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it will not be deemed irrelevant, we trust, to enrich it with some 

 extracts translated and abridged from his learned work. 



He informs us that O'Flaherty and Harris affirm that Fortchern, 

 the son of Deaga, and Nedius, the son of Adneus, two celebrated 

 poets in the reign of Concovar, king of Ulster, flourished at Eamania 

 thirty-four years A. C. ; that Fortchern wrote various precepts of 

 poesy, and various kinds of verse ; and that his book is entitled 

 Uraiceacht na n eacgios, (Precepts of the Poets,) that it contained a 

 hundred varieties of versification ; that Kennfeola, the son of Olioll, 

 interpolated it many ages after, viz. A. D. 628. They add that 

 Fortchern, Nedius, and Aitherneus, poet of Concovar, were among 

 the poets who established the legal enactments, called Breatha nimkej 

 or celestial judgments. 



Doctor O'Conor does not place implicit faith in these statements, 

 but maintains it to be a well established fact, that the poetic art was 

 cultivated in Ireland from a very remote period, as is plain from the 

 declaration of Adamnanus, in the 7th century, in the first book of 

 his Life of Columbanus, c. 42, where he has some notices of Cronan, 

 a poet, who, according to the custom of his art, ex more sua artis, 

 sang his songs in a modulated manner, modulahiter. He affirms 

 this, not from the authority of one passage in Adamnanus, or from 

 verses yet extant of Columbanus, but from many inedited remains of 

 the bards preserved by Tigernach and other ancient historians. 



Some have affirmed that the rhythmic or rhyming art was unknown 

 before the eleventh century, and that, consequently, the fragments 

 alluded to must have been subsequent to that age. They egregiously 

 err, and Muratorius (della poesia Italiana,) meant to confine his 

 observations on this subject to the modern tongues, since he repeat- 

 edly testifies that rhyme was used by the ancients. That it was 

 known in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity, is evident 



