Silvan, was brother to Brutus, who governed Britain at the time Eli the
high-priest judged Israel, and when the ark of the covenant was taken by
a foreign people. But Posthumus his brother reigned among the Latins. *
V.R. Thirty-seven.

12. After an interval of not less than eight hundred years, came the
Picts, and occupied the Orkney Islands: whence they laid waste many
regions, and seized those on the left hand side of Britain, where they
still remain, keeping possession of a third part of Britain to this
day. *

* See Bede's Eccles. Hist.

13. Long after this, the Scots arrived in Ireland from Spain. The first
that came was Partholomus,(1) with a thousand men and women; these
increased to four thousand; but a mortality coming suddenly upon them,
they all perished in one week. The second was Nimech, the son of...,(2)
who, according to report, after having been at sea a year and a half,
and having his ships shattered, arrived at a port in Ireland, and
continuing there several years, returned at length with his followers
to Spain. After these came three sons of a Spanish soldier with thirty
ships, each of which contained thirty wives; and having remained there
during the space of a year, there appeared to them, in the middle of the
sea, a tower of glass, the summit of which seemed covered with men, to
whom they often spoke, but received no answer. At length they determined
to besiege the tower; and after a year's preparation, advanced towards
it, with the whole number of their ships, and all the women, one ship
only excepted, which had been wrecked, and in which were thirty men,
and as many women; but when all had disembarked on the shore which
surrounded the tower, the sea opened and swallowed them up. Ireland,