Ireland was inhabited by such a variety of tribes from different na- 

 tions, as rendered some common assembly indispensable for general 

 subordination. That geographer enumerates* no less than eighteen 

 tribes as surrounding the coast of Ireland in the first century, in 

 which he is followed by Marcianus Heracleota-f and Richard of 

 Cirencester,:]: and powerfully illustrated by the approving comment of 

 the ingenious Mr. Whitaker.§ 2ndly. That there was such a scale 

 of Princes, Druids, and men of learning, appears from the Dissert. 

 Historic, de Vita S. Romuoldi, as well as from the Ogygia (Insula 

 p. 58,) a work which the learned Dr. Loftus, Bishop Stillingfleet, and 

 Ware himself, frequently quote with approbation. || Srdly. That 

 Ptolemy, in his map of Ireland, marks as near the river Boyne, and 

 where Tara actually is, a place called by him Laberus, and which Bax- 

 ter, a great master of the British and Irish tongues, conjectures** to be 

 a place where councils or parliaments were held ; for that (says he) 

 Lhavar, in the British language, signifies concio or sermo, as Labh- 

 ragh does in Irish; while Richard of Cirencester, in his work " De 

 situBritanniae," makes this very Laberus the capital of theVoluntii;-f-f- 

 (a people whose country was intersected by the Boyne.) 4thly. That 

 the palace of Tara is repeatedly mentioned by Probus and the other 

 biographers of Saint Patrick. ;]::|; othly. That Tara, as shall be shewn 

 in the fifth section of this period, bears to the present day on its face, 

 traces of pre-eminence even more ancient than this age ; while it 



* Geog. lib. 2, cs. 1 and 2. t Periplus. % De Sit Brit. p. 43. 



§ History of Manchester, vol. 1. p. 430, where the respective sites and boundaries of the 

 tribes may be seen. 



II Ware's Writers, p. 272. ** Gloss, verb. " Laberus." 



ft " Voluntii civitatem habebant Lebarum, fluvios autem Vinderum et Buvindam." — De 

 sit Brit. p. 44. 



XI And see Ward's Dissert, p. 359. 



