break down the spirit of the Chiefs; and to render the people immediately dependent on the Crown. The principle of subordination to the Chiefs was thus gradually eradicated, and no adequate principle was substituted in its stead.

2. Situated at the Western extremity of the old world, Ireland had fewer inlets than other natious to new modes of thinking; the wants of her sons were supplied by the richness of her pastures, the fecundity of her lakes, and rivers, and the produce of her soil.-She had remained free from foreign conquest; her distance secured her against the concussion of the fall of the Roman Empire; and her hatred to foreigners, whom she indiscriminately named Gall, or Enemies, contributed with her difficult language, to widen that barrier, which separated her from the other nations of the globe. The same manners therefore which existed a thousand years ago, and the same language, with some exceptions arising from English intercourse, the same distinctions of Clans, and the same principles of hereditary Clanship, all ex

t

isted, as rightly noticed by Buchanan, down to the reign of James I. The itinerant Bards and Harpers still supported the uninterrupted chain of family history, not only by oral songs, but also by very ancient written compositions; and the prejudices in favour of hereditary succession extended to every trade, and almost to every occupation in life.

3. Throughout all the furious contests for pre-eminence, which disgrace our Annals, the contending Chiefs uniformly agree in founding their respective claims, on their lineal descent from the sons of Milespaine, who conducted their Ancestors from the shores of Galicia and Iberia, to Ireland. The Chiefs of Southern Ireland gloried in their descent from Heber, those of the Northern division from Heremon.*

"Hibernia Insula inter duos filios principales Militis, "i.e. Heremon et Eber, in duas partes divisa est. Eber "autem Australem partem Hiberniæ accepit. Heremon "autem primus de Scottis omnem Hiberniam regnavit.”

This passage is quoted by Ware. I have transcribed it from the Bodleian MS. Psalter na rann, Laud F. 95, which is written 500 years-This MS. contains above 6000 verses in the Irish-language. A fac simile may be seen in my Epistle

Both origins are recorded from ancient docu-ments, and from the testimonies of the most learned Irish of his time, by Nennius, who wrote in the 9th century-" Sic mihi peritissimi "Scotorum nunciaverunt;"* and by Aengus the Culdee, who wrote in the reign of Aodh Oirdnidhe King of Ireland, A. D. 800.† Bede. notices the distinction between the Northern and Southern Irish, in his account of the Paschal controversy; Giraldus declares in the 12th century, as Nennius did in the 9th, that he derived the same account of Heber and Heremon, from the oldest Irish MSS. and best. Antiquaries of his age;|| and there is yet extant an Irish Poem of the 7th Century, but falsely ascribed to Torna Eicgios, a Poet of the 4th, in

Dedicatory Prefixed to the Irish Annals, now in the press, and also in Astle's " Exemplaria Venerande Antiquitatis," in the Stowe Collection, fol. 157-Ware mistakes where he says "Heremoni cessisse partem Australem, Hebero Aquilonalem.” Antiq. Lond. 1656, p. 6.

↑ See the ancient Bodleian MS. Laud, F. 95, quoted hereafter p. 30, and Ware's Antiq. Lond. 1655.

↑ Bed. 1. 3, c. 26,

Girald. Topogr. Hib. Dist. 3, c. 1, 2, 6, 7.

which the respective pretensions of the Heberians and Heremonians are, in very antiquated Irish, metrically detailed.*

4. The obstinacy with which these contests for hereditary pre-eminence were maintained in James's reign, may be inferred from the Irish poems of O'Bruodin, the Genealogist of Munster, against O'Cleri the Genealogist of Connacht; the former were recited in numerous assemblies of the people in Munster; the latter at the sacred Druidic hill of Rath-Cruachan, where the States of Connacht usually assembled, down to the end of the 16th century.-The former quotes, in his favour, the ancient poems

* Torna's poem is now before me. It consists of 104 verses; each verse divisible into two, by a chiming cadence in the middle, corresponding with the final or 14th syllable at the end. I refer it to the 6th century, when bells were first introduced into Ireland, because it mentions Cashel with an Epithet which shews the novelty of that introduction when the Poet wrote, "Caisil na cclocc" Cashel of Bells. Adamnan says that the Monks of Ireland assembled to evening prayer ad sonum Clocca. Vita Col. c. v.

Gough enlarges on this poem with as much confidence as if he understood or had seen it, Britan. vol. 3. But his errors are almost as many as his Lines.

of Torna above mentioned; the latter those of Cennfaelad, who died in 625, and of Malmura, who died in 886.*

5. I do not mean now to inquire into the truth of their assertions; that may be the work of another day. The question here is not whether their pretensions to such remote antiquity are well or ill grounded, but whether they were not deemed true, venerable, and sacred in the days of James I.-I have before me a coeval Copy, in which O'Cleri's verses are in number 500, O'Bruodin's 378; and there are several other

* O'Flaherty says of O'Cleri-" Lugad O'Cleri, who claims the first place amongst the greatest Antiquaries of his age, in his controversy with O'Bruodin counts 136 Kings of Ireland to the coming of S. Patrick in 432."-The same number of Pagan Kings is given by the Magnates Hiberni, in their Remonstrance to Pope John XXII, in 1315. Coeman in 1072, Tigernach before 1088, Gildas Modůda, who died Abbot of Ardbraccan 1143, and whose Poem Eire og is now before me, with Coeman's Eire Ard, all agree in this list of Pagan Kings, except in very few instances, where Usurpers are excluded. Moduda's Poem consists of 185 verses, Coeman's may be seen published with a literal Latin translation in my Preface to the Irish Annals. Cuan O'Maol Conair's metrical list, which he recited at the Inauguration of Felim O'Conor K. of Connacht, in 1315, coincides.

C