This is but an _item_ in that great ocean of incertitude in which that enterprising etymologist had, unfortunately, been swallowed up. Having perceived by the perusal of the manuscripts of our country, that there must have been a time when it basked in the _sunshine_ of literary superiority; yet unable tangibly to grapple with it, having no _clue_ into the _origin_ of its _sacred_ repute, or the collateral particulars of its _date_, _nature_, or _promoters_, he was tossed about by the ferment of a _parturient_ imagination, without the saving ballast of a _discriminating_ faculty. The General’s work, accordingly, is one which must be read with great reserve; not because that it does not offer many valuable hints, but because that its plan is so _crude_, and its matter so _ill-digested_,--the same thing being _contradicted_ in one place, which was _affirmed_ in another, or else _repeated_ interminably, without regard to _method_ or to _style_,--that when you have waded through the whole, you feel you have derived from it no other benefit than that of whetting your avidity for a _correct_ insight into those subjects, of which the author, you imagine, must have had some _idea_, but which also, it is evident, however indefatigable he was in the attempt, he had not, himself, the power to penetrate. The great praise, therefore, which I would award to this writer, is that, with one leg almost in the grave, he sat down, in the enthusiasm of a youthful aspirant, to master the difficulties of the Irish tongue, which, _mutilated_ though it be, and _begrimed_ by disuse, he knew was, notwithstanding, the only sure inlet to the _genius_ of the people, as well as to the _arcana_ of their antiquities, the most precious, as they are, and fruitful, of any country on the surface of the globe. But though his perseverance had rendered him the best _Irishian_ of his age, and of many ages before him, yet has he committed _innumerable blunders_, even in the exposition of the most simple words; and the question now in point will verify this declaration, with as much exactitude as any other that could be adduced. _Tuath_, then, and _pish_ are by no means _synonymous_; neither do they signify _mystery_ or _prophets_, except in a secondary light. In their original acceptation, they are the _antipodes_ of each other, as much as _male_ is to _female_, and as _relative_ is to _correlative_.[268] They are the distinctive denominations for the _genital organs_ of both sexes, respectively--_Tuath_ signifying _Lingam_; and _Pish_, _Yoni_. I have already explained that _Tuath_ is but a modification of the word _Budh_--the final _dh_ of the latter having been changed into the final _th_ of the former, only for euphony; because that prefixed to _de-danaan_ the collision of the two _d’s_--as _Bud_-de-danaan--would not sound well; it was, therefore, made _Buth_-de-danaan; and--the initials _b_ and _t_ being always convertible,--hence became _Tuath_-de-danaan.