116 



Yet the other alternative may also be considered — namely, that 

 the people who used this character may have been invaders, and not 

 original colonists ; that being invaders, they were probably weak in 

 numbers, though of a superior civilization to the aborigines, whom they 

 found, perhaps, thinly populating the country. Those invaders having 

 formed a settlement in the immediate district where they landed, and 

 increasing in numbers by the coarse of nature, spread themselves along 

 the seaboard, and around those commodious harbours and sea inlets so 

 plentiful on the south and south-western coasts ; being themselves a 

 maritime people, they affected the shores, both from a natural desire 

 for the sea, the convenience of fishing, and for politic reasons, inas- 

 much, as by the sea they could hold communication with their native 

 land, receive reinforcements from thence, and by it also make their 

 escape if unexpectedly hard pressed by the aborigines. Such has ever 

 been the policy of colonists under similar circumstances. In this 

 immense district, comprising the counties of Cork, Kerry, and "Water- 

 ford, such a colony may have existed for centuries, growing into the 

 power and numbers of a considerable state, ere they were able to 

 extend their dominion over the whole island. Such a state of things 

 as, in fact, existed in England at the time of the Eoman invasion, 

 when the island was divided into a number of states totally independent 

 of each other, and often engaged in fierce wars. In this alternative 

 we might also suppose that the Ogham fell into disuse among them ere 

 their power was extended over the whole island. That such a state of 

 things is not only possible, but probable, we may infer from the fact, 

 that the descendants of the Norman invaders were near five centuries 

 settled in Ireland before they were able to subdue the country ; and 

 that for the same period their language and letters were unknown out- 

 side their limited dominion, known as the "Pale;" while the letters 

 and idiom brought by them originally into the country would be in 

 our days unintelligible, except to the learned alone. Here, I think, is 

 a parallel case to what may have occurred in our island at a remote 

 period. The argument might be further amplified and illustrated; 

 but as I desire only to indicate a line of investigation, I shall leave the 

 pursuit of it to others. 



Now, among the many migrations recorded by our Bardic his- 

 torians, there is one, and only one, to whom the introduction of the 

 Ogham might be attributed with any degree of plausibility — namely, 

 that tribe called the Clanna Miledh, or Milesians. 



Eejecting the mythic origin and adventures of the ancestors of 

 Miledh, and the conjectural chronology of the Bards, we may safely 

 admit the probability of an ancient eastern tribe having migrated 

 through, or from the northern parts of Egypt, along the shores of the 

 Mediterranean to Ceuta, and from thence across the straits into Spain — 

 the very identical route taken by another eastern tribe in subsequent 

 ages, who founded an oriental empire in Europe that lasted nearly eight 

 centuries. Tarik and his Arabs did in A. D. 710 what their ancestors 



