"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?
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