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182 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
‘mear the Alps;’’4s and are found in this particular Alpine region two 
centuries later, when St. Permin, we are told, in his ministrations, had 
to make use of the Latin and Frankish languages. Their own national 
tradition brings them from the East by the banks of the Danube 
“‘juxta Thraciam,” and it is certain that in the third century some 
part of Thrace was allotted to and occupied by them as a settlement.‘ 
It may therefore not unreasonably be inferred that if a Frankish king 
about the period in question desired to adopt a heremetical life, he 
would have found a retreat among his own countrymen on this border 
of the Roman territory. 
In the passage in which Mac Firbis describes the process of 
making the dead king appear to breathe smoke and fire against his 
enemies, he repeats the above observation about the “‘ learned.” 
This double version of the means of Dathi’s death may give rise to 
a suspicion that the lightning-flash is an incident borrowed from the 
story of the Hun, and that the Irish legend is built up of material 
drawn partly from Byzantine history and partly from the medieval 
thaumaturgists. But I fancy anyone acquainted with the characteristics 
of that kind of Irish literature will regard this introduction of the 
“arrow” which slew Niall as one of the common affectations of senach- 
ism, and easily separable from the less puerile incidents of the story. 
The fable of their Trojan descent, in which the Franks only imi- 
tated the Latins and Britons, may have had its origin in the presence 
of the name Priam, father of Marcomir, in the pedigree of their 
kings. This Marcomir, who spent the latter part of his life in cap- 
tivity in Tuscany, was father of a son called Pharamond. Pharamond 
has had the ill-fortune to be regarded by many historical critics as a 
mythical personage, on singularly slight grounds. He is mentioned 
by Prosper, a cotemporary, as reigning in France in a.p. 420. There 
was no France then, properly so called; but the name France is shown 
on the Peutinger map, as designating a country east of the Lower 
Rhine, which not impossibly may have been Pharamond’s kingdom. 
No record, however, has been preserved, of the time or maiuer 
of his death, and tradition assigns him different and inconsistent 
places of sepulture.* The result has been that Pharamond’s ex- 
43 Franci, origine Trojani, post eversionem Trojz, Priamo quodam duce, inde 
digressi, juxta Thraciam super ripas Danubii consederunt, edificantesque ibi civi- 
tatem vocebant eam Sicambriam. Mansueruntque ibi usque ad tempora Valentiniani 
imperatoris, a quo inde expulsi.... . Maccommiro, Sunnione, et Genebraudo 
ducibus, venerunt et habitaverunt circa ripas Reni in confinio Germanie et Ale- 
maniz. Quos cum multis post modum idem Valentinianus preliis attemptasset, 
nec vincere potuisset, proprie eos nomine Francos quasi ferancos, ad est feroces, 
appellavit. Rad. de Diceto Abbreviat., ad an. 392. From Hugo de S. Victor Excerp- 
tiones P. Priores, 1. x., c. 1. 
46 Under the Emperor Probus. 47 Stephen Byzant., dpayyor. 
48 The chartularies of 8. Gall abound in Frankish names; seealso the Vocabula- 
rium Teutonicum preserved there. 
4) Vita Pirminu. 
0 Chiflet (Anastasis Childerici Regis) has it from the Brussels Ms. that he is 
