museum at Oxford, at the commencement of the last century, and being well versed in the primitive language of his race, he was requested to leave to posterity a legacy from the store of his acquirements, to comply wherewith, he applied his mind to the study of the history of his country, from the most early times, the knowledge of which he was sensible could be attained by means of the ancient language only, wherein were expressed the most ancient names of places, &c which language he naturally imagined was that wherein he, an ancient Briton, was eminently skilled. But he had not proceeded far in his undertaking, when he discovered that the most ancient names of places in Britain were not in his original tongue, and being aware, from his intimate knowledge therein, that his language partook of the genius, and was cast in the mould of the language of Eri, he repaired thither, and there he satisfied himself, that the ancient names he sought for were in the language of the people of that land, and then set about the framing a scheme for the purpose of accounting for the fact, which he published as a preface to a Glossary, which he called Archeologia Britannica, addressed to his country people, the legacy which he hath bequeathed unto mankind; which scheme shall now be examined with that tenderness and delicacy which modesty such as Lhuyd's should never fail to inspire, yet with the strictness that respect for truth requires, nay demands.

Before I reply critically to these suppositions, I beg of you not to lose sight of two important circumstances, the one applicable to the universe, the other to the individual; that no human being hath any sort of knowledge, even traditionary, of any emigration from Britain to Eri, antecedently to the introduction of Normans, by the false traitor, Diarmuid Cabanagh McMurrogh, in the year since Christ 1169; on the contrary that we of Eri deny such a fact, and that Edward Lhuyd ingenuously avows he hath no written authority, for what he candidly calls the novelties he hath uttered, which term novelty, you will please to note, doth apply not to what he hath delivered concerning the most ancient names of places in

Bri-tain, being in the Irish language, on which there can be no error, but to his manner of accounting for that fact, in which that he hath failed altogether, will be manifested by the few following observations.

Lhuyd fancied that Ireland was co-inhabited by two distinct nations, (for one of whom he hath coined the name of Guydhelians,) immediately from Britain, originally from Gaul; the other Scots from Spain, and that it was the Guydhelians, who, during their occupation of Britain, imposed the most ancient names on places in that country, and afterwards were driven to Ireland by another colony of Guydhelians, who had emigrated from Gaul also; yet that these most ancient names of places in Britain were not in the British, that is Welch, that is the the latter Guydhelians, but in the first Guydhelians language, which was the language used in Ireland, when he visited that country not more than 130 years ago.

Now I ask any man endowed but moderately with the gift of discrimination, if this first fancied Guydhelian colony had existence, would the posterity of the second colony who expelled their brethren, have a difficulty in solving the signification of those names imposed by a nation of their own race? would Lhuyd have been under the necessity of journeying to Ireland, in quest of the language whereby he hoped to explain these names, and in which he did find all the words for which he had been at a loss? would not all the names have been in his own vernacular tongue?

But (quoth he) these words were lost to the ancestors of the Welch, so then following that fantasy, we are to believe, that the people who remained on the soil, lost the language, in which all the most ancient names of remarkable places in their proper country were denoted, and yet that it was retained even to the days of Lhuyd, by another colony of the same race, who had no connexion with the land for thousands of years! Eri, Eri, to what unheard of uses are thy language and thy people converted! doth any one fabled miracle of the church militant here on earth exceed this!!!

Now prithee call to mind even so much of the ancient his

tory of Britain as I have disclosed to you, do you not find therein a solution of the facts in which Lhuyd first bewildered, then lost himself, driven to the necessity of fancying novelties, for which he had no foundation. Therein you see clearly that the language by which and which only the very ancient names of places in Britain can be explained, is not a fictitious Guydhelian, but the real Scythian or Scottish language of Eri, commonly called Gaelleag; the language I have proved identic with the Persian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Ardmenian, Gothic Grecian and Roman; this is the language by which all the most ancient names of places in that part of Britain, colonized by the Phoenicians and Iberians, must be explained. Lhuyd was surprised that notwithstanding the fact of these names being in a language spoken in his own days in Ireland, the Irish never advanced any pretension to their having occupied Britain at any time; we never did, because we never had any ground for the pretension; but doth it follow, because we of Eri never possessed any part of Britain, that therefore no people of our race and language did colonize districts thereof? I hope I have no occasion to use any farther argument to convince you, that the tribes of Dunmianac, the Silures, and the Brigantes, were of Phoenician and Iberian origin, and that the Ib-er-ians came to Britain from that part of present Spain, called Gallicia and Biscay; and when I come to Eri, I will prove that from that same Gallacia, the Gaal of Sciot of Iber emigrated to Eri, about 31 years after Dunmianac had been discovered by the Phoenicians, and colonized by the brethren of those Iberians who colonized Eri, the solution of the fact that the most ancient names in a great part of Britain, are in the language of Eri; and now for the key that closes the arch, now for the demonstration that it is by this Scythian, Scottish, Gaelleag, Irish, and Erse language, not by a whimsical Guydhelian that all these places are denoted; a tribe of these Sciot, Scoti or Scots, were invited into the service of the chief and people of Caladun, and had the district of Ardgae), which is Dalrigfada, granted to them, and there we find the names of places expressed in the same language as all the most

ancient places from the Land's End of Cornwall, to Solway Firth, whereby is distinctly manifested the connexion between; the Iberian tribes of Britain, of Eri, and of Ailbin, who used a distinct language in the time of Bede from the British, Pictish and English, and as he supposed from the Latin, from his being unacquainted with the Iberian dialect thereof.

Lhuyd supposed that the fact of all the most ancient names of places in Britain, being in the Irish language, indicated a former occupation of that country by the Irish people; what would be thought of a man of hypothesis who should at some future time, argue that the people of the republic of North America possessed Botany Bay, and the Cape of Good Hope, and Canada, and Nova Scotia, from the fact of the English language being spoken in these parts, surely it would not be proof of possession, though conclusive that all the people who spoke the English language were of one common origin.

In fine Lhuyd is perfectly correct in saying, that all the most ancient names of places in Britain are in the Irish language, but is erroneous in fancying it to be Guydhelian, of which word I can but guess at the meaning, and suppose it to be a kind of English translation of the bard's monstrous distortion of Gaal, of which they made Gaoidhiol, for the sake of their rhymes, if this be the word, the misconception of Lhuyd is complete in every case, his Guydhelian being the common or ordinary name of the Iberian and Scottish dialect of the Scythian tongue, signifying neither more or less than the language of the Gaal, that is, the Gael of Sciot of Iber, heretofore fully explained.

As these observations furnish a sufficient answer to all writers of all times, who have imposed their ignorance on the ignorance and credulity of their readers, I have no occasion to notice their lucubrations more particularly, and shall dismiss this part of the subject with the observation, that in all those instances where British or English writers use the word British, as forming a part of the ancient names I have enumerated, you should substitute Irish therefor.

And now let me fulfil the other parts of my undertaking,

and first as to the Druidic religion, on which many mistakes have prevailed amongst moderns; all which let the following few words correct.

It was first introduced into Dunmianac by the Phoenicians, and from thence found its way to Bri-taign in Gaul, and that it originated in this island is clearly proved by the facts, that the Phoenicians had no intercourse with Air-moir-ce, and that Julius Cæsar, whom I must consider good authority, expressly says, "it is thought this discipline was first instituted in Britain, and from thence transferred to Gaul; for even at this day, those who desire to be perfect masters of their art, take a voyage thither to learn it;" nor does it appear to have extended farther than to some small part of this island, and to the middle third of Gaul, most assuredly to Ireland it never found its way; and if my own judgment be of avail, I am of opinion that part of Gaul called Air-moir-ce or Britaigne, was more indebted for population to the island of Britain, than Britain to it.

As to the nation of Caledonia, vulgarly and most erroneously called Picti by the Romans, Sassonized to Picts, being of British origin, for the reasons Camden gives, I consider his conjectures as altogether false or insufficient, false because there is no instance in their history of their submitting to be governed by a woman, which the pedant mistook from their custom of the male chief succeeding by the female, not the male line; insufficient, because though they did in the Roman times even paint their bodies, it does not appear to have been an original custom, if which had been the case, the chronicles of Eri would certainly have noticed it; and it must be presumed was adopted by them in after times, an improvement on the British fashion of smearing with woad; because though one or two of their chiefs were named Brudi, (if this whimsical conceit of the identity of Brudi and Brith, proceeding from the fancy of a man wholly ignorant of the language of which these are words,) is to be seriously noticed and replied to, I ask if Brudi or Brith means painted, why call the people Picti, which signifies painted also? and as to the assertion of Cam