CHAP. deficiency of heat, which is observed to be unfriendly to the perfection of corn. Area. Divifion. The greatest length of Ireland from north-eaft to fouth-weft is three hundred and fix Englifh miles; its greatest breadth two hundred and feven; and its area, which has been moftly under-rated, contains, conceived as a flat furface, without regard to its inequalities, about twenty millions of English, or above twelve millions of Irish acres. This area, with respect to civil or political diftinctions, is divided into the four provinces of Munfter, Connaught, Leinster, and Ulfter, which are fubdivided into thirty-two counties, and these again into two hundred and fifty-two baronies. Munfter contains the fix counties of Waterford, Tipperary, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Clare Connaught the five of Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, and Rofcommon: Leinfter the twelve of Longford, Westmeath, King's county, Queen's county, Kilkenny, Carlow, Wexford, Wicklow, Kildare, Dublin, Meath, and Louth; and Ulfter the nine of Cavan, Monaghan, Armagh, Down, Antrim, Derry, Donegal, Tyrone, and Fermanagh. The largest of all the counties is Cork, which contains in area almost a million and fifty thousand Irish acres; and the leaft is Louth, which has hardly a hundred and eleven thoufand. known CHA P. II. National vanity-Periods of Irish History-Ireland tha-de-Danans-Scots-Romans-Fables -Songs- II. To derive their origin from ancestors of ancient CHAP. renown and polished manners has been the ambition of every people, in a state of glimmering knowledge, Vanity. between the darkness of barbarism and the illumination of literature. Of this puerile vanity, which endures not the light of hiftorical research, Ireland has had its portion. The curiofity of readers, defirous to be inftructed in the uninterefting fables of Irish antiquity, may be fatisfied, without more extenfive inquiry, by the perufal of the history given by Keating, and the Ogygia of O'Flaherty. Refutations of fuch fictions, and attempts of a judicious nature to select from the rubbifh of romantic story fome disfigured and obfcure facts, may principally be found in the antiquities of Ledwich and the ftrictures of Campbell. That in the ages anterior to the birth of Chrift the affairs of this country are utterly unknown and infcrutable, is the refult of the most laborious and accurate refearch. As darkness impenetrable refts on this period of Irish transactions, fo hardly a few rays of glimmering light appear be 12 tween Periods. CHAP. tween the incarnation of our Saviour and the intro II. duction of Christian worship into this ifland towards to the present time. That the Phoenicians, the renowned navigators of antiquity, who planted colonies in Spain, and are fuppofed to have frequented, from commercial motives, the ports of Britain, were not unacquainted with the coafts of Ireland, might feem in fome degree probable, without any authority of ancient writers. The fact was believed by the poet Feftus Avienus. - That the Greeks had received fome obfcure account of this ifland, either through the Phoenicians or fome other medium, four or five centuries before Christ, we learn from the Argonautics under the name of Orpheus, a poet imagined cotemporary with Pifistratus the Athenian. Above three centuries before the Christian era, Ariftotle, in his treatife of the World, names the two greatest Britannic islands, Albion and Ierne. More known to the Romans, it was no ticed JI. 15 ticed by feveral writers in very early periods of the CHAP. Chriftian era, as by Strabo, Pomponius Mela, and Solinus; but chiefly by Ptolemy, a geoprapher of the fecond century, who has marked the names and fituations of places and tribes of Irish people, from the best information which he could procure. Of the state of the inhabitants, except their barbarism we are not informed by these writers. The name of Name. the country has been imagined of Celtic origin, denominated anciently Iri, Eri, Erin, Jere, Ierne, and Iris, by which was believed to be denoted its weftern fite with regard to Europe. Others consider the original term as Gothic, fignifying the farther ifle. From this perhaps are derived the names Ouernia, Juverna, and Hibernia. The appellation of Scotia, which it retained until the tenth century, is of a later date, and from a Gothic fource. Ireland is only a compound of a Gothic epithet with its primitive denomination. That this island was first colonized by Celtic Celts. tribes, the primitive poffeffors of the European continent, of a brownish complexion, with black and curling hair, feems hardly to admit a doubt; but when and whence they firft arrived, are queftions unanswerable. From the researches of the best antiquarians, especially the acute and laborious Pinkerton,* two races of Celtic people, diftinguished by the names of Gael and Cumraig, appear to have fucceffively inhabited the fouthern parts of Britain, in ages long anterior to the birth of Chrift. * Inquiry into the Hiftory of Scotland. The former, CHAP. former, fuppofed with reafon to have been the fame 11. Goths. with the Gallic Celts of Cæfar, and to have come immediately from France into Britain, were probably driven weftward into Wales and Cornwal, and at laft into Ireland, by the Cumri or Cumraigs, who are likewise with reafon fuppofed to have come from Germany. The language of the Gaels, termed Gailic, remains, how much corrupted foever, efpecially in the west of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, very diftinct from the Welch, the dialect of the Cumri. The proximity of the Welch and Scottish headlands, more especially the latter, afforded the opportunity of a fhort navigation from Britain to the Irish coafts, very fhort in comparison of the voyages now known to be performed by favage tribes, in veffels framed flightly of wood and covered with leather, fuch as have been formerly much in ufe in the feas of the British islands. Of these primitive colonists, who were doubtless illiterate, and even favage, no history can be given; nor could a narrative of their transactions be other than difgufting by a uniform repetition of petty wars and acts of barbarian ferocity. Their first arrival may have happened, nine or ten centuries. before the Chriftian era, and later by fix or seven may have been the first invafion of Gothic tribes. The vast race of the Goths, proved by a chain of evidence to have been the fame with the ancient Scythians, diftinguished by large limbs and ftature, fair complexions, blue or grey eyes, and red or *See Gordon's Terraquea, vol. 4. p. 288. † Pinkerton's differtation on the Scythians or Goths. flaxen |