the throne of his father David. As we should not altogether
reject, though neither are we bound to believe, the wild
and uncertain traditions of which we have neither
documentary nor monumental evidence, we will glance over
rapidly what the old Bards and Story-tellers have handed
down to us concerning Ireland before it became Christian.

The _first_ story they tell is, that about three hundred
years after the Universal Deluge, Partholan, of the stock
of Japhet, sailed down the Mediterranean, "leaving Spain
on the right hand," and holding bravely on his course,
reached the shores of the wooded western Island. This
Partholan, they tell us, was a double parricide, having
killed his father and mother before leaving his native
country, for which horrible crimes, as the Bards very
morally conclude, his posterity were fated never to
possess the land. After a long interval, and when they
were greatly increased in numbers, they were cut off to
the last man, by a dreadful pestilence.

The story of the _second_ immigration is almost as vague
as that of the first. The leader this tune is called
Nemedh, and his route is described as leading from the
shores of the Black Sea, across what is now Russia in
Europe, to the Baltic Sea, and from the Baltic to Ireland.
He is said to have built two royal forts, and to have
"cleared twelve plains of wood" while in Ireland. He
and his posterity were constantly at war, with a terrible
race of Formorians, or Sea Kings, descendants of Ham,
who had fled from northern Africa to the western islands