120 REPORT—1874. 
still exists on the battle-field of Moytura Conga, and the decorated urn is in the 
Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. 
It has been objected to our Irish manuscripts that, from the material on 
which they were written, the form of their letters, their philological construction, 
and their iluminations, none of them was written earlier than the ninth or tenth 
century; some, indeed, go so far as to say that there is not an Irish MS. later 
than the twelfth or thirteenth century. Now granting all that, what does it prove ? 
Not that the historic instances recorded were concocted by the scribes of these 
times, but that these vellum or paper manuscripts were copied from earlier writings 
which were founded on anterior materials. That they were interpolated, glossed, 
and changed in many instances from century to century in process of transcription 
from the time they were first committed to writing, is but a repetition of what has 
occurred in other countries. But, even in more modern and so-called civilized 
times, has not history been falsified to please the pride of a ruler or to pander to 
the prejudice of a party? Where, I would ask, are the early rolls of “The Law?” 
Where are the original manuscripts relating to or after the first century of the 
Christian era? Where, except in Egypt (that great land of embalmment) or at 
Nineveh, do we find a bit of writing two thousand years old? Are not learned 
artists and philologers even now disputing as to the dates of the Psalter of Utrecht 
and the Codex of Upsala ? 
To my surprise Mr. James Fergusson, in discussing the subject of our Irish 
histories, at p. 197 of his valuable book on ‘Rude Stone Monuments,’ says, 
when alluding to the battles of Moytura,—“ Before the introduction of writing 
into a country, how long could so detailed a narrative as that which we possess, 
and one so capable of being veritied by material evidences on the spot, be handed 
down orally as a plain prose narrative?” Surely my friend does not deny the 
vocal tradition of history by means of memory; and if he merely objects to the 
accounts of the battle of Moytura and other Irish tales from their being in prose, 
it is right for him to know that they are nof all in prose, but partly in the rhyth- 
mical style of the period. The introduction of prose at the time of the use of letters 
can be accounted for by the fact that when the Schannaghie or rhymer found 
“a hole in the ballad,” he supplied the legend in a prose version to the scribe, or 
that the scribe shortened the narrative by a prose version of his own. 
Passing over, as probably apocryphal, the old tales related in the bardic legends 
of the Lady Kaisar and her ships, we come to Parthalon, the great Grecian hero, 
who landed in Dublin Bay, and whose cohorts conquered the aborigines, as related 
by the annalists. I should not have introduced him, but that there is a remarkable 
confirmation of the legend afforded by the topographic and antiquarian examina- 
tion of the locality. This invader and his followers occupied, it is said, Ben-Kider, 
now called the “ Hill of Howth,” and the “ old plain of the valley of the Flocks,” 
along the shores of Dublin Bay, styled ‘“ the Strand of the Birds,” passing all round 
from Belscadden to Bray Head; and who had, no doubt, a “ Pale” for themselves 
as others had in later times. 
A Thaum or pestilence attacked that people, and they are said to have all died. 
Upon the age of this catastrophe, or the numbers who died of it, I cannot specu- 
late ; but I believe that when flying from the seacoast and plains to the mountains 
a large number perished and were buried on the slopes of Tallaght, so called 
because it was the Thawm-Lacht where the plague-stricken people were interred, and 
where occasionally Kistyaens are turned up containing decorated urns, having 
within them incinerated bones. Several of these are still in existence; and when 
Istand at the northern end of this great plain of Dublin, said to have been colonized 
by Parthalon, my foot is on his reputed cromleach at Ben-Eider. 
Of the Femorians, Nemedians, and other minor invaders we need take no notice, 
as they have left nothing after them by which to track their footprints. The 
annalists, or at least the transcribers, probably believed that these people all came 
direct from the Ark, after resting for a while on Mount Ararat, or that they were 
epee direct from Japhet, or from Gog and Magog. Cuthites were not known 
ere then. 
T will now tell you what has been the result of my own examination of the races 
that migrated to, or are said to have conquered, Ireland, 
