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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 301. 



have been considerably larger before the 

 Deisi took possession of the baronies of the 

 two Decies and other districts now consti- 

 tuting the county of Waterford, not to 

 mention possible encroachments on the 

 part of Munster on a boundary which seems . 

 to have been sometimes contested. Now 

 the Continental name which invites com- 

 parison with that of the Usdise is that of 

 the Ostisei, who in the time of Pytheas ap- 

 pear to have occupied the northwestern 

 end of what afterwards came to be called 

 Brittany ; they were also called Ostiones, 

 and more commonly Osismi. I see no 

 reason to suppose that the ships of the 

 Aremoric League could not make the voy- 

 age from Brittany to the principal landing- 

 places on the south of Ireland from the 

 Harbor of Cork to that of Waterford, and 

 I gather from Ptolemy's Geography that 

 Ireland was relatively better known on the 

 Continent than Britain, although the latter 

 has been in a manner connected with the 

 Roman world. This I should explain some- 

 what as follows : Csesar, who knew very 

 little about the west of Britain and prob- 

 ably less about Ireland, says that in his 

 time the great druidic center of Gaul was 

 in the country of the Carnutes, somewhere, 

 let us say, near the site of the present town 

 of Chartres, that druidism had been intro- 

 duced from Britain to Gaul, and that those 

 who wished to understand it had to go to 

 Britain to study. The authors of antiquity 

 tell us otherwise nothing about druids in 

 Britain, except that Tacitus speaks of such 

 in the Annals, in his well-known passage 

 as to Suetonius Paulinus landing with his 

 troops in Anglesey and the scene of 

 slaughter which ensued. Indeed, one may 

 go further and say that there is no proof 

 that any Belgic or Brythonic people ever 

 had druids : they belonged to the Celtican 

 Gauls and the Goidelicizing Celts of Britain 

 and Ireland, who had probably accepted the 

 institution from the Pictish race. At any 



rate, it is significant that the Life of St. 

 Columba introduces the reader to a genuine 

 druid at the court of the Pictish king, near 

 Inverness, where, as well as on Loch N"ess, 

 the saint had to contend with him. In any 

 case, it is highly probable that druidism 

 was no less a living institution in Ireland 

 than in the Goidelic and Pictish parts of 

 Britain. Presumably it was more so, and 

 it may be conjectured that Gaulish stu- 

 dents of druidism visited Ireland no less 

 than Britain ; also, vice versa, that Irish 

 druids paid visits to the Celtican part 

 of Gaul where druidism flourished on the 

 Continent, and, in a. word, that there was 

 regular intercourse between Gaul and the 

 south of Ireland. If the druids of Ireland, 

 who, among other roles, played that of 

 schoolmasters and teachers in the country, 

 traveled to Celtica, they must have spread 

 on the Continent some information about 

 their native country, while generations of 

 them cannot have returned to Ireland, with 

 their druidic pupils, without bringing with 

 them some of the arts of civilized life as 

 understood in Gaul ; among these one must 

 rank very decidedly the art of writing, which 

 the druids practiced. Now you know the 

 usual account given of the ordinary Latin 

 for Ireland, namely Hibernia — to wit, that 

 it was suggested by such native names as 

 that of one of the greatest tribes of that 

 country, namely the 'luuepvot or Iverni, and 

 that it had its v ousted when Latin began 

 about the fourth century to write b for v, and 

 that an A was then prefixed to make the 

 word Hibernia properly connote the wintry 

 climate which our sister island had always 

 been supposed to enjoy. But now comes 

 the question, where did Pomponius Mela, 

 who flourished about the middle of the first 

 century, get his Iiiverna, which Juvenal 

 also used? Doubtless from a druid like 

 Dalan, or some other educated native of 

 Ireland, for what the editors print as luver- 

 na, luuerna, or Juverna would appear in 



