Part 3 (2/2)

The artificial state of society in our own age, has probably acted disadvantageously on our literary researches, if not on our moral character. Civilization is a relative arbitrary term; and the ancestors whom we are pleased to term uncivilized, may have possessed as high a degree of mental culture as ourselves, though it unquestionably differed in kind. Job wrote his epic poem in a state of society which we should probably term uncultivated; and when Lamech gave utterance to the most ancient and the saddest of human lyrics, the world was in its infancy, and it would appear as if the first artificer in ”bra.s.s and iron” had only helped to make homicide more easy. We can scarce deny that murder, cruel injustice, and the worst forms of inhumanity, are but too common in countries which boast of no ordinary refinement; and we should hesitate ere we condemn any state of society as uncivilized, simply because we find such crimes in the pages of their history.

The question of the early, if not pre-Noahacian colonization of Ireland, though distinctly a.s.serted in our annals, has been met with the ready scepticism which men so freely use to cover ignorance or indifference.

It has been taken for granted that the dispersion, after the confusion of tongues at Babel, was the first dispersion of the human race; but it has been overlooked that, on the lowest computation, a number of centuries equal, if not exceeding, those of the Christian era, elapsed between the Creation of man and the Flood; that men had ”multiplied exceedingly upon the earth;” and that the age of stone had already given place to that of bra.s.s and iron, which, no doubt, facilitated commerce and colonization, even at this early period of the world's history. The discovery of works of art, of however primitive a character, in the drifts of France and England, indicates an early colonization. The rudely-fas.h.i.+oned harpoon of deer's horn found beside the gigantic whale, in the alluvium of the ca.r.s.e near the base of Dummyat, twenty feet above the highest tide of the nearest estuary, and the tusk of the mastodon lying alongside fragments of pottery in a deposit of the peat and sands of the post-pliocene beds in South Carolina, are by no means solitary examples. Like the night torch of the gentle Guanahane savage, which Columbus saw as he gazed wearily from his vessel, looking, even after sunset, for the long hoped-for sh.o.r.e, and which told him that his desire was at last consummated, those indications of man, a.s.sociated with the gigantic animals of a geological age, of whose antiquity there can be no question, speak to our hearts strange tales of the long past, and of the early dispersion and progressive distribution of a race created to ”increase and multiply.”

The question of transit has also been raised as a difficulty by those who doubt our early colonization. But this would seem easily removed. It is more than probable that, at the period of which we write, Britain, if not Ireland, formed part of the European continent; but were it not so, we have proof, even in the present day, that screw propellers and iron cast vessels are not necessary for safety in distant voyages, since the present aboriginal vessels of the Pacific will weather a storm in which a _Great Eastern_ or a _London_ might founder hopelessly.

Let us conclude an apology for our antiquity, if not a proof of it, in the words of our last poet historian:--

”We believe that henceforth no wise person will be found who will not acknowledge that it is possible to bring the genealogies of the Gaedhils to their origin, to Noah and to Adam; and if he does not believe that, may he not believe that he himself is the son of his own father. For there is no error in the genealogical history, but as it was left from father to son in succession, one after another.

”Surely every one believes the Divine Scriptures, which give a similar genealogy to the men of the world, from Adam down to Noah;[22] and the genealogy of Christ and of the holy fathers, as may be seen in the Church [writings]. Let him believe this, or let him deny G.o.d. And if he does believe this, why should he not believe another history, of which there has been truthful preservation, like the history of Erinn? I say truthful preservation, for it is not only that they [the preservers of it]

were very numerous, as we said, preserving the same, but there was an order and a law with them and upon them, out of which they could not, without great injury, tell lies or falsehoods, as may be seen in the Books of _Fenechas_ [Law], of _Fodhla_ [Erinn], and in the degrees of the poets themselves, their order, and their laws.”[23]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEREHAVEN]

FOOTNOTES:

[15] _Erinn_.--O'Curry, page 57. It has also been remarked, that there is no nation in possession of such ancient chronicles written in what is still the language of its people.

[16] _Years_.--See O'Curry, _pa.s.sim_.

[17] _Erinn_.--_Eire_ is the correct form for the nominative. Erinn is the genitive, but too long in use to admit of alteration. The ordinary name of Ireland, in the oldest Irish MSS., is (h)Erin, gen. (h)Erenn, dat. (h)Erinn; but the initial _h_ is often omitted. See Max Muller's Lectures for an interesting note on this subject, to which we shall again refer.

[18] _Poets_.--The _Book of Lecain_ was written in 1416, by an ancestor of Mac Firbis. Usher had it for some time in his possession; James II.

carried it to Paris, and deposited it in the Irish College in the presence of a notary and witnesses. In 1787, the Chevalier O'Reilly procured its restoration to Ireland; and it pa.s.sed eventually from Vallancey to the Royal Irish Academy, where it is now carefully preserved.

[19] _Murdered_.--The circ.u.mstances of the murder are unhappily characteristic of the times. The Celtic race was under the ban of penal laws for adherence to the faith of their fathers. The murderer was free.

As the old historian travelled to Dublin, he rested at a shop in Dunflin. A young man came in and took liberties with the young woman who had care of the shop. She tried to check him, by saying that he would be seen by the gentleman in the next room. In a moment he seized a knife from the counter, and plunged it into the breast of Mac Firbis. There was no ”justice for Ireland” then, and, of course, the miscreant escaped the punishment he too well deserved.

[20] _Lost_.--He was also employed by Sir James Ware to translate for him, and appears to have resided in his house in Castle-street, Dublin, just before his death.

[21] _Betaghs_.--Poems, by D.F. Mac Carthy.

[22] _Noah_.--This is a clear argument. The names of pre-Noahacian patriarchs must have been preserved by tradition, with their date of succession and history. Why should not other genealogies have been preserved in a similar manner, and _even the names of individuals_ transmitted to posterity?

[23] _Laws_.--MacFirbis. Apud O'Curry, p. 219.

CHAPTER III.

First Colonists--The Landing of Ceasair, before the Flood--Landing of Partholan, after the Flood, at Inver Scene--Arrival of Nemedh--The Fomorians--Emigration of the Nemenians--The Firbolgs--Division of Ireland by the Firbolg Chiefs--The Tuatha De Dananns--Their Skill as Artificers--Nuada of the Silver Hand--The Warriors Sreng and Breas--The Satire of Cairbre--Termination of the Fomorian Dynasty.

[A.M. 1599.]

We shall, then, commence our history with such accounts as we can find in our annals of the pre-Christian colonization of Erinn. The legends of the discovery and inhabitation of Ireland before the Flood, are too purely mythical to demand serious notice. But as the most ancient MSS.

agree in their account of this immigration, we may not pa.s.s it over without brief mention.

The account in the _Chronic.u.m Scotorum_ runs thus:--

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