174 



affords a strong confirmation of these ideas by the account which he 

 gives of the Persian Pyratheion, which was, he says, a vast en- 

 closed space, in the centre of which stood the altar ; upon this the 

 Magi collected a large quantity of ashes, and in them preserved the 

 Azer, or sacred fire, unextinguished. Zonares speaks of the sacred 

 enclosures in which fire was worshipped by the people. And most 

 of the terms used by the Greek writers imply a spacious enclosed 

 piece of consecrated ground, with which description all the oriental 

 MSS. agree. The words which Strabo employed are thought by 

 Gail, to be synonimous to enceinte sacred a sacred boundary.* 

 And accordingly among the Persian remains of antiquity, several 

 of those monuments still pointed out as fire altars, are sur- 

 rounded by broad walls formed of unhewn stones. Thus in Persia 

 do we find counterparts of the most remarkable antiquities existing 

 in Ireland, 



Of the same nature with the above fabrics, is a very extraordi- 

 nary structure remaining in the greater Isle of Arran, off Galway 

 Bay, which has been incorrectly described by Dr. Ledwich in his 

 Antiquities of Ireland, and which Mr. O'Flaherty, in his History of 

 the IsleSj-f- only mentions as the Dun or Fort of the chief Aengus. 

 It is certainly now called Dun-Aengus, But having obtained an 

 authentic account of it as it now stands, it seems, although differing 

 in many particulars, yet to bear a sufficient resemblance to the Stig- 

 an-air, to corroborate the foregoing conjectures. Dun Aengus 

 stands upon the very edge of a perpendicular cliff, two hundred and 

 fifty feet above the sea, towards which there is no fence ; it is of a 

 horse-shoe shape, and composed of three concentric walls, put 



yf^ Ouseley's Travels in the East, I. pp. 129 — 130 And the Greek authors there cited. 



t Transactions R. I. A. XIV. 



