a quarter of the period annually devoted by them to the celebration of their ancient Taltine Games.*

The very custom, indeed, of a great annual festival existing, for any time, among a people, would seem, of itself, to imply that, in regulating the length of their year, they employed some more certain measure than the revolutions of the moon; since otherwise, the same confusion must, in time, have arisen, on the recurrence of such a festival, as provoked the ridicule of Aristophanes against the calendar of the Greeks. But, among the Irish, there appear to have been observed, at least, three annual festivals, each marking one of those Raths, or quarters, into which their year was divided. Beginning the year, in the manner of the Persians, at the Vernal Equinox, they then solemnized their great Fire Feast, La Bealtinne; and the second Rath, which commenced at the Summer Solstice, and was called the Course, or Season of Gaiety, they signalized by the celebration of the Taltine Games, or Sports. In three months after were performed, in the Field of Howling, those dreadful sacrifices, of which mention has already been made, and by which the opening of the third Rath, or Autumnal Equinox, was commemorated. The remaining three months of the year, unmarked, as far as appears, by any periodical solemnity, except the usual lighting up of fires on the high places, constituted the fourth Rath, or quarter.

The degree of knowledge as to the equinoctial and solstitial points, which this division of the twelve months seems to imply, would incline us to believe, that the ancient Irish were not entirely unacquainted with that first approach to a correct measure of time, the luni-solar year; and some of the terms employed, in their language, on the subject, tend to confirm this view. Thus, the year was called by them Bel-ain, or the Circle of the Sun, while the Zodiac they named Beach-Grian, or the Revolution of the Sun; and the Solstices were termed Grian-stad, or the Sun's stopping places. It has been conjectured, and with much probability, that the stone circles of the Druids were employed no less as rude observatories than as places of judicature and worship; and the position, in most of them, of the great perpendicular stones, of which some, it is said, are placed generally in or near the meridian of the spot, while others are as carefully stationed to the right or left of the centre, would seem to indicate, in their construction, some view to astronomical purposes. It is remarked, too, that they are situated chiefly on eminences commanding an extensive range of horizon; and a circle thus placed, in Merionethshire, is called Cerig Brudyn, or the Astronomer's Stones, or Circle. A similar monument, bearing much the same designation, is described by antiquaries as existing near Dundalk. In addition to this and other remains, supposed to have been connected as well with astronomy as with religion, the ancient Irish had also their Round Towers, or Fire-Temples, which appear to have been applied to the same double purpose. It is, indeed, highly probable, from the name "Celestial Indexes" affixed to them by the chroniclers, that one of the chief uses of these structures was to stand as gigantic gnomons, and by their shadows measure, from solstice to solstice, the gradual increase and decrease of the day.

From a passage which occurs in an old life of Moctheus, the first Bishop of Louth, ¶ it has been conjectured that the division of time, by the week or cycle of seven days, was not unknown to the Pagan Irish; and if there be any good grounds for such a notion, it affords an additional confirmation of the very early origin claimed for Druidism; since it appears, that soon after the lapse of mankind into idolatry, the observance of the Mundane week fell every where into disuse, excepting only among the family of Abraham, by whom it was faithfully preserved, and from them transmitted down through the descendants of Ishmael to the Mahometans.**

Quemadmodum in nostro Civili Computo, annus, universali consensus constat diebus tantum 365, excepto quovis anno quarto seu Bissextili dierum 366, sic etiam apud Druidos Hibernos invaluisse assero artem, qua Ludos Taltinios ad Solstitia, expletis Lunationibus 12 accommodabant, quinque dies cum quadrante addentes anno Lunari dierum 360, ut popularem annum adimplerent.-Rer. Hibern. Script. Prol. 1. 34.

† Rer. Hibern. Script. Ep. Nunc.

King's Munimenta Antiqua. vol. i.

For the same purpose, it would appear that upright stones and rocks were employed by the Goths and Sucons "They have no use," says Olaus," of sun-dials, but they use only the high stones of rocks that are placed partly by nature, partly by cunning, that by an infallible conjecture do overshadow the sunbeams and distinguish the parts of the day."-Olaus Magnus, book i. chap. 19.

In the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xiv., may be found an account of a remarkable old building on the north side of Kenmare river, called Staigne Fort, and supposed, by Mr. Nimmo, to have been originally intended for an observatory. See his reasons annexed to the essay." It appeared to me," he says, "that the structure exhibited a sort of rude graduation of the horizon."

There is also, in Ireland," says King, "an astronomer's hill belonging to the Druids, called Carrick Edmond, which eannot but remind us of the Kerrig Edris in Wales."

¶ Peractis vero, ut moris erat Gentilium, diebus septem exequiarum.

**This view of the history of the Sabbatical institution may be found argued at some length, and upon apparently solid grounds, by a commentator on Pliny, lib. xvi. c. 95. (Valpy's Edition.) This writer, however, denies that the Druids were acquainted with the hebdomadal cycle. Quod hic obiter annotandum

CHAPTER V.

POETIC, OR BARDIC, ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF IRELAND.

So intermixed together are reality and fiction in the first record of most nations, and each, in passing through the medium of tradition, assumes so deceivingly the features of the other, that the attempt to distinguish between them is a task of no ordinary responsibility; more especially where national vanity has become interested in the result; or where, as in the case of Ireland, a far deeper feeling of wounded pride seeks relief from the sense of present humiliation and suffering, in such indistinct dreams of former glory. As the earliest chroniclers, too, of most countries, have been poets, the duty of stripping off those decorations and disguises in which matter of fact comes frequently arrayed from such hands, is, in general, the first the historian is called upon to perform; and often, in attempting to construct truth out of materials so shadowy, History has become but the interpreter of the dreams of Poesy. By this process it is that the fanciful fictions of Greece and of Egypt have been resolved into real records of human personages and events; and even their gods, dislodged from their high station, have been brought back by history to the humble earth from whence they sprung. Far different, however, from the mythic traditions of these classical nations are the dry memorials of past adventures and personages which our native historians have handed down; and while to the Greeks belonged the power of throwing gracefully the veil of fiction over reality, the Bardic Historians may lay claim to the very different merit of lending to the wildest and most extravagant fictions the sober lineaments of fact.

Respecting the degree of credit due to the early history of Ireland, two directly opposite opinions are entertained;-both equally, as in all such occasions, removed from the fair medium of truth. While to some the accounts given by the Bardic writers of all that passed in the ancient Pagan times appear undeserving of any credit whatsoever,— their opinion being, that it is only with the dawn of the Christian faith in that country, that its history begins to assume any credible shape-there are others, on the contrary, who believe in all that flatters their feeling of national glory, surrendering their reason wilfully to the guidance of fanciful historians, who, by means of a deceptive system of chronology, have invested fable with much of the grave and authoritative aspect of history. Between these two extreme views of the subject, the over-skeptical and the credulous, a just medium may, as in most such cases, be found; and the true value of our traditionary memorials be correctly ascertained, without either questioning indiscriminately their claims to credence with the one party, or going headlong into the adoption of all their fictions and extravagances with the other.

The publication, by Doctor O'Connor, the late reverend librarian of Stowe, of the Irish Chronicles, in their original language, accompanied by a Latin translation and explanatory notes, has, for the first time,* put the world in possession of the means of judging for itself of the truth and value of documents which had before only been known through the reports of modern Irish writers, conveyed in all the vagueness of allusion and mist of paraphrase.

To the real importance of these records, which differ wholly, in form, matter, and authenticity, from those compilations of the middle ages of which mention has just been

est, mirum profecto nullum apud Romanos Græcosve vel hos etiam Druidos, hebdomadarum usum fuisse. Cyclum scilicet septem dierum Deum ipsummet habet auctorem: sed Abrahæ temporibus neglectus ab hominibus quia essent in idolotatriam omnes fere prolapsi. Sola hunc ser vavit Abrahæ domus: et mos solis Abrahæ posteris est cognitus."

According to one of Whitaker's etymological conjectures, not only did the British Druids observe the cycle of seven days, but the name Sabaith, he thinks, was likewise given by them to their Sunday, or Day of the Sun, though bearing an entirely different meaning from that of the Sabbath of the Jews; and it was in order," he says, " to take advantage of this accidental coincidence, that the Jewish Sabbath was transferred by the Christians to the Druidical Sunday."-Celtic Vocabulary, p. 94.

In the work of Keating, written originally in Irish, are imbodied most of the old national traditions; but, besides that he has strung them together without any selection or judgment, and but seldom attempts to dis criminate between the record of the annalist and the fable of the bard, his work has to answer, it seems, for even more than its own original extravagances, as some of the fictions that most disfigure it, and have most contributed to draw down ridicule on Irish history, are said to have been the fraudulent interpolations of his translator, Dermod O'Connor. The aptest description of Keating's book is that given by the clever and turbulent Peter Talbot, who pronounces it" Insigne plane, sed insanum opus."

made, there will occur, in the course of this work, opportunities of more particularly adverting. Our business, at present, as well with them as with the other class of documents alluded to, which, though branching out so extravagantly into fable, have often their roots laid deep in traditional truth, must be to refer to them merely as repositories of the ancient traditions of the country, as retaining traces of those remote times to which no history reaches, and as, therefore, of use in the task imposed upon all inquirers into the first origin of a people,-that of seeking, through the dim vista of tradition, some glimmerings of truth. And even here, in this obscure region of research, it is far less in the actual events related by the Bards and Seanachies, than in the absurdly remote period to which the first links of their chain of tradition is carried, that any very insurmountable obstacle to our belief in most of their narratives lies: and this disposition to extend and elevate their antiquity, has marked the first imperfect attempts at chronology in all countries. Even among some whose history, in other respects, has received the authenticating sanction of ages, the same ambition is known to have prevailed. Thus, in the calculations of the Egyptians, the interval between two of their kings was made to occupy no less a period than 11,340 years; and yet that two such kings really existed, and were named Menes and Sethon, is accounted by no means the less probable or historical for this absurd flight of calculation; nor is it at all questioned, that under the serene skies of Chaldæa astronomy may have had its birth, because that people boasted of having made observations upon the stars through a period of 470,000 years.

So far back in the night of time have our Bardic Historians gone in quest of materials, that, from the very first age of the world, we find marked out by them a regular series of epochs, which have each been signalized by the visit of some new colony to their shores. Beginning a few weeks before the Flood, when, as they say, a niece of Noah, named Cesara, arrived with a colony of antediluvians upon the Irish coast, they from thence number, through the lapse of ages, no less than five or six different bands of adventurers, by which the island, at various intervals, had been conquered and colonized.

To dwell, at any length, on the details of the earlier of these settlements,-details possessing neither the certainty of history, nor the attractiveness of fable, can hardly be deemed necessary. Still so much of truth is occasionally intermixed with their fictions, and so many curious, if not important speculations, have arisen out of this period of Irish history, that to pass it over without some degree of notice, would be to leave the task attempted in these pages incomplete.

From the time of Cesara, who is allowed on all hands to have been a purely fabulous personage, there occurs no mention of any colony till about the beginning of the fourth century after the Flood, when Ireland was invaded, and taken possession of, by a chief, of the race of Japhet, named Partholan, who, landing at Imbersciene, in Kerry, says O'Flaherty, "the 14th day of May, on a Wednesday," fixed his residence in the province of Ulster, upon an island named Inis-Samer, in the river Erne. The fables related by the Irish bards respecting Partholan,-his faithless wife, her favourite greyhound, the seven lakes that burst forth after his arrival,-may all be found in the rhyming form that best suits them, in the marvellous pages of Keating. After holding possession of the country for three hundred years, the race of Partholan were all swept away by a plague; and the Hill of Howth, then called Ben-Heder, was the scene of the most awful ravages of this pestilence.

To this colony succeeded another, about the time, it is said, of the patriarch Jacob, who were called, from the name of their leader, Nemedians, and are said to have come from the shores of the Euxine Sea. The fierce wars waged by this people with the Fomorians, a tribe of African sea-rovers, who then infested the coast of Ireland, forms one of the most picturesque subjects of the ancient Irish Muse. The stronghold of these African mariners, who are supposed, not improbably, to have been Carthaginian traders, was the Tower of Conan, which stood upon an island on the sea-coast of Ulster, named from this structure Tor-inis, or the Island of the Tower. This fortress the Nemedians stormed; and, after dislodging from thence their formidable enemy, left not a trace of the mighty structure standing. An Irish poem called "The Storming of the Tower of Conan," still exists in the noble library of Stowe. The Fomorians, however, having been joined by fresh supplies of force, a general battle, by land and sea, ensued, in which

* According to Bardic authorities, cited by Keating, the arrivals in Ireland, before the Deluge, were numerous; and, among other visiters, three daughters of Cain are mentioned. The famous White Book, so much ridiculed by some of the Scotch controversialists, is the authority cited for this story. See chapter headed, "Of the first Invasion of Ireland before the Flood."

It is probable that for most, if not all, of the wild inventions respecting Partholan and the Nemedians, we are indebted to a poet or Seanachie of the tenth century, named Eochaidh O'Floinn, of whose numerous writings an account may be found in the Transactions of the Iberno-Celtic Society for 1820.

the Africans were victorious, and the Nemedian colony being all dispersed and destroyed, the country was once more left at the mercy of those foreign marauders, and relapsed into wildness and desolation for the space of two hundred years.

The next, and, in number, the third, of these colonies, which was known to the Irish, by the name of Fir-Bolgs, first imposed upon them, it is said, the yoke of regal authority, and dividing the island into five parts or provinces, established that pentarchal form of government, which continued, with but few interruptions, till the twelfth century of our era. The five sons of Dela, under whose command the colony had landed, shared the kingdom, according to this division, between them,* placing a stone in the centre of the island at the spot where their five shares met. Their tenure of royalty, however, was but short; for, not more than thirty or forty years had this quintuple sovereignty remained in their hands, when they were dispossessed by the Tuatha-de-Danaan, a people famed for necromancy, who, after sojourning for some time in Greece, where they had learned this mysterious art, proceeded from thence to Denmark and Norway, and became possessors, while in those countries, of certain marvellous treasures, among which were the Stone of Destiny, the sorcerer's spear, and the magic caldron. Armed with these wonderful gifts, the tribe of the Danaans next found their way to Scotland, and, after a rest there for some years, set sail, under the auspices of their chieftain, Nuad of the Silver Hand, for Ireland. Here, landing secretly, under cover of a mist which their enchantments had raised, these sorcerers penetrated into the country, and had reached Sliabh an Iaruinn, the Mountain of Iron, between the lakes of Allen and Eirne, before their presence was discovered. The alarmed Belgians, thus taken by surprise, retreated before them rapidly into Connaught, where, at Moytura, on the borders of Lake Masg, that sanguinary battle took place, which, under the name of the Battle of the Field of the Tower, was long a favourite theme of Irish song. Defeated signally by their invaders, the Belgians fled to the Isle of Man, North Aran, and the Hebrides, and the victorious Danaans became in their turn sole masters of the country.

In process of time, the Tuatha-de-Danaan were themselves dispossessed of their sway: a successful invasion from the coast of Spain having put an end to the Danaanian dynasty, and transferred the sceptre into the hands of that Milesian or Scotic race, which, through so long a series of succeeding ages, supplied Ireland with her kings. This celebrated colony, though coming directly from Spain, was originally, we are told, of Scythic race, and its various migrations and adventures before reaching its Isle of Destiny in the West, are detailed by our Bards, with all that fond and lingering minuteness in which fancy, playing with its own creations, so much delights to indulge. Grafting upon this Scythic colony the traditional traces and stories of their country, respecting the Phoenicians, they have contrived to collect together, without much regard to either chronology, history, or geography, every circumstance that could tend to dignify and add lustre to such an event; an event upon which not only the rank of their country itself in the heraldry of nations depended, but in which every individual, entitled by his Milesian blood to lay claim to a share in so glorious a pedigree, was interested. In order more completely to identify the ancestors of these Scythic colonists with the Phoenicians, they relate that by one of them, named Fenius, to whom the invention of the Ogham character is attributed, an academy for languages was instituted upon the Plain of Shenaar, in which that purest dialect of the Irish, called the Bearla Feini, was cultivated.

From thence tracing this chosen race in their migrations to different countries, and

According to Hanmer's Chronicle, there arose dissensions between these brothers, and the youngest, Slainge, having, (as Hanmer expresses it,)" encroached round about the middle stone and fixed meare aforesaid," usurped at length the sole rule of the country.

In one of the old Irish romances, on the subject of Finn Mac Comhal, that hero is imagined to have derived a portion of his knowledge from the waters of a certain magical fountain, which was in the possession of the Tuatha-de-Danaan, and of which a single draught was sold for three hundred ounces of gold.

So called from an artificial silver hand, which he wore to supply the loss sustained from a wound he received in the battle of Moytura. We are told seriously by O'Flaherty, that "Cred, a goldsmith, formed the hand, and Miach, the son of Dian Kect, well instructed in the practical parts of chirurgery, set the arm."Ogygia, part iii. ch. 10.

One of the grandsons of this Nuad, named Brittanus, or Maol Briotan, is said to have passed over, after their defeat, into North Britain; and from him, according to the Psalter of Cashel, the Britons derived their origin. To this tradition Camden alludes, in a note on his Introduction." Brittannia dicta est a quodam qui vocabatur Britannus." There is also another of the grandsons of Nuad, named Simon Breac, who is made to play a distinguished part in the Scotch version of our Milesian story; being represented therein as the importer of the famous Stone of Destiny, and even substituted, in place of Heremon, as the founder of the Milesian monarchy. (Fordun, 1. i. c. 26. See, also, Stillingfleet's Origin. Britan. cap. 5.) The Scotch antiquarians, however, seem to have confounded this primitive Simon Breac with another of the same name, also grandson of a King Nuad, who flourished four centuries later. See Innes, vol. ii. sect. 2. §There are in the library of Stowe," says Dr. O'Connor," no less than five metrical chronicles, in which this battle of Moytura is commemorated."-Rer. Hibern. Script. Prol. ii. 37.

See Sketch of the History and Antiquities of the Southern Isles of Aran, by John T. O'Flaherty, Trans. of Royal Irish Academy, vol. xiv.