"FAIL, simply, appears to have been a favourite epithet." - p. 328.
"Verily it shall be well with thy remnant. Verily I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of affliction." - Jer. 15:11.
F.R.A. Glover: Ireland has had many names. She is now Hibernia, and Erin, and "the Emerald Isle;" but she has been Inis Ealga, the Noble; and Fioah-Inis, the Woody; and Crioch Fuiniah, the Final, - similar to Finis-Terre, and the Land's End. And we read that
"Inis-Fail, it was also called, after the Lia-Fail; and 'Fail,' simply, appears to have been a favourite epithet. The Danans also gave Ireland the names of Eire, Fodhla, and Barba, from three of their queens, being beautiful and euphonious in sound." And people, it seems, credit this nonsense! "Erin also; and Ierne, the Sacred Isle; Plutarch calls it Ogygia, or 'The ancient land.' Roman writers call it Iuverna, Iuvernia, Ouvernia, Ibernia, Ierna, and Vernia, and Caesar called it first Hibernia." - Annals of the Four Masters, (Notes), 388. 90-1.
But a principal name for the famous Island has been Scotia Vetus; and Scotia Major, to distinguish it from Hibernian Scotland; then called, Scotia Minor: though now known, mostly, as Scotland. - 391.
But if Ireland has had many names, she has had as many reasons assigned for some of her names; for Scotia, for example, there are not less than nine given: as Sir Wm. Betham has shown in his Gael and Cymbri, p. xi-xiv. Hence, one may collect that not much is known about the reality of the case. A lady is honoured as being the cause of this effect: Scota, the daughter or wife of Gathelus. But as she and her illustrious companion are assigned to very early times, and the word Scotia was never beard of as a name for Ireland earlier than the third century after Christ, that celebrated lady may be set aside with all the other ladies, whose names were always at hand, with Bards and Annalists, to give a name to Ireland whenever a reason had to be assigned for what chroniclers had heard of, as an adjective descriptive of their Island, and they were unable otherwise to account for.
As this name is not on record earlier than the times that the Greeks were masters of the Seas and of the trade of the World, .. and as the men of that day would talk of "going into the Darkness" as now an American would speak of "going down West" .. and as considerable emigration had taken place at different times from Phoenicia, and those who had emigrated would be considered as having "gone West," or "into the Darkness," .. and hence, as living in the West, the Finis-Terre, they would be designated generally the Skoti, (Gk.) it is clear that the Greek word, Skotia, Darkness, is the etymology of a word which came to be used to convey the idea of the local habitation of those who had gone West. This was the word by which Ireland was universally known, after the time when men understood Greek nautical terms. Porphyry, in the third century, is the first writer who called the Irish Scoti. By the same name they are known ever after by St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and the poet Claudian, and so downwards to the eleventh century. "Pinkerton says, 'From the consent of all antiquity, the name of Scoti, belonged to the Irish alone.'" Annals of the Four Masters p.390-1, notes.
Whether or not the above suggestion gives the true origin of the name, Scotia, for Ireland, we know, that as the Sun-Rising, Anatolee, where the light first shows in the morning stood for the East, with the Greeks; so, skotia, darkness, is in the West, where the light vanishes in the evening; that there, Ireland, was certainly, by the Greeks, known to be; and that Scotia, its name, is a Greek word, signifying Darkness.
The, object in thus depriving the celebrated princess, Scota, of her name and honours is to show, that the assertion with respect to the Lady with the "euphonious'" name, Fodhla, may be as void of foundation as the existence of her, who has been supposed to have given a name to Ireland for a thousand years, and to Scotland to the present time. The Princess Fola, as much gave a name to Ireland as did the Lady Scota, who never existed. The name Fola, is, evidently, a corruption of a known word that did exist, and did give a name to Ireland; a name which is, proveably, not Irish at all, because it is Hebrew. That a queen had to do with it, is possible, is probable; but it was not in her name as a woman: it was altogether on other and higher grounds. The woman had a destiny; a great destiny: and it was the word that identified her with that, which she and the Island had in common. The meaning of the Irish-Hebrew compound Innis-phail, is, the Isle of Destiny; from Inis, an Island; and Fail, Mystery or Destiny.
If Ireland were indeed ever named Inis-Fola, Fola is not so far, in sound, from Fail, as are a good many alleged kindred etymologies from their assumed cognates: and if, as a matter of fact, as the island of Fola, it became Inis-Fola by the same rule of construction that the island of Fate or Fail became Inis-Fail, .. and that Ireland were called, anywhere, in this connexion, Inis-Fola, would any doubt exist in the mind of the philologist, that the two words Inis-Fail and Inis-Fola had been confounded? .. the one taken for the other? .. that they meant, in fact, the same thing, and were the same word, somewhat differently pronounced?
Those -who are accustomed to accept of such transmutations as St. Coemgere into St. Kevin, and again Koemin or Caymin into the same Kevin, will hardly make a difficulty in finding in Inis-Fola and Inis-Fail two words expressive of the same thing, and therefore of the same meaning. - See Ledwich's History and Antiquities of Ireland. -Art. Glendalough, p. 174.
But, as in this case, the word in question was common to the Man, and the Princess; and as the Man, the Woman, and the Stone all came on the stage at the same time, doubtless, the word belongs to them all; and is the same word, modified by time; or, changed by bardic imaginations to fit fanciful ideas. The stone was the Stone of Destiny:- the woman in whose destiny and joint agency the perpetual sceptre of Judah was again set up and identified, was a Woman of Destiny:- the High Ollam, the founder of the order of Ollams, he who proclaimed the destiny, remembrance of which, the Order that he founded, was ever to keep fresh in men's minds, and who sanctified the whole with a grand inauguration, and re-consecration of the Stone - the Stone of Witness to the great destiny of the people to whom it belonged - was, properly, the Ollam of Destiny. So that the meaning of the word would seem to be, not that of the subsequently written word, Fodhla, "learning," which would be a mere reduplication of its conjunct, Ollam, - but a meaning which would cover and be common to the whole transaction.
The priest who proclaimed the destiny, viz. that the Stone, the Race, and the Standard should abide until the time of their restoration to the East, was an Ollam of Destiny, i.e. a prophet. He proclaimed the same, as connected with the Woman of Destiny, enthroned, doubtless, with her husband on the Stone of Destiny; that Lia-Fail, after which the Island was certainly named: .. even that same Pillar of Witness which Jacob set up at Bethel the morning after his vision, and consecrated, then and there, unto the Lord, in proof of his confidence that the DESTINY promised to Abraham and confirmed to himself, would be fulfilled in the fortunes of his Children. See Gen. 28:13, 15.
And who are, and where now are, these Children? Has the destiny foretold failed? Were not rather, a Remnant, entirely contrary to what might have been ordinarily looked for, well-treated of the Baalitish enemy, when, in the day of Judah's affliction, and of the Remnant's wandering, they honoured them by giving to their own Island a new name in the Jew's language, and, in honour of their faith and hope?
From: "England, the Remnant of Judah, and the Israel of Ephraim", written by F.R.A. Glover, M.A., Chaplain to the Consulate at Cologne. Published by Rivingtons, London, 1861. Based on research commenced in 1844.