THE HISTORY OF IRELAND. CHAPTER I. Ancient History of Ireland-Political Condition of the Country at the Time of the Anglo-Norman Invasion. THE pretensions of the Irish to an antiquity more remote than that of other Europeans, and their claims of being descended from the most powerful and enlightened of the eastern nations, have been attacked and defended with a zeal and vigour beyond the laws of literary controversy. In this contest, the cause of Irish history has suffered far more from the extravagant claims of its advocates, than from the fiercest assaults of its opponents. The suspicious particularity of the more remote incidents, and the still more suspicious coincidence of the epochs with the received system of chronology, are gravely quoted as proofs of genuine antiquity, while, in fact, they are decisive evidences of falsification. The materials from whence the historians have compiled their narratives, were the songs of the bards, the genealogies of the sennachies, and the popular legends current in their day; and it is manifest that such records must have been replete with errors and defects, and, above all things, must have contained little or no reference to dates and eras.' monks of Ireland, in the middle ages, seem to have surpassed their brethren of Britain in the art of fabricating history. The latter went no higher than the The days of Brute the Trojan; but the former boldly ascended to the days of Adam, and brought his granddaughter to Ireland with a numerous colony, before the primitive race had yet degenerated into crime. The intervention of the deluge might have been supposed to throw some difficulties in the way of this hopeful legend; but for this a remedy was easily provided-one fortunate individual was saved in the western world, to relate the circumstances of that great event to the next band of colonists who arrived in the country. The new settlers could boast of an origin equally illustrious: they were Greeks, under the guidance of Partholanus, whose genealogy from Noah is traced with edifying accuracy. After this, several new tribes arrive from places equally illustrious; but their fame is absorbed in the superior glory of the Milesian colony, whose arrival in Ireland is dated previous to the Argonautic expedition; that is, before Greece had a traditional history! The history of the Milesians before their arrival in Ireland is detailed at length in the Irish legends. They were, it appears, a Phenician branch of the vast Scythic nation, to which the greatest revolutions in ancient and modern times have been generally ascribed. Phenius, the chief legislator of the tribe, having invented letters, and some important arts of civilized life, acquired great fame in the neighbouring nations, and the Egyptian king sent ambassadors to his court. Niul the son of Phenius, progenitor of the O'Neill family, was sent with a numerous train to return the compliment, and so highly pleased Pharaoh, that he obtained his daughter in marriage, and a fertile tract on the banks of the Egyptian river as her dowry. From him the river Nile takes its name; and from him Egypt derived all that knowledge which in subsequent ages entitled her to be named the parent of civilization. Shortly after this the Exodus occurred; and the Phenicians treated the departing Israelites with so much generosity, that the silence of Moses on the subject is a matter perfectly unaccountable. The Egyptians who survived the calamity of the Red Sea were indignant at the kindness shown to the Israelites. They expelled the Phenicians from their territories; and, after a long course of wandering, in which they successively established themselves in Crete, in Africa, and in Spain, they at last landed in Erin, bringing to that favoured country the knowledge of letters, and the elements of civilization, long before Greece had emerged from barbarism, or Italy received the arts of social life. When attempts are made to impose such a wild romance as this on the world for history, it is no wonder that the whole mass of the Irish annals should be rejected with disgust, and that the few important truths which are mixed up with a mass of similar fictions, should share in the merited condemnation such legends must inevitably meet. There is really no authentic history of Ireland before the introduction of Christianity into the country; but there are some genuine traditions which appear to be based in truth, because they accord with and explain the peculiar customs which were found to prevail in the island at the time of the English invasion. These traditions declare, that the original Celtic inhabitants were subdued by an Asiatic colony, or at least by the descendants of some Eastern people, at a very remote period: they aver, that the conquerors were as inferior to the original inhabitants in numbers, as they were superior in military discipline and the arts of social life: they describe the conquest as a work of time and trouble; and assert, that, after its completion, an hereditary monarchy and an hereditary aristocracy were for the first time established in Ireland. It has been judiciously remarked by Faber, that, " in the progress of the human mind, there is an invariable tendency, not to introduce into an undisturbed community a palpable difference between lords and serfs, instead of a legal |