actions of that early period of Grecian story, when, as we know, the accounts of great events were kept by memory alone.*

A learned writer, who, by the force of evidence, has been constrained to admit the antiquity of the lists of Irish kings, has yet the inconsistency to deny to this people, the use of letters before the coming of St. Patrick. It is to be recollected, that the regal lists which he thus supposes to have been but ortally transmitted, and which, from the commencement of the Christian era, are shown to have been correctly kept, consists of a long succession of princes, in genealogical order, with, moreover, the descent even of the collateral branches in all their different ramifications. Such is the nature of the royal lists which, according to this sapient supposition, must have been transmitted correctly, from memory to memory, through a lapse of many centuries; and such the weakness of that sort of skepticism,—not unmixed sometimes with a lurking spirit of unfairness, which, while straining at imaginary difficulties on one side of a question, is prepared to swallow the most indigestible absurdities on the other. And here a consideration on the general subject of Irish antiquities presents itself, which, as it has had great weight in determining my own views of the matter, may, perhaps, not be without some influence on the mind of my reader. In the course of this chapter shall be laid before him a view of the state in which Ireland was found in the fifth century,-of the condition of her people, their forms of polity, institutions, and usages at that period when the Christian faith first visited her shores; and when, by the light which then broke in upon her long seclusion, she became, for the first time, in any degree known to the other nations of Europe. In that very state, political and social, in which her people were then found, with the very same laws, forms of government, manners and habits, did they remain, without change or innovation, for the space of seven hundred years; and though, at the end of that long period, brought abjectly under a foreign yoke, yet continued unsubdued in their attachment to the old law of their country, nor would allow it to be superseded by the code of the conqueror for nearly five hundred years after.

It is evident that to infuse into any order of things so pervading a principle of stability, must have been the slow work of time alone; nor could any system of laws and usages have taken so strong a hold of the hearts of a whole people as those of the Irish had evidently obtained at the time of the coming of St. Patrick, without the lapse of many a foregone century, to enable them to strike so deeply their roots. In no country, as we shall see, was Christianity received with so fervid a welcome; but in none also had she to make such concessions to old established superstitions, or to leave so much of those religious forms and prejudices, which she found already subsisting, unaltered. Nor was it only over the original Irish themselves, that these prescriptive laws had thus by long tenure gained an ascendency: as even those foreign tribes,-for the most part, as we have seen, Teutonic,-who obtained a settlement among them, had been forced, though conquerors, to follow in the current of long-established customs; till, as was said of the conquering colonists of an after day, they grew, at length, to be more Hibernian than the Hibernians themselves. The same ancient forms of religion and of government were still preserved; the language of the multitude soon swept away that of the mere caste

"It is strongly implied by his (Pausanias's) expression, that the written register of the Olympian victors was not so old as Chorobus, but that the account of the first Olympiads had been kept by memory alone. Indeed, it appears certain from all memorials of the best authority, that writing was not common in Greece so early."-Mitford, vol. i. chap. 3.

"When we consider that this was the first attempt (the Olympionics of Timæus of Sicily) that we know of, to establish an era, and that it was in the 129th Olympiad, what are we to think of the preceding Greek chronology?"-Wood's Inquiry into the Life, &c., of Homer.

In Ireland, the genealogies which are preserved, could not have been handed down in such an extensive, and at the same time so correct a manner, without this acquaintance with letters, as the tables embrace too great a compass to retain them in the memory; and as, without the assistance of these elements of knowledge there would have been no sufficient inducement to bestow on them such peculiar attention."Webb, Analysis of the Antiq of Ireland Another well-informed writer thus enforces the same view :-" The Irish genealogical tables, which are still extant, carry intrinsic proofs of their being genuine and authentic, by their chronological accuracy and consistency with each other through all the lines collateral, as well as direct; a consistency not to be accounted for on the supposition of their being fabricated in a subsequent age of darkness and ignorance, but easily explained if we admit them to have been drawn from the real source of family records and truth."-Inquiry concerning the original of the Scots in Britain, by Barnard, Bishop of Killaloe.

"Foreigners may imagine that it is granting too much to the Irish, to allow them lists of kings more ancient than those of any other country in modern Europe; but the singularly compact and remote situation of that island, and its freedom from Roman conquest, and from the concussions of the fall of the Roman empire, may infer this allowance not too much. But all contended for is the list of kings so easily preserved by the repetition of bards, at high solemnities, and some grand events of history."-Pinkerton, Inquiry into the Hist. of Scotland, part iv. chap. i.

The consequences of this "Oriental inflexibility," as Niebher expresses it, in speaking of the Syrians, -are thus described by Camden :-"The Irish are so wedded to their own customs, that they not only retain them themselves, but currupt the English that come among them.."

who ruled them, and their entire exemption from Roman dominion left them safe from even a chance of change.*

How far the stern grasp of Roman authority might have succeeded in effacing from the minds of the Irish their old habits and their predilections, it is needless now to inquire. But had we no other proof of the venerable antiquity of their nation, this fond fidelity to the past, this retrospective spirit, which is sure to be nourished in the minds of a people by long-hallowed institutions, would, in the absence of all other means of proof, be fully sufficient for the purpose. When, in addition to this evidence impressed upon the very character of her people, we find Ireland furnished also with all that marks an ancient nation,-unnumbered monuments of other days and belonging to unknown creeds, a language the oldest of all European tongues still spoken by her people, and Annals written in that language of earlier date than those of any other northern nation of Europe, tracing the line of her ancient kings, in chronological order, up as far at least as the commencement of the Christian era,-when we find such a combination of circumstances all bearing in the same direction, all confirming the impression derived from the historical character of the people, it is surely an abuse of the right of doubting, to reject lightly such an amount of evidence, or resist the obvious conclusion to which it all naturally leads.

Among the most solemn of the customs observed in Ireland, during the times of paganism, was that of keeping, in each of the provinces, as well as at the seat of the monarchical government, a public Psalter, or register, in which all passing transactions of any interest were noted down. This, like all their other ancient observances, continued to be retained after the introduction of Christianity; and to the great monasteries, all over the country, fell the task of watching over and continuing these records. That, in their zeal for religion, they should have destroyed most of those documents which referred to the dark rites and superstitions of heathenism, appears highly credible. But such records as related chiefly to past political events were not obnoxious to the same hostile feeling; and these the monks not only, in most instances, preserved, but carried on a continuation of them, from age to age, in much the same tone of veracious dryness as characterizes that similar series of records, the Saxon Chronicle. In like manner, too, as the English annalists are known, in most instances, to have founded their narrations upon the Anglo-Saxon documents derived from their ancestors, so each succeeding Irish chronicler transmitted the records which he found existing, along with his own; thus giving to the whole series, as has been well said of the Saxon Chronicle, the force of contemporary evidence.

The precision with which the Irish annalists have recorded, to the month, day, and hour, an eclipse of the sun, which took place in the year 664, affords both an instance of the exceeding accuracy with which they observed and noted passing events, and also an undeniable proof that the annals for that year, though long since lost, must have been in the hands of those who have transmitted to us that remarkable record. In calculating the period of the same eclipse, the Venerable Bede-led astray, it is plain, by his ignorance of that yet undetected error of the Dionysian cycle, by which the equation of the inotions of the sun and moon was affected,-exceeded the true time of the event by several days. Whereas, the Irish chronicler, wholly ignorant of the rules of astronomy, and merely recording what he had seen passing before his eyes,-namely, that the eclipse occurred, about the tenth hour, on the 3d of May, in the year 664,—has transmitted a date to posterity, of which succeeding astronomers have acknowledged the accuracy.

* It has been falsely asserted by some writers, that the Romans visited, and even conquered, Ireland. The old chronicler, Wyntown, carries them to that country even so early as the first century; and Gueudeville, the wretched compiler of the Atlas Historique, has, in his map of Ireland, represented the country as reduced within the circle of the Roman sway. The pretended monk, Richard, also, who, thanks to the credulity of historians, was permitted to establish a new Roman province, Vespasiana, to the north of Antonine's Wall, has, in like manner, made a present to Constantine the Great of the tributary submission of Ireland. "A. M. 4307, Constantinus, qui Magnus postea dicitur... cui se sponte tributariam offert Hibernia." "Cæterarum enim gentium Septentrionalium antiquitates scriptas longe recentiores esse existimo, si cum Hibernicis comparentur."-Dr. O' Connor, Ep. Nunc, xix.

"Alibi indicavi celebriora Hiberniæ monasteria amanuensem aluisse, Scribhinn appellatum."—Rer. Hib. Script. Ep. Nunc.

Of the works of the Druids, as we are informed from the Lecan Records, by the learned Donald Mac Firbiss, no fewer than 180 tracts were committed to the flames at the instance of St. Patrick. Such an exam. ple set the converted Christians to work in all parts, till, in the end, all the remains of the Druidic supersti. tion were utterly destroyed-"-Dissert, on the Hist. of Ireland.

The annals of these writers are, perhaps, but Latin translations of Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.... at least, the existence of similar passages, yet in Anglo-Saxon, is one of the best proofs we can obtain of this curious fact, that the Latin narrations of all our chroniclers, of the events preceding the Conquest, are in general translations or abridgments from the Anglo-Saxon documents of our ancestors. This fact is

curious, because, wherever it obtains, it gives to the whole series of our annals the force of contemporary evidence."-Turner, Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, book vi. chap. 7.

Hist. Ecclesiast. lib. iii. can. 27.

It may be said, that this observation was supplied and interpolated by some later hand; but this would only rescue us from one difficulty to involve us as deeply in another; as it must, in that case, be admitted that among the Irish of the middle ages were to be found astronomers sufficiently learned to be able to anticipate that advanced state of knowledge which led to the correction of the dionysian period, and to ascertain, to the precise hour, a long-past eclipse, which the learned Bede, as we have seen, was unable to calculate to the day. But how far, at a distance nearly two centuries from the time of this eclipse, were even the best Irish scholars from being capable of any such calculations may be judged from a letter, still extant, on this very subject of eclipses, which was addressed to Charlemagne by an Irish doctor of the ninth century, named Dungal.* The letter is in reply to a question proposed by the emperor to the most eminent scholars of that day in Europe, respecting the appearance, as had been alleged, of two solar eclipses, in the course of the year 810; and the Irish doctor, though so far right as to express his doubts that these two eclipses had been visible, is unable, it is plain, to assign any scientific reason for his opinion. Down to a much later period, indeed, so little had the Irish scholars advanced in this science, that as it appears from the second part of the Annals of Inisfallen, they had one yeart experienced much difficulty and controversy before they could succeed even in fixing Easter Day.

It may, therefore, be taken for granted, that it was not from any scientific calculation of after times, but from actual and personal observation at the moment that this accurate date of the eclipse in 664 was derived. With equal clearness does it follow that some record of the observation must have reached those annalists, who, themselves ignorant of the mode of calculating such an event, have transmitted it accurately to our days as they received it. There are still earlier eclipses,-one as far back as A. D. 496,-the years of whose appearance we find noted down by the chroniclers with equal correctness: and so great was the regularity with which, through every succeeding age, all such changes in the ordinary aspect of the heavens was observed and registered, that, by means of these records, the chronologist is enabled to trace the succession, not only of the monarchs of Ireland, but of the inferior kings, bishops, and abbots, from the first introduction of Christianity, down to the occupation of the country by the English.

Having, therefore, in the accurate date of the eclipse of 664, and in its correct transmission to succeeding times, so strong an evidence of the existence of a written record at that period; and knowing, moreover, that of similar phenomena in the two preceding centuries, the memory has also been transmitted down to after ages, it is not surely assuming too much to take for granted that the transmission was effected in a similar manner; and that the medium of written record, through which succeeding annalists were made acquainted with the day and hour of the solar eclipse of 664, conveyed to them also the following simple memorandum which occurs in their chronicles for the year 469." Death of Mac-Cuilin, bishop of Lusk.—An eclipse of the sun.―The pope Gelasius died."

It thus appears pretty certain, that, as far back as the century in which Christianity became the established faith of Ireland, the practice of chronicling public events may be traced; and I have already shown, that the same consecutive chain of records carries the links back, with every appearance of historical truth, to at least the commencement of the Christian era, if not to a century or two beyond that period. To attempt to fix, indeed, the precise time when the confines of history begin to be confused with those of fable, is a task in Irish antiquities, as in all others, of mere speculation and conjecture.||

* Epist. Dungali Reclusi ad Carol. Magnum de dupliciti Solis Eclipsi, Ann. 810. This letter may be found in D'Achery's Spicilegium, tom. iii. together with some critical remarks upon it by Ismael Bullialdus, the learned champion of the Philolaic system, whom D'Achery had consulted on this subject.

† Rer. Hibern. Script. Prol. 2. cxxxvi. Dr. O'Connor refers, for the above record, to the year 1444; but this is evidently a typographical error, such as abound, I regret to say, throughout this splendid work,-the continuation of the Annals of Inisfallen having come down no farther than the year 1320.

Annals of Tigernach. For the substance of the argument, founded upon this record, I am indebted to Dr. O'Connor, Prol. 2. cxxxiv.

The dates assigned to the several eclipses are, in this and other instances confirmed by their accordance with the catalogues of eclipses composed by modern astronomers, with those in the learned work of the Benedictines, and other such competent authorities. There is even an eclipse, it appears, noticed in the Annals of Ulster, ad. ann. 674, which has been omitted in L'Art de vérifier les Dates.-Ep. Nunc. xciv.

According to Mr. O'Connor of Balenacgare, in his later and more moderate stage of antiquarianism, "it is from the succession of Feredach the Just, and the revolution soon after, under Tuathal the Acceptable, that we can date exactness in our Heathen History."-Reflections on the Hist. of Ireland. The period here assigned commences about A. D. 85. A Right Reverend writer, however, in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Aca demy carries in his faith in Irish chronology much farther. "A general agreement," says Bishop Barnard, "appears in the names and lineage of that long series of princes that succeeded and descended from the first conqueror down to the fifth century; and the descent of the collateral branches is traced up to the royal stem with such precision and consistency, as shows it to have been once a matter of public concern. The later bards and seanachies could not have fabricated tables that should have stood the test of critical examination as these will do; from whence I infer, that they have been a true transcript from ancient records then extant,

It has been seen that Tigernach, by far the best informed and most judicious of our annalists, places the dawn of certainty in Irish history at so early a period as the reign of Kimboath, about 300 years before the birth of Christ: and it is certain that the building of the celebrated Palace of Emania, during that monarch's reign, by establishing an era, or fixed point of time, from whence chronology might begin to calculate, gives to the dates and accounts of the succeeding reigns an appearance of accuracy not a little imposing. This apparent exactness, however, in the successions previous to the Christian era, will not stand the test of near inquiry. For the purpose of making out a long line of kings before that period, a deceptive scheme of chronology has been adopted; and all the efforts made by O'Flaherty and others to connect the traditions of those times into a series of regular history, but serve to prove how hopeless, or, at least, wholly uncertain, is the task.

As we descend towards the first age of Christianity, events stand out from the ground of tradition more prominently, and begin to take upon them more of the substance of historical truth. The restoration, under Eochy Feyloch, of the ancient Pentarchy which had been abolished by the monarch Hugony,-the important advance made in civilization during the reign of Conquovar Mac Ness, by committing the laws of the country to writing, these and other signal events, almost coeval with the commencement of Christianity, border so closely upon that period to which, it has been shown, written records most probably extended, as to be themselves all but historical.

In corroboration of the view here taken of the authenticity of the Irish Anuals, and of the degree of value and confidence which is due to them, I need but refer to an authority, which, on such subjects, ranks among the highest. "The Chronicles of Ireland," says Sir James Mackintosh, written in the Irish language, from the second century to the landing of Henry Plantagonet, have been recently published, with the fullest evidence of their genuineness and exactness. The Irish nation, though they are robbed of many of their legends by this authentic publication, are yet by it enabled to boast that they possess genuine history several centuries more ancient than any other European nation possesses, in its present spoken language;-they have exchanged their legendary antiquity for historical fame. Indeed, no other nation possesses any monument of its literature, in its present spoken language, which gocs back within several centuries of the beginning of these chronicles."

With the exception of the mistake into which Sir James Mackintosh has here, rather unaccountably, been led, in supposing that, among the written Irish chronicles which have come down to us, there are any so early as the second century, the tribute paid by him to the authenticity and historical importance of these documentst appears to me, in the highest degree, deserved; and comes with the more authority, from a writer whose command over the wide domain of history enabled him fully to appreciate the value of any genuine addition to it.

It has been thus clearly, as I conceive, demonstrated that our Irish Annals are no forgery of modern times; no invention, as has been so often alleged, by modern monks and versifiers: but, for the most part, a series of old authentic records, of which the transcripts have from age to age been delivered down to our own times. Though confounded ordinarily with the fabulous tales of the Irish Bards, these narrations bear on the face of them a character the very reverse of poetical, and such as, in itself alone, is a sufficient guarantee of their truth. It has been shown, moreover, that the lists preserved of the ancient Irish kings (more ancient than those of any other country in modern Eu

but since destroyed. Im ready to admit, however, that the transactions of those times are mixed with the fictions of later ages. .. it is, therefore, neither to be received nor rejected in the gross, but to be read with a skeptical caution."—Inquiry concerning the Original, &c., by Barnard, Bishop of Killaloe. * Hist. of England, vol. i. chap. 2. A writer in the Edin. Rev. No. xcii., in speaking of Dr. O'Connor's work, thus, in a similar manner, expresses himself:-"We have here the works of the ancient Irish historians, divested of modern fable and romance; and whatever opinion may be formed of the early traditions they re. cord, satisfactory evidence is afforded that many facts they relate, long anterior to our earliest chroniclers, rest on contemporary authority. ... Some of Dr. O'Connor's readers may hesitate to admit the degree of culture and prosperity he claims for his countrymen; but no one, we think, can deny, after perusing his proofs, that the Irish were a lettered people, while the Saxons were still immersed in darkness and ignorance." I shall add one other tribute to the merit of Dr. O'Connor's work, coming from a source which highly enhances the value of the praise:-" A work," says Sir F. Palgrave," which, whether we consider the learning of the editor, the value of the materials, or the princely munificence of the Duke of Buckingham, at whose expense it was produced, is without a parallel in modern literature."-Rise of the English Commonwealth.

How little, till lately, these Annals were known, even to some who have written most confidently respecting Ireland, may be seen by reference to a letter addressed by Mr. O'Connor to General Vallancey, acknowledging his perusal then, for the first time, of the Annals of Tigernach and of Inisfallen, which his venerable friend had lately sent him.-Reflect, on Hist. of Ireland, Collect. No. 10. The ignorance of Mr. Beauford, too, a professed Irish antiquary, respecting the valuable work of Tigernach, is shown by the statement in his Druidism Revived, (Collectan. Hib, No. vii.) that the records of this annalist commence only at the fifth century," without making the least mention of the pagan state of the Irish."

rope) are regulated by a system of chronology which, however in many respects imperfect, computes its dates in the ancient mode, by generations and successions; and was founded upon the same measures of time-the lunar year, and the regular recurrence of certain periodical festivals-by which the Greeks, the Romans, and other great nations of antiquity, all computed the earlier stages of their respective careers.

CHAPTER IX.

REVIEW OF THE INSTITUTIONS AND STATE OF CIVILIZATION OF THE
PAGAN IRISH.

HAVING thus pointed out how far reliance may safely be placed on that brief abstract of the earlier portion of Irish history, which has been given in a preceding chapter, it may be worth while to pause and contemplate the picture which this period of our annals presents; a picture the more worthy of attention, as, from that persevering adherence to old customs, habits, and, by natural consequence, dispositions, which has ever distinguished the course of the Irish people, the same peculiarities of character that mark any one part of their country's history will be found to pervade every other; insomuch, that, allowing only for that degree of advancement in the arts and luxuries of life, which in the course of time could not but take place, it may be asserted, that such as the Irish were in the early ages of their pentarchy, such, in most respects, they have remained to the present day.

We have seen that, from the earliest times of which her traditions preserve the memory, Ireland was divided into a certain number of small principalities, each governed by its own petty king, or dynast, and the whole subordinate to a supreme monarch, who had nominally, but seldom really, a control over their proceedings. This form of polity, which continued to be maintained, without any essential innovation upon its principle, down to the conquest of the country by Henry II., was by no means peculiar to Ireland, but was the system common to the whole Celtic, if not also Teutonic race*, and, like all the other primitive institutions of Europe, had its origin in the East. Without going so far back as the land of Canaan, in the time of Joshua, where every city could boast its own king, we find that the small and narrow territory of the Phoenicians was, in a similar manner, parcelled out into kingdoms; and from Homer's account of the separate dominions of the Grecian chiefs, it would seem that they also were constructed upon the same Canaanite pattern. The feeling of clanship, indeed, out of which this sort of government by a chieftainry sprung, appears to have prevailed strongly in Greece, and to have been one of the great cements of all their confederations, warlike or political.f

In none of these countries, however, do the title and power of Royalty appear to have been partitioned out into such minute divisions and subdivisions as in the provincial government of Ireland, where, in addition to the chief king of each province, every subor dinate prince, or head of a large district, assumed also the title of king, and exercised effectually within his own dominion all the powers of sovereignty, even to the prerogative of making war, not only with coequal princes, but with the king of the whole province, whenever he could muster up a party sufficiently strong for such an enterprise. To the right of primogeniture, so generally acknowledged in those ages, no deference whatever was paid by the Irish. Within the circle of the near kin of the reigning prince, all were alike eligible to succeed him; so that the succession may be said to have been hereditary as to the blood, but elective as to the person. Not only the monarch himself

* During the heptarchy, the island of Great Britain contained about fifteen kingdoms, Saxons, British. and Scotch; and in one of the smallest of them, the kingdom of Kent, there were at one time three chiefs on whom the annalists bestow the title of king. See Edin. Review, No. 1xx. art. 12.

†The opinion that the feudal system orignated in the East, is not without some strong evidence in its favour. In Diodorus Siculus, (lib. 1,) we find the tenure by military service pretty accurately described, and said to be a custom of the Egyptians, as well as of some Greek cities derived from them. ATERAV SE TAŽIU γενεσθαι την των γεωμόρων, των οφείλοντων δπλα κεκτησθαι και πολεμείν υπέρ της κσλέως, ὁμοίως τοις, κατ' Αίγυπτον ονομαζομενοις γεωργοίς και τους μαχιμους παρεχομενοις.

See Richardson, (Dissert on the languages, &c. of Eastern Nations,) who asserts that feudality "flourished in the East, with much vigour, in very early times."

Campbell's Strictures, &c. sect. v.