ia 



In the intervals from the year 126 to 130, this island, according 

 to the native Annals, was afflicted with a most annihilating visitation. 

 " Hibernia," (say the four Masters,) " was without food, without 

 milk, without fruit, without fish, in a word, without any other com- 

 modity/'* The circumstance, however, would not appear within the 

 scope of this Essay, but that by a curious coincidence, the period of 

 this famine is in or about that in which Solinus, who, according to 

 the best authorities, flourished from the middle of the second to that 

 of the third century, obtained the information which induced him, and 

 him alone, to give that characterf- to Ireland, in which he insinuates 

 that birds were rare there, that the very bees had deserted it> (" avis 

 rara, apis nusquam,") that the natives drank the blood of their ene- 

 mies, and that they held good and evil in alike indifference. (" Fas 

 atque nefas eodem animo ducunt.") 



Saxo Grammaticus furnishes the inference of another Danish 

 aggression against Ireland about A. D. 177, in the passage, " Having 

 heard these things, Hako, the son of Hamund, when he was about to 

 transfer the hostility of his arms from the Hibernians to the Danes, in 

 revenge for the fate of his brothers,"^ &c. 



In A. D. 192 a remarkable dismemberment of Ireland, in conse- 

 quence of the disputes of two rival kings, into two divisions, designated 

 after the names of the contending parties, as " Leath Conn," and 



tepide ab ullo unquam expugnata et subacta est ; nunquam externae subjacuit ditioni, usque ad 

 annum a paitu Virginis, 1171." — Hist. Rer. Angl. lib. 2. c. 26. 



* O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Script, v. 3. p. 73. The year is there stated as much earlier, but 

 this is only the variance peculiar to the chronology of these chronicles, arising from an erro- 

 neous calculation of the year of the world in which our Saviour was bom. 



•f Post, Period I . sect. 6. 



I His audilis Hako Hamundi filius, quum in ultionem fratrum arma ab Hibemensibus 

 in Danos translaturus videretur, &c.— Hist. Dan. lib. 7. 



