[442] “Heremon was the first of the Scots who held the dominion over all Ireland” (Psalter of Narran).
[443] “For, in the first place, the general tradition of the old Irish handed down to us by all our historians and other writers, imports that when the Scots arrived in Ireland, they spoke the same language with that of the Tuath-de-danaans” (Preface to O’Brien’s Irish Dictionary).
[444] The Egyptian epithets are not very dissimilar: “Besides these first inhabitants of Sancha-dwipa, who are described by the mythologists, as elephants, demons, and snakes, we find a race called Shand-ha-yana, who are the real Troglodites; they were the descendants of Abri, before named, whose history being closely connected with that of the Sacred Isles in the West, deserves peculiar attention” (Asiatic Researches).
[445] Nearly similar things, we find, have occurred in the East. “The natives of the place (Mavalepuran, in Indian) declared to the writer of this account, that the more aged people among them remembered to have seen the tops of several pagodas far out in the sea; a statement which was verified by the appearance of one on the brink of the sea, already nearly swallowed up by that element” (Asiatic Researches).
[446] Αναθηματα,—things dedicated to the gods.
[447] In March.
[448] In September.
[449] See p. 120.
[450] Trans. Roy. Ir. Acad. vol. xvi. p. 166.
[451] Procopius calls them ανηκοι και αμελιτητοι, that is, heedless and indifferent to all culture.