Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/315

 in Granado, as from their mightiest auncestors. Since then to Henry Fltz Emjiresse the Conquerour, no such invasion happened them, as whereby they might be driven to infect their native language, untouched in manner for the space of 1 700. yeares after the arrivall of Hiberius. The tongue is sharpe and sententious, of Fereth great occasion to quicke apothegmes and proper allusions, wherefore their common Iesters, Bards, and Rymers, are said to delight passingly those that conceive the grace and propriety of the tongue. But the true Irish indeede difFereth somuch from that they commonly speake, that scarce one among five score, can either write, read, or understand it. Therefore it is prescribed among certaine their Poets, and other Students of Antiquitie.

Touching the name Ibernia, the learned are not yet agreed. Some write it Hibernia, and suppose that the strangers finding it in an odde end of the world, wet and frosty, tooke it at the first for a very cold country, and accordingly named it, as to say, the winter land: Another bringeth a guesse of Irlamal, of whom because I read nothing, I neither build upon that conjecture, nor control! it. Thirdly, they fetch it from Hiberus the Spaniard. Most credibly it is held that the Spaniards their founders for devotion toward Spaine, called then Iberia, and the rather for that