Neither is this propertie to be ascribed to S. Patrickes blessing (as they commonly hold) but to the originall blessing of God who gave such nature to the situation and soyle from the beginning. And though I doubt not, but it fared the better in many respects for that holy mans prayer, yet had it this condition notified hundred of yeares ere he was borne.
CAP. III.
Of the Irish tongue and the name Hibernia, Ireland.
I finde it solemnely avouched in some of their pamphlets, that Gathelus, and after him Simon Brecke, divised their language out of all other tongues then extant in the world. But considering the course of enterchanging and blending speeches together, not by invention of Arte, but by use of talke, I am rather led to beleeve (seeing Ireland was inhabited within one yeare after the devision of the tongues) that Bastolenus a braunch of Iapheth who first seased upon Ireland, brought hither the same kinde of Speech, some one of the seventie two Languages, that to his family befell at the dissolution of Babell, unto whom succeeded the Scithians, Grecians, Ægyptians, Spaniards, Danes; of all which this tongue must needes have borrowed part, but specially retaining the steps of Spanish then spoken
