14

HEREMON'S DIVISION OF IRELAND.

Slieve Fuad in Armagh, a place much celebrated in Irish history, has derived its name), and Cuailgne, who was killed at Slieve Cuailgne, now the Cooley mountains, near Carlingford, in the county of Louth.

After the battle of Teltown the Milesians enjoyed the undisturbed possession of the country, and formed alliances with the Firbolgs, the Tuatha de Dananns, and other primitive races, but more especially with the first, who aided them willingly in the subjugation of their late masters, and were allowed to retain possession of certain territories, where some of their posterity still remain. Heremon and Heber Finn divided Ireland between them; but a dispute arising, owing to the covetousness of the wife of Heber, who desired to have all the finest vales in Erin for herself, a battle was fought at Geashill, in the present King's county, in which Hereman killed his brother Heber. In the division of Ireland which followed, Heremon, who retained the sovereignty himself, gave Ulster to Heber, the son of Ir; Munster to the four sons of Heber Finn; Connaught to Un and Eadan; and Leinster to Crivann Sciavel, a Damnonian or Firbolg. The people of the south of Ireland in general are looked upon as the descendants of Heber; while the families of Leinster, many of those of Connaught, the Hi Nialls of Ulster, &c., trace their pedigree to Heremon. Families sprung from the sons of Ir are to be found in different parts of Ireland; but of Amergin, the poet and ollav, little is said in this distribution of the land. He is mentioned as having constructed the causeway or tochar of Inver Mor, or the mouth of the Ovoca in Wicklow.

The wife of Heremon was Tea, the daughter of Lugaid, the son of Ith, for whom he repudiated his former wife Ovey, who followed the expedition to Ireland, and died of grief on finding herself deserted; and it was Tea who selected for the royal residence the hill of Druim Caein, called from her Tea-mur or Tara-that is, the mound of Tea. In the second year of his reign Heremon slew his brother Amergin in battle, and in subsequent conflicts others of his kinsmen fell by his hands; and having reigned fifteen years, he died at Rath-Beothaigh, now Rathveagh on the Nore, in Kilkenny.

About the period of the Milesian invasion the Cruithnigh, Cruithnians, or Picts, so called, according to the generally received opinion, from having their bodies tatooed, or painted, are said to have paid a visit to Ireland previous to their final settlement in Alba, or Scotland.

*The above etymology of Tara is evidently legendary; and according to Cormac's Glossary, quoted by O'Donovan (Four Masters, vol. i. p. 31), the name, which in Irish is Teamhair, merely signifies a hill commanding a pleasant prospect.

THE CRUITHNIANS OR PICTS.

15

Having no wives, they obtained Milesian women in marriage; that is, according to some accounts, they married the widows of those who had been drowned with Heber Donn in the expedition from Spain, making a solemn compact that, should they succeed in conquering the country they were about to invade, the sovereignty should descend in the female line. The Cruithnians were of a kindred race with the Scots or Irish, and for many centuries dwelt as a distinct people in the eastern part of Ulster, where some of their descendants were to be found at the time of the confiscations under James I.; but the confused traditions about the visit of a Pictish colony at the same time with the children of Milesius are properly treated as apocryphal.*

*Bede (Hist. Eccl. lib. i. c. 1) gives the following account of the origin of the Picts:-" When the Britons, beginning at the South, had made themselves masters of the greater part of the island, it happened that the nation of the Picts, from Scythia, as is reported, putting to sea in a few long ships, were driven by the winds beyond the shores of Britain, and arrived on the northern coast of Ireland, where, finding the nation of the Scots, they begged to be allowed to settle among them, but could not succeed in obtaining their request. . . . . . The Picts, accordingly, sailing over into Britain, began to inhabit the northern parts thereof. . . . . Now the Picts had no wives, and asked them of the Scots, who would not consent to grant them on any terms than that when any difficulty should arise they should choose a king from the female royal race, rather than from the male; which custom, as is well known, has been observed among the Picts to this day." See for ample details about the Cruithnians or Picts, and for all the traditions relative to their intercourse with Ireland, the annotations to the Irish Nennius.

CHAPTER III.

Questions as to the Credit of the Ancient Irish Annals.-Defective Chronology.The Test of Science applied.-Theories on the Ancient Inhabitants of Ireland. Intellectual Qualities of Firbolgs and Tuatha de Dananns.-Monuments of the latter People.-Celts.

AVING thus far followed the bardic chroniclers, or seanachies, it is right to pause awhile to consider what amount of credit we may place in them; and in the next place, what are the opinions of those who reject their authority. A judicious and accomplished Irish annalist, Tighernach, Abbot of Clonmacnoise, who died so early as A.D. 1088, has said that all the Scottish, that is, Irish, records previous to the reign of Cimbaeth, which he fixed at the year B.C. 305, are doubtful; and we have, therefore, good authority, independent of internal evidence or of the opinions of modern writers, for placing on them but a modified reliance. We must be careful, however, not to carry our doubts too far. These ancient records claim our veneration for their great antiquity, and are themselves but the channels of still older traditions. Writings which date from the first ages of Christianity in Ireland refer to facts upon which all our pre-Christian history hinges, as the then fixed historical tradition of the country; and the closest study of the history of Ireland shows the impossibility of fixing a period previous to which the main facts related by the annalists should be rejected as utterly fabulous. There is no more reason to deny the existence of such men as Heber and Heremon, and therefore, of a Milesian or Scottish colony, than there is to question the occurrence of the battle of Clontarf; and the traditions of the Firbolgs and Tuatha de Dananns are so mixed up with our written history, so impressed on the monuments and topography of

DEFECTIVE CHRONOLOGY.

17

the country, and so illustrated in the characteristics of its population, that no man of learning who had thoroughly studied the subject would now think of doubting their existence. But, as we have said, it is for the main facts that we claim this credence. These facts are, of course, mixed up up with the quaint romance characteristic of the remote ages in which they were recorded, and the chief difficulty, as in the ancient history of most countries, is to trace out the substratum of truth benea‘n the superincumbent mass of fable.

The chronology of the pre-Christian Irish annals is ob 1ously erroneous, but that does not affect their general authenticity. They were compiled for the most part from such materials as g nealogical lists of kings, to whose reigns disputed periods of duration were attributed; and those who, in subsequent ages, endeavo red to form regular series of annals out of such data, and to make them synchronize with the history of other countries, were unavoidabl ̧ liable to error. The Four Masters, adopting the chronology of the Septuagint and the Greeks, according to which the world was 5,200 years old at the birth of our Saviour, refer the occurrences of Irish history, previous to the Christian era, to epochs so remote as to expose the whole history to ridicule; while O'Flaherty, endeavouring to arrive at a more reasonable computation, and taking for his standard the sys ́em of Scaliger, which makes the age of the world before Christ some 1250 years less, reduces the dates given by the Four Masters by many hundreds of years; but the degree of antiquity wnich even he al ows to them surpasses credibility. Thus, according to the author of the Ogygia, the arrival of the Milesian colony took place 1015 years before the Christian era; that is, about 260 years before the building of Rome, making it synchronize with the reign of Saul in Israel; w..ile, according to the Four Masters, that event occurred more than six hundred years earlier; that is, many centuries before the foundation of Troy, or the Argonautic expedition; and yet, at that remote period-sixteen hundred years, according to one computation, and at least a thousand, according to another, before Julius Cæsar found Britain still occupied by half-savage and half-naked inhabitants-we are asked to believe that a regular monarchy was established in Irelan 1, and was continued through a known succession of kings, to the twelfth century !*

A chronology so improbable has naturally weakened the credibility of our older annals; but neither bardic legends nor erroneous com

* Charles O'Connor, of Balenagar, says, in hi Dissertations on the History of Ireland, that the Milesian invasion cannot have been much earlier or later than the year B.C. 760.

C

putations can destroy the groundwork of truth which we must recog nize beneath them.

The ancient Irish attributed the utmost importance to the truth of their historic compositions, for social reasons. Their whole system of society-every question as to the rights of property-turned upon the descent of families and the principle of clanship; so that it cannot be supposed that mere fables would be tolerated instead of facts, where every social claim was to be decided on their authority. A man's name is scarcely mentioned in our annals without the addition of his forefathers for several generations, a thing which rarely occurs in those of other countries.

Again, when we arrive at the era of Christianity in Ireland, we find that our ancient annals stand the test of verification by science with a success which not only establishes their character for truthfulness at that period, but vindicates the records of preceding dates involved in it. Thus, in some of the annals, natural phenomena, such as eclipses, are recorded, and these are found to agree so exactly with the calculations of astronomy as to leave no room whatever to doubt the general accuracy of documents found in these particulars to be so correct, at least for periods after the Christian era.*

Now, coming to the theories of Irish origins entertained by those who reject the authority of the old annalists either wholly or on this particular point; it is certain, according to them, that Ireland has invariably derived her population from the neighbouring shores of Britain, in the same way as Britain itself had been peopled from those of Gaul. It was thus, they tell us, that the Belgæ, or Firbolgs, the Damnonians, and the Dananns came successively into Erin, as well as, in after times, that other race called Scots, whose origin seems to set speculation at defiance. Navigation was so imperfectly understood in those ages that such a voyage as that from Spain to Ireland, especially for a numerous squadron of small craft, is treated with ridicule. The knowledge of navigation,

* For observations on the comparison of the entries of eclipses in the Irish annals with the calculations in the great French work, l'Art de verifier les Dates, as a test and correction of the former, see O'Donovan's Introduction to the Annals of the Four Masters, and Dr. Wilde's Report on the Tables of Deaths in the Census of 1851, where the idea of the comparison has been fully carried out. Thus, in the Annals of Innisfallen we find, "A.D. 445, a solar eclipse at the ninth hour." This is the first eclipse mentioned in the Irish annals, and it agrees with the calculated date in l'Art de verifier les Dates, where the corresponding entry is, "A solar eclipse visible in North-Western Europe, July 20th, at half-past five, A.M." And again, in the Annals of Tiger: nach, "A.D. 664. Darkness at the ninth hour on the Calends of May;" while in the French astronomical work already quoted, there is noticed for that year "A total eclipse of the sun, visible to Europe and Africa, at half-past three, P.M., 1st of May."