Text this colour is a link for Members only. Support us by becoming a Member for only £3 a month by joining our 'Buy Me A Coffee page'; Membership gives you access to all content and removes ads.
Text this colour links to Pages. Text this colour links to Family Trees. Place the mouse over images to see a larger image. Click on paintings to see the painter's Biography Page. Mouse over links for a preview. Move the mouse off the painting or link to close the popup.
All About History Books
The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke. Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson. Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.
Dublin Penny Journal is in Victorian Books.
Victorian Books, Dublin Penny Journal 1833
Victorian Books, Dublin Penny Journal 1833 Page 245
Cromleach, at Knockeen [Map], County of Waterford.
The annexed cut is a faithful representation of a Cromleach at a place called Knockeen, about five miles north of the celebrated watering-place, Tramore, in the County of Waterford. I should more properly have written that my drawing correctly represents what that Druidical monument was in the year 1825, because I cannot say what damage it may have since received, as I have not seen it for the last seven years.
The word Cromleach is from the Irish, Cromleac, a pagan altar, which is a compound of, Crom, God, and leac, a flat stone. The one now about to be described is situate on the gentle declivity of a small hill, as the name of the place, i. e. "the little hill," indicates, and was constructed of eight huge rocks, six of which stood upright, and the remaining two were laid flat upon some of the erect ones. One of the latter stones, which is about sixteen feet in length, and of proportionate breadth and thickness, weighing five or six tons, appears to have been balanced on the top of one of the upright rocks, as on a pivot. At the time I saw it, one end of this stupendous block seemed to be suspended in the air, but the other end was overgrown with ivy, which con- nected it with the stones beneath, and gave the whole group a very fantastic and grotesque effect. It is to be remarked that this structure lay due east and west, in conformity with the ancient custom, which assigned amongst the cardinal points a religious pre-eminence to the east. 1826. This superiority of the east over the other points of the compass in religious worship at the first glance strikes one as strange, nay, almost, as pagan and ridiculous, but many important reasons for its continuance are to be found in an anonymous work, entitled " The Picture of Parsonstown," published by subscription in The author of that work, in describing the new Roman Catholic Chapel of Parsonstown, animadverts on the In position in which that edifice was placed, and quotes from scripture, the primitive fathers, and profane writers, a Egeat number of curious and interesting authorities on the subject.
Become a Member via our 'Buy Me a Coffee' page to read complete text.
In proof that the early preachers of christianity were unwilling to divert their converts from those places of worship which they had while pagans been accustomed to resort to, in order thereby the more readily to win their attendance at their new devotions, we find mouldering in decay, within twenty yards of this Cromleach, the more modern yet venerable ruins of a Christian Church, and there also is to be seen a burial ground adjoining. A countryman I happened to meet on the spot, informed me that hard-by was one of those subterranean dwellings which were inhabited by the ancient Druids, and which are so often to be read of in Irish history. However, at the time of my visit the entrance to this cave, unfortunately for me, was closed up.
There cannot be a doubt but that the huge stones now being written of served formerly as an altar for sacrifice. The kind of altars which, Wormius informs us, were used by the northern nations and Cimbri, is similar to that just described. This amazing pile of ponderous granite presents a specimen of the Rocking-stones or Baetylia, (i. e. moving or animated stones) which the Jate learned Dr. Lanigan finds fault with Bochart for calling anointed stones, although perhaps either epithet is equally appropriate. It is worthy of note that Dr. Smith, notwithstanding his acknowledged research, industry, and learning, has omitted to notice this Cromleach at Knockeen in his able and laborious work on the County of Waterford. B.
Victorian Books, Dublin Penny Journal 1833-34
The Druid Stone aka Mount Druid Cromlech [Map].
This memorial of the superstitious customs of our country, previous to the introduction of Christianity, stands on an eminence in the grounds of the Rev. Robert Trail, of Ballintoy, in the immediate vicinity of the Giants' Causeway, in the county of Antrim.
This species of rude altar is very common in many parts of Ireland; it is called both in the Irish and old British language Crom-liagh and Crom-leche, which signify in both a crooked stone, not from any crookedness, but from their inclining posture. They are supposed to have been so formed, in order to allow the blood of the victims slain upon them to run off freely. Mr. Rowland, in his Mona Antiqua, (page 47) conjectures that the word is derived from the Hebrew, Cærumluach, i.e., a devoted table or altar. Noah, after he left the ark, was to build an altar and offer up sacrifice on it to the Lord—Genesis viii. 20. And it is to be supposed that he built it of such coarse and rude stones as the mountains where the ark rested, afforded. In Exodus xx. 25, they had a command not to build them of hewn stone, which seems to show that the British Cromleche, and the Irish Cromliagh are only the remaining effects of that ancient law and custom of not striking a tool upon the stones of their altars.—Deut. xxvii. 5. These rude altars are sustained in some places by rows of pillars, and sometimes by three or more large stones, something similar, though smaller, than the table or covering stone. The Cromliagh at Mount Druid appears to be of the latter class.
Of the Druidic system very little is actually known; and that little can be collected only from Greek and Latin authors. Tt was doubtless a system of profound mystery. Its priests, designated by the name of Druids, were forbidden by the inviolable rules of their institution to divulge to the laity any of their dogmas, or to commit to writing any part of their doctrines, which were composed in verses merely oral, and treasured in the mind by a tedious course of study. Their places of worship were lonely groves, awful to the vulgar by gloomy shades and religious consecration. For the oak tree they enjoined extraordinary reverence. On their altars they offered bloody sacrifices, and among the victims were frequently men, commonly such as were condemned for supposed or real crimes. Among them was said to be maintained a kind of hierarchy, terminating in Archdruid, President of all. To the vulgar they communicated some instructions of a moral nature; and, to inspire them with courage in battle, are said to have given them, in the doctrine of the metempsychosis, some faint idea of the soul's immortality. It is to them the following allusion is made by Ossian.
"There, mixed with the murmurs of waters, rose the voice of aged men, who called the forms of night to aid ‘them in their war."