102 



Whether Britain was the earliest peopled, and soon afterwards 

 colonized Ireland, or whether both islands were taken possession of 

 about the same period by different parties of the great nation of wan- 

 dering adventurers, denominated Scythians, will, it is probable, 

 never be distinctly known ; but it is certain that the same race 

 which inhabited Ireland, did also occupy a large part of Britain : 

 this is evinced by the numberless names of places in the south and 

 west of that country, which according to the great Welsh antiqua- 

 ries, Llwyd and Roberts, are Irish ; and which are to be found in 

 that language, whilst they cannot be explained by the Welsh or 

 Celtic, or any of its branches. 



The Celts or Cumri, appear to have conquered the first Britons 

 or Loegriaus, as Roberts calls them, and to have driven them out 

 of the country, at which time, as we learn from both Welsh and 

 Irish history, they took refuge with their kindred nation in Ireland. 

 Hence the resemblance already adverted to, between the names in 

 south-western England, in Wales, and in Ireland, notwithstanding 

 the dissimilarity of the existing languages. 



Our eastern ancestors appear to have received at several periods, 

 colonies of Colchian-Scythians, not only from Spain, where they 

 had early been established in the province of the Turdelani, and 

 famed for their progress in the arts ; but even directly from the 

 still more distant regions of Asia. Such are the pretensions of our 

 oldest histories, and they are countenanced as well by the character 

 both of the fables, and the authentic facts recorded in those histo- 

 ries, as by the language, the arts, and the customs of tlie country. 



I. By the fables and the facts of Irish history — both of which 

 are most curiously blended with circumstances recorded in that 

 of Persia, Now the earliest history of every nation is the history of 

 the parent country brought with them by the colonists, and transr 



