VAGUE poetical tradition flings a mystical veil over the origin of the earliest inhabitants of Ireland. The historian, McGee, who would seem to have made a serious study of the subject, says that the first account given by the bards and the professional story-tellers attributes the settlement of the island to Parthalon of the race of Japhet, who, with a number of followers, reached it by way of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, “about three hundred years after the Universal Deluge.” The colonists, because of the unnatural crimes of their leader, were, we are told, “cut off to the last man by a dreadful pestilence.” The second colony, also a creature of tradition, was said to have been led by a chief called Nemedh from the shores of the Black Sea across Muscovy to the Baltic, and from that sea they made their way to the Irish shore. In Ireland, they encountered a stronger race, said to have been of African origin, called Formorians, with whom they had many severe battles and were by them finally defeated and either killed or driven from the country, to which some of their descendants returned in after years. After Nemedh came the Firbolgs, or Belgæ, under the five sons of their king, Dela, who divided the island into five parts and held it undisputedly until the Tuatha de Danaans, said to be descended from Nemedh, and having magical power to quell storms, invaded the island, carrying with them the “lia fail,” or “Stone of Destiny,” from which Ireland derived its fanciful title of “Innis fail,” or the “Island of Destiny.” The Danaans are said to have been of the Greek family. In any case, it is claimed, they subdued the Belgæ and made them their serfs. They ruled mightily, for a time, but, in turn, were compelled to give way to a stronger tide of invasion.