23 



centre ; the Goths or Belgae on the borders ; it is highly probable 

 that those authors who quote no authority for their assertions, having 

 heard of those Gothic tribes in Ireland, and of the Norman pira- 

 tical attempts on the British coast, in the time of the Romans, re- 

 quired no further proof to draw those specious inferences. 



Other writers, from an erroneous construction of a line in Pro- 

 pertius, have brought the Irish from Turkey in Europe. And so 

 much stress has been laid upon it, that I had long hesitated, lest I 

 should incur the censure of critics, in venturing upon my own au- 

 thority to give it a different interpretation. The line I allude to is 

 in the 4th book of the elegies of Propertius, and in the epistle of 

 Arethusa to Lycos : 



Hibernique GetiE, pictoque Britannia curiu ; 



which is understood to mean, ' the Irish Getee, and Britain with her 

 painted chariot.' To understand the force of this line I shall quote 

 the two preceding ones, in which Arethusa, in an epistle addressed 

 to her lover, continues to describe his travels. 



Te modo viderunt iterates Bactra per ortus, 

 Te modo munito Beticus liostis equo, 

 Hibernique Getae, pictoque Britannia curru ; 



which, as I conceive them, should be thus translated: — at one time 

 the Scythians have seen you in the frequented east ; at another the 

 Betic (Spanish) enemy beheld you upon your armed steed : you 

 have also been seen by the wintry or frigid Getce and by Britain 

 with her painted chariot. 



The propriety of the epithet applied to the Getae^^- is confirmed 



55. A Scythian tribe, wlio occupied both sides of the Danube in Bulgaria and Moldavia of 

 Turkey in Europe. 



