History of the Britons | Page 6

this island named from him Britannia, dwelt there,
and filled it with his own descendants, and it has been inhabited from
that time to the present period. [1] Other MSS. Silvius. [2] V.R. Who
should slay his father and mother, and be hated by all mankind. [3] V.R.
He displayed such superiority among his play-fellows, that they seemed
to consider him as their chief. [4] Tours.

11. Aeneas reigned over the Latins three years; Ascanius thirty three
years; after whom Silvius reigned twelve years, and Posthumus
thirty-nine * years: the latter, from whom the kings of Alba are called
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 shat- tered, 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 disem- barked
on the shore which surrounded the tower, the sea opened and
swallowed them up. Ireland, however, was peopled, to the present
period, from the family remaining in the vessel which was wrecked.
Afterwards, other came from Spain, and possessed themselves of
various parts of Britain. [1] V.R. Partholomaeus, or Bartholomaeus. [2]
A blank is here in the MS. Agnomen is found in some of the others.

14. Last of all came one Hoctor,[1] who continued there, and whose
descendants remain there to this day. Istoreth, the son of Istorinus, with
his followers, held Dalrieta; Buile had the island Eubonia, and other
adjacent places. The sons of Liethali[2] obtained the country of the
dimetae, where is a city called Menavia,[3] and the province Guiher
and Cetgueli, [4] which they held till they were expelled from every
part of Britain, by Cunedda and his sons. [1] V.R. Damhoctor,
Clamhoctor, and Elamhoctor. [2] V.R. Liethan, Bethan, Vethan. [3] St.
David's. [4] Guiher, probably the Welsh district Gower. Cetgueli is
Caer Kidwelly, in Carmarthenshire.
15. According to the most learned among the Scots, if any one desires
to learn what I am now going to state, Ireland was a desert, and
uninhabited, when the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, in which,
as we read in the Book of the Law, the Egyptians who followed them
were drowned. At that period, there lived among this people, with a
numerous family, a Scythian of noble birth, who had been banished
from his country and did not go to pursue the people of God. The
Egyptians who were left, seeing the destruction of the great men of
their nation, and fearing lest he should possess himself of their territory,
took counsel together, and expelled him. Thus reduced, he wandered
forty-two years in Africa, and arrived, with his family, at the altars of
the Philis- tines, by the Lake of Osiers. Then passing between Rusicada
and the hilly country of Syria, they travelled by the river Malva through
Mauritania as far as the Pillars of Hercules; and crossing the Tyrrhene
Sea, landed in Spain, where they continued many years, having greatly
increased and multiplied. Thence, a thousand and two years after the
Egyptians were lost in the Red Sea, they passed into Ireland, and the
district of Dalrieta.* At that period, Brutus, who first exercised the
consular office, reigned over the Romans; and the state, which before
was governed by regal power, was afterwards ruled, during