the fire, although the Council of Constantinople, 680, expressly prohibited the heathen practice of leaping through the fire.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“We cannot conceive of an Irish bard writing, as did a Welsh bard, of Ceridwen--"Her complexion is formed of the mild light in the evening hour, the splendid, graceful, bright, and gentle Lady of the Mystic Song." But we do know that the early Crusaders brought home much of this mystic talk from the East, and that ecclesiastics of an imaginative turn were charmed with pseudo-Christian gnosticism”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“In the poem Cathluina, as translated in Ireland's Mirror, is this:--"Ferarma, bring me my shield and spear; bring me my sword, that stream of light. What mean these two angry ghosts that fight in air? The thin blood runs down their robes of mist; and their half-formed swords, like faint meteors, fall on sky-blue shields. Now they embrace like friends. The sweeping blast pipes through their airy limbs. They vanish. I do not like the sight, but I do not fear it.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Sonnerat had this account of the Darma, a Feast of Fire in India--"It lasts eighteen days, during which time those who make a vow to keep it must fast, abstain from women, lie on the bare ground, and walk on a brisk fire. On the eighteenth day, they assemble on the sound of instruments their heads covered with flowers, the body daubed with saffron, and follow in cadence the figures of Darma Rajah and Dobrede his wife, who are carried there in procession. When they come to the fire, they stir it to animate its activity, and take a little of the ashes, with which they their foreheads, and when the gods have been three times round it, they walk, either fast or slow, according to their zeal, over a very hot fire, extended to about forty feet length”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“In this respect he differs from Macpherson's Ossian.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“Two sects were said to be in the island--the Baalites, or fire adorers, and the Lirites, or devotees of water. O'Kearny tells us--"It is probable that very violent contentions we once carried on in Ireland by the partizans of the rival religions, who were accustomed to meet and decide the quarrels at the place set apart for battle." The Samhaisgs, were devoted to fire-worship, and the Swans to Lir worship.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“To show how wide-spread was the custom of human sacrifices, we may quote the list of nations adopting it, as given in the work Indo-Aryans, by Rajendralala Mitra. This includes the "Phœnicians, Carthaginians, Druids, Scythians, Greeks, Trojans, Romans, Cyclops, Lamiæ, Sestrygons, Syrens, Cretans, Cyprians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Jews, Aztecs, Khonds, Toltecs, Tezcaucans, Sucas, Peruvians, Africans, Mongols, Dyaks, Chinese, Japanese, Ashantis, Yucatans, Hindus." He adds--"The Persians were, perhaps, the only nation of ancient times that did not indulge in human sacrifices.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“The Scotch Beltane, till lately, was observed in the Hebrides with something more heathen than the fire. The people lighted the fire by the old fashion of friction with two pieces of wood, and then ate the consecrated cake indulged in by pagan Syrians. The Scotch had the mixture of eggs, milk, and oatcake. This was broken up, and distributed among the assembly. Whoever got the black bit, hidden in the cake, was considered worthy of sacrifice to Baal, as the cailteach bealtine. He was pushed into the fire, though soon rescued, and afterwards had to leap three times through the flames. The term Beltane carline was ever a name of reproach.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

“At Mull, he continues, "Here are some persons who can repeat several of the Celtic poems of Ossian and other bards. The schoolmaster told me he could repeat a very long one on the death of Oscar, which was taught him by his grandfather.”
― James Bonwick, Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions