the eastern monarchs with each other, and afterwards with the Firbolgs
and Tuatha Dé Danann of Erinn,[17] and subsequently with the Milesians.
Flann synchronizes the chiefs of various lines of the children of Adam
in the East, and points out what monarchs of the Assyrians, Medes,
Persians, and Greeks, and what Roman emperors were contemporary with the
kings of Erinn, and the leaders of its various early colonies. He begins
with Ninus, son of Belus, and comes down to Julius Cæsar, who was
contemporary with _Eochaidh Feidhlech_, an Irish king, who died more
than half a century before the Christian era. The synchronism is then
continued from Julius Cæsar and _Eochaidh_ to the Roman emperors
Theodosius the Third and Leo the Third; they were contemporaries with
the Irish monarch Ferghal, who was killed A.D. 718.

The ANNALS and MSS. which serve to illustrate our history, are so
numerous, that it would be impossible, with one or two exceptions, to do
more than indicate their existence, and to draw attention to the weight
which such an accumulation of authority must give to the authenticity of
our early history. But there are two of these works which we cannot pass
unnoticed: the CHRONICUM SCOTORUM and the ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS.

The Chronicum Scotorum was compiled by Duald Mac Firbis. He was of royal
race, and descended from _Dathi_, the last pagan monarch of Erinn. His
family were professional and hereditary historians, genealogists, and
poets,[18] and held an ancestral property at Lecain Mac Firbis, in the
county Sligo, until Cromwell and his troopers desolated Celtic homes,
and murdered the Celtic dwellers, often in cold blood. The young Mac
Firbis was educated for his profession in a school of law and history
taught by the Mac Egans of Lecain, in Ormonde. He also studied (about
A.D. 1595) at Burren, in the county Clare, in the literary and legal
school of the O'Davorens. His pedigrees of the ancient Irish and the