5

196 THE HISTORY
veniently for the Phenicians, Grecians, Spaniards,
and Gauls, it was always a place of great trade:
and for this reason Tacitus * says (agreeable to
the Irish annals) " that its ports were better known
for trade, and more frequented by merchants,
than those of Britain. Neither is Pytheas's account
of the frozen sea, any more than that of
Thule, a fable. Whoever was in Greenland, knows
it to be literally true. It is, therefore, in the antient
Greec and Roman books, call'd the icy, the
slowf, the congeal'd, the dead sea; as I have read
that it is in some Arabic books very properly
written, the dark sea and the sea of pitch.
In the
oldest Irish books 'tis call'd by words ;]: that import
the Joul, and the foggy sea;
and likewise Mitirchroinn,
or the coagulated sea§, from the word
Croinn, which signifies close and thick as well as
round ||. From this original, which Pytheas and
other travellors learnt no doubt from the Britons,
this sea was nam'd Oowmm^: and not (as after-
* Melius aditus portusque, per commercia et negoUatores,
eogniti. Vit. Jgric. cap. 24.
+ Mare glaciale, pigrum, congelatum, roortnuni.
X Muircheachtf Muircheoach.
§ Mare coDCretum.
Crunn has the same
II signification in Welsh, and Cronni or
Croinnigh in both the languages signifies to gather, to obstruct,
to heap, and particularly Cronni to thicken or stagnate waters;
so that this derivation of the Cronian, and congeal'd sea, cannot
be reasonably. call'd in question.
*i 'A^^ Hfonn.