Irish annals,* to commit their poems, laws, and philosophy to writing^ 

 in characters doubtless only known to a few, yet it is positively stated, -f- 

 that Saint Patrick in a moment of that jealous triumph, too often 

 adopted in politics as well as in religion, utterly destroyed the books 

 illustrative of their principles and habits. Some fragments of their the- 

 ology and ritual are, however, still to be found in our ancient MSS. the 

 originals of many of which were drawn up at different periods of Paga- 

 nism ; and in the Book of Lecan, now in the possession of the Royal 

 Irish Academy, the Pythagorean doctrine of the Metempsychosis, 

 (which was also the doctrine of all the Celts,) is clearly given in an 

 allegorical fragment, J with which the belief in the tradition (preserved 

 by Cambrensis as from Irish Histories,^) of Ruanus, who was said to 

 have lived from the time of Partholanus, and to have been baptized 

 by Saint Patrick^ curiously agrees. 



' It does seem as if a spirit of Christian Theism followed close upon the 

 publication of the tenets of heathen Ireland, and the Ogygiall records a 

 certain judge of Connaught, named Conlavin, who kept up a written 

 controversy against the Druids immediately afterwards ; while it might 

 be inferred from Tertullian, that these discussions originated in a faint 

 dawning of Christianity, for he in the first century mentions,** that 

 parts of the British islands, which had never been approached by the 

 Romans, were subjected to true Christianity, (Britain and Ireland being 



• See Vallanc. Collect, v. 2. p. 206. f Vail. Coll. v. 2. p. 208. 



X See O'Flaherty's Isles of Aran, p. 21. 



§ " Ruanus iste (prout ex Hibernicis Historiis coUigi potest) longe trans omnem antiquo- 

 rum patrum longaevitatem, licet incredibile valde videatur et calumniae obnoxium, multis annis 

 vitam produxisse perhibetur." — Top. Hib. Dist. 3. c. 2. 



II " Conlavin insignem Connactiae judicem, qui adversus Druidas scriptis decertavit." 



Ogyg. c. XXX. p. 218. 



** " Brittanorum inaccessa Romania loca Christo vero subdita." — Lib. adv. Jud. c. 7. 



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