Chapter I
[P. 12.]—The intercourse of Ireland with the Roman provinces is illustrated by coins found in the island. See Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, ii. 184-8 (1843), on a find of coins (early imperial, from Vespasian to the Antonines) in Faugh Mountain, near Pleaskin, Giant’s Causeway, Co. Antrim; cp. also ib. 186-7; ib. vi. 441 sqq. (1856), a paper by Petrie on coins of the Republic found near Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin; ib. 525, on eight coins (imperial, from Tiberius to Constantine) found near Downpatrick; Proc. of Royal Soc. of Antiquaries of Ireland, xxx. p. 176 (1900), fifteen coins (Constantine) at Tara.
[P. 14.]—Gaelic settlements in S.-W. Britain. Sources: Cormac’s Glossary, s.v. mogeime (ed. Stokes); the text (of which an extract was printed by Zimmer in Nennius Vindicatus, p. 85) from Bodleian MSS. Rawlinson, B. 502 f. 72 c., and Laud 610 f. 100 a. 1, edited with translation by Kuno Meyer (Y Cymmrodor, 14, 101, sqq.). Cp. also Historia Brittonum, § 14, p. 156, ed. Mommsen. See Zimmer, ib. on these settlements. He determines the date of the composition of the Rawlinson-Laud document as about A.D. 750. The question as to the survival in West Britain of the descendants of an ancient pre-British Goidelic population (maintained by Professor Rhŷs, combated by Professor K. Meyer, see Transactions of Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, 1895-6, p. 55 sqq.) does not affect the reality of a later Goidelic settlement in historical times. On the Dessi cp. Rhŷs, Studies in Early Irish History, p. 56; Origin of Welsh Englyn, pp. 26, 73, 179 (in Y Cymmrodor xviii. 1905); Celtic Britain (ed. 3), p. 247 sqq.
[P. 10.]—The statement that Man was never conquered by Rome might have to be modified if, as has occurred to me, the words of Tacitus at the beginning of Agricola 24, naue prima transgressus ignotas ad id tempus gentes crebris simul ac praeliis domuit, record a descent of Agricola on that island. In the context an expedition to Caledonia seems excluded. [Prima is unintelligible. It may be an instance of the common confusion of un with im, ima (for una) having been taken as an abbreviation of prima.]
[P. 14.]—“Perhaps were conditions of military service.” A stone of Killorglin (now in the Dublin Museum) bears the ogam inscription Galeatos, which Professor Rhŷs explains as genitive of Latin galeatus, a helmed soldier. He thinks that it was a name “first given to a Goidel who had worn the Roman galea, that is one who had served in the Roman army. For one cannot help comparing it with Qoeddoran-i as connected with Petrianae, and the name Sagittarius, of which the genitive Saggitari was found in ogam on a stone discovered at Burnfort, in the neighbourhood of Mallow, in Co. Cork. All three names are presumably to be explained on the supposition of Goidelic touch with Roman institutions, especially the military system; not to mention such Latin names as Marianas, Latinus, and Columbanus, or their significance, so to say, in this context” (reprint from Proceedings of Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Part i. vol. xxxii. 1902, p. 16).