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,
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 Philistines,
by the Lake o