13 



from a fictitious Chamus in Africa, from Scythia, Thrace, a part 

 of Macedon called Mygdonia, Scandinavia and Spain f*- and they 

 are made to travel backward and forward with as little uncon- 

 cern, as if they had nothing to apprehend on passing through 

 savage regions ; and with as much ease as if chaises, relays and 

 pacquet boats were in readiness to receive them. 



Such tales are unworthy of refutation. The narrators have 

 unwittingly destroyed their credit by the insertion of dates, which 

 relate to times long before the introduction of letters and figures 

 into Britain or Ireland. 



Dr. O'Brien observes: ' I rather should, in my quality of a 

 mere Irishman of the old stock, shew him my gratitude for his 

 zeal in asserting that patriarchal genealogy of Milesius, which 

 our bards have been stout enough to trace up to our first fa- 

 thers through the plains of Senaar, mentioning also in their way 

 both the Pharaohs of Egypt and Moses, though they knew 

 not one step of that dark road, no more than Senaar and these 

 personages, until they had learned them from the holy Scrip- 

 tures.'^^- In his remarks upon the letter A he adds ;-*' " AVe 

 should not in the mean time time forget that it is to this change 

 made in the words Gaill and Galic, doubtless by our heathen- 

 ish bards, who inserted the letter D, that we owe the important 

 discovei-y necessarily reserved to their successors,, who embraced 

 Christianity, of those illustrious personages Gadel aixl Gadclus : 

 the former an usher under that royal schoolmaster Pheniusa Far- 

 ra, king of Scythia, in his famous school on the plain of Senaar, 

 where this Gadel invented the Irish alphabet and the Gadelian 

 language, so called, as it is pretended, from his name ; and the 



2-i. Hist. d'Irland<>, torn. 1. p. 59, 66. 



25. Ir. Eng. Diet. Preface, p. 59. 26. Ibid., p. 5. 



