MacNkill — An Irish Historical Tract dated A.D. 721. 125 



the Bionze Age, that is to say, perhaps a thousand years before any Celts 

 are known to have reached the coasts of Gaul and Spain. This theory has 

 long seemed to me to be chiefly sustained by the scaffolding that surrounds 

 it. I do not know how far it may have been suggested by the claims to 

 remote antiquity put forward on behalf of the Gaelic people in Ireland by 

 their medieval historians. At all events, it is not irrelevant to point out that 

 the writer of Z, the oldest known document which assigns a period to the 

 Gaelic conquest of Ireland, is content to claim for that event a date no more 

 remote than the time of Alexander the Great. To my mind, it .has neither 

 been proved nor shown probable that any Celtic people had settled in Britain 

 or Ireland before the Celts were already far advanced in the use of iron. 

 While I attach no precise importance to Z's date for the Gaelic immigration — 

 the method by which that date was determined will be shown in further 

 analysis — I consider it reasonable to think that the migrations to Ireland 

 came in natural sequence from the occupation of the Atlantic seaboard by 

 the Celts, and may not have begim earlier than the fifth century B.C. 



2. Textual Extracts with Tkajislation. 



I. (BB 21 j3 28). 



I cind .ccc. bl. iar ndilind ro gab At the end of 300 years after the 



Parrtholon Ei-m«», no d?jo amar aderam Flood, Partbolon took possession of Ire- 

 bos treabbsad a sil .1. bL ar .u.c. conda- land, or else, as we shall further relate, 

 sealgadar C'owcheind go na terno neach his race dwelt [here] 550 years until 

 di[a] claind ana beatbaigli t/icha bl. the Bogheads slew them, so that not one 

 iarsia gan duine beo a nErm». of their posterity escaped alive. For 



thirty years thereafter, there was no 

 one alive in Ireland. 



[Then foUows an account of certain prediluviau immigrants to Ireland — 

 Capa, Laiglme, and Sluasad, and again Cessair and her company.] 



II. (BB 23 a 29).i 



Ocus nir gabh reach do chloind Adham And no one of the race of Adam before 



re ndiU Ermw acht sain. Ba fas tra the Flood took possession of Ireland but 



Eriu fria re .ccc. bla. co»as-torr(rc'/(< these. Now Ireland was vacant for the 



Parrtholon. no da bl. ar mile 7 is fir space of 300 j-ears until Partholon 



eissein. doig is .Ix. bl. ba slan do reached it; or rather 1002 years, and 



' I give this section in its order, but regard it as forming no part of the original tract. Its 

 object is to amend the eiirlier reckoning. For Mac Caithy's translation and emendations, see 

 Todd Lect. Lii., p. 2G2. 



[19^^] 



