Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

Dark and Fabulous. *jg
It is needlcfs to make any anfwer to the ac-
count of the learning of Ireland given by this
writer, fimply on his own authority. The inge-
nious father Innes * has long ago convinced the
•candid and impartial, that the Irifh were wholly
unacquainted with letters, till St. Patric brought
them into their country, about the Year 432.
One of his arguments, and a very plaufibie
one, is, that the very words in the Irifh tongue
which exprefs what in Englilh we call books,
pens, paper, reading, writing, and letters, are ma-
nifeftly Latin ones Hibernized.
Innes has totally deflroyed all the proofs which
O Flaherty had piled up in fupport of this abfurd
do(ftrine, and evinced, in the mod fatisfa<^ory
manner, that the Betbluis nion of the modern Irilh
is no more than the invention of a late age. All
the Irifh letters may be feen in Latin manufcripts
written in foreign countries, which had not the
leaft Intercourfe with Ireland.
Those who defire to be more fully fatisfied
in this matter, may confult Mr. Innes t ; and to
his arguments I fhall beg leave to add one or two
more, with a particular view to the dodrine pro-
mulgated by O Connor.
Were it true that Ireland had been the feat
of learn ir.g, and the mother of the fciences, long
before the commencement of the Chriflian aera, it
is a'-folutely incredible that the old Hibernians
fhould have been fo unfavourably charaderized
by Strabo, Mela, and Sohnus. It is impolTible
* Mr. Inne^'s 2r! part of his Critical Eflay.
f Mr. innes's ad par: of his Criu'cal EfTiy, cbap. i. art. 2,
3* 4-
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