Bishop Cormac also says that he “cannot sufficiently express his astonishment at the indifference which the Scottish nation evinced in his day to literature.”
Strabo calls them, Αγριων τελεως ανθρωτων, while M‘Pherson asserts of their brethren, that “nothing is more certain than that the British Scots were an illiterate people, and involved in barbarism, even after the Patriarch’s mission to the Scots of Ireland.”
[452] In fact this writer had no other reason for this mistake which he has committed, in describing it as “scarce habitable for cold,” than his knowledge of its Hyperborean situation. “The most remote navigation northward from the Celtic coast in our days,” says he, “is said to be into Ireland (Ierné), which being situated beyond Britain, is scarce habitable for cold, so that what lies beyond that island is thought to be not at all habitable” (Geog. lib. 2, ex vers. Gul. Xylandri).
[453] Orpheus also calls the sea dividing the north of Scotland from Ireland, “Mare Cronium, idem quod mare saturninum et oceanus septentrionalis” (Vallancey).
[454] Gerald. Cambr. Hist. i. cap. 19.
[455] A series of articles written under this head, in the columns of the Dublin Penny Journal, by Mr. Pebrie, antiquarian high-priest to the Royal Irish Academy!
[456] This Tubal-Cain was evidently the person from whom the Greeks manufactured their mythological Vul-can.
[457] “The griffin,” says Shaw, copying Ctesias, “is a quadruped of India, having the claws of a lion, and wings upon his back. His fore parts are red, his wings white, his neck blue, his head and his beak resemble those of the eagle; he makes his nest among the mountains, and haunts the deserts, where he conceals his gold.”
[458] “The ignorance of the European Greeks in geography was extreme in all respects during many ages. They do not even appear to have known the discoveries made in more ancient voyages, which were not absolutely unknown to Homer” (Mr. Gouget, Origin of Arts and Sciences, tom. 7, b. 3).
[459] “L’existence de ce peuple antérieur est prouvée par le tableau qui n’offre que des débris, astronomie oubliée, philosophie mêlée à des absurdités, physique dégénérée en fables, religion épurée, mais cachée dans une idolatrie grossière. Cet ancien peuple a eu des sciences perfectionnées, une philosophie sublime et sage” (Bailly).