Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/97

 seemes) ye have much swarved in all this long discourse, of the first inhabiting of Ireland; for what is that to your purpose?

Iren. Truely very materiall, for if you marked the course of all that speech well, it was to shew, by what meanes the customes, that now are in Ireland, being some of them indeede very strange and almost heathenish, were first brought in: and that was, as I said, by those nations from whom that countrcy was first peopled: for the difference in manners and customes, doth follow the difference of nations and people. The which I have declared to you, to have beene three especially which seated themselves here: to wit, first the Scythian, then the Gaules, and lastly the English. Notwithstanding that I am not ignorant, that there were sundry nations which got footing in that land, of the which there yet remaine divers great families and septs, of whom I will also in their proper places make mention.

Eudox. You bring your selfe Iren. very well into the way againe, notwithstanding that it seemeth that you were never out of the way, but now that you have passed thorough those antiquities, which I could have wished not so soone ended, begin when you please, to declare what customes and manners have beene derived from those nations to the Irish, and which of them you finde fault withall.