Another writer, Gilla Caemhain, was also contemporary with Flann and Tighernach.  He gives the “annals of all time,” from the beginning of the world to his own period; and computes the second period from the Creation to the Deluge; from the Deluge to Abraham; from Abraham to David; from David to the Babylonian Captivity, &c.  He also synchronizes the eastern monarchs with each other, and afterwards with the Firbolgs and Tuatha De Danann of Erinn,[17] and subsequently with the Milesians.  Flann synchronizes the chiefs of various lines of the children of Adam in the East, and points out what monarchs of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and Greeks, and what Roman emperors were contemporary with the kings of Erinn, and the leaders of its various early colonies.  He begins with Ninus, son of Belus, and comes down to Julius Caesar, who was contemporary with Eochaidh Feidhlech, an Irish king, who died more than half a century before the Christian era.  The synchronism is then continued from Julius Caesar and Eochaidh to the Roman emperors Theodosius the Third and Leo the Third; they were contemporaries with the Irish monarch Ferghal, who was killed A.D. 718.

The ANNALS and MSS. which serve to illustrate our history, are so numerous, that it would be impossible, with one or two exceptions, to do more than indicate their existence, and to draw attention to the weight which such an accumulation of authority must give to the authenticity of our early history.  But there are two of these works which we cannot pass unnoticed:  the CHRONICUM SCOTORUM and the ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS.

The Chronicum Scotorum was compiled by Duald Mac Firbis.  He was of royal race, and descended from Dathi, the last pagan monarch of Erinn.  His family were professional and hereditary historians, genealogists, and poets,[18] and held an ancestral property at Lecain Mac Firbis, in the county Sligo, until Cromwell and his troopers desolated Celtic homes, and murdered the Celtic dwellers, often in cold blood.  The young Mac Firbis was educated for his profession in a school of law and history taught by the Mac Egans of Lecain, in Ormonde.  He also studied (about A.D. 1595) at Burren, in the county Clare, in the literary and legal school of the O’Davorens.  His pedigrees of the ancient Irish and the Anglo-Norman families, was compiled at the College of St. Nicholas, in Galway, in the year 1650.  It may interest some of our readers to peruse the title of this work, although its length would certainly horrify a modern publisher:—­

“The Branches of Relationship and the Genealogical Ramifications of every Colony that took possession of Erinn, traced from this time up to Adam (excepting only those of the Fomorians, Lochlanns, and Saxon-Gaels, of whom we, however, treat, as they have settled in our country); together with a Sanctilogium, and a Catalogue of the Monarchs of Erinn; and, finally, an Index, which comprises, in alphabetical order, the