The language which they spoke differed in nothing from the Tuath-de-danaan, but that it was not quite so refined; and this feature of similarity silences at once the _conjectures_ of _Stillingfleet_, Innes, and their followers, who would make those _Scythians_ to be _Scandinavians_, merely because the letter S occurs as the _initial_ and _final_ of either name! Why, sir, when the _Scandinavians_ did _really_ invade Ireland, which was not until the early centuries of the Christian era, the great obstruction to their progress was their _ignorance_ of our tongue; whereas, when the _Scythians_ arrived here, many ages earlier, our legends, our traditions, our histories, and our annals, _unanimously_ and _universally_ attest, that they used the same conversable articulation with that of the established dynasty.[483] Where is the wonder, then, that we should find all the ancient names in the north of England, correspond to a nicety with those of the Irish? And which made Lhuydh, the author of the _Archæologia_, himself an Englishman, declare, “_how necessary the Irish language is to those who shall undertake to write of the antiquity of the isle of Britain_.” But if Lhuydh was thus _candid_ in the avowal of his conviction, he was not equally _successful_ in the discovery of the relationship. From want of the true _touchstone_, he went on _hypothesising_! and came at last to the _supposition_--“that the Irish must at one time have been in possession of those English localities, and thence removed themselves into Ireland”--_the exact opposite having been the fact_. To atone for my long digression from Mr. Whittaker, and his _breakages_, I will supply to you the derivations, as well of Britain as of Brigantia. The former is compounded of _Bruit_, _tin_; and _tan_, a country abounding in that metal, and corresponding to _Cassiteris_, assigned to it by the Greeks: and Brigantia, as before explained, being but a formative from Breo-cean, is compounded of _Breo_, which signifies fire; and _cean_, a head or promontory, meaning the _head-land of fires_; or that whereon such used to have been lighted for the convenience of mariners lying out at sea.[484]