373 



"l!^ow, gentlemen, let us, with the full spirit of enlightened patriot- 

 ism, devote ourselves to the illustration of our own antiquities ; let us 

 love them, and, loving them, labour to bring them to light ; but let us 

 not believe that they are all we have to learn, or that they convey 

 all that can be taught. Let us look upon them only as links in one 

 great chain, which embraces many nations and many periods of human 

 culture — which has no place of its own, unless considered in co-ordina- 

 tion with other links in a still greater chain, but the full elaboration of 

 which is necessary, before its cosmic relation can be well and thoroughly 

 comprehended. Let us be sure that we are not exclusive, but compre- 

 hensive, in what we do ; let us, above all things, never lose sight of this 

 great truth, that the interests of man have at all times led to a close 

 communion between the several divisions of his race ; that nothing can 

 be dissociated in the study of archseology." 



In a preceding paper, I have noticed fabulous histories of celebrity 

 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and one of them, especially, 

 earliest in point of time of appearance, of greatest notoriety, and most 

 pernicious influence over Spanish literature of an historical kind — the 

 work of John Annius de Yiterbo, a learned member of the Dominican 

 order, of the early part of the sixteenth century. In that paper it was 

 shown, that in the fabulous historical fragments of that writer, purport- 

 ing to be the productions of Berosus and Manetho, long lists of early 

 Spanish sovereigus, beginning with Tubal, and brought down in regular 

 chronological order for several centuries, are to be found ; and that they 

 have been adopted generally by the historical writers of Spain and Por- 

 tugal of the same century, and to nearly the end of the succeeding one. 



It must be obsp-ved that the starting point of all colonization in 

 Spain and Portugal, in Spanish and Portuguese history, is the confusion 

 of tongues, and the dispersion of the sons of Koah, at Sennaar. 



Antediluvian migrations from Spain to Ireland are not to be found 

 noticed in Spanish chronicles ; but, unfortunately, some scanty records 

 of them have been discovered by 0' Flaherty in ancient Irish annals, 

 and the most that could be made of them by the latter has been done in 

 the " Ogygia," in a notice of certain Spanish fishermen, named Cappa, 

 Lagne, andLuasat, driven from the coast of Spain in tempestuous Aveather 

 on the coast of Ireland. See chap, i., vol. ii., p. 2. 



" I do not pledge myself," says O'Plaherty, " to inform you how 

 the history of them has been recorded and transmitted to posterity. 

 This only I affirm, that the antiquities and primitive archives of other 

 countries have not been supported by a stronger or more permanent 

 basis ; which antiquities are still handed down to us with an air of pro- 

 bability by their respective historians . . . 



" Therefore, according to the most ancient histories of Ireland, Cappa, 

 Lagne, and Luasat, three fishermen, being driven by adverse winds from 

 Spain to Ireland, landed at the mouth of the Eiver Muad. They were 

 afterwards overwhelmed in the Deluge at Tuathinbhir. And forty days 

 before the Plood, on the 15th of the moon, being the sabbath, Caesarea, 

 Baronna, and Balba, with fifty women and children, Bith, Ladra, and 



E. I. A. PROC. VOL. VIII. 3 D 



