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can be adduced of the identity of origin? Hitherto we have considered language as the oral vehicle of tradition; " and the general tradition of a people is seldom to be wholly despised *."

documents

est evi

past events.

Fourthly Written document is the most unerring Written mode of transmitting facts and traditions to remote the strongposterity. The establishment therefore of the leading dence of fact, that the use of writing preexisted the events recorded in the nation, in which they are reported to have taken place, opens great facility in proving, and powerful means of refuting the denial of circumstances and events of remote ages. Assuming from what has been offered, that the Milesian colonists, who arrived in Ireland about 1300 years before the christian æra, were Phoenicians, and therefore of Scythian origin, it is of the highest importance to examine, whether or no they carried with them the use of letters. For unless they carried with them, or found the inhabitants of the island already in possession of the art of writing, then indeed must be banished to the region of fiction and romance, whatever the phyllids and senachies have reported of their own institution, functions, and duties in composing, entering, collating, and preserving these monuments of their national achievements. Their claim of the use of letters at this time is not made in the way of boast, or set up as a privilege, to which their neighbours did not aspire.

profane

It is not a little singular, that the earliest Ethnic The first writer of history lived at this very period, was himself historian a Phoenician, and wrote his history in the Phoeniciannician, and

* Day. Celt. Res, p. 38.

was a Pho

lived about language. There is no incongruity, therefore, in recording, that in a Phoenician colony, history was at

1300 years

before Christ.

* Sanchoniatho was a Phoenician, and a most diligent and faithful searcher and transcriber of the records of his own country, as well as of others, which he had access to; but the work of which a large portion is preserved by Eusebius, in the first book of his Evangelical Preparation, ch. 9, is professedly an apology for the idolatry of his times. He studiously suppresses the deluge, which was known to be God's punishment of the world for that offence. He changes indeed several names of persons, who, notwithstanding, from the number of generations from Adam, called by him Protogenus, or the first-begotten, and from several other peculiarities and circumstances, are evidently brought to accord with the Mosaic account of our antediluvian ancestors to the 12th generation. Sanchoniatho mentions Misor in that order, which tallies with Moses' Misraim, one of the sons of Ham, who was a man of ambition, and the restorer of idolatry after the flood; and consequently this defender of idolatry would trace the descendants of the founder or restorer of their false religion, as Moses did those of Seth, who were the worshippers of the true God. This idolatrous Phoenician annalist records, that a son of Misor (or Misraim, who was in the 12th generation from Adam) whom he calls Thoth, was settled as the monarch of Egypt, and was the great Hermes of the Egyptians, whom O'Halloran, Parsons, Vallancey, and others, prove Sir Isaac Newton to have considered as Phoenix, (or our Feniusa Farsa): and according to Eusebius, (1. x, c. 3,) he compiled his history from documents, shewn to him by Hierombal, a Levite, and from the registered annals of particular towns. The fragment of this first profane writer, from the erudite elucubrations of Dr. Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough, published in 1724, after his death, with a learned preface by his chaplain and son-in-law, Dr. Payne, under the title of Sanchoniatho's Phoenician History, translated from the first book of Eusebius de Preparatione Evangelica, &c. lets in new day-light upon the history of this early period, Sanchoniatho, says the truly learned Celtic researcher (p. 3), is supposed

this period of time attended to and written; and from the annals or history so written, or asserted to have been written, we learn, that it was a standing custom of the ancient nobility of the country, to retain several bards in their establishments, in order to communicate and transmit to posterity their and their families' achievements; besides those, which were in the pay and service of the public, for taking care of the historical records, and adding the notices of their own times to those of former ages.

tho's his

served by

The æra, in which this Phoenician history was writ-Sanchonia ten in the Phoenician language, by a Phoenician au-tory prethor, and at the distance of above 1400 years trans-Eusebius. lated by a Phoenician into the Greek tongue, and so highly valued for its antiquity and genuineness by the learned Eusebiust, that he thought proper to ingraft

to have lived 300 years before Homer, and Homer, according to the great chronologist Petavius, L. 1. c. xii. lived about 1000 years before Christ. Post Trojanum bellum 168, quo tempore clarissimum ingenii lumen Homerus in lucem exiit annis ante Christum circiter Mille, Judæis Solomone regnante. The earliest history (barring the scriptural accounts) which has reached posterity, was thus written in the very year, in which the Milesians are recorded to have arrived in Ireland: it was written by a Phoenician; it is the history of his Phoenician ancestors; and as far as it has been depurated from idolatrous fiction, and its allegory brought into substance by the learned prelate of Peterborough, perfectly accords with the Mosaic and Irish account of these early periods.

* Adrian, in whose time Philo wrote, began his reign 117 years after the birth of Christ.

+ Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, was born in Palestine, about A. D. 267, and died about 338. St. Hierom translated several of his works out of Greek into Latin, and says of him, that he had

characters

a large portion of it in his work, in the first of his thirteen books of Evangelical Preparation, is full moral proof of the use of letters by the Phoenicians at this important epoch of ancient Irish history.

The ancient As to the particular character of letters then used, of the Irish.presuming them still in use with the native Irish, the question can be fairly stated, understood, and decided by those only, who have a scientific knowledge of the Irish language*. Suffice it therefore to remark, that the read not only the works of the Greek historians, philosophers, and divines, but also those of the Egyptians and Phoenicians. Dr. Jortin (Rem. on Eccl. Hist. v. iii. p. 160) stiles him the most learned bishop of his age, and the father of ecclesiastical history.

*It is impossible to refer to the learned elucubrations of Mr. Charles O'Conor, Dr. Parsons, General Vallancey, and other adepts in the Irish language, who have with dignified science thrown so much light upon the ancient history of this country, and not mingle indignation with contempt for those, who in lieu of argument, knowledge, and refutation, resort to flippant indecency, and coarse abuse. "This is the language (says Dr. Ledwich, p. 345, of the respectable and learned Vallancey), which the very eccentric author of the Collectanea de rebus Hybernicis, affects to be the parent of every other on the globe. O tribus Anticyris Caput insanabile!"—He had before expressed himself (p. 12.) with the like arrogance of all the supporters of a system differing from his own. "The hint of the Phoenicians (who were great navigators and traders) acted as a strong ferment on the intellects of British and Irish antiquaries, and produced the frothy systems in the writers before named, and particularly in the author of the Collectanea de rebus Hybernicis, who has completely orientalized our ancient history." As modesty and seience generally attend each other, how speaks General Vallancey in his 6th vol. of the Collectanea, p. 414, published 1804. "Linguarum ·cognatio cognationis gentium præcipuum certissimumque argumentum est (Sheringham). And the learned Ihre goes still further;

letters or characters used by the ancient Irish were Scythian or Pelasgian, and were seventeen only in number; and from their first three letters they named their Bethluisnion, as the Greeks had their al

he insists, that language is to be preferred even to the annals of remote times, to prove the origin of a people, particularly of a migrating people. What objection then can be made to a people, whose history I have vindicated, and whose most ancient annals and language confirm them to have been an oriental people?" In this same passage, General Vallancey gives what becomes a most valuable proof of the immutability of the Irish language at a middle period, viz. immediately before its conversion to christianity, and which at this moment is a living demonstration of the authenticity of the Irish records. "As to the Waldenese language being similar, or rather identically the same with the Irish, it is well accounted for in Irish history. Dathi, mo-. narch of Ireland, A.D. 398, led a numerous army to Gaul, and thence to the Alps, where he was killed by lightning. Several of his troops having lost their leader, settled there. The Oratio Dominica, in the Waldense, printed by Chamberlain, in London, in 1720, is certainly pure Irish." Now, can it for a moment be conceived, that a person of General Vallancey's science and respectability, would expose himself in an assertion of such obvious and notorious falsity (the identity is admitted by Mr. Davies, Cel. Res. p. 226.) were the Waldensic Lord's Prayer a different language from the Irish. If the assertion be true, then does there exist the most striking demonstration of the truth of that part of the ancient history of Ireland, which relates the death of Dathi, by a thunder-bolt at the foot of the Alps, whence some of his army brought home his corps to be burned in Ireland, and that the remainder settled themselves in that country. Thence has the Irish language been ever since there retained. Dathi was the last heathen monarch immediately preceding Leoghaire, who was converted by St. Patrick.

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