286 



naigh." Without at all meaning to insinuate that the bold Captain 

 meant to swear to any thing which he did not believe to be true, we 

 cannot avoid remarking that he did not swear with that caution that 

 honourable and conscientious men usually observe on such solemn oc- 

 casions. He swears positively that Cuchullin was a Scotchman, who 

 had a house or castle at Dunskaich, in the Isle of Sky, the remains of 

 which are still in existence, and upwards of twenty feet high ; and 

 that even the stone to which CuchuUin's dog used to be tied is sunk 

 in the ground, without the entry of the castle. In the Annals of 

 Tigernagh, an Irish writer who died in the year of our Lord, 1088, 

 the death of Cuchullin is recorded under the year A. D. 2. Admit- 

 ting the possibility of the ruins of a castle, built upwards of 1800 

 years back, being still in existence, it may be asked, what other 

 proofs are there that the Highlanders had stone-built houses at that 

 early period 1 Or that the ruins mentioned in the affidavit are the 

 ruins of CuchuUin's castle ? Many of the popular tales and poems 

 of the Irish mention the circumstance of CuchuUin's spending some 

 time in Sky, at a gymnastic school kept there by a famous Scotch 

 amazon, whose daughter Aoife, that Irish chief, upon his return to 

 Ireland, his native country, left pregnant of the hero Conlaoich. The 

 death of the last mentioned hero is the subject of two very beautiful 

 Irish poems, translated by Miss Brooke, and published by that lady 

 with the originals in her " Reliques of Irish poetry," pp. 9 to 31, 

 and 265 to 271. 



With respect to the orthography and meaning of the words Car- 

 raig and Toure, sworn to by the Captain, we beg leave to differ 

 from him, and we have no hesitation in saying, that we consider what 

 he has sworn relating to them, a strong proof of his ignorance of 

 the ancient Gaelic language ; Carraig is the Gaelic name for a rock, 

 whether round or square, rugged or smooth, and we defy the most 



