صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

circumstance of their maintaining the general authenticity of their historical annals; as if the bare presumption bereft them of every fair pretension to national genius, character, and credit.

and incom

British wri

affairs.

Dr. Leland* has observed, that "if we enquire into Partiality the manners of the antient Irish from English writers, petency of we find the representation odious and disgusting. The ters in Irish historian of England sometimes regards them as the most detestable and contemptible of the human race. The antiquary of Ireland raises them to an illustrious eminence above all the European countries." Justice, however, calls for this obvious remark; that, from Cambrensis downwards, not one of the British writers upon Irish affairs, (except the respectable and learned Vallancey) was sufficiently master of the Irish language to understand one of the authors in his native tongue. The Reverend Dr. Warner therefore says, "as to all the English writers, who have attempted to give any part of the History of Ireland, such as Cambrensis, Campian, Hanmer, Stanihurst, Spencer, Morrison, Cox, &c. it is difficult to determine, whether they shew more inaccuracy and ignorance, or malevolence and partiality." For preventing any imputation of partiality, recourse is only had to British authors for the purpose of properly appreciating the authority of their own countrymen, when they treat of Irish affairs. The temptations to historical infidelity have been strongly avowed by Dr, Leland, with reference to himself. He also tells us§,

*Prel. Dis. xl.

+ Even Usher and Ware had translations

of some of them made for them. + Pref. iii. § Prel. Disc. ii.

Ᏼ Ꮞ

ters treat the

tory of Ire

land as wholly fabulous.

that" at the Revolution the favour and patronage of government encouraged Sir Richard Cox to write an History of Ireland; but, however assiduous in his researches, he produced nothing better than an hasty, indigested, and imperfect chronicle." That historical commissioner is little reserved in his opinions*: he finds

it strange, that the affairs of this noble kingdom should find no room in history, but remain so very obscure, that not only the inhabitants know little or nothing of what has passed in their own country, but even England, a learned and inquisitive nation, skilful beyond comparison in the histories of all other countries, is nevertheless but very imperfectly informed in the story of Ireland. As for those histories that treat of the times before the English conquest, Dr. Keating's is the best; but, after all, it is no more than an ill-digested heap of very silly fictions.

[ocr errors]

British wri- Mr. M'Pherson says, that "the History of the Miantient his-lesian Colony, which it is pretended transmigrated "from Spain into Ireland, under the conduct of Here"mon and Heber, is absolutely unworthy of any credit. "That the long list of kings, who are said to have "held the scepter of Ireland for 13 centuries before the

* Cox's Preface to the Reader. Sir Richard Cox seemed to think, that it was the duty of a Protestant to disbelieve the antient history of Ireland because believed by the generality of the Irish, who were Papists. "At this day," says he, "we know no difference of nation, but what is expressed by Papists and Protestants. If the most antient natural Irishman be a Protestant, no man takes him for other than an Englishman; and if a cockney be a Papist, he is reckoned in Ireland as much an Irishman, as if he was born on Slevelogher." + Introduction to the History of Ireland, p. 124.

"Christian æra, had their existence only in the dis

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

tempered fancies of the bards of latter ages: and "in short, that every thing related in their domestic "annals concerning the Irish, prior to the mission of "St. Patrick, ought to be banished to the region of "fiction and romance.' This disbelief in the whole of the antient History of Ireland, has become the fashionable doctrine of other modern writers on Irish. affairs. Mr. Gordon, who published his History of Ireland only in 1806 *, taunts his countrymen with the puerile vanity of deriving their origin from ancestors of antient renown and polished manners; referring his readers, for the reputation of such fictions, to the antiquities of Ledwich, and the strictures of Campbell, and assuring them, that in the ages anterior to the birth of Christ, the affairs of this country were utterly unknown and inscrutable, and that was the result of the most laborious and accurate research. Dr. Ledwich has the honour of having improved upon the modern pyrrhonism on Irish history, and is the first that has brought it into the Christian æra t. "Away," says he, "with the phantoms invented by missionaries of the "9th century in imitation of Mars, Minerva, and "Juno.

[ocr errors]

There never was such a man at all as St. "Patrick the Apostle of Ireland." And again," St. Bridget is an imaginary Saint like Patrick." Mr. Gordon treads faithfully in the doubtful steps of Dr. Ledwich, and informs his readers (though without quoting any authority for his information)" that

* Gordon's History of Ireland, vol. I. 13, p. 29.

Ledwich's Antiquities. Ibid. 69.

[ocr errors]

"the stories related of this apostle, are, doubtless, legendary tales, or theological romances, fabricated "four centuries after their imaginary existence."

General na- Order, method, and relevancy, are the only roads Disserta- that lead to satisfactory conclusion *. The present

ture of this

tion.

subject of discussion embraces not specific facts, circumstances, or dates. None, therefore, are specifically insisted upon. The Irish produce written records, documents, or metrical annals in their vernacular antient language, which, they say, ought to be credited as to their general substance. But to pretend, that they are not largely disfigured and disguised by what we call fiction, would be to divest them of one of the most questionless badges of their high antiquity. The scriptures alone of all antient annals are clear of the effects of ethnic mythology or poetic fancy t. The general substance of that antient history of Ireland, the whole of which it has too long been the British fashion to prcnounce absolutely fictitious, and for the substantial credit of which the Irish people is still treated as a de

*For this reason we studiously avoid all statements, arguments, and deductions, etymological, geographical, biographical, and (precisely) chronological. Such minute discussions are not called for by the nature of this work; they may be referred to in several writers of learning and respectability. Even to review the whole contest upon these several heads, and to deduce an hypothesis from them, would exceed the limits of the intended publication.

We should exceed our intent by attempting to reduce allegory to substance, to identify mythological heroes with real person ages, to trace aberration from the true history of mankind to the ethnic fables, in which it was latterly disguised, to analyze symbol into instructive reality, and to winnow the flights of the recording bard from the fundamental theme of his song.

graded, arrogant, and suspected cast, is to the following purport.

substance

tient Histo

land.

About one hundred and forty years after the deluge, General Ireland was discovered by one Adhua, who had been of the ansent from Asia to explore new countries by a grandson ry of Ireof Belus he plucked some of the luxuriant grass as a specimen of the fertility of the soil, and returned to his master. After that, the island remained unoccupied for one hundred and forty years; and, about three hundred years after the flood, one Partholan, originally a Scythian, and a descendant from Japhet in the 6th generation, sailed from Greece with his family and one thousand soldiers, and took possession of the island. They all died off, and left the island desolate of human beings for the space of 30 years. Afterwards different sets of emigrant adventurers occupied and pecpled the island at different periods. About 1080 years after the deluge, and 1500 years before Christ, Niul, (the son of Phenius, a wise Scythian prince) who had married a daughter of Pharaoh, inhabited with his people a district given to him by his father-in-law on the Red Sea, when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. The descendants of that Pheneus, (more generally called Feniusa Farsa) were afterwards expelled by Pharaoh's successors on account of their ancestors having favoured the escape of the Israelites through the Red Sea. They then emigrated and settled in Spain, whence, under the command of Milesius, a colony of them sailed from Brigantia in Galicia to Ireland, gained the ascendancy over the inhabitants, and gave laws and a race of monarchs to the island. The Milesian dynasty

« السابقةمتابعة »