I 



12 



inetli the. son of Aguomin is in the ancient historic poem of tlie 

 Tuatha De Danaan thus, 



lar bannul faidh Fionn go fall 

 Mic Neimidhe, mhic Adknamhoin. 



After dangers long the Finns to Erin came, 

 Tlie sons of poesy, sons of song. 



*' The poem relates to the bardic academies, supposed to have been 

 established in Ireland by the northern scalds, under the conduct of 

 Garmann or Gurmund, commander of the Dubh Gals, about the 

 beginning of the ninth century, who during this period infested 

 the coast of Britain, France and Spain. He was slain, according 

 to the Ulster annals, in the year 855. The poem is said to be the 

 composition of Torne Eigis, bard to the O'Nials in the fourth cen- 

 tury ; but neither its versification nor language places it beyond 

 the twelfth. And, on examination it proves to be an almost )| 



literal translation of an ancient Scaldic poem on that subject. The 

 monkish and Latin writers of the ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth 

 and thirteenth centuries relative to Ireland, copying from Irish 

 romances, have given in some measure sanction to all those ridi- 

 culous and fanciful relations, with which the Irish annals ace 

 clouded. 22" 



OF THE MILESIANS. 



After the Tuatha Dea Danaan the next colony is called Scot- 

 tish, Scytliian or Milesian from Spain. And we are told that 

 the chiefs of the four colonies claimed the Saxon Magog, the 

 nephew of Noah by Japhet, as their common father, and all are 

 ?aid to have used the Scottish tongue.-^- Those colonies are brought 



22. Camden's Brit. p. 220. 23. Ogyg. p. 7. Keating, &c. 



