Many monuments are accredited to them by tradition, but greatest and
most wonderful are the pyramids of stone at Brugh on the Boyne. Some
nine miles from the sandy seashore, where the Boyne loses itself in the
waves, there is a broad tongue of meadowland, shut in on three sides
southward by the Boyne, and to the northeast cut off by a lesser stream
that joins it. This remote and quiet headland, very famous in the
annals, was in old days so surrounded by woods that it was like a quiet
glade in the forest rimmed by the clear waters of the Boyne. The Mourne
Mountains to the north and the lesser summits on the southern sky-line
were hidden by the trees. The forest wall encircled the green
meadowland, and the river fringed with blue forget-me-nots.

In this quiet spot was the sacred place of the De Danaans, and three
great pyramids of stone, a mile apart along the river, mark their three
chief sanctuaries. The central is the greatest; two hundred thousand
tons of stone heaped up, within a circular wall of stone, itself
surrounded by a great outer circle of standing stones, thirty in number,
like gray sentinels guarding the shrine. In the very heart of the
pyramid, hushed in perpetual stillness and peace, is the inmost
sanctuary, a chamber formed like a cross, domed with a lofty roof, and
adorned with mysterious tracings on the rocks. Shrines like this are
found in many lands, whether within the heart of the pyramids of Egypt
or in the recesses of India's hills; and in all lands they have the same
purpose. They are secret and holy sanctuaries, guarded well from all
outward influence, where, in the mystic solitude, the valiant and great
among the living may commune with the spirits of the mighty dead. The
dead, though hidden, are not passed away; their souls are in perpetual
nearness to ours. If we enter deep within ourselves, to the remote
shrine of the heart, as they entered that secluded shrine, we may find
the mysterious threshold where their world and our world meet.