103 , 



ferred to the new country, which in the progress of time gradually 

 becomes the imaginary seat of the various events originally re- 

 corded. This is so plainly the case with regard to much of the Irish 

 history, as to excite a strong persuasion that the exact lime of the 

 peopling of Ireland might be satisfactorily made out, by ascertain- 

 ing the period at which the Irish histories cease to be applicable to 

 Persia and Spain, and become appropriate only to Ireland. 



Nor could these histories have been invented in support of the claim 

 to Median descent, because the Irish books and MS. in which they 

 are found, were written long before the annals of Iran had been made 

 known to these countries through modern research. How indeed 

 can the close resemblance between many of the Eastern and Irisli 

 legends, that for instance, of the Persian hero Rustam and his 

 son Sohraub, to the story of the Irish Conloch and his valiant father 

 Cucullin* — or the exact similitude which the account Herodotus-f* 

 gives of the Macedonian king Arayntas and Darius the Persian, 

 bears to the Irish history of the destruction of Turgesius the Dane — 

 be accounted for otherwise than by the chronicles and legends of 

 the parent state having been transported to the colony, and there 

 located by the adaptation of names, times, and places. Had the 

 events recorded been borrowed, would not a succinctly arranged 

 history, free from the absurdities which now deform it, have been 

 made out ; but on the contrary there remains the same mixture of 

 the fabulous and llie marvellous, as is found in the early records of 

 all ancient nations. Yet notwithstanding this quantity of fable and 

 useless matter, and the discrepancies frequently observable in their 

 accounts, there are some points on which all the Irish annalists and 



* Transactions Royal Irish Academy. 



f Tergos, ch. v. — Campion's Hist. Ireland, p. 73. Hib. Edit. 1809. — Warner's Albion's 

 England, b, v. c. 26. 



