Mr, Petrie on the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. 7 1 



It would be difficult, if not impossible, to answer some of these objections, 

 and others of still greater force might have been added ; for example, the impos- 

 sibility of Core, King of Munster, having been one of three kings constituting 

 this committee, when it appears from the concurrent testimony of all the Irish 

 histories that he must have been dead long before the period of its supposed for- 

 mation, as his grandson, Aengus, was the contemporary of Laoghaire, and the first 

 king of Munster converted to Christianity by St. Patrick. And in like manner 

 St. Cairneach could not have been of this committee, as he was the cousin and 

 contemporary of the monarch Muircheartach Mac Ere, who died in 534, and as 

 his own death is placed by Colgan about the year 530. To these objections 

 might be further added the facts that all the ancient lives of St. Patrick, with 

 the exception, perhaps, of that compiled by Jocelyn in the twelfth century, are 

 silent respecting this work, and that the most ancient accounts preserved by the 

 Irish respecting its origin shew that it is involved in great obscurity. 



It is, notwithstanding, certain that the Irish had a work called the Seanchus 

 Mor, of which portions, if not the whole, are still preserved ; and that the tra- 

 dition respecting its supposed authors is of an antiquity anterior to the ninth 

 century. It is quoted several times in Cormac's Glossary, and the same account 

 of its origin is given in that work under the word Noipiy, or knowledge of nine, 

 as that already extracted from the Annals of the Four Masters ; and it is also 

 frequently quoted, and referred to Patrick's time, in the Brehon Laws of later 

 ages. The antiquity of the Seanchus Mor is therefore beyond a doubt ; but 

 as the character of this work, and its probable age, are questions which have 

 been hitherto left in nearly total darkness by all the modern historians, it may 

 not be wholly improper, even at the hazard of a slight digression from the imme- 

 diate object of this paper, to take the present opportunity of investigating a 

 subject of so much historical interest. 



And, first, with respect to the nature of the work, the clearest evidences will 

 be derived from the ancient prefatory accounts prefixed to fragments of it still 

 preserved in the Manuscript Library of Trinity College, Dublin, (Class H. 3. 

 17 ; and H. 3. 18,) which are here presented to the reader with as literal a 

 translation as the idiom of the English language will allow. 



Caice locc, ocup aimpip, ocup cucaic What is the place, and time, and cause of 



fcpiBino, ocup peppa oo'n e-Senchup map ? writing, and author of the Senchus Mor ? 



