110 . 



have seen,* induce the petty kings and nobles of the country to direct 

 their attention to the sciences, and accordingly professors therein of 

 the most illustrious families are, within this period and thenceforth, 

 frequently alluded to. The chief and most important object of their 

 cultivation was history or annals-writing, of which many highly 

 curious specimens yet remain. The practice of recording remark- 

 able national events, must have been also the natural consequence of 

 the Phoenician origin of the Irish, for while Herodotus-j" and Josephus;;}; 

 describe the custom as appertaining to the Phoenicians, Pliny and 

 Festus Avienus extend it§ to their colonies. Why, therefore, should not 

 the Irish participate in the inheritance which their own antiquarians 

 claim from the remotest time, and which Spencer and others freely 

 concede to them ? 



The first sentence, with which Tigernach in honest candour com- 

 mences his annals, has been often vaunted by short-sighted critics as 

 an admission, that the Irish could have no ancient monuments of lite- 

 rature, " Omnia monumenta Scotorum, ante Cimbaoth sunt incerta," 

 i. e. all the records of the Irish before the reign of Cimbaoth are uncer- 

 tain. Now as this Cimbaoth flourished about the time of Alexander the 

 Great, it might not seem necessary, nor within our scope, to comment 

 on the passage, but even in reference to our boundary line, the rea- 

 der will observe that Tigernach's proposition resolves itself into two 

 parts, II the one a fact, namely, that the Irish had such records or 

 monuments extant of days before those of Cimbaoth, and the other 

 merely matter of opinion that they were uncertain. Indeed Tigernach's 

 work evidences records then existing of very high antiquity; not 

 only does he repeatedly cite such, but his notes of remote events are 



* Ante, p. 76. f Ante, p. 16. 



; Artte, p. 10. § Atite, pp. 30, 31. 



II See 1 Catal. Stow.MS. p.60. 



