Mr. DowNES on the Norse Geography of Ancient Irleand. 85 



lettered founders, by virtue of its literary celebrity. The term Runic, so fre- 

 quently applied to this language, even by such scholars as Parkhurst, is a mis- 

 nomer, being applicable only to a peculiar form of its characters, like the term 

 Ogham in Irish. In tracing to a foreign origin a few of our local names, I shall 

 unavoidably startle vernacular prejudices, researches such as the present being but 

 too frequently marked by a national bias. Local investigations recall local 

 associations, and there is a charm about ancient things, by which the judgment 

 becomes warped : a chastened imagination will indeed rather aid than obstruct 

 inquiry into the topography of an imaginative people, but patriotism is a bad 

 etymologist. 



Of the four provinces of Ireland, which are all given in English on the Map, 

 but two are given in Norse — Ulaztir and Kunnaktir ; Leinster and Munster 

 are, however, mentioned in the Essay, and two portions of the former are laid 

 down on the Map — Dyflinar-skiri, or Dublinshire, and Kunnjdttaborg, which 

 occupies much of the present county of Meath. The Danish writer asserts, after 

 Chalmers, that 5^er, the termination of the names of three provinces, is a cor- 

 ruption of the Norse sta'^r, " place," not adverting to its occurrence without an s 

 in Kunnaktir, where, however, it may have been omitted for euphony. It cer- 

 tainly has no connexion with the Irish cfp, which was invariably the leading word 

 in local designations wherein it occurred, as in Tir-Anlave, or Tirawley — a name 

 apparently Norse, but which is found, as Tir-Amhalgaidh, in the Book of Ar- 

 magh, written about 680, a period anterior to the earliest northern invasion of 

 Ireland on record, and which is misinterpreted in the Essay as Olafs Hdj, or 

 " Olave's Height." To the apparently idle tradition that Ulster owes its name 

 to one Ullagh, a Norwegian, the Essay naakes no allusion. 



Though Leinster is not included among the Norse localities on the Map, 

 Johnstone, in his edition of the Lodbrokar-Quida, or Death-Song of Lodbroc 

 (otherwise called the Krakumdl), printed in 1782, gives " Leinster" as the 

 translation of " Lindis-Eyri" in a description of a sea-fight between the North- 

 men and the Irish : in the notes, however, he suggests that Lindisfarne may 

 be intended, that is. Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland (or now of 

 Durham), and adds, that some suppose the Lindesnes, commonly called the 

 Naze, in Norway, to be the locality in question. In Rafn's edition of the same 

 poem, published in 1826, various opinions are cited. If eyn, "strand" (the 



