part of his body was in other respects quite naked. For they often
threw off their parti-coloured chequered cloaks, which shone with
all the hues of the rainbow, like the picturesque dress of their
kinspeople the Highlanders, who have laid aside the trousers of the
ancient Gauls. Their duels and gross revels are an image of the rudest
part of the middle ages. Their debauches were mostly committed with
beer and mead; for vines and all the plants of southern regions were
as yet total strangers to the north of the Alps, where the climate in
those ages was extremely severe; so that wine was rare, though of all
the commodities imported it was the most greedily bought up.

Ulster was known in ancient times as one of the five Irish 'kingdoms,'
and remained unconquered by the English till the reign of James I.,
when the last prince of the great house of O'Neill, then Earl of
Tyrone, fled to the Continent in company with O'Donel, Earl of
Tyrconnel, head of another very ancient sept. Up to that period the
men of Ulster proudly regarded themselves as 'Irish of the Irish and
Catholic of the Catholics.' The inhabitants were of mixed blood, but,
as in the other provinces of the island, the great mass of the people,
as well as the ruling classes, were of Celtic origin. Those whom
ethnologists still recognise as aborigines, in parts of Connaught
and in some mountainous regions, an inferior race, are said to be
the descendants of the Firbolgs, or Belgae, who formed the third
immigration. They were followed and subdued by the Tuatha de
Danans--men famed for their gigantic power and supernatural skill--a
race of demigods, who still live in the national superstitions. The
last of the ancient invasions was by the Gael or Celt, known as the
Milesians and Scoti. The institutions and customs of this people were
established over the whole island, and were so deeply rooted in the
soil that their remnants to this day present the greatest obstacles