It was with this feeling that I visited one of the most ancient places of worship in Ireland, the tumulus at Newgrange.  It was on a day filled with historic sight-seeing.  We started from Drogheda, the great stronghold of the Pale in the Middle Ages, and the scene of Cromwell’s terrible vengeance in 1649.  Three miles up the river is the site of the Battle of the Boyne.  It was one of the great indecisive battles of the world, it being necessary to fight it over again every year.  The Boyne had overflowed its banks, and in the fields forlorn hay-cocks stood like so many little islands.  We stopped at the battle monument and read its Whiggish inscription, which was scorned by our honest driver.  We could form some idea of how the field appeared on the eventful day when King William and King James confronted each other across the narrow stream.  Then the scene changed and we found ourselves in Mellefont Abbey, the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland, founded by St. Malachy, the friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.  King William and King James were at once relegated to their proper places among the moderns, while we went back to the ages of faith.

Four miles farther we came to Monasterboice, where stood two great Celtic crosses.  There are two ruined churches and a round tower.  Here was an early religious establishment which existed before the times of St. Columba.

This would be enough for one day’s reminiscence, but my heart leaped up at the sight of a long green ridge.  “There is the hill of Tara!”

Having traversed the period from King William to the dwellers in the Halls of Tara, what more natural than to take a further plunge into the past?

We drive into an open field and alight near a rock-strewn hill.  Candles are given us and we grope our way through narrow passages till we come to the centre of the hill.  Here is a chamber some twenty feet in height.  On the great stones which support the roof are mystic emblems.  On the floor is a large stone hollowed out in the shape of a bowl.  It suggests human sacrifices.  My guide did not encourage this suggestion.  There was, he thought, no historical evidence for it.  But it seemed to me that if these people ever practised such sacrifices this was the place for them.  A gloomier chamber for weird rites could not be imagined.

Who were the worshipers?  Druids or pre-Druids?  The archaeologists tell us that they belonged to the Early Bronze period.  Now Early Bronze is a good enough term for articles in a museum, but it does not suggest a human being.  We cannot get on terms of spiritual intimacy with the Early Bronze people.  We may know what they did, but there is no intimation of “the moving why they did it.”  What spurred them on to their feats of prodigious industry?  Was it fear or love?  First they built their chapel of great stones and then piled a huge hill on top of it.  Were they still under the influence of the glacial period and attempting