Conquests, and from the Leabhar Dhroma Sneachta, or the snow-backed book, by some said to have been written before St. Patrick arrived in Ireland.* From Magog were descended the Nemedians, the Fîr-Bolg, and the Tuatha De-Danánn, and from the same patriarch came Niul, a particular friend of Aaron and Moses,† who married Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, and afterwards saw his father-in-law drowned in the Red Sea. Their son was Gaodhal, from whom the Gaoidhil or Gaël are named. They went to Scythia or Gothia, and thence to Spain, in four ships, led by Oige-Youth-Uige-Knowledge, and the two sons of Allod-Antiquity, and obtained many victories over the people of Spain, till at length one of their princes Mileadh—a soldier, usually termed Milesius of Spain, sailing abroad became marshal of the army of Pharaoh Nectonibus, then fighting against the Ethiopians. He went then to Spain, and beat the Gothi who ravaged that country-doubtless the Visigoths. We find here an anachronism of two thousand years. After fighting fifty-four battles he expelled them from Spain. Vexed by a famine he despatched Ith-Corn-in quest of the Western Island. Ith and his company came to Ireland, and conversed with the nations who spoke the Gaoidhealg, Gaëlic or Irish language. According to the Book of Conquests, not only the Milesians or Gaoidhil, but likewise the other descendants of Neimhidh, including the Fîr-Bolg and the Tuatha De-Danánn, spoke the Gaoidhealg or Gaëlic language. Richard Creagh, primate of Ireland, says that Gaëlic was constantly used in Ireland since the arrival of Neimhidh, namely, 630 years after Noah's Deluge. The Milesians arrived in 1300 B.C., at Inmhear Slainge or Wexford harbour, the name of which is a proof that the Milesian story was written after the seventh century, since in the second that place was called "Modoni ostia" by Ptolemy, and in the seventh Moda by St. Adamnan. The remains of the Tuatha De-Danánn were

*Keating, p. 54.

Niul had his camp at Capacirunt, near Egypt, when Moses and Aaron arrived in the neighbourhood. Moses cured Niul's son Gadelus, who had been bitten by a serpent, by laying his rod upon the wound, and thereby conciliated the friendship of the Gaël. He moreover prophesied that they should settle in a country free from venomous reptiles.

Dr. Wood's Inquiry.

banished, and Ireland became the sole possession and dwellingplace of the Milesians or Gaoidhil.

These traditions are preserved in poems or metrical fragments of Fiech,* Cennfaolad, Maelmur, Coemann, Eochod, and other Irish bards, who composed their poems between the sixth and tenth centuries. These compositions, some of which have been printed from Irish manuscripts, were the materials which the monkish chroniclers of a somewhat later period worked up in their annals. Of the monkish chronicles, those of Tigernach, Innisfallen, Ulster, and the Psalter of Cashel are the most celebrated. A part of the poetical fictions are even too wild to have obtained credit with the more sober of the chroniclers. Tigernach allows that all the Irish monuments are uncertain down to the age of Kimbaoth, or that of the first Ptolemy.

Nearly the same enumeration of the colonies said to have settled in Ireland has been deduced by the learned Dr. O'Connor from the various annals above mentioned, the compositions of the Irish chroniclers. The following is a brief abstract of his statement. He terms the first colony that of Partholanus, who lived in the third age of the world, according to the computation of ages supposed to have been made by Bede, and adopted by the monastic historians of the Irish. The third age commences with the time of Abraham.

This first colony, led by Partholan, was followed by a second under Nemethus, about the time of the patriarch Jacob. The third colony was that of the Fir-Bolgs, who came to the south of Ireland. From these were the first dynasties of Irish kings, whose names and successions are given by Keating and O'Flaherty, as these writers have collected them from the old poets above mentioned. The fourth were the Tuatha De-Danánn, who came under their leader Nuadha. All these colonies were in the third age of the world, i. e. before the time of Solomon. After that time, in the fourth age of the world, came the Scoti from Spain. Such, according to O'Connor, is the uniform and constant

* Fiech is said to have been a pupil of St. Patrick.

† See the Prolegomena to O'Connor's collection of Irish historians. VOL. III.

L

assertion of all the Irish chronicles. This learned writer allows that all the previous part of Irish history is uncertain and partly fabulous. He conjectures that the Tuatha DeDanánn were a colony of Damnonii from South Britain, and that the Fîr-Bolgs were Belgæ. Their descendants, he says, remained until the third century of our era in the north of Ireland, having been expelled from the southern parts by the Scoti.

The Scoti were the Milesians. Whence they came, appears to Dr. O'Connor a puzzling question. He thinks the solution can only be collected from poets and chroniclers who wrote before the tenth century, viz. Fiech, Cennfaelad, Cuanac, Maelmur, and Nennius. All these writers deduce them from Spain. There is nothing improbable in the opinion which Dr. O'Connor adopts, that the inhabitants of that peninsula, when oppressed by the Carthaginians and Romans, may have emigrated into Ireland; but as this colony is uniformly said to have consisted of people who spoke the Gaëlic language, which we know indeed from other information to have been the idiom of the Scoti, the Spanish colony, if it ever existed, must have come from the parts of Spain inhabited by Celts. From what is known of the Celtic people in Spain, it may be supposed they were too barbarous to have had shipping and the means of transporting themselves beyond seas. The historical evidence of such a colonisation from Spain is the legend of Milesius above stated, which, as it may be seen, is the most romantic of all the Irish sagas.

It seems evident on comparing this enumeration of Irish colonies with that which has been set down in the preceding pages, that the contents of the annals are merely the bardic story reduced to a sort of chronological system adopted by the monks of Britain and Ireland. Dr. O'Connor has omitted the fabulous circumstances which are so striking in each relation. But it is better to take them as we find them if we wish to form an estimate of their credibility. The rationalising method of such writers as Dr. O'Connor, imposes

* "Connaciæ pars quæ nunc Erros dicitur, Erros Damnoniorum appellatur ab Adamnano, qui scripsit ante Bedum, anno 694." (Dr. O'Connor, Proleg. 26.)

upon the reader by making him believe facts on the supposed evidence of sober history, while their existence only rests on the credit of the wildest rhapsodies.

Paragraph 3.-Critical remarks on the Bardic stories and on the Monkish annals of Ireland.

When we consider the general character of the legends connected with the history of Ireland, it seems surprising that writers of a late period, men of learning and intelligence, have thought it worth while to attempt any analysis of them, or have supposed that any truth can be elicited from such a mass of absurdities. It has been well observed, that even in events and circumstances of a late date, in respect to which it may be supposed that correct information might have been easily obtained by Irishmen of the period to which these compositions are referred, the most palpable ignorance is displayed. Thus it is stated that the city of Dublin was built by the Danes in the fifth century; whereas it is mentioned by Ptolemy as a city existing already in the second century. They omit to mention Nagnata, though that city is termed by Ptolemy módus étionμos, which implies that it was a place of great importance in his time. They preserve chiefly the names of places which were monastic establishments, as that of Rhobog, a small episcopal village.* The authors of these legends were evidently monks of the most ignorant and credulous class. It appears that the Irish inventors and their brethren of Wales had some common germs of fiction, which were developed differently in after times. Thus in the fabulous chronicles of Nennius or of Mark we find a brief notice of the Trojan origin of the Britons, and the story of Partholan as the leader of the first colony to Ireland. It was by working upon these materials that the monks of Wales and Ireland at length accumulated that mass of fictions which in both countries passed for history. The Irish monks embellished their fables by bringing in occasionally stories from the Old Testament; while those of Wales seem to have preferred the fictions of the classical poets, with which they were perhaps better acquainted than their brethren in Ireland.

* Dr. Wood, ubi supra.

In the compositions of both we detect the most glaring anachronisms. A slight review of these compositions is sufficient to show that no reliance can be placed on the traditions which they contain. The Spanish origin of the Milesians or followers of Mileadh-whose name is a corruption of the Latin word miles-rests on no better authority than the Trojan origin of the Britons, or than the alleged origination of other Irish tribes from Thrace, Greece, the shores of the Euxine, Egypt, and Africa; but the situation of Spain is nearer to that of Ireland, and the statement is therefore not so obviously absurd. This tale has been alluded to by writers of late times as a probable tradition, while the other parts of the same story have been considered as altogether unworthy of credit. It may be true, and is not improbable, especially as there were Celtic tribes in the north of Spain, but the testimony of Irish legends in its favour is of little or no weight.

We

One fact of some importance may be collected from the works of the Irish annalists. It is that one language prevailed through Ireland during the age of their earliest compositions, as well as during that which their fuller developement embraces. It is expressly stated that the successive colonies of Neimhidhians, Fîr-Bolgs, Tuatha De-Danánn, and Milesians, though said to have come to Ireland from different countries, all spoke the Gaoidhealg or Gaëlic language. may infer that no great diversity of language existed in any great part of the Irish population, and that whatever settlements may have been made on the coasts of Ireland, either by Northmen or by the Welsh Britons of the Roman or subsequent times, consisted of very small bodies, whose members were insufficient to produce any effect on the language or stock of the previous population.* Gaoidhil, or as the Welsh have the

* It is repeatedly stated by Keating that no language except the Erse or Gaëlic was spoken by any of the different colonies said to have arrived in Ireland. After showing that all the Irish tribes, from Partholanus and his followers (whose arrival he considers a piece of authentic history, and supposes to have happened three hundred years after the Flood), were descended from the same ancestors, of the family of Magog, he says, "These tribes, notwithstanding they were dispersed into different countries, retained the same language, which was Scotbhearla, or the Irish, and it was spoken as the mother-tongue of every tribe. This we have reason to believe, from the testimony of authentic writers, who relate that when Ithus, the son of