PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. II7 



any serious attention. The common derivation which is assigned to Eirinn (Ireland) 

 is / iar-flwim, the land of the western isle; or, the land of the island of the west. 

 The letter I (island) occurs in lona, Islay and many other topographical names. 

 Max Miiller gives in a footnote in his first series of lectures on the Science of 

 Language, a very learned and elaborate disquisition by an eminent Irish scholar on 

 the etymology of the word Eirinn. The most enthusiastic admirer of the Celtic race 

 can scarcely maintain that the Celts of those far-off times had even an approxi- 

 matioi; to the philosophical ingenuity that is involved in the disquisition on the word 

 Eirinn, to which allusion has just been made. I hold the opinion that the common 

 e.xplanation of Eirinn is correct, and that the disquisition to which Max Miiller has 

 given a place in his lectures is too learned to be of any practical value. 



Various derivations of the word Breatunn have been advanced. Is Brcatunnach 

 misc, I am a Briton. Rugadh mise ann am Brcatmuu I was born in Britain. Breatunn 

 and Brcatunnach are, therefore, Gaelic words, and are very commonly employed. 

 Some one has contended that Breatunn is a compound of brait. extensive, and /;;, an 

 island; and that, therefore, the signification accordingly is an extensive island. The 

 presence of a fertile imagination is so unmistakably manifest in that interpretation 

 of Breatunn that no importance can be attached to it. An ingenious explanation of 

 Breatunn has been given by Mr. Clark in his " Caledonian Bards," where he contends 

 that the components of the word in question are Braigh, top, and tonn, waves. The 

 argument whereby it is sought to defend that interpretation is very ingenious : 

 " That Britain was at first peopled from the opposite coast of Gaul is a rational 

 hypothesis, and accordingly it has been adopted by the most eminent historians. 

 As Britain was within sigiht of Gaul, the inhabitants would bestow on it some name 

 before they crossed the channel, is a supposition not altogether improbable. 

 Ingenuity could certainly suggest no term more significant of the appearance of 

 Britain from France, viewing it over the convexity which the globe forms in the 

 breadth of some part of the channel, than the land on the top of the zvaves." To over- 

 throw the fanciful interpretation that Britain means the land on the fop of the wai'cs, 

 it is sufficient to consider that there is no syllable to correspond with land in Breatunn ; 

 and that in the last syllable iinn there is evidently present the same root which forms 

 the termination of Albion, Eixinn. Sasnnn. The word Breatunn has also been resolved 

 into Breac Innis, the variegated island. I find tliat Prydain is the name of the first 

 legendary King of Britain, and that from him the British Isles have taken the appel- 

 lation. Ynis Prydain. To contend that Breatunn had its origin in Breton, the name 

 of that portion of Gaul from which the Celts emigrated to Great Britain, is merely 

 to thrust the difficulty aside, and not to explain it at all. Professor Rhys, of Oxford, 

 has in recent years advanced another interpretation of Breatunn. He asserts that 

 when the Romans came to Britain they learned the name Britannia or Brettann. 

 which the Brythones gave themselves. He is of opinion that Britanni and Brettani 

 are regarded as of the same origin as the Welsh brith. spotted, parti-coloured — 

 feminine hraith; and that there can be found in them a reference to the painting or 

 tatooing the body, already alluded to more than once. " It would appear." he writes. 

 " that the word Brythan and its congeners mean a clothed or cloth-clad people. 

 There is no reason why the name should not be treated as exclusively belonging 

 in Britain to the non-Goidelic branch of the Celts of- the second invasion. But 

 some time later, there arrived another Celtic people with another Celtic language, 

 which was probably, to all intents and purposes, the same as that of the Gaul. Tliese 

 later invaders called themselves Brittones. and seized en the best portions of Britain, 

 driving the Goidelic Celts before them to the west and north of the island." It 

 seems, however, to be impossible to explain the term Breatunn in a manner that can 

 be regarded as altogether satisfactory. 



The Picts and Scots are by common consent admitted to have played a promi- 

 nent and restless part in the early annals of Great Britain. In a paper which T 

 prepared for the Canadian Institute last session, I entered somewhat fully into the 



