ge before, by earlier missionaries in the parts of Ireland which they converted to the faith. In the antecedent times the Fileas or ancient Irish writers, inscribed their ideas on tablets of wood, by the means of seventeen cyphers, of which their ancestors learned the use before their arrival in Ireland; nor is this fact obscured, but is rather enlightened by a fable of the Fileas, setting forth that some of those ancestors were instructed in letters by a celebrated Phenius, famous for literary knowledge in the East. Through this poetical veil we plainly discern the Phenicians, who first instructed the Europeans (the Greeks, Lybians, Italians, and Spaniards particularly) in the use of letters and other arts. Spain, according to Strabo, had the use of letters at a very early period; and that a colony from that country should import into, and cultivate also, those elements of knowledge in Ireland, is not improbable: the perfection of the Irish language before the introduction of Christianity, is an incontrovertible proof of the fact. The Scots are represented as a rude and barbarous people in the fourth and fifth ages, even by some eminent ecclesiastical writers. But these as well as other foreign historians have not, if at all, been resident long enough in Ireland to pronounce the natives barbarous, if those writers took that epithet in the worst sense it can bear. St. Jerom avers that when an adolescentulus, he saw a Scot in Gaul feeding upon human flesh, but the child in this case might impose upon the man; or if otherwise, a nation is not to be characterised from the barbarity of an individual, or even of a single tribe in an extensive country. That some barbarous customs prevailed in Ireland during the ages mentioned, cannot be denied; and that some prevail at this day in most of the modern states of Europe, called enlightened, is a matter of fatal experience. In the documents still preserved in the native language of the ancient Irish, we learn that after the reform made of the Order of Fileas in the first century, houses and ample landed endowments were set apart for those philosophers, who, in the midst of the most furious civil wars, were by common consent to be left undisturbed; that they were to be exempt from every employment but that of improving themselves in abstract knowledge, and cultivating the principal youths of the nation in their several colleges; that in the course of their researches they discovered and exposed the corrupt doctrines of the Druids; and that an enlightened monarch called Cormac OQuin took the lead among the Fileas in the attack upon that order of priests, and declared publicly for the unity of the Godhead against Polytheism, and for the adoration of one supreme, omnipotent, and merciful Creator of heaven and earth. The example of that monarch, and the disquisitions of the Fileas relating to religion and morality, paved the way for the reception of the gospel; and as the doctrines of our Saviour made the quickest progress among civilized nations, the conversion of Ireland in a shorter compass of time than we read of in the conversion of any other European country, brings a proof that the natives were not the rude barbarians some ancient authors have represented them to be. [back]
Note 6. Certain ancient principal Scottish saints are commemorated in an ancient Scottish calendar published by Mr. Robert Keith, as follow: Jan. 8. St. Nethalan, B. C. An. 452. 21. St. Vimin, B. An. 715. 29. St. Macwoloc, B. An. 720. 30. St. Macglastian, B. An. 814. Feb. 7. St. Ronan, B. C. An. 603. March 1. St. Minan, archdeacon, C. An. 879. Also St. Marnan, B. An. 655. 4. St. Adrian, B. of St. Andrews, M. He was slain by the Danes in 874, and buried in the Isle of Man. 6. St. Fredoline, C. An. 500. 11. St. Constantine, king of Scotland, a monk and M. An. 556. 17. St. Kyrinus or Kyrstinus, surnamed Boniface, B. of Ross, An. 660. April 1. St. Gilbert, B. of Caithness, An. 1140. 12. St. Ternan, archbishop of the Picts, ordained by St. Palladius, about the year 450. 16. St. Manus or Mans, M. in Orkney, An. 1104