391 



matters ! And, however sapient and well acquainted with some kinds 

 of ancient learning their Druids may have been, we know they com- 

 mitted nothing to writing ; and, in fact, that all their science was de- 

 pendent on their memory. It was otherwise in Spain. The Turduli 

 and Turdetani, who inhabited Andalusia, possessed books of an extra- 

 ordinary antiquity. In them were written in verse their ethics and 

 their laws, which were of an antiquity, as it was believed, of 6000 

 years. JS'o doubt, that extreme antiquity was fabulous. But the tra- 

 dition preserved through ages in Andalusia, as to the antiquity of those 

 writings, justifies our inference that science was not a stranger to these 

 people."^' 



Prom all the preceding extracts from Spanish chronicles and his- 

 tories, and especially from the work of the Mohedanos last cited, it is 

 obvious that no ancient Spanish annals in MS., no written records of 

 the very early history of Spain, no compilation of such records analo- 

 gous to those Irish ones of the ''Annals of the Pour Masters," the 

 '' Book of Lecan," &c., are extant in Spain ; and from long- continued 

 research in Spanish and Portuguese literature, during a residence of 

 several years in those countries, I am fully competent to assert that no 

 ancient Spanish or Portuguese annals in MS., or compilation of them 

 similar to our Irish annals, are extant in Portugal. 



There are ecclesiastical records, indeed, relating to the Spanish and 

 Portuguese churches — to councils, especially, of both countries — of an 

 ancient date, and of high interest in religious matters, reaching even to 

 a period antecedent to the Moorish domination in Spain, the origin of 

 which was A. D. 713, to the period of the domination of their prede- 

 cessors, the Visigoths, who entered Spain with their great army, A. D. 

 472. 



Ticknor states truly in his great work on Spanish literature that there 

 is not a single ancient historical record in the Spanish language in 

 existence previous to the eleventh century. 



It is well to bear in mind that Annius de Yiterbo says the great 

 migrations from Spain,- consequent on the drought which prevailed for 

 twenty-six years in that country, took place long anterior to the date 

 assigned to that event by several other Spanish historians, who assert 

 the date of that event was about 1030 years before the Christian era, or 

 the year of the world 2974. In the Annals of the Pour Masters," the 

 coming of the Gadelians, or Milesians, from Spain into Ireland, is said 

 to have taken place in the year of the world 3500. But it must be remem- 

 bered that the chronology of the Septuagint is the one followed in the 

 "Annals;" and the equivalent of that date, according to the Hebrew 

 computation, would be the year of the world 2500, a period of 1 504 years 

 before the Christian era. 



O'SuUivan Beare, in his '' Compendium of Irish History," assigns 

 to the same event the age of the world 2662, a period of 1342 years 

 before our era. 



* "Hist. Litteraria de Espana," torn, i., lib. i., pp. 1, 2. 



