50 Proceedings or' the Royal Irish Academy. 



There are many reasons, historical, ethnological, and archaeological, for 

 thinking that this story of the introduction of a foreign people into Leinster 

 enshrines a historical fact ; hut it is apparent that the tradition as to the 

 precise country from which they came has been confused and lost. Ptolemy, 

 writing about the middle of the second century A.D., places the Brigantes in 

 the south-east corner of Ireland, and north of them the Coriondi, and still 

 further north the Manapii. The Brigantes are found at the same period in 

 Northumbria in England, and also about Bregenz in the Yorarlberg. The 

 Menapii were a maritime people in Belgic Gaul, south of the Meuse, where 

 their town was called Castellum, 1 identified with Cassel in the Department of 

 the Nord in France. These peoples would be, I suppose, of Brythonic stock, 

 and would be regarded as foreigners by the Goidels of Ireland. Xow in the 

 version of the story contained in the Egerton MS., instead of rig Armenia, 

 > the King of Armenia,' occurs in one place ri fer Menia, ' the King of the 

 men of Menia ': and M. D'Arbois de Jubainville conjectures that Menia 

 represents Menapia, pronounced in Irish fashion without either the p or the a 

 that precedes it. For the Irish, he says, could not pronounce the letter^?, 

 and the preceding a was post-tonic, as in Irish it was the initial letter that 

 was accented. The expression tir fer Menia, 'land of the men of Menia,' 

 puzzled the redactors of the story, and, having Biblical lands in their minds, 

 they replaced fer Menia by Armenia. In fact, tir fer Menia would be 

 pronounced like Tir Armenia. Others, he supposes, corrected ' Menia ' into 

 : Morca,' placed it in the south [west] of Ireland, and the term ' exile' then 

 became unmeaning. 2 



Mr. Coffey has already called attention to this conjecture, 3 and has stated 

 that the date assigned by M. D'Arbois (216 B.C., or more vaguely the third 

 century B.C.) for the return of Labraid with the Galians and their broad blue 

 lances agrees with that to which on other grounds he is inclined to assign the 

 general use of iron weapons in Ireland. 1 Indeed, he points to a certain broad 



1 The name KaoTtWor here must, of course, not be translated " castle " in the sense 

 of a private castle. It was a fortified i6\is. It is significant, however, as indicating 

 that the Menapians were remarkable for their fortifications. 



2 Revue Celtique, vol. xxviii (1907), p. 32, et seq. On the point of textual criticism, 

 however, a better case might, I think, be made out for supposing that the country 

 originally named was Armorica, and that this became changed in the one case into Tir fer 

 Morca. and in the other into Tir A It is at least a curious coincidence that the 

 compiler of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, while taking his opening sentences from Bede, 

 says that the Britons came from " Armenia," whereas Bede's words are de tractu 

 Armoricano. 



Proc. R.I. A., vol. xxviii (C), p. 99. 

 : M. D'Arbois's date for this foreign influx is 216 B.C. He arrives at this date from a 

 calculation based on the early Irish genealogies and on the supposed synchronism of 

 Ugaine Mor and Ptolemy son of Lagos. Inasmuch, however, as these genealogies seem 



