Among the Welsh documents which are usually founded upon as affording materials for the early history of the country, there is one class of documents contained in the Myvyrian Archæology which cannot be accepted as genuine. The principal of these are the so-called Historical Triads, which have been usually quoted as possessing undoubted claims to antiquity under the name of the Welsh Triads; the tale called Hanes Taliessin, or the history of Taliessin; and a collection of papers printed by the Welsh MS. Society, under the title of the Iolo MSS. These all proceeded from Edward Williams, one of the editors of the Myvyrian Archæology published in 1801, and who is better known under the bardic title of Iolo Morganwg. The circumstances under which he produced these documents, or the motives which led him to introduce so much questionable matter into the literature of Wales, it is difficult now to determine; but certain it is that no trace of them is to be found in any authentic source, and that they have given a character to Welsh literature which is much to be deplored. In a former work, the author in reviewing these documents merely said, ‘It is not unreasonable therefore to say that they must be viewed with some suspicion, and that very careful discrimination is required in the use of them.’ He does not hesitate now to reject them as entirely spurious.[15] It will of course be impossible to write upon the Celtic period of Scottish history without making a large use of Irish materials; and it is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the Irish Annals for this purpose; but these too must be used with some discrimination. The ancient history of Ireland presents the unusual aspect of the minute and detailed annals of reigns and events from a period reaching back to many centuries before the Christian era, the whole of which has been adopted by her historians as genuine. The work of Keating, written in Irish in 1640, a translation of which by Dermod O’Connor was published in 1726, may be taken as a fair representation of it. The earlier part of this history is obviously artificial, and is viewed by recent Irish historians more in the light of legend; but there is nothing whatever in the mode in which the annals of the different reigns are narrated to show where legend terminates and history begins, and there is a tendency among even the soundest writers on Irish history to push the claims of these annals to a historical character beyond the period to which it can reasonably be attached. For the events in Irish history the Annals of the Four Masters are usually quoted. There is a certain convenience in this, as it is the most complete chronicle which Ireland possesses; but it was compiled as late as the seventeenth century, having been commenced in 1632 and finished in 1636. The compilers were four eminent Irish antiquaries, the principal of whom was Michael O’Clery, whence it was termed by Colgan the Annals of the Four Masters.