was the establishment of the Great Fes, or Triennial Convention at Tara, an approach so far to representative government that, in these periodical assemblies, the leading persons of the three orders of whom the political community consisted, that is to say, the Monarch, the Druids or Ollamhs, and the Plebeians, were convened for the purpose of passing such laws and regulations as the public good seemed to require. In the presence of these assemblies, too, the different records of the kingdom were examined; whatever materials for national history the provincial annals supplied, were here sifted and epitomized, and the result entered in the great national Register called the Psalter of Tara.t

In a like manner, according to the historian Ctesias, who drew his own materials professedly from such sources, it was enjoined to the Persians, by an express law, that they should write down the annals of their country in the royal archives. In Ireland this practice of chronicling events continued to be observed to a late period; and not only at the courts of the different Kings, but even in the family of every inferior chieftain, a Seanachie, or historian, formed always a regular part of the domestic establishment. To this recording spirit, kept alive, as it was, in Christian times, by a succession of monastic chroniclers, we owe all those various volumes of Psalters and Annals with which the ancient literature of Ireland abounds.

The policy which Herodotus tells us was adopted among the Egyptians and the Lacedemonians, of rendering employments and offices hereditary in families, was also, from the time of Ollamh Fodhla down to a very recent period, the established usage in Ireland. This strange custom formed one of the contrivances of that ancient stationary system, which has been the means of keeping the people of the East and their institutions so little changed through all time. The same principle which led the Egyptians to prohibit their sculptors and painters from innovating, even with a view to improvement, on the ancient models transmitted to them, prompted them also to ordain, as the Irish did after them, that the descendants of a physician, for instance, or an artificer, should continue physicians and artificers through all succeeding generations. Not only in their early adoption of this truly Eastern rule, but in the constancy with which, to this day, they have continued, through all changes of time, to adhere to most of their ancient characteristics and usages, the Irish have proved themselves in so far worthy of their oriental descent, and but too faithful inheritors of the same stationary principle.

Among the important offices transmitted hereditarily in Ireland, were those of heralds, practitioners in physic, bards, and musicians. To the professors of these arts Ollamh Fodhla assigned lands for their use; and also instituted a school of general instruction at Tara, which became afterwards celebrated under the name of the Mur-ollam-ham, or College of the Learned.

A long series of Kings, with scarcely a single event worthy of commemoration, fills up the interval between the reign of this monarch and the building of the palace of Emanie by King Kimboath: an event forming, as we have seen, a prominent era in the Irish annals, and from which Tigernach dates the dawn of authentic history. This splendid palace of the princes of Ulster, who were from thenceforward called Kings of Emania, had in its neighbourhood the mansion appropriated to celebrated Knights of the Red Branch, so triumphantly sung by the bards, and commemorated by the seanachies.

If the Bardic historians, in describing the glory and magnificence of some of these

So represented by those zealous antiquaries O'Flaherty, O'Connor, &c.; but it will be shown presently that, like the Coloni of the Franks and the Ceorls of the Anglo-Saxons, the plebeians, under the ancient Irish government, were wholly excluded from political power.

Keating speaks of this authentic Register of the Nation as extant in his time; but O'Connor says, "there is good reason to believe that no considerable part of it escaped the devastations of the Norman war." The following is all that the industrious Bishop Nicholson could learn of it: "What is now become of this Royal Monument is hard to tell; for some of our moderns affirm that they have lately seen it, while others as con. fidently maintain that it has not appeared for some centuries last past."-(Historic Library, chap. ii.) Parts of that collection of Irish Records, called the Psalter of Cashel, which was compiled in the tenth century, are supposed to have been transcribed from the ancient Psalter of Tara.

"What is remarkable," says Smith in his History of Cork, "of this last family of the O'Cullinans, is, that it was never known without one or more physicians in it; which is remarked by Camden; insomuch, that when a person is given over, they have a saying in Irish, Even an O'Cullinan cannot cure him.' Which profession still continues in the family." (Book i. chap. 1.) An attempt has been made by Rollin, and not unplausibly, to justify this hereditary system." By this means," he says, " men became more able and expert in employments which they had always been trained up to from their infancy; and every man adding his own experience to that of his ancestors, was more capable of rising to perfection in his particular art. Besides, this wholesome institution, established anciently through the Egyptian nation, extinguished all irregular ambition," &c. (Manners and Customs of the Egyptians.) Herodotus, however, in the concluding sentence of the following passage, has laid open quietly the inherent absurdity of such a system." In one instance, the Lacedæmonians observe the usage of Egypt: their heralds, musicians, and cooks, follow the profession of their fathers. The son of a herald is, of course, a herald, and the same of the other two professions. If any man has a louder voice than the son of a herald, it signifies nothing."-Lib. 6.

reigns, have shown no ordinary powers of flourish and exaggeration, it is to be hoped, for the credit of human nature, that they have also far outstripped the truth in their accounts of the discord, treachery, and bloodshed by which almost every one of these brief paroxysms of sovereignty was disgraced. Out of some two-and-thirty kings who are said to have reigned during the interval between Ollamh Fodhla and the royal builder of Emania, not more than three are represented as having died a natural death, and the great majority of the remainder fell by the hands of their successors.*

Though the building of the royal palace of Emania was assumed as a technical epoch by the chronologers, the accession of Hugony the Great, as he was called, proved, in a political point of view, an era still more remarkable; as, by his influence with the assembled States at Tara, he succeeded in annulling the Pentarchy; and moreover prevailed on the four provincial kings to surrender their right of succession in favour of his family, exacting from them a solemn oath, "by all things visible and invisible,"t not to accept of a supreme monarch from any other line. For the Pentarchal government this monarch substituted a division of the kingdom into twenty-five districts, or dynasties; thus ridding himself of the rivalry of provincial royalty, and at the same time, widening the basis of the monarchical or rather aristocratical power. The abjuration of their right of succession, which had been extorted from the minor kings, was, as might be expected, revoked on the first opportunity that offered; but the system of government established in place of the Pentarchy, was continued down nearly to the commencement of our era, when, under the monarch Achy Fedloch, it was rescinded, and the ancient form restored.

After the reign of Hugony, there succeeds another long sterile interval, extending, according to the Bardic chronology, through a space of more than three hundred years, during which, with the exception of King Labhra's, return from Gaul at the head of a Gaulish colony-an event to which allusion has already been made-not a single public transaction is recorded worthy of notice; the names of the kings, as usual, succeeding each other at fearfully short intervals; and, in general, their accession and murder being the only events of their brief career recorded.

A. D. 2.

In the reign of Conary the Great, which coincides with the commencement of the Christian era, the name dwelt upon, with most interest, by the chroniclers, is that of the young hero Cuchullin, whose death, in the full flush and glory of his career, took place, according to these authorities, in the second year of Christ. With the fame of this Irish warrior modern readers have been made acquainted by that splendid tissue of fiction and forgery imposed upon the world as the Poems of Ossian, where, in one of those flights of anachronism not unfrequent in that work, he is confronted with the bard and hero, Oisin, who did not flourish till the middle of the third century. The exploits of Cuchullin, Conal Cearnach, and other Heroes of the Red Branch, in the memorable Seven Years' War between Connaught and Ulster, are among those themes on which the old chroniclers and bardic historians most delight to dwell. The circumstance recorded of the young Cuchullin by these annalists, that, when only seven years old, he was invested with knighthood, might have been regarded as one of the marvels of traditionary story, had we not direct evidence, in a fact mentioned by Froissart, that, so late as the time of that chronicler, the practice of knighting

The language in which O'Flaherty and O'Halloran relate some of these events is but too well suited to their subject. Lugad Luagny, the son of the King Inatmar," says O'Flaherty, "cut Bresal's throat, and got the crown."-(Part iii. chap. 41.) "His reign," says O'Halloran, of another monarch, lasted but five years, when the sword of his successor cut his way through him to the Irish throne."-(Vol. ii. chap. 7.) + Annal. IV. Magist.-In these annals, Ugony the Great, is styled "King of Hibernia and all Western Europe, as far as the Tuscan sea."

According to the view taken by some writers of this change, the principle of the Pentarchal government was therein preserved, as Ugony retained the division of the country into five provinces, and in each esta blished a Pentarchy.

§ In the accounts of the reign of this monarch, as given by Keating and others, are introduced two ro. mantic stories, resembling (one of them) the fabulous adventure of Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel; andthe other, the story of Midas's ears, and the miraculous revealment of his secret. In the weak and verbose work of Dr. Warner, (Hist. of Ireland, vol i. book 3.) the reader will find these stories diluted through some half dozen pages.

This celebrated septennial war bears, in Irish history, the name of the Tain-bo-Cuailgne, or the Spoils of the Cattle at Cuailgne; one of the chief causes of its origin having been the seizure of an immense quantity of cattle by the troops of Maud, the Queen of Connaught, at Cuailgne, in the county of Louth. The march of her army on this expedition, commanded by Fergus, the dethroned King of Ulster-the splendour of the queen herself, seated in an open chariot, with her Asion, or crown of gold, on her head-the names of the Champions of the Red Branch, who bravely encountered her mighty force-all these circumstances are found detailed in the stories and romances respecting this memorable invasion; and from some of these fictions, it appears, Macpherson derived the ground-work of his poems of Fingal and Temora. See Mr. O'Con nor's Dissertation on the History of Scotland, where (in speaking of these poems) it is said, "They are evidently founded on the romances and vulgar stories of the Tan-bo-Cualgney war, and those of the Fiana

Ereann."

boys at the very same age,―more especially those of royal parentage,—was still retained in Ireland.*

From what has been said of the high station and dignities assigned to their Bards and Antiquaries, it will have been seen that the political system of the ancient Irish, the Literary or Bardic order, which appears to have been distinct from the Druidical, formed one of the most active and powerful springs. Supported by lands set aside for their use, and surrounded by privileges and immunities which, even in the midst of civil commotion, rendered their persons and property sacred, they were looked up to not only as guardians of their country's history and literature, but as interpreters and dispensers of its laws. Thus endowed and privileged, this class of the community came at length to possess such inordinate power, and, by a natural consequence, so much to abuse it, that a popular reaction against their encroachments was the result, and their whole order was about to be expelled from the kingdom. In this crisis of their fate, the heroic Conquovar, King of Ulster, espoused the cause of the Bards; and, protesting strongly against the policy of suppressing them altogether, succeeded in effecting such reformations in the constitution of their order, more especially in all that related to their judicial proceedings, as at length restored them to public favour. The better to regulate their decisions for the future, he caused a digest of the ancient laws to be formed, under the auspices of Forchern, and two other distinguished poets; and the code thus compiled was called by their admiring contemporaries, Breathe Neimidh, or the Celestial Judgments. In having poets thus for their lawgivers, the Irish but followed the example of most of the ancient nations; among whom, in the infancy of legislation, the laws were promulgated always in verse, and often publicly sung; and even so late as the time of Strabo, the chief magistrate of the people of Mazaca, in Cappadocia, (who was to them what jurisconsuls were to the Romans,) bore the title, as we are informed by Strabo, of the Law-singer.‡

A. D.

75

As we advance into the Christian era, a somewhat clearer and more extended range of horizon opens upon us; as well from our approaching that period to which the authentic annals of the country extend, as from the light which thenceforward the Roman accounts of Britain throw incidentally on the affairs of the sister island. It was during the reign of the Irish monarch Crimthan, or, according to others, that of his successor Fiachad, that Agricola was engaged in pursuing his victorous enterprises in Britain; and the few facts relating to Ireland, which his philosophic biographer discloses, are, in themselves, worth whole volumes of vague, ordinary history: as, though but glimpses, the insight which they afford is vivid and searching. The simple statement, for instance, of Tacitus, that, at the period when he wrote, the waters and harbours of Ireland were, through the means of commerce and of navigators, better known than those of Britain, opens such a retrospect at once into her foregone history, as, combined with similar glimpses in other writings of antiquity, renders credible her claims to early civilization, and goes far to justify some of the proud boasts of her annals.

to

82.

In a far other sense, the view opened by the historian into the interior of Ireland's politics at that moment,―the divided and factious state of her people, and the line of policy which, in consequence, the shrewd Agricola, as ruler of Britain, was preparing to pursue towards them,- is all of melancholy importance, as showing at how early a period Irishmen had become memorable for disunion among themselves, and how early those who were interested in weakening them, had learned to profit by their dissensions.

* In Froissart's curious account of the knighting of the four Irish kings by Richard II., it is related, that, on being asked whether they would not gladly receive the order of knighthood from the King of England, "they answered how they were knights already, and that sufficed for them. I asked where they were made knights, and how, and when. They answered, at the age of seven years they were made knights in Ireland, and that a king maketh his son a knight... And then this young knight shall begin to just with small spears against a shield, set on a stake, in the field; and the more spears that he breaketh, the more he shall be honoured."-Froissart, vol. ii. chap. 202.

"We are told," says Sir James Ware, in a MS. Life of St. Carthag, Bishop of Lismore, who flourished in the seventh century, that "Moelfulius, one of the petty princes of Kerry, intending to knight St. Carthag, while he was a boy, would have put into his hand a sword and target, being the badge or cognizance of knighthood."-Antiquities, chap. 26.

This translation of the term, which has been adopted by all other authorities on the subject, is, I find, questioned by the learned Irish scholar, Mr. O'Reilly, (Trans. of Iberno Celtic Society,) who contends, in op. position to O'Flaherty, the O'Connors, O'Halloran, &c., that the meaning of the words Breathe Neimidh is the Laws of the Nobles. This is but one of numerous instances that might be adduced, in which important Irish words are shown to be capable of entirely different meanings in the hands of different interpreters,seeming in so far to justify those charges of vagueness and confusion which Pinkerton, in his hatred of every thing Celtic, brings so constantly against the Irish language. See Inquiry, &c., part iii. chap. 2. Η Αιρουμενοι και νομώδον, ος εστιν αυτοίς εξηγηντς των νόμων, lib. 12.

§ Melius aditus portusque per commereia et negociatores cogniti.-Agric. cap. 21.

HISTORY OF IRELAND.

"One of their petty kings," says Tacitus, "who had been forced to fly by some domestic faction, was received by the Roman general, and under a show of friendship The plan successfully pursued by Cæsar towards Gaul, detained for ulterior purposes.' of playing off her various factions against each other, and making her own sons the ready instruments of her subjugation, would have been the policy doubtless of Agricola towards Ireland, had these ulterior purposes been put in execution. The object of the Irishman was to induce the Romans to invade his native country; and by his representations, it appears, Agricola was persuaded into the belief that, with a single legion, and a small body of auxiliaries, he could conquer and retain possession of Ireland.

It would hardly be possible, perhaps, in the whole compass of history, to find a picture more pregnant with the future, more prospectively characteristic, than this of a recreant Irish prince in the camp of the Romans, proffering his traitorous services to the stranger, It is, indeed, mournful to and depreciating his country as an excuse for betraying her. reflect, that, at the end of nearly eighteen centuries, the features of this national portrait should remain so very little altered; and that with a change only of scene from the tent of the Roman general to the closet of the English minister or viceroy, the spectacle of an Irishman playing the game of his country's enemies has been, even in modern history, an occurrence by no means rare.

Offence has been taken by some Irish historians at the slur thrown, as they think, on the courage of their countrymen, by the hope attributed to the Roman general of being able to effect an easy conquest of Ireland. But they ought to have recollected that, more than a thousand years after, from the same fatal cause, internal disunion, a far smaller force than Agricola thought requisite for his purpose, laid the ancient Milesian monarchy prostrate at the feet of Britain. At the same time, it cannot but be acknowledged that the conduct of the Romans respecting Ireland, by no means warrants the supposition that they held its conquest to be at all an easy task. The immense advantages that must attend the acquisition of a country placed so immediately in the neighbourhood of their British possessions, were, we know, fully appreciated by them; nor could any views be more keen and far-sighted than those of Agricola, as unfolded by Tacitus, both as regarded the commercial strength that must accrue to Britain from the occupation of Ireland, and the strong moral and political influence which the example of this latter country must ever exercise, whether for good or for evil, over the fortunes of her more powerful neighbour. He saw that the Britons, says the historian, could never be effectively curbed as long as there was a people yet unmastered in their neighbourhood; and that, to effect this object, the example of liberty must be removed wholly from their sight. Could the sagacious Agricola again visit this earth, he would find his views, as to the moral influence of the two countries upon each other, fully confirmed;-would see that the oppression of the weaker people by the stronger, has produced a reaction, which may be, in time, salutary to both; and that already, in all the modes, at least, of struggling for liberty, Ireland has become the practised instructor of England.

With so deep a sense of the great value of the possession, there can hardly be a more convincing proof that the Romans considered its conquest not easy, than the simple fact that they never attempted it; and that, though Britain continued to be harassed by the Irish for near three centuries after, not a single Roman soldier ever set foot on their shores. Even when the flight of their eagles had extended as far as the Orcades, Ireland still remained free.**

How little the Irish themselves were in fear of invasion at this very period, when, as

* Agricola expulsum seditione domestica unum ex Regulis gentis exceperat, ac specie amicitiæ in occa sionem retinebat.-Agric. cap. 24.

† De Bell. Gal. lib. vi. c. 13.

↑ Sæpe ex eo audivi legione una et modicis auxiliis debellari obtinerique Heberniam possc.-Agric. ib. § The estimate of Strabo respecting Britain is, considering all things, still less flattering. To keep her tributary, he says, at least a legion and a few horse would be requisite. Τελάχιςον μεν γαρ ενός ταγματος Xeno av, x 71X8 TIVOS.-Liv. iv. To the courage of the Caledonians, according to this standard, the highest testimony seems to have been paid; as, about the year 230, while one legion was found sufficient to keep all the rest of Britain in subjection, two were employed upon the borders, against this people.-Dio. 55. Si quidem Hibernia, medio inter Britanniam atque Hispaniam sita, et Gallico quoque mari opportuna, valentissimam imperii partem magnis invicem usibus miscuerit.-Agric. ib.

"Idque etiam adversus Britanniam profuturum, si Romana ubique arma, et velut e conspectu libertas "Ireland has more harbours and more convenient tolleretur."-Agric. ib. The remarks of La Bletterie, the French translator, upon this chapter, prove how pregnant with the seeds of the future it appeared to him. than any other country in Europe. England has but a small number. Ireland, if she could shake off the British yoke, and form an independent state, would ruin the British commerce; but, to her misfortune, England is too well convinced of this truth.

** "Hibernia Romanis etiam Orcadum insularum dominium tenentibus inaccessa, rarò et tepide ab ullo unquam expugnata et subacta est."-Gulielmus Parv. Nebriss. Hist. Rer. Angl.

Tacitus informs us, the coast opposite to their shores was lined with Roman troops, may be judged from the expedition to Britain undertaken by the monarch Crimthan, for the purpose of aiding his ancient allies, the Picts, in their heroic stand against the legions of Rome. In the course of this visit, the Irish monarch is said to have first set the daring example of those predatory incursions into the Roman province by which the Britons continued to be harassed for so long a period after; and having been eminently successful, as it appears, on this occasion, he returned to his dominions laden with a variety of rich and even luxurious booty, the particulars of which have been triumphantly enumerated by the annalists.*

On the death of this monarch, whose name enjoys, as we have seen, the peculiar distinction of being associated in the page of history with those of Tacitus and Agricola, a more than usually troubled period succeeded; during which, even that frail and nominal pledge for the security of the public peace, which the descent of the monarchy by inheritance afforded, was set at defiance by a plebeian usurper and his followers, and the whole island made one scene of promiscuous strife and bloodshed. A spirit of revolt among the descendants of the Belgic tribes, whose chief seat was Connaught, but of whom numbers were also dispersed throughout the other provinces, was the primary cause of all this commotion. The state of Ireland, indeed, at this crisis, shows at how early a period was naturalized on her shores that principle of exclusion and proscription which, in after ages, flourished there so rankly. Under the Milesian or Scotic rule, not merely were the great mass of the old Celtic population held in subjection by the sword, but also the descendants of the foreign settlers, the remains of the conquered Belgic tribes, were wholly excluded from every share in the administration of public affairs, and treated in every respect, as a servile and helot class. Confederated among themselves by a common sense of humiliation and wrong, these people, having concerted their measures, took the opportunity of a great public assembly, held at Magh-Cru, in Connaught, to strike the first blow of their conspiracy. An indiscriminate massacre of all the princes and chiefs collected on that occasion was the signal of general revolt among their confederates throughout the kingdom; and being joined also by the larger portion of the Celtic population, to whom the dominant caste was odious, they succeeded, with but little opposition, in overturning their legitimate monarchy, and placing one of their own race and rank, Carbre Cat-can, upon the throne.

A. D. 90.

The five years during which the reign of this usurper lasted are described by the annalists as a period of general gloom and sterility,—“ no grain on the stalk, no fruitfulness in the waters, the herds all barren, and but one acorn on the oak." Abandoned wholly to the rule of the rabble, there appeared no hope for the nation of better days; when, unexpectedly, on the death of Carbre, the magnanimity of one individual changed the whole face of affairs. The usurper's son and intended successor, Moran, instead of accepting the bequeathed crown for himself, employed all his influence to have it replaced upon a legitimate brow, and succeeded in restoring the royal race in the person of Feredach, son of Crimthan. The post of Chief Judge of the kingdom, bestowed upon him by the monarch, afforded to Moran the means of completing his generous work, and of rendering popular, by a course of unexampled clemency and justice, that restoration of which he had been so disinterestedly the author. To the fame acquired by this judge for his upright decisions, is owing the fable of the Jodham Moran,† or Moran's Collar, which is said to have given warning, by increased pressure around the neck of the wearer, whenever he was about to pronounce an unjust sentence.

The administration of this honest counsellor succeeded in earning for his king the honour of the title of the Just; and, under their joint sway, the whole country enjoyed a Jull of tranquillity as precious as it was rare. This calm, however, was but of brief duration in the reign of the son of this monarch, Fiach, there broke out a second revolt of the plebeians, or Attacots, which raged even more fiercely than the former, and in

* In the long list of articles specified by the Four Masters, as composing this mass of plunder, are mentioned, a suit of armour ornamented with embossed gold and gems a military cloak with golden fringe, a sword with figures of serpents upon it in chased gold, and a brace of greyhounds, joined together by a silver chain, whose price is estimated, according to the primitive usage of barter, at the value of 300 cows.

† A golden collar or breast plate, supposed by Vallancey to be the lodhain Morain, was found, some years since, in the county of Limerick, twelve feet deep, in a turf bog. "It is made of thin plated gold, and chased in a very neat and workmanlike manner; the breast plate is single, but the hemispherical ornaments at the top are lined throughout with another thin plate of pure gold."-Collectan. Hibern. No. 13.

The traditional memory of this chain or collar (says O'Flanigan) is so well preserved to this day, that it is a common expression for a person asseverating absolute truth to say, "I would swear by Moran's chain for it."-Trans. of Gaelic Society, vol. i.

The Plebeians engaged in this rebellion, are, in general, called Attacots, a name corrupted from the com pound Irish term Attach-tuatha, which signifies, according to Dr. O'Connor, the Giant Race, (Prol. i. 74 ;) but, according to Mr. O'Reilly's version, simply the Plebeians.