Maoalistkk — ToiiK ir Breg : Remains and Traditions of Tara. 297 



to Fergus. The interpolated ETT would then be simply the Latin ct, learnt, 

 with the forms of the letters in which the inscription is cut, and the accom- 

 panying cross with its ornamentation, fro in the missionaries. On this hypothesis, 

 the St Vigean's inscription would give us the original pre-C'eltic forms of 

 these names, those in the Celtic documents being corruptions.' I may remind 

 the reader of the illustration I have used in a previous paper — the trans- 

 formation of the names of Eu.dus and Mad-Oinae, heads of Clomnacnois, 

 into Eocjun and Mael-TuUe in all the Annals — which shows that there is 

 scarcely any limit to the possibilities of corruption in proper names, even 

 when these are familiar. The change oilpeuoret to larbonel, which is perhaps 

 the most violent of those suggested, will not seem so difficult when we 

 remember the similarity of p to Tl, 11 to tl, and U to L, in the so-called 

 " Irish " capitals, especially if these are not very carefully written. 3 



It is not difficult to recognize the same quaternity once more in the names 

 of the four persons recorded as having escaped the universal deluge, Finntan 

 Feron, Fors, and Andoid. 4 Here Feron and his double Ainnind (Andoid) 

 appear together, while Finntan and Fors take the place of the others. 



The name Feron appears to occur in a similar invocation on the Newton 



stone. The beginning of this inscription is AIDDAHRNNN VOEEENN 



Reason will presently be given for seeing in the first of these words the name 

 of a god ; and the analogies already suggested perhaps make it at least 

 admissible that Vorrenn is to be similarly treated. Feron would thus be an 

 artificial corruption of the name of a very ancient deity, made by interchanging 

 the vowels. 



We have thus reduced the mysterious Tephi daughter of Pharaoh to a 

 Celtic divine ancestress Scota, considered as the daughter of a pie-Celtic 

 deity called Forenn. But why should this Celtic ancestress be made the 

 daughter of a pre-Celtic divinity ? To this question, at first sight difficult, a 

 simple and convincing answer is at hand. It is a device of the Celtic invaders, 

 who came in at the beginning of the iron-age culture, to establish their claim 

 to the possession of the land. Baudis 5 has ingeniously explained the songs of 

 Amergin as hymns designed to propitiate the unknown deities of a country 



1 There seems to be a contamination with another triplicity, namely, the three "gods 

 of the Tuatha De Danann," called Brian, Iuchar, Iucharba. The names Iuch-AR, 

 Iuch-ARBA, are reminiscent of the first two names of the 1'artliolon triplicity. 



2 Proc. R.I.A., xxxiii, 0, p. 106. 



3 That ghost-words produced thus, by misreadings of manuscripts, call attain to 

 vitality is shown by such examples as Hebrides, Iona, cell (= chisel), and uncial, derived 

 from misreadings of Ebudae, loua, caelo, and initiates. 



4 Keating's History, I.T.S. edition, i, 184. 

 ° kriu, viii, p. 102. 



