[ 5° ] 



have been correQed by the edition lately publiflied at Perth, of 

 which I fhall have occafion to make further mention hereafter. 

 In other places, therefore, they will be found very incorred : 

 But this cannot be an object of furprize ; for as the Erfe was 

 not a written language 'till within thefe few years, there were 

 no means of forming any ftandard for the writer ; the ortho- 

 graphy, therefore, depended on his own fancy. But after the 

 Irifii Bible was printed in the Roman letter by Mr. Kirke, in the 

 year i6go, for the ufe of the Highlands, where the Irilh cha- 

 rader was unknown », and other religious tra£ls had been pub- 

 lifhed, there was then formed a kind of ftandard ; and if we 

 may reafon from the remarkable improvement which has fince-j- 



taken 



* The . title-page runs in the following words : " Tiomna nuadh, &c. noch 

 " ata anios ar mhaithe choitchinn Gaoidhealtacht Albann, athruighte go haireach 

 " as an litir Eireandha, go mion-litre fhoi-leighidh Romhanta, &c. le R. Kirke, 

 " M. A. bli. I (S90 ;" that is, " The New Teftament, &c. which now, for the 

 " public good of the Gaels of Scotland, is carefully altered from the Irifli letter 

 " to the neater Roman letter, which is more eafily read, &c. by R. Kirke, in the 

 " year I'Sgo." On this title-page we may obferve, that the Irifh letter in the 

 year 1690 was unknown, at leaft generally, in the Highlands ; and that the High- 

 landers have the epithet Alban attributed to them in dire£l contradidlion to the 

 aflertion of Mr. Mc. Pherfon, who tells us, that they are called Gael emphatically, 

 but that the Irifh have the epithet of Eirimiach added to diftinguifh them from the 

 original ftock ; whereas we here find that the diftinguifhing epithet is applied to 

 the Highlanders, and therefore, as far as this argument goes, it proves Ireland to 

 be tlie mother country. 



f Mr. Mc. Pherfon once was of opinion, that the beauty of Erfe writing confifted 

 in its " not being brifllcd over with unneceflary, quiefcent confonants, like the Irifh," 

 as he has exprefTcd himfelf in his notes on the 7th B. of Temora. But the 

 learned Colonel Vallancey, to whom the Celtic literature of this country owes fo 



much, 



