other boys, he suddenly found the use of speech. When he grew up and Cobtach discovered that he no longer had the disabling blemish, and was moreover held in high esteem, he drove him out. The young man was received with honor at the King's court in Gaul-whence after some time he returned, with an army of over two thousand Gauls, armed with broad spears to which the Irish gave the name of Laighen. On his arrival in Ireland, he learnt that Cobtach, with thirty princes, was holding an assembly in Dinn Righ. There Labraid marched, and destroyed them all. He attacked and burned the Dinn and its guests-and won his grandfather's throne and incidentally supplied the plot for one of the most famous of old Irish tales, "The Burning of Dinn Righ." From the Laighen of the Gauls, whom he settled in this southeastern part, Leinster, it is said took its name.1 The story of Cobtach and Labraid is to some extent curiously paralleled in that of the next Irish monarch of much note, Conaire Mor, who reigned within the century before, or at the time of, Christ: and who, in establishing his strong rule over Ireland, putting down lawlessness and making himself and his rule respected and feared, drove out his own foster-brothers, the four sons of a chieftain of Leinster. These returned after a time with a great body of Britons, under Ingcel, son of a British king. They destroyed and burned Meath, and then attacked Conaire Mor and his retinue in the Bruighean of DaDerga (one of the six public houses of hospitality that Ireland then boasted) destroyed it, and 1 About this Labraid Loingsech grew the myth (closely paralleled in the Greek) of his being cursed with the ears of a horse. He always wore a golden helmet, says the legend, to conceal his horrible secret. Because the barber who cut his hair was ever chosen by lot, and put to death immediately after he had performed his task, a dread fear was on the whole nation, of some awful mystery that their king concealed from them. Once the barber's lot fell upon the son of a poor widow. The woman's brokenhearted supplications so moved Labraid that he promised to spare her son's life, on his taking a solemn oath of secrecy. His terrible discovery, which he must now carry forever, a festering secret in his mind, so preyed upon the young man that he lost his sleep, lost his health, and was on the verge of losing his reason. He consulted a wise Druid, asking what he should do to save himself. The Druid's advice was that he must travel to a place where four roads met, and then tell to the nearest growing tree the dread secret which he must not give to any living being. He did this, and was instantly relieved, and grew hale, with a mind at ease, once more. Now it was a willow tree to which he told the secret. In course of years this tree was cut down, and a harp made of it for Craftine, the king's harper. And lo, when Craftine touched the strings of his new harp, in the hall of the king, the instrument sang: "The ears of a horse has Labraid Loingsech! The ears of a horse has Labraid Loingsech!" Over and over again, "The ears of a horse has Labraid Loingsech!" The court was horror-stricken, the king dumbfounded. Filled with remorse, and humiliated, but brave as a king should be, he bowed his head, and before the whole court, removed his golden helmet-thus ending the dreadful mystery forever. killed Conaire and his retinue. This tragic incident gave us the equally famous and remarkably beautiful tale, The Bruighean Da Derga. Some of the historians say that it was Conaire Mor who reigned in Ireland when Christ was born. But others make the reigning monarch then Crimthann Niad Nair (Abashed Hero) – a king famous in ancient story for his foreign expeditions-from one of which we are told he brought back, among the booty, a gilt chariot, a golden chess-board inlaid with 300 transparent gems, a sword entwined with serpents of gold, a silver embossed shield, and two hounds leashed with a silver chain. During Crimthann's reign occurred a notable return of Firbolgs from the Western Islands of Alba (Scotland) whereto their forefathers had been driven, long ages before. Now a colony of them, led by the four sons of the chief, Umor, with the eldest son, Angus, at their head, took refuge in Ireland from the persecution of the Picts, and by the high king were granted lands in Meath. They soon however found him as oppressive as the Picts had been coercive. And on a night they fled Westward from their Meath possessions. They crossed the Shannon into Connaught, which was still largely inhabited and dominated by their Firbolg kin. There, the celebrated Queen, Maeve, and her husband, Ailill, gave them lands in South Connaught, where they settled once more. But they were pursued by the two great Ulster warriors and heroes of the Red Branch, Cuchullin and Conal Cearnach, who had gone security to the high king for their good behaviour-who here fought them a battle wherein great numbers of the Umorians were slain, including Angus' three brothers, and his son, Conal the Slender. A great cairn, known to this day as Cairn Chonaill, was erected on the battlefield to commemorate him and them. Angus with his own people then settled in the islands of Aran, in Galway Bay, where he built the wonderful fortress still standing there and known as Dun Angus. At the time of Christ, the celebrated Conor (Conchobar) MacNessa reigned over Ulster. CHAPTER V IRELAND IN THE LORE OF THE ANCIENTS SCOTIA (a name transferred to Alba about ten centuries after Christ) was one of the earliest names of Ireland-so named, it was said, from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, one of the ancient female ancestors of the Milesians--and the people were commonly called Scotti or Scots1-both terms being frequently used by early Latin historians and poets. Ireland was often referred to-by various names-by ancient writers both Latin and Greek. Plutarch testifies to the nation's antiquity by calling it Ogygia, meaning the most ancient. One of its ancient titles was Hibernia (used by Cæsar)—which some trace from Ivernia, the name, it is said, of a people located in the south of the Island; but most trace it from Eber or Heber, the first Milesian king of the southern half; just as the much later name, Ireland, is by some traced from Ir, whose family were in the northeastern corner of the Island. Though it seems much more likely that this latter name was derived from the most common title given to the Island by its own inhabitants, Eiré-hence Eire-land, Ireland. It was first the Northmen and then the Saxons, who, in the ninth and tenth century began calling it Ir-land or Ir-landa— Ireland. In the oldest-known foreign reference to Ireland, it was called Ierna. This was the title used by the poet Orpheus in the time of Cyrus of Persia, in the sixth century before Christ. Aristotle, in his Book of the World, also called it Ierna. In the first half of the first century Pomponius Mela refers to it as Iuvernia. It was usually called either Hibernia or Scotia by the Latin writers. Tacitus, Cæsar, and Pliny call it Hibernia. Egesippus calls it Scotia-and several later Latin writers did likewise. A Roman, Rufus Festus Avienus, who wrote about the beginning of the fourth century of this era called it "Insula Sacra"-which leads us to suppose that in the very early ages, it was, by the pagans, 1 MacNeill thinks the term Scot (and then Scotia) was derived from an old Irish word which signified a raider. He thinks they earned the title from their frequent raiding in Alba and in Britain in pre-Christian times. The conjecture is to the present writer unconvincing. esteemed a holy isle. In a noted geographical poem of his occur the lines "This Isle is Sacred named by all the ancients, And peopled far and wide by the Hiberni." And the fourth century Istrian philosopher Ethicus in his cosmography tells how in his travels for knowledge he visited "Hibernia" and spent some time there examining the volumes of that country-which, by the way, this scholarly gentleman considered crude. That travellers' tales were about as credible in those far-away days as they are in days more recent, is evident from some of the curious things related about this Island by the early Latin writers -oftentimes grotesque blends of fable and fact. The Latin writer, Pomponius Mela (who was a Spaniard and flourished near the middle of the first century of the Christian Era), says in his cosmography books: "Beyond Britain lies Iuvernia, an island of nearly equal size, but oblong, and a coast on each side of equal extent, having a climate unfavourable for ripening grain, but so luxuriant in grasses, not merely palatable but even sweet, that the cattle in very short time take sufficient food for the whole dayand if fed too long, would burst. Its inhabitants are wanting in every virtue, totally destitute of piety." The latter sentence is quite characteristic of the Latin writers of that day, to whom the world was always divided into two parts, the Roman Empire with which exactly coincided Civilisation and the realm of all the Virtues, and the outer world which lay under the black cloud of barbarism. But Strabo, who wrote in the first century of this era, does even better than Pomponius Mela. Quoting Poseidonios (who flourished still two centuries earlier), he informs us that the inhabitants of Ierne were wild cannibals who considered it honourable to eat the bodies of their dead parents! But he blends sensational picturesqueness with caution; for he adds: "But the things we thus relate are destitute of witnesses worthy of credit in such affairs." He suspected he was setting down wild fiction, but evidently could not resist the temptation to spice his narrative for the sensating of his readers.2 2 An English clergyman with the Cromwellian troops in Ireland vouched for the fact that every man in a garrison which they captured was found to have a tail six inches long. Some of the English still believe it. Solinus (about 200 A. D.), as naïve as any of his fellows, has the inhabitants of Juverna (as he names the Island) "inhuman beings who drink the blood of their enemies, and besmear their faces with it. At its birth the male child's foot is placed upon its father's sword, and from the point of the sword it receives its first nourishment!" He, however, also heard of, and records, the account of Juverna's luxuriant grasses, which he says injure cattle. And the true statement that there is no snake in the Island he counterbalances by the misstatements that there are few birds in it, and that the inhabitants are inhospitable! Seemingly forgetful of the fact that even the early Christians were accused of eating human flesh, St. Jerome accused the Irish of cannibalism. And a reason suggested for his making the wild accusation was because he smarted under the scathing criticism of the Irish Celestius-"an Alban dog," as the good sharp-tongued Father calls him, "stuffed with Irish porridge." The careful Ptolemy, in the second century, gives a map of Ireland which (from a foreigner in that age of the world) is remarkable for the general correctness of the outline, and more noteworthy features. He names sixteen "peoples" (tribes) inhabiting it (the names of half of them being now recognised), and he mentions several "cities"-probably royal residences. With the exception of Ptolemy who, in all likelihood, derived his knowledge from the trading Phoenicians, the early Greek and Latin writers only knew of Ireland that it was an island sitting in the Western ocean, and remarkable for its verdure. Yet the Phonicians were probably well acquainted with its ports. Tacitus says, "The Irish ports in the first century were well known to commerce and merchants." The great antiquity of Ireland, incidentally acknowledged by foreign writers of olden time, is, as might be expected, sometimes fantastically exaggerated by ancient native writers. We have the legend set down by several early Irish writers that a Greek, Partholan, with his people came here a few hundred years after the flood. The Island of Inis Saimer, in the mouth of the River Erne, at Ballyshanny, is named after Partholan's favourite hound. A plague exterminated the Parthola nians. But, not to be outdone in antiquity, by any European nation, some very ancient Irish poets people their country even before. the flood-when, they say, in a well-known legend, that the Lady Cesair came with her father Bith, a grandson of Noah, and their |