213 



votaries ; and Giraldus Cambrensis's work contains* some obscure 

 notices of such an order as existing in Ireland, which seem to have 

 misled Spelman-f" and other antiquaries; but, after all, when it appears 

 on examination that venerable Bede, notwithstanding all he writes of 

 Columba and his disciples, and concerning the Irish missions to the 

 north of Britain, yet never says one word of Culdees ; that never in 

 the whole history of lona and its dependencies, does the name of 

 Culdees once occur, which would be wholly improbable had that 

 establishment been of such : that Colgan, in his account^ of Saint 

 Columba's priests, has not a word about them, and that all the nume- 

 rous lives of that saint are equally silent concerning them, the whole 

 order seems founded in conjecture, or if it ever had reality, must be 

 referrible to a much later period. 



The Magian religion of Ireland could not long withstand the 

 powerful and exemplary superiority of the Christian teachers. Like 

 a mist before the rising day, it passed off from the broad face of the 

 country, and only hung in thick but partial cloudiness over the deeper 

 valleys and remoter islands of the west, or the kindred mountains of 

 Caledonia. From the immense stone altars, pillar stones, circles, and 

 other like remains of their architecture, that Mr. Hardiman, in his 

 valuable History of Galway, states§ as existing in the isles of Aran, it 

 would seem that these lonely rocks afforded them a last retreat, while 

 the two round towers, apparently of more modern times, that still re- 

 main in Scotland, furnish similar architectural evidence as to that coun- 

 try. Adamnan yet more satisfactorily supports this assertion in his Life 

 of Columba; once, where he speaks of the Magi as amidst the Grampian 

 hills, and that one of them " Broichanus Magus," attempted to raise 



* See post. Per. 4. sect. 3. f See Glossary, tit. " Culdei." 



X Trias Thaum. p. 487. § p. 319. 



