dunon or the Acropolis of Camulos, with the name of which that of Fál's Tara may perhaps, mythologically speaking, be equated.
These scattered facts, which I have tried to connect with one another, not only suggest that Nuada Finnfáil, or the Goidelic Nodens, was the same divinity as Fál, and the latter as Cenn Cruaich; but they further go to prove a connection between his cult and the high places, which, whether artificial or natural, agree, so far as concerns the object in view, with the selection in Greece and Rome of elevated positions for the temple of Zeus and Jupiter. It would agree even more closely with the custom, still practised by the Parliament of the Isle of Man, of promulgating the laws made by it from an artificial mound called the Tynwald, which was done at Midsummer under the Old Style, but now on the 5th of July, a date of no institutional significance. It is in this light, perhaps, that one should chiefly regard the cruach or 'gorseᵭ' sacred to the Celtic god and his assessors: in other words, the Irish probably assembled on Mag Slecht, for example, not only to worship Cenn Cruaich, but also to hold their courts under the sanction of the chief of the nation's gods, much as the English House of Lords pays homage to Christianity by opening its proceedings with a public prayer. But one need not leave Celtic ground to look for an instance more pagan and far more in point: I allude to the gorseᵭ or court under the authority of which the Eisteᵭvod is held as a sort of session, as its name indicates, for letters and music. The gorseᵭ is held in the open air, a circle of stones being formed, with a stone bigger than the others in the middle; the proceedings are opened with prayer
