Neither the Scythians, therefore, nor the Celts, had connection whatsoever, either of them, with the once-envied celebrity of this “island.”[485] The latter were the persons who, under the name of Fir-Bolgs, erected all the cromleachs spread over the country, the accomplishment of which bespeaks, it is true, an acquaintance with _mechanics_, of which the present artisans are altogether ignorant. And as the original of their denomination has never been elucidated, I embrace this opportunity of supplying the omission. It comes from _bolog_, which, in the Irish language signifies a _paunch_; and _fir_, a _man_; so that Fir-Bolg means the _big-bellied man_, being an evident allusion to their bodily configuration: and to this day Bolcaig is the epithet applied, vernacularly, to individuals of large girth or corpulent robustness, exactly corresponding to what we are told by Cæsar, when describing the tripartite division of Gaul, viz. that the Belgæ, who, in fact, were of the same stock as our Fir-Bolgs, were the _stoutest bodied_, and the _bravest otherwise_ of all its inhabitants. The Scythian religion, which was Druidical, accorded with that of the Fir-Bolgs, which was Celtic--not less as to modes of worship, than in mutual aversion to that of the Iranians; and, accordingly, we find, that when both conspired for the recovery of this country from the Iranians, who had themselves wrested it from the Fir-Bolgs, antecedently, these latter branching out into the septs of Cauci and Menapii, corresponding to the kindred and cognominal tribes on the continent; and who, during the occupancy of the Iranians--the interval of Ireland’s Hyperborean renown--had retired to Arran[486] and the northern isles, were restored to a partnership in the possession of the island, in return for the assistance they lent the Scythians for its conquest: and this accounts for that diversity of races which Ptolemy records, but which antiquarian luminaries, unable to comprehend, took upon them to reject as altogether a chimera. As to the Iranians, the real Hibernians--the true Hyperborean Tuath-de-danaans, or Magic-god Almoners--they were hurled from the throne, their sanctified ceremonials trampled in the dust, their sacred harps, which before used to swell to the praises of their Divinity, were now desecrated for the inspiration of the Scythian warriors; and their divine _Boreades_, who ere now composed canticles in adoration of Apollo, were degraded to the secular and half-military occupation of Scythian _bards_. The name of the island itself, from “Irin,” or the “Sacred island,” was changed into Scuitte, that is, Scotia or Scythia, or the land of the _Scythians_. Nor was it until the eleventh century of the present era, that, _to remove the ambiguity which arose from the circumstance of there being another country also called by this name_, Ireland assumed its former name, Irin, as its people did Irenses, instead of Scoti.[487]