109 



to one of the dialects of the great and general tongue, which pervaded 

 ancient Europe, than that it was formed by a few vagabonds who 

 assembled together for self-defence on the shores of the Tiber, &c."* 



Such is the blindness with which this subject is viewed by those 

 to whom its consideration is latterly entirely committed ; such is the 

 " crambe repetita," the saliva of critical rumination, that is, day after 

 day, cast up to vilify a nation; but it may now be permitted to ask, 

 whether there is more credulity in believing in early Irish literature, 

 or in seeing a vis consequential in any one of the above anti-conclu- 

 sions ? Some few other objections, which are rather referrible to the 

 general civilization of Ireland, shall be treated of in the sixth section. 



The learning thus early known in Ireland was long confined to the 

 Magi and Philosophers; the wisdom, however, of Tuathal,-|- did, as we 



* Introduction, p. 264. 



t From this Tuathal, the once powerful family of O Tuathal, O Tothill, or O Toole, 

 derived their name. Spencer conjectures that they were of a colony of ancient Britons, who 

 in remote ages settled on the coast of the present County Wicklow. They were princes of 

 Jmaile and Cuolan in that district, and in Ortelius's map are placed in the barony of Balli- 

 nacor. They were one of the septs eligible to the dignity of Kings of Leinster, and main- 

 tained the right of electing the bishops and abbots of Glendaloch, even for centuries after that 

 see was united to Dublin. They are said to have struck their own coins before the English 

 invasion, and after it founded several castles, particularly those of Carnew and Castle Kevin. 

 (In the latter. Piers Gaveston resided for some time in the year 1308.) The Rhefeart Church at 

 Glendaloch, was tlie principal burial place of the O Tooles, and in it are still found some mo- 

 numents to the princes of this race, whose deeds are extensively spread over the annals of the 

 country. Archbishop Laurence O Toole, the uncompromising opponent of the early English 

 invaders, was of this sept. And while those invaders were establishing themselves in the island, 

 the O Tooles were their most harassing antagonists. Accordingly we find them in the reign of 

 Edward the Second, denominated "Irish felons." They caused much trouble to llichard the 

 Second, during his progress in Ireland, having destroyed a large body of the royal forces ; and 

 in the reign of Elizabeth, they are charactered as "a mischievous clan." A captain of this name, 

 then in the Spanish service, was one of the four who succeeded in carrying off Maria Clemen- 

 tina Sobieski, the betrothed of the Pretender, from Inspruch in the Tyrol, where she was de- 

 tained by the Emperor Charles the Sixth, at the instance of George the First. 



