100 



the laws of the xii tables, and the inscription on the columna rostrata 

 of Duillius, sculptured only 150 years before Cicero. 



Polybius assures us that the most learned of his contemporaries 

 could with difficulty understand the articles of the treaty made with 

 the Carthaginians after the expulsion of the kings. Great changes 

 took place in the Roman language, from intrinsic causes, before the 

 Goths subjugated \ta\y. As long as languages are destitute of 

 learned men to give them stability, so long must they fluctuate and 

 be liable to be vitiated by new inflexions, by idioms and solecisms, 

 ignoble and plebeian. Every nation borrows the peculiar idiom of 

 the foreigners and neighbours with whom it carries on commerce; 

 what is good is easily changed for the worse, and the greater the cor- 

 ruption, the more strongly does it adhere to the speech of the vulgar. 

 Now if the more polished tongues undergo such mutations, much 

 more, must we conclude, will those which are barbarous experience 

 similar vicissitudes. In the lapse of ages, and especially since the 

 invasion of the English, the native language of the Irish, not only of 

 the common people, but of the nobles and gentry, has been greatly 

 contaminated.* 



Doctor O'Conor says, there is in Stowe Library an unedited rhyth- 

 mical poem, ascribed to01iol-01am,who flourished in the third century. 

 Whether it was really the production of Oliol-Olam or not is ques- 

 tionable; its antiquity, however, cannot be doubted, "umw ex Codice 

 vetusto Congabhala descripium fuerit, qui a monasterio Dungallense, 

 ante iv. Magistrorum tempora, summa cum veneratione servabatur." 

 In the margin of this poem, the Doctor's grandfather had, with his 

 own hand, written "ni riiaith thuigim an tsean duan so." "I do not 



• The curious reader may see this subject illustrated at greater length in the original work 

 of Doctor O'Conor. 



