Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, fyc. 27 



of mountains and hills, and the other in towers. This last form of worship, 

 he continvies, was an innovation, said to have been brought about by Mogh 

 Nuadhat, or the Magus of the New Law, otherwise called Airgiod-lamh, or 

 Golden-hand, who, as he states, was no less a personage than the Zerdost or 

 Gold-hand of the Persians, who is said to have lost his life by a Touranian 

 Scythian, in a tumult raised by this innovation. On these assertions I have first 

 to remark, that Irish history furnishes us with no such facts as are here stated. It 

 is true, that it states that fires were lighted by the Druids on the tops of moun- 

 tains and hills ; but there is not one word to be found in that history respecting 

 fires having been lighted in towers, nor about the innovation, said to have been 

 brought about by Mogh Nuadhat, nor about any innovation introduced by any 

 Magus whatsoever. Secondly, it does not appear from Irish history that there 

 was any prince, or Magus, called Mogh Nuadhat, to whom the cognomen of Airgiod- 

 lamh was applied, nor would such a cognomen mean Golden-hand, but Silver- 

 hand. We are told, indeed, in Irish history, of a leader of the Tuatha De Da- 

 nann colony, who was called Nuada Airgiod-lamh, or Nuada of the Silver-hand, 

 from a hand of silver with which he supplied the place of a hand lost in the 

 battle of Magh Tuiredh, near Cong, in the present county of Mayo, fought 

 against the Fir-Bolgs, according to OTlaherty's corrected Irish chronology, in 

 the year 2737; and we also find in that history mention of a provincial king 

 of the Milesian colony, named Eoghan, who bore the cognomen of Mogh Nuadhat, 

 and who was slain by the celebrated monarch Conn of the Hundred Battles, 

 in the battle of Magh Lena, in the year of Christ 192. Thus it will be seen, 

 that General Vallancey makes the cognomen of one prince be the name of 

 another, who lived many centuries before him, in order to give probability to a 

 fanciful etymology of this cognomen necessary to his purpose, but which, after 

 all, it will by no means bear ; for we have the authority of Irish history itself, that 

 the cognomen Mogh Nuadhat did not mean Magus of the New Law, but strong 

 labourer. See an ancient Irish tract on the etymology of the names of celebrated 

 Irish personages, preserved in the Book of Lecan, fol. 221, and Mac Curtin's 

 Vindication of the History of Ireland, p. 102. 



General Vallancey next tells us, that these Towers were evidently named 

 by the Chaldeans Aphriun, i. e. templum, and that the Tower of St. Bridget, at 

 Kildare, one of the highest in the kingdom, was called her Aifrion Tower, 



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