Orpen — Dim Gallon and the c Dunum- of Ptolemy. 51 



iron lauee-head in the Museum as being probably an example of the broad 

 blue lances from which Leinster derived its name. 



M. D'Arbois's conjecture, if it be accepted, leads to the identification of the 

 Galians of Irish tradition with the Manapians of Ptolemy.' Even apart from 

 the restoration of Menia (= Menapia) as the land whence the Galians are said 

 to have come, the inclusion of the Manapians among the Galians is plausible 

 on the general ground that the Manapians were a Gallo-Brythonic people 

 appearing in Leinster before Ptolemy's time, and the Galians were foreigners, 

 presumably of Gaulish extraction, appearing at least as early in the same 

 province. It seems better, however, to regard the Manapians as one of the 

 several similar peoples included under the general term 'Galians.' Ptolemy's 

 Brigantes, for example, were probably another, and a trace of them may 

 perhaps be discerned in the Tuath Fidga, " a British people " dwelling in the 

 barony of Forth, County "Wexford, 2 in the very district where Ptolemy places 

 the Brigantes. In the passage in the Book of Ballymote already referred to 

 the Tuath Fidga of Ui Cennselaigh are classed as Gaileoin. 



This suggested inclusion of the Manapians among the Galians has led me 

 to a reconsideration of the precise site of Ptolemy's Manapia. It has usually 

 been supposed that Manapia was on the site of the town of "Wexford, 3 but 

 this supposition seems to be based on no better ground than that the river 

 Modonnus, near the mouth of which, according to Ptolemy, Manapia was 



to have been constructed to suit more or less arbitrarily fixed synchronisms, the basis of 

 his calculation is artificial and unsound. Prof. MacXeill has shown that one of the 

 earliest of the synchronists places the coming of the Goedil at the begi nn ing of Alexander's 

 World-Empire, or 331 b.c. (Proc. R.I.A., vol. xxviii (C), p. 142). Later writers have not 

 been so moderate in their drafts on antiquity. I can give no date beyond the tentative 

 statements that the foreign influx must have occurred before, but perhaps not very long 

 before, the time of Ptolemy the Geographer, for he seems to place the foreigners on his 

 map ; and after, but perhaps not very long after, the coming of the Goedil, for they seem 

 to have not yet dominated all Ireland. 



1 Ptolemy writes Mav&inoi in Ireland and Mevdirioi in Belgic Gaul, but the names are 

 usually treated as identical. 



2 LL. 15 a (25) : Tuath fidga i foth.atia.ib .i. tuath de Bretnaib. See, too, Irish 

 Nennius, p. 123 ; Keating, I.T.S., vol. ii, p. 111. 



3 In his "Studies in Early Irish History," p. 51, Sir John Rhys places Manapia 

 somewhere in the neighbourhood of Arklow. This, he tells me, he did partly because the 

 Avonmore there seems best to suit his analysis of the name Mo-donnos. He treats this 

 as meaning ' My Donn [bull],' perhaps a divine bull, suggested by the rush of the river 

 in times of flood. (See D'Arbois's remarks on this analysis, Rev. Celt, xxi, pp. 254, 255, 

 where he similarly treats Ptolemy's Povovivoa as Bu-vinda, the white cow}. This would 

 be more true of the Avonmore than of the Slaney. The prefix mo-, so common in saints' 

 names, seems to have been similarly used in pagan times. Modovinias, however, is 

 perhaps a doubtful reading of the Dunmore Ogam. Professor Macalister says that 

 Moccaggi, which he takes for Mo-Cagi, is the only example that we meet with in oghamic 

 epigraphy of the use of the honorific prefix mo-. (Irish Epigraphy, Pt. iii, p. 124.) 



[8*] 



