Okpkn — Dun Gallon and the 'Dunum' of Ptolemy. 49 



Ireland). According to the Scholium " he went eastward till he reached the 

 island of the Britons and the speckled youths of the land of Armenia." 1 



Both versions represent him as obtaining an armed force from the land 

 of his exile, with which he returned to Leinster, sacked Dind Eig, killed 

 Cobthach, and took the kingdom. Prom his having been exiled he was called 

 Labraicl Loingsech, or ' L. the Exile.' It is clear that in the original story 

 this force was a foreign force, and not the Mimster men from Luachair 

 Dedad. Even in the first version, as told in the Rawlinson MS., it is said at 

 the end that his name was ' Labraid the Exile,' " since he went into exile, 

 when he gained a realm as far as the Ictian Sea, 2 and brought the many 

 foreigners with him (to Ireland), to wit, 2,200 foreigners with broad lances 

 {laighne) in their hands, from which the Laigin (Leinster men) are so called." 

 Moreover, in the qixatrains of the Dindshenchas of Lagin the foreign force 

 with their novel broad lances is the essential feature : — 



" Labraid, the exile (full his number), 



by whom Cobthach was slain at Dindrig, 



came with a lance-armed host over the sea- water ; 



from them Lagin was named. 



" Two-and-twenty hundreds of the Gall 



came oversea, having with them broad lances : 

 from the lances that were carried there — 

 thence the men of Lagin get their name." 3 



In the prose version this foreign force is called the Black Foreigners 

 (Dubgaill), from the lands of the Gauls, and it is added that "it was the 

 Gaileoin that nourished Labraid during his exile in the lands of the Gauls." 4 



1 Dochuaid soir eo rainig Tms Bretan J in breacmacraid third Armenia. 



2 The reference is apparently to the British Coast of the Muir nlcht, and this, as Sir 

 John Rhys suggests to me, recalls the Welsh Arlechwadd Galedin, " the slope of Galedin, 

 comprising the South of England from Kent to Dumnonia," mentioned in the Iolo aiss., 

 p. 86. The Galedin would probably be the Belgae of Britain ; but there is no other 

 allusion to them under this name. Galedin points to Galat-in-i, and this name in its turn 

 reminds one of Calatin and the sons of Calatin, who figure in the story of Cuchulainn's 

 death. There may have been a legendary connexion between Calatin and the Galians, 

 as the latter were opposed to Cuchulainn in the battle of Ros-na-rfg. It seems not 

 improbable that the Galians came directly from this district in the South of Britain to 

 Leinster, though they may have been reinforced by Menapians f rom the other side of the 

 Channel. 



In the Yellow Book of Lecan, Gailli Dana is written for Calatin Dana. Tain B. C, 

 Windisch, pp. 423, 667. 



3 Translated by Edw. Gwynn, " Metrical Dindshenchas," Pt. ii, p. 53. 



4 Rennes Dindshenchas. Rev. Celtique, vol. xv, p. 300. 



K.I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXXII., SECT. C. [8] 



