5

OP THE DRTJIDS. 53
the antiquities of Gaule in a clearer light than any
one has hitherto done. But when 'tis consider'd,
that, over and above what he knows in common,
relating to the Druids, with the learned of the
French nation (whose works he constantly reads
with uncommon esteem), he has also certain other
advantages, which none of those writers have ever
had : when this, I say, is consider'd, then all the
wonder about this affair will instantly cease. Yet
let it be still remember'd, that whatever accomplishment
may consist in
the knowledge of languages,
no language is
really valuable, but as far
as it serves to converse with the living, or to learn
JDeitrmaeh is compounded of Dair, an oak, and the aiicient 'word
Mach (now Machaire) a. field. They who did not know so much,
bare Imagined it from the mere sound to be Armaghf which, far
from Campus roborum, signifies the height or mount of Macha,
(surnamed Mongruadh or redhair'd) a queen of Ireland, and the
only woman that ever sway'd the sovereign sceptre of that king,
dom. But Armagh never was a monastery founded by Columba,
who, in Bede's time, was called Coluim.cille*, as he's by the Irish
to this day :
whereas it was from the monasteries of Derry and
I-colmkill Cwhich last, though the second erdcted, became (he
£rst in dignity) that all the other monasteries dedicated to Go>
lumba, whether in Scotland or Ireland, were so many colonies.
This is attested by the just mentioned Bede+, no less than by all
the Irish annalists since their several foundations.
> Qui, videlicet Columba, nunc a nonnullis, composito a Cella ^ Columba
nomine Colamcelli vocatnr. Ibid. lib. 5. eap. 10.
t Ex quo ntroque monasterio perplurima exinde moQasteria, per discipulos
ejus, & in Britannia & in Hibernia propagata sunt ;
in quibus onioibus idem
uionasterium insulannm, in quo ipse rcquiescit corpore, principatnm tenet.
Jbid. lib. 3. eap. 4".