n 



ing garb of truth, pretend to ascertain the time of the arrival of 

 colonies in this island, even before the flood, with so much pre- 

 cision that, the year and month not being thought sufficient, they 

 add the day, and specify by name each family of the chiefs- 

 And this impudent forgery upon chronology being found not to 

 agree with historical data,-°- later writei-s have, vmder the pre- 

 tence of error, excused and rectified it.^'- Yet, though they pre- 

 tend to those early records of antiquity, they are completely ig- 

 norant of those tribes enumerated by Ptolemy in the second cen- 

 tury, of the towns they inhabited and of the names of several 

 rivers, which appear upon his map of Ireland. This want of 

 knowledge proves that our bards had commenced the history of 

 Ireland at a later period, or that those Roman tiaders, from 

 whom Ptolemy had derived his information, were instructed by 

 some of the Belgic or Teutonic tribes of the southern coasts. 

 Such is the light thrown upon Irish history by native writers, 

 who nevertheless accuse all others of incompetency, if ignorant 

 of the Irish tongue ; yet two of the best Philo-Milesian histo- 

 rians, O'Flaherty and Mac Geoghegan, though they inveigh 

 against the qualifications of others on this account, were them- 

 selves extremely ignorant of the Irish language. 



Mr. O'Connor, in the late edition of Camden's Britannia, in- 

 forms us that " the account of Partholanus and Nemethus, ^c. 

 cannot have been in the original copies of Nennius, but inserted by 

 some monkish transcriber ; and it is evidently taken from Irish 

 romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and is not con- 

 tained in the historic poems of Irish bards. The original of Ne- 



20. Hist. Monastique du Royaurae d'Irlande, p. 38. ' Mais la chronologie d'Irlande est 

 peut-estre une des plus brouillees qu'il y ait.' 



21. Ogyg. p. 168, 170, 182, ISi. 



c2 



