men of the contending hosts. We have the later and more florid manner of recital, and there was terror in the grimness of the Gaels, and horrible aerial phantoms rose up, in dismal, regular, aerial, storm-shrieking, hovering fiend-like hosts constantly in motion, shrieking and howling as they hovered above the armies; and the grey-haired Morrigu shouts victory over the head of Domhnall--

"Over his head is shrieking

A lean hag, quickly hopping

Over the points of their weapons and shields---
She is the grey-haired Morrigu."

But the touch of the Christian teacher is felt in these later tales. Apostles and saints, Church blessings and cursings enter now into the argument. Even the cowardice of the hero Suibhne, whose sudden fear is a feature in the story, and who is said in another tale to have died of the many poems made upon him, is thus moralised. It confounded him "because he had been cursed by St. Ronan, and denounced by the saints of Erin for having slain an ecclesiastical student of their people over the consecrated trench,”—that is, the clear stream over which the shrine of the Lord had been placed for worship before the battle. God before! His blessing on the bread, His blessing on the battle, so the new note rises in the ancient song.

The chief MS. materials for a study of the old Gaelic Language and Literature are :

LATIN MSS. OF THE 8TH OR 9TH CENTURY WITH
GAELIC GLOSSES.*

1. A codex of "Priscian," in the Library at St. Gall in Switzerland, crowded with Irish glosses, interlinear and marginal, as far as p. 222. (They were Irish monks who first carried Christianity to Switzerland.)

2. A codex of "St. Paul's Epistles," in the University Library at Würzburg, containing even more glosses than the St. Gall" Priscian."

3. A Latin "Commentary on the Psalms," ascribed now to St. Columbanus, in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, yet more crowded with ancient Irish glosses.

4. A codex at Carlsruhe containing some of the works of Bede. An entry of the death of Aed, King of Ireland, establishes the date 817.

5. A second codex of "Priscian," also at Carlsruhe, with fewer glosses than that of St. Gall.

6. A miscellaneous codex of St. Gall, including medical charms, in which Goibnenn the smith and Diancecht the leech of the Tuatha dé Danann are mentioned.

7. A codex at Cambray, written between the years 763 and 790, containing canons of an Irish council held A.D. 684, and a fragment of an Irish sermon containing Latin sentences.

ANNALS AND OTHER LITERATURE.—IITH CENTURY.

The "Synochronisms of Flann of Monasterboice," a monk, who died in 1056, a sketch of Universal History from the remotest times. The chronological "Poem of Gilla Caemhain," who died A.D. 1072. The "Annals of Tighernach" (pronounced Teer-nah) O'Braoin, abbot of the Monasteries of Clonmacnois and Roscommon, who died A.D. 1088. Of the Annals of Tighernach there are seven MS. copies, all defective, and a vellum fragment. This is the most trustworthy of the ancient records.

The "Annals of Innisfallen," believed by Professor O'Curry to have been mainly written by Maelsuthain, a prince of the tribes of Loch Léin or Killarney, who was educated in the monastery of the lake, and died in it, retired from the world, A.D. 1009. These annals, being continued to 1215, are commonly ascribed to the 13th century.

The "Leabhar na-h-Uidre," or Book of the Dun Cow: a fragment remains of 138 folio pages, written by Maelmiore, who was killed in 1106, contains ancient poems and tales. It contains part of the Book of Genesis, part of Gilla Naemhin's translations of Nennius, part of the Taîn Bo, an account of the Pagan ceremonies of Ireland, and other tracts. It is in the library of the Royal Irish Academy.

12TH CENTURY.

The "Book of Leinster," compiled by Finn M'Gorman, Bishop of Kildare, who died A. D. 1160, for the Dermod M'Murroch who invited Strongbow into Ireland. It contains invasions, a description of

Germanic settlements in Britain before A.D.

449.

Gaul into the south-east of Britain—whence the few Gaels who had wandered so far from Erin and our western shores were driven back on the main body of their own people-the Cymry were, in their turn, pressed by the Belga, a Germanic race, who partly dislodged them, first in Gaul, and afterwards in Britain. These people, as we have seen, had occupied the Frisian shore of the continent and the coast of France east of the Seine. But the ancient language of the Frisian coast is allied more closely than Old Saxon itself, or any other language, to the language of the Anglo-Saxons. AngloSaxon and old Frisian are, in fact, allied so closely that they seem to be only dialects of the same tongue. A dialect also of that tongue may have been the language spoken by the Belge who had crossed into Britain before Cæsar's time; and the main bulk of the Anglo-Saxons may have been only Belgæ of a later date, and from another part of their long line of continental shore opposite Britain. The beginning of the Germanic immigration is, in fact, prehistoric. Speaking of Britain from direct knowledge, Cæsar said: "The interior is inhabited by those who are traditionally said to be natives of the island itself; the sea-coast by those who have crossed from Belgium for the sake of spoil or war, their settlements being almost all called by the names of the places whence they came. Having carried war into Britain, they remained there and began to cultivate the fields." This process of gradual conquest and tillage led to the existence of a recognised "Saxon" fringe of

་་

*

* Lib. v. c. 12.

†The writer of the article upon the Belge in Dr. William Smith's 'Dictionary of Ancient Geography," believes that the Belge were partly Germanic and partly Celtic. "The fact," he says, "of Cæsar making such a river as the Marne a boundary between Celtic and Belgic peoples, is a proof that he saw some marked distinction between Belgæ and Celtæ. But if we exclude," he adds, the Menapii, the savage Nervii, and the pure Germans," the rest may have been Celts.

population, Saxon being the name formerly applied from without to the Germanic population in this country. In the reign of Diocletian, A.D. 290, Mamertinus, the orator, in his panegyric on Maximian, the Emperor's colleague, speaks of a victory at London, won by the Roman provincials over Franks (Germans), who occupied the city. In 306, Constantius dying at York, a German chief in Britain, Eroc King of the Alemanni, helped his son Constantine to assume the empire. Towards the close of the period of Roman occupation, the "Notitia utriusque Imperii," compiled between the years 369 and 408, describe the administration of a Saxon Shore (Littus Saxonicum) in Britain and in Gaul. The Littus Saxonicum in Britain appears from the places named in it—our Brancaster and Burgh Castle, in Norfolk ; Othona, in Essex, now under the sea; Dover, Lympne, Reculvers, and Richborough, in Kent; Pevensey and the River Adur, in Sussex-to have extended from the Wash to Southampton Water. It has been argued that the Saxon Shore, which is called also in the same record the Saxon Boundary (Limes), meant a shore not occupied by, but liable to attack from, a Germanic people. This, however, is only argued to evade one of the difficulties made by rejection of that evidence of Cæsar, Strabo, and Tacitus, with which the appointment in Britain of a Roman Count of the Saxon Shore is, without strain of interpretation, perfectly consistent. Eutropius, who died about the year 370, speaks * of the Franks and Saxons who infested the sea between the coasts of Gaul and Britain. Ammianus Marcellinus, in whom Gibbon acknowledged an accurate and faithful guide, and who writes of his own times, in his history which closes with the year 378, speaks under date 364 and 368 of the Britons or Cymry as invaded by the Picts, Scots, and Attacots (in Erin the Aitheach Tuatha, a turbulent un

* Lib. xii. cap. 21.

hamlets, a Gael town, a Gael port, and in two places the Gael's Walls.

Pressure of the Saxons on the Cymry. The record

of six settlements.

But their German allies soon began to overwhelm the Cymry; and after the deposition of Vortigern, the struggle of the Cymric Celts was to resist the occupation of their land by successive warrior bands of Anglo-Saxon colonists. Six settlements by invasion, spread over a period of a century, are recorded upon the authority of the Saxon Chronicle, which was not brought into its present form until after the death of Bede, and of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History," dedicated to a king who reigned in Northumberland between the years 729 and 737. Of these settlements, the first, under Hengist and Horsa, is said to have been of Jutes, the next three were of Saxons, the last two of Angles. They were settlements :

1.—Of Jutes, landing A.D. 449, under Hengist and Horsa, at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet. Six years later they established the kingdom of Kent.

2.—Of Saxons, landing A.D. 477, under Ælla, in Sussex, which they made the kingdom of the South Saxons.

3. Of Saxons, landing A.D. 495, under Cerdic, in Hampshire, where they established the kingdom of the West Saxons (Wessex).

4.—Of Saxons, landing A.D. 530, leader unnamed, in Essex.

5.--Of Angles, who landed in Norfolk and Suffolk during Cerdic's reign in Wessex.

6.—Of Angles, landing A D. 547, under Ida, on the south-eastern coast of Scotland, between Tweed and Forth.

It is the stir of battle in the conflict of the Cymry with these last comers that animates the oldest literature of the Cymric Celts. Against Ida and his Angles Urien Rheged led the warriors of Britain, and the praise of Urien was