When this is done, it will probably be found that the Irish possess a more copious literature, illustrative of the eocene period of their early history, than almost any other country of Europe. Ireland may also boast that, never having been conquered by the Romans, she retained her native forms, and the people their native customs and fashions, uninterrupted and uninfluenced by Roman civilization, for a longer time than the other countries of Europe which were subjected to its sway.
As most important and instructive parts of the Irish annals, it is proposed first to treat of those passages descriptive of the two battles of Moytura[1] (Magh Tuireadh), both of which occurred within a period of a very few years. A description of the fields on which they were fought will probably be sufficient to set at rest the question as to the uses of cairns and circles; and if we can arrive at an approximative date, it will go far to clear up the difficulties in understanding the age of the most important Irish antiquities.
The narrative which contains an account of the battle of Southern Moytura, or Moytura Cong, is well known to Irish antiquaries. It has not jet been published, but a translation from a MS. in Trinity College, Dublin, was made by John O'Donovan for the Ordnance Survey, and was obtained from their records above alluded to by Sir William Wilde. He went over the battle-field repeatedly with the MS. in his hand, and has published a detailed account of it, with sufficient extracts to make the whole intelligible.[2] The story is briefly this:—At a certain period of Irish history a colony of Firlolgs, or Belgæ, as they are usually called by Irish antiquaries, settled in Ireland, dispossessing the Fomorians, who are said to have come from Africa. After possessing the country
- ↑ In the following pages it is proposed to follow the popular and pronounceable spelling of Irish proper names. One half of the difficulty of following the Irish annals is the unfamiliar and uncouth mode in which proper names are spelt, and which we learn, from Eugene O'Curry's lectures, never represents the mode in which they are pronounccd. In a learned work intended for Irish scholars, like the 'Annals of the Four Masters,' the scientific mode of spelling is, of course, the only one that could be adopted, but in such a work as this it would be only useless and prejudicial pedantry.
- ↑ 'Lough Corrib, its Shores and Islands.' Dublin, 1867. Sir William possesses a residence on the battle-field, where I was hospitably entertained for some days when I visited that neighbourhood last year.
