"Ollav Fola is celebrated in ancient history as a sage and legislator, eminent for learning, wisdom, and excellent institutions ; and his historic fame has been recognized by placing his medallion, in basso relievo, with those of Moses, and other great legislators, on the interior of the dome of the Four Courts in Dublin." - Annals of the Four Masters, p. 227, notes.
"The ancient Records and Chronicles of the kingdom were ordered to be written and carefully preserved at Tara by Ollav Fola, and these formed the basis of the ancient History of Ireland, called the Psalter of Tara." - Ibid. p. 297, note. [ABCOG: O'Donovan's translation p. 117 (1856) attributes the now lost Psalter to Cormac, son of Art. O'Donovan often differs from the translation used by Glover.]
F.R.A. Glover: Ollam Fodhla - pronounced Ollav Fola - is a man well-known of, though not accurately known in, Irish tradition, as a great Monarch, Sage, and Lawgiver. He is mentioned thus in the Annals of the Four Masters, p. 412:-
"Amongst the most celebrated kings of Ulster, who also reigned as monarchs of Ireland, was Ollamh Fodhla, or Ollav Fola, the famous legislator, whose reign is placed by Tigernach, O'Flaherty, and others about seven centuries before the Christian era. He founded, the Conventions of Tara."
This is that Eocaid-Ollambh-Fodhla-Heremon-Ardrigh (Each'd=Historian, Ollam=Prophet, Fola=Destiny or Learned, Heremon=King, Ardrigh=Head-King [Pentarch] [JML: ruler over 5 kings]) of Tara, of whom the Chronicles of Eri make such ample and honorable mention (Chronicles of Eri, vol ii pp.70, 85,91,116).
"Their kings had many names and titles; these titles have been branched out into persons, and inserted in the lists of real monarchs; ... by which means the chronology of Egypt has been greatly embarrassed." So, as Bryant said of Egyptian history and chronology, may be said of Irish, as Mr. Moore well suggests. This case, however, affords an example of the converse evil: a compound, in which mere titles have been converted into a man, and two persons thrown into one. - Moore's Ireland, i. 161.
"Ollav Fola" is no king at all:- is not the name of a king, nor of any one. It is, if we are to judge of his true position by the circumstantial evidence that the case affords, the title of an Official. We have to prove that his Office was made and filled by the prophet Jeremiah.
The Ollav Fola, of Irish history, was the chief and first, and founder of the Order of Ollams, in Ireland. This was an order, not of kings, but of priests or sages; Druids so called: more properly Draoi, as General Vallancey insists. They were not Pagans. They were simple Deists.
This Ollav Fola founded, also, a college of Ollams, at Tara; "At Tara, was also the building called Mur-Ollam-ham, or the House of the Learned: in which resided the bards, brehons, and other learned men." - Annals of the Four Masters, p. 293. [ABCOG: O'Donovan p. 53]. Or, as the Hebrews would say, 'a school of the prophets;' but not a college of kings.
Who ever beard of an order of kings? or, a college of kings? Therefore, this Ollam Fola is not, in his presumed name, a king, by reason of this word Ollam. The word Ollam has a meaning. It is a Hebrew word, (Strong's No. 5769); and has to do with any period of time short of eternity, or eternity: a natural word to apply to the office of a man whose business it was to teach men to look to Him "who keeps the times and seasons in His own hand," and Who, incarnate, should, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, at some certain time, appear in the East.
As Kingship, therefore, is evidently not in the word Ollam, we must seek for it in the other portion of this official's name; that is, in the word Fola.
Now, this word, this illustrious official had in common with a certain Eastern Princess, married to the King of the Country, one of the many Queens after whom Ireland has been said to be named, Inis-Fodhla, Inis-Fola. The letters "dh" introduced into the word, were a subsequent invention. When the language came to be written, and men had to find out reasons for what they did not know, they changed the Fola of conversation into some other word, the meaning of which they did know, by the arbitrary incorporation of unsounding consonants: a process by which the word Fola, which was unintelligible as Irish, became invested with a meaning, which they thought would fit the circumstances of the case.
But if the Island was named Fodhla at all, or, Fola, in pronunciation, why not after the alleged king, who was a wonderfully learned man, and a great man, instead of after a woman? For the greatness of this Ollam Fola, which it is impossible to treat as a fiction, has come down to us, notwithstanding a halo of the impossible which surrounds the demi-god, as an undeniable reality. So much is this the case, that notwithstanding his alleged apocryphal existence, he is en-dome-d at this day in the grand Hall of the Four Courts, in Dublin, with Moses and other magnates of ancient celebrity. The apocrypha in the case is, his imaginary kingship; which, intruding unnaturally into the legends concerning the man, has, by turning truth into fiction, thrown a cloud of doubt over the whole. The Ollam Fola is a reality, and a grand reality, but not that of a king. He was a Prophet and a Hebrew, as the word and its significant meaning declare to us.
And what Hebrew prophet of note was living at the time assigned as the era of this Ollam Fola, - cir. B.C. 600, according to the corrected chronology of Mr. O'Connor of Balanagare, in his Dissertations, - but Jeremiah? .. the man who was appointed prophet to the Gentiles, and the restorer of the eradicated kingdom of Judah (jer. 1:5, 10; 15:11). He was; and was adrift at the time. And, the place of his death and burial being unknown, (for his tomb is shown at three places, Taphnis, Jerusalem, and Babylon, and the legends of his death being in terms that carry their own confutation,) be may as well have lived and died in Ireland as in any other country. (See Jer. 1:8 and 19. So far from any thing being known as to the certainty of his death, a fanciful idea obtained that he never died at all; record of which is to be seen in the questions of the disciples of John [JML: the Baptist], the Forerunner, to their Lord; a notion that very well accords with the fact of the prophet's disappearance towards the Fortunate Islands, and his long looked-for return from those imaginary Elysian Fields, the Suvarna-Dwip of Sanskrit theology. [Suvarna-Dwip is the name by which Ireland was known by those to whom Father Abraham was known; and was the place to which their descendants, later, swarmed, when driven out of Pali-stan by him whom they have handed down to posterity as "Joshua the son of Nun, the Robber."])
He, Jeremiah, had, as we shall see, a great business to do somewhere: and he was, doubtless, under the guidance, as before he had been under the protection of Almighty God, to do it.
With respect to the reason as to why Ollam Fola might have been concluded to be a king when he was none other than a prophet, it is easy to suppose that the Conductor and Guardian of the King's Daughters, would, as guardian of these high-destinied women, be held by the vulgar, and by the Bards also in course of time, as himself a king. The character, also, which he had, the position he filled, and the relation in which he stood towards them and God, in Whose Name he spoke and Whom he represented (2 Cor. 5:20), would necessarily inspire that admiration and profound respect for the man, which, the kings who knew him readily according him, would, by the same vulgar, be interpreted into kingship over them. Hence all the exaggerated statements concerning the wonderful phantom, Ollam-Fola-Heremon: of whom and whose imaginary character the poet Moore feels constrained, albeit with great respect for the illustrious dead, to speak in the following philosophic terms:-"
"Among the numerous kings, that, in this dim period of Irish history, pass like shadows before our eyes, the Royal Sage, Ollamh Fodhla, is almost the only one, who, from the strong light of tradition thrown round him, stands out as a being of historical substance and truth. It would serve to illustrate the nature and extent of the evidence with which the world is sometimes satisfied, to collect together the various celebrated names which are received as authentic, on the strength of tradition alone; and few, perhaps, could claim a more virtual title to this privilege than the great legislator of the Irish, Ollamh Fodhla. In considering the credit, however, that may safely be attached to the accounts of this celebrated personage, we must dismiss wholly from our minds, the extravagant antiquity assigned to him by the Seneachies; and as it has been shown that the date of the dynasty itself, of which he was so distinguished an ornament, cannot, at the utmost, be removed further back than the second century before our era, whatever his fame may thus lose in antiquity, it will be found to gain in probability; since, as we shall see, when I come to treat of the Irish annals, the epoch of this monarch, if not within the line to which authentic history extends, is, at least, not very far beyond it." Moore's Ireland, vol. i. 113, 114.
"In fixing the period of this Monarch's reign, chronologers have been widely at variance. While some place it at no less than 1316 years before the Christian Era" (the time of Gideon), "Plowden makes it 960 years" (the time of Jeroboam), "O'Flaherty, between 700 and 800" (the time of the Israelitish Dispersion), "and the author of the Dissertations, Mr. C. O'Connor, of Balanagare, about 600." [The time. of the besieging of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, being, according to Hales, 602 B.C.]
This extravagant difference in the fixing the era of the most distinguished man that ever lived in Ireland, to say nothing of Mr. Moore's own further reduction of 400 years in the antiquity of the illustrious individual, shows that there is still a great want of information as to the realities of the case. Possibly, when historians shall have agreed to the propriety of un-king-ing the man who was no king, and dislodging him from the imaginary dynasty, to all the exigencies of the theories concerning which this official's life and acts have been made to conform, his true place and time in history may be more easily determined than is now the case; while the truth established in this so-important an instance, may become the stand-point for the rectification of a great deal of other matter: matter very valuable in itself, but quite unusable from the heterogeneous inter-comminglings of Persons and Things, which Irish Tradition now so often presents to the anxious inquirer after truth and facts.
Mr. Moore's observations on this point are,-
"It is a task ungracious and painful, more especially to one accustomed from his early days to regard, through a poetic medium, the ancient fortunes of his country, to be obliged, at the stern call of historical truth, not only to surrender his own illusions on the subject, but to undertake also the invidious task of dispelling the dreams of others who have not the same imperative motives of duty or responsibility for disenchanting themselves of so agreeable an error. That the popular belief in this national tale should so long have been cherished and persevered in, can hardly be a subject of much wonder. .. . Even in our own times, all the most intelligent of those writers who have treated of ancient Ireland, have each, in turn, adopted the tale of the Milesian Colonization, and lent all the aid of their learning and talent to elevate it into history. But, even in their hands the attempt has proved an utter failure: nor could any effort, indeed, of ingenuity succeed in reconciling the improbabilities of a story, which in no other point of view differs from the fictitious origins invented for their respective countries by Humbold, Suffridius, Geoffroy Monmouth, and others, than in having been somewhat more ingeniously put together, and far more fondly persevered in by the imaginative people, whose love of high ancestry it flatters, and whose wounded pride it consoles. Suffridius was a fabricator of fictitious origins for the Frisons, as Humbold was an inventor in the same line for the Franks; the latter founding his fictions professedly on Druidical remains. There is scarcely a nation, indeed, in Europe, which has not been provided thus with some false scheme of antiquity; and it is a fact, mournfully significant, that the Irish are now the only people among whom such visionary pretensions are still clung to with any trust."
" Had the Bards, in their account of the early settlements, so far followed the natural course of events as to place that colony they wished to have considered as the original of the Irish people at the commencement instead of at the end of the series, we should have been spared, at least, those difficulties of chronology, which, at present, beset the whole scheme .. . The ideal colony - the Milesian Settlement - which ought to have been placed beyond the bounds of authentic record, where its inventors would have had free scope for their flights, has, on the contrary, been introduced among known personages and events, and compelled to adjust itself to the unpliant neighbourbood of facts: while on the other hand accredited beings of history, have, by the interposition of this shadowy intruder, been separated, as it were, from the real world, and removed into distant regions of time, where sober chronology would in vain attempt to reach them." (According to the calculation of the Bards, the arrival of the Belgae, for example, must have been, at least, 1500 years before the Christian era.)
"It is true, the more moderate of the Milesian believers, on being made aware of these chronological difficulties, have surrendered the remote date at first assigned to the event; and, in general, content themselves with fixing it near 1000 years later. But this remove, beside that it exposes the shifting foundation on which the whole history rests, serves but to render its gross anachronisms and improbabilities still more glaring .. . When brought near the daylight of modern history, and at the distance of nearly a thousand years from their pretended progenitors, it is plain that these Milesian heroes, at once, shrink into mere shadows of fable." - Moore, pp. 91.123.
Seen from our point of view, the dignity of the great Ollam Fola of Irish Tradition has hardly been magnified beyond due proportions, as men, in those times, would see and feel what they understood, (i.e., were able to understand,) of his position, and of the great powers with which he, if our conjecture be the truth of the case, was endowed: particularly if the Papal view of such endowments can invest even the pretender to such, with a grandeur, in presence of which, that of kings and emperors must pale; and out of the assumption of which, upon no authority but his own assurance, a Christian bishop has been found to magnify himself into, and has found others to make of him, a King of kings, and Lord of lords, and further dared to act, the Mighty Ruler of Princes.
The words thus applied by Jehovah to the office of the Prophet Jeremiah having been those upon which the Bishops of Rome established their travesty of Almighty Power on Earth, over kings, emperors, and states: as is clear from the Preamble to the Bull of Pope Pius V., by which that Bishop of Rome thought to deprive the Queen of England of her throne and power:-
"Pius, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God. He, Who reigneth in the highest .. hath committed to me, .. Church .. to one alone upon Earth, .. the Bishop of Rome, to be governed in fulness of power. .. Him alone, He made Prince over all people, with power to pluck up, destroy, scatter, consume, plant, and build."
The word, of the Lord to Jeremiah were, - "See, I have set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant."
I have, however, no desire to encumber my hypothesis, with any argument, as to whether the Ollam Fodhla of Irish Tradition is, or is not a mistake for Jeremiah the Prophet. I feel that the case of the presence of the illustrious Seer in Ireland is made out on other grounds; that, indeed, he must have been the transporter of the Stone, the conductor of "the King's Daughters" and the planter of the Standard of Judah, in Ireland. I was satisfied of this, long before I heard a word of the Legend, of his having been Instructor to the great warrior Finn McCoyle, or even of the existence of this Ollam Fola. But as the existing history of Ollam Fola is inconsistent with itself, .. as his kingship is evidently a fiction, while the facts of his reality and his wisdom cannot be denied; .. and as, moreover, the chronology of the real individual is brought down to accord with the times of the Prophet; and as his acts are exactly those that the Prophet's acts would have been had he had the power to do as he would have felt it to be his duty to do, viz. the establishing an order of learned men to carry on the knowledge of that Law, the Tara, which he certainly would have brought with him and left them, with that office of Jodhan Moran, of which he was evidently the introducer, - I submit,
1. That the Eochaid-Ollam-Fola-Heremon-Ardri of fiction, is, when reduced to its proper elements, the description of two officials instead of one person:-
2. That the Eochaid Ollam Fola, when divested of the royalty which belongs to the first of the last two words of this pretentious name, and of the Pentarchate expressed by the last, is the Jeremiah of reality:-
3. That the two last words belong to the King contemporary with him, the King Pentarch at the time of the Prophet's arrival in Ireland, and who married the Princess from the East:-
4. That the word Eochaid as prefixed to the words Olla-Fola, is an adjective characteristic of respect, such as we are accustomed to use towards the ancient chronicler, the Venerable Bede:
The word Each'd, evidently the same as Eocaid, means "History," "Annals." "The ancient Records and Chronicles of the kingdom were ordered to be written and carefully preserved at Tara, by Ollav Fola," - more Hebraico? - "and these formed the basis of the ancient history of Ireland called the Psalter of Tara." - Annals of the Four Masters, note, p. 297. Well, therefore, did Ollam Fola deserve the immortalization of the epithet, "The Chronicler." Vide also Moore, i. 114.
5, and lastly. That, in the capacity and character thus assigned to him, as the Prophet-Restorer of the Monarchy of Judah, the Ollam Fola of Tara, Chronicler, Sage, and Lawgiver, divested of both Pentarchy and Royalty, is more worthy of the exaltation given him in the Dome of the Four Courts in the Irish Capital, than any other would be, though entitled to the dignity of all the adjuncts through which Ollam Fola has been presented to the world, since the true knowledge of the real man became lost to the generations which succeeded him.
From: "England, the Remnant of Judah, and the Israel of Ephraim", written by F.R.A. Glover, M.A., Chaplain to the Consulate at Cologne. Published by Rivingtons, London, 1861. Based on research commenced in 1844.