Macalisteh — Tamair Breg : Remains and Traditions of Turn. 29. r > 



I think that I was the first to point out that Ln Ogham inscriptions couched in 

 the formula A maqi mucoi B, in which the descent of the deceased is traced 

 not from his father but from a remote eponymous ancestor, the second name, 

 that of the ancestor, is very frequently broken off while the rest of the 

 inscription is left intact; and this almost always seems to be a work of 

 intentional violence. I completely missed the true interpretation, however, 

 which is certainly that given by Professor MacNeill 1 ; namely, that the 

 ancestral name is that of a divinity, which would naturally be destroyed 

 when some enthusiastic Christian iconoclast came across it. 



I therefore suggest that Scota was an eponymous ancestress of the Scotic 

 people, to whom divine honours were paid, and that Tephi was a crypto- 

 graphic way of referring to her, devised at the time when Christianity had 

 become the strongest faith in the country. 



(ii) The next question that arises in connexion with Tephi is the interpre- 

 tation to be put upon the statement that she was a daughter of Forann. It 

 is not to be understood that she was originally supposed to have been a 

 daughter of the king of Egypt, though this explanation, doubtless, became 

 current in later times. We are to see in Forann a native name, which later 

 historians misunderstood. 



Sir John Rhys long ago suggested a comparison between this name and 

 that of Feron, mentioned in the legends of Irish origines? According to one 

 story, preserved by Keating, 3 Parthol6n, the first post-diluvian invader of 

 Ireland, had four sons, named Er, Orba, Eeron,and Fergna. Another tradition 

 made these four the sons of Eber, brother of Eremon, the first king of the 

 Milesians, and assigned to them a reign of half a year in joint rule, some little 

 time after the establishment of the Milesian kingdom. 4 



There is, on the whole, a general similarity between the legends of 

 Partholon, Nemed, and the Fir Bolg, close enough to justify us in regarding 

 them as variants of one and the same group of tales — namely, the tales that 

 the aboriginal pre-Celtic people of the country told about their own beginnings. 

 This being premised, it may be considered as at least probable that the four 

 leaders of the expedition whereby these autochthones were said to have been 

 settled in a previously desert Ireland, were the ancestral deities of the pre- 

 Celtic tribes. Accordingly, we find the same quartette appearing in another 

 guise, as those of the sons of Nemed, the second post-diluvian invader of the 

 country. As there given, they are Starn, Iarbonel, Fergus, Ainnind. 5 The 



1 Proceedings R.I. A., vol. xxvii, section C, p. 334. 



2 Rhiud Lectures in Scottish Review, October, 1890, p. 252. 



3 Fonts Feasa ar Eirinn (I.T.S. edition), vol. i, p. 1.70, 



4 Tbid., ii. 116. ' /'•"/.. i. 1M 



R.I. A. ruoc, VOL. XXXIV, SKCT. c. [-41] 



