298 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



which the singers are invading. One of the most familiar devices for establish- 

 ing a treaty with the gods of a conquered country is to affiliate them to the 

 gods of the conquerors. Much of the Greek Theogonia has its roots in this 

 custom, and we can very reasonably trace it here. The Celtic-speaking 

 people, coming into the country with their Scota, declared that she was the 

 offspring of the aboriginal Forenn, and thereby put forward the strongest 

 claim they could make to the possession of the country. Some further 

 tons as i" Scota's personality must for the present be postponed. 



•iii) The saga which connect 1 I'ophi-.Scota with llachtir and with 

 ( 'unison is lost, except in the allusions of the poem before tis. and there is no 

 light from any other source to throw on these obscure names.' The "king of 

 Bregon," with whom Camson was at enmity, can hardly be dissociated from 

 Breogan, the grandfather of Mil, traditional ancestor of the Milesian or Celtic 

 inv.i - i bnradn, the son of the king of Britain, would thus be a non-Celt, 

 and we now begin to see indicated a legend told to account for the invasion of 

 the Mil- ■- [he orthodox story is to the effect that the expedition was 

 Brat undertaken to avenge on the Tuatha I >0 Danaim the murder of Itfa son 

 of Breogan; bnt that other tales were current before the historians formu- 

 lated the "official" history ,.f the country can hardly be doubted. Probably, 

 Dg I - Camson abducted Scota-Tephi from Spain, and the ex- 



pedition in motion to avenge the outrage. But this does not altogether 



exhaust tie- possibilities of reconstruction, as we Bhall presently see. 



iiv . Cams6n bad a god Etherun, on which a word or two must be said. 

 I'.tne. not unnaturally, compared this name to that of Taranis, the Gaulish 

 deity named in an oft-quoted of Lucan. The vowels, however, seem 



irreconcilable with this identification; and moreover we do not appear to 

 have any very oli ace of Taranis-worsbip in these islands. 1 at one 



time thought that in Etherun we were to see a scribal error for Eeher&n 



iting this as some sort of corruption of the name Ct rnunnos. This however 

 assumes the undemonstrable hypothesis that ('ernuunos was known in Ireland 

 under tie- same name as on the Continent; and as Camson, on the theory 

 here advanced, was a pre-Celtic personage, he must have had a pre-Celtic 

 We must therefore look elsewhere for Etherun, and once more Pictland 

 comes to our assistance. 



Two of the Scottish Ogham .-tone- — that from Scoonie, Fifeshire, now in 

 Edinburgh Museum, and that at Brodie Park in Elginshire— bear a word 

 EDLAia::. In the forme) -tone ii constitutes the entire inscription ; on 



the latter it is the only word now legible in what appears to have been 



W lth the exception of oue uolitarj ray "ii I 'ainsi'm, to be mentioned later. 



