[§ 194]. As early as the year A.D. 1676, an opinion was advanced by[[32]] Aylett Sammes, in a work entitled Britannia Antiqua Illustrata, that the first colonisers of Ireland were the merchants of Tyre and Sidon. In confirmation of this opinion the existence of several Eastern customs in Ireland was adduced by subsequent antiquarians. Further marks of an Eastern origin of the Irish were soon found in the Gaelic dialect of that country. Finally, the matter (in the eyes at least of the national writers) was satisfactorily settled by the famous discovery, attributed to General Vallancey, of the true meaning of the Carthaginian lines in Plautus.
In the Little Carthaginian (Pœnulus) of the Latin comic writer Plautus, a portion of the dialogue is carried on in the language of Carthage.
That the Punic language of Carthage should closely
resemble that of the mother-city Tyre, which was Phœnician; and that the Phœnician of Tyre should be allied to the language of Palestine and Syria, was soon remarked by the classical commentators of the time. Joseph Scaliger asserted that the Punic of the Pœnulus differed but little from pure Hebrew—"Ab Hebraismi puritate parum abesse."
Emendated and interpreted by Bochart, the first ten lines of a speech in Act v. s. 1. stand thus:—
1. N' yth alionim valionuth sicorath jismacon sith
2. Chy-mlachai jythmu mitslia mittebariim ischi
3. Liphorcaneth yth beni ith jad adi ubinuthai
4. Birua rob syllohom alonim ubymisyrtohom
5. Bythrym moth ymoth othi helech Antidamarchon