[ 24 ] 
ter of the greateft importance to exhibit a clear deduction of 
their countrymen from thence, and their clofe attention to this 
point carried them, as will be feen, into many abfurd, incredible, 
and puerile exceffes. They * tell us three Spanifh fifhermen 
arrived here before the flood, and that foon after that awful 
event, the Fomhoraigh, or Africans, (by whom muft be underftood 
the Saracens) fubdued the + ifle, and others from the continent 
of Africa frequently vifited it, and that it was finally colonized t 
by Milefius, a Spaniard. This fiGtion is in Nennius, who is faid 
to have written A.D. 858, though I think there are internal 
proofs in his work of his age being much later. But let it 
be as is ftated, we need not wonder at the adoption of ro- 
mantic fiction fo early here, when we reflect that Ireland was 
then the § mart of learning to the Weftern World, and that 
hither reforted crowds from the remoteft countries for greater 
advancement in piety and more perfect inftruction in letters. 
Nennius relates, that the Milefians, in their voyage from Spain 
to this ifle, faw a tower of glafs in the middle of the ocean, 
which, endeavouring to take, they were drowned im the attempt. 
This tower is a fure mark of an oriental fancy: It is fimilar 
to the tower of glafs built by Ptolemy, and Boyardo’s wall 
of glafs made by an African m@gician ; and the pillars of Her- 
cules at Cape Finifterre, erefted on magical looking-glafles, all 
betraying their foundation in Arabian fable and Arabian phi- 
lofophy. 
THE 
* Keating, pag. 18—46. + Keating, pag. 11. + Warzi Difq.c. 2. Keating, fup. 
§ Antiquities of Ireland, pag, 171. Edit. Dubl. 1790. 4 Warton, fup. Seét. 15. 
