author but mentions them.* Pliny even makes them find their way into the East, and there to establish themselves near the river Indus. † But, not to go far from home, you recollect what Seneca, himself a Spaniard, says of the little, and comparatively barren island of Corsica. The Corsicans, says he, still conform to the customs, the manners, and the dress of their original founders, the Iberians. Now, where is the much greater difficulty of a colony making its way to Ireland, than to Corsica; in particular, when we recollect, that the one is fertile, whereas, the other is not so?

An erroneous incapacity has been objected to the vessels of those days, especially to the curraghs: for the Britons are expressly declared by Lucan, to have navigated the seas in their curraghs. Succours were sent in curraghs from. South Britain into Gaul, in the days of Cæsar. The migration to America was effected in curraghs. The Scots invasion of the Britons, from Ireland and Caledonia, was in curraghs. If, then, there were ships, or sea-boats, which could

Seneca, Tacitus. Ptolemy. Bronus.

Scaliger. Braun.

+ Lib. vi.

could live in the channel between Gaul and Britain, why should there not have been ships, or sea-boats, which could have lived between Spain and Ireland? Corrach and corcor, in old Irish, signifies a ship, built of strong timbers and planks, and is the same as the Arabic kwrkur, or kurkoor, a large ship.* "Rise, ye gentle breezes of Erim. Stretch my sails towards Mora's shore. The king of Morven commanded. I raised my sails to the wind. Our course was to sea, to Berrathon, the isle of many storms. The bay received our ships. My white sails rose over the waves, and I bounded on the dark blue sea. Often did I turn my ship, but the winds of the east prevailed. The sun rose on the sea, and we beheld a distant fleet."+ Fingal, and his heroes, are represented as making several voyages to Scandinavia.

Yet, Ireland is still accused of remaining su perstitiously devoted to her ancient history. She is said, sullenly to turn away from the light of reformation, that is spread over the neighbouring island, and to wrap herself in the gloom of her own legendary tales. Parcere subjectos,

VOL. V.

D

• Vallancy.

+ Ossian.

et

et debellare superbos, was an established maxim of the Romans. It is not very becoming, to brand what are supposed legitimate claims with the severity either of invective or oppro brium.

LET.

LETTER LXXVIII.

VENERABLE Bede, who was born in 66t, speaks of Ireland, as a rich, and a happy kingdom, undisturbed by those bloody wars, which harrassed the rest of the world, during the barbarous ages: "Insulæ hujus situs est amænus, ác diversantium exterarum carens bello nationum." And she, of all the Scythiac and Celtic states of ancient Europe, as I have already said, is the only one that has preserved her own chronicles in her own language. With domestic documents, therefore, so strongly in her favour, and those still strengthened by every extrinsic reference, I cannot, in common honesty, reject evidence which speaks conviction to my understanding; nor subscribe, with implicit acquiescence, to the fiat, which declares Grecian and Roman writers to be the only standard of historical truth.*

*

The testimony of Bede, says Dr. Leland, is unquestionable, that, about the middle of the seventh century, many nobles and others of the Anglo-Saxons, retired from their own country into Ireland, either for instruction, or for an opportunity of living in monasteries of stricter discipline; and that the Scots, as he stiles the Irish, maintained them, taught them, and furnished them with books at their own immediate cost. Nor can it, in addition, be impertinent to observe, that if we suppose the old Irish poets to have been the inventors of the whole series of incidents, so circumstantially detailed by them, they still must have drawn their pic-. ture from that government, and those manners, which subsisted in their own days, or were remembered by their fathers. Their very fictions are proofs, that some solid foundation of true history lay at the bottom of even their wildest superstructures.

But, there is, says Sir William Petty, no monument, or real argument, that when the Irish were first invaded, they had any stone building, any money, any foreign trade, nor any learning beyond the legend of the saints, psalters, mis-. sals, rituals, &c. nor any geometry, astronomy,

Hist. Ireland.

ána