endeavoured to take up the gauntlet and answer Lanigan's challenge by
quoting one of Taliessin's poems from the "Black Book of Carmarthen,"
which represents a Welsh hero sailing away with an army to Scotland and
recovering his lost inheritance in a battle fought and won at Nevthur
in Clydesdale.

Besides the fact that no small stretch of imagination is required to
believe that Nevthur and Nemthur are one and the same, nearly all the
poems attributed to Taliessin are regarded as spurious by learned
critics, as Chamber's "Encyclopaedia," under the heading Welsh
Literature, evidently points out.

"Mr. Nash, the author of 'Taliessin and the Bards and Druids of Wales,'
enables us to form an independent judgment on this point, for he
translates some fifty of the poems, and we find that, instead of their
exhibiting an antique Welsh character, they abound in allusions to
mediaeval theology, and frequently employ mediaeval Latin terms. It is
certainly unfortunate for the reputation of the 'Chief of Bards' that
the specimens of his poems, which are considered genuine, possess
exceedingly small merit. The life of this famous but over-rated genius
is, of course, enveloped in legend." Lanigan's challenge, therefore,
still remains unanswered, and a town mamed Nemthur is not to be found
in any ancient history, geography, or map. The error, therefore, of the
Scholiast consisted in stating that Alcluid and Nemthur were identical,
but his statement that St. Patrick was captured in Armorica is
historically true.



THE "TREPARTITE LIFE" FALLS INTO THE SAME ERROR.