“Deden,” says the professor, “is one of the Bahrein, or rather more northerly one of Cathema. The proofs, which to detail here would be out of place, may be found in Assemani, _Bib. Orient._ tom. ii. par. ii. pp. 160, 564, 604, and 744. Difficulties arise here, not merely from want of maps, but also from the variation and confusion of names. _Daden_, or _Deden_, is also frequently called _Dirin_; and it may be conjectured that from hence arose the name of Dehroon, which is given to one of the Bahrein islands in the map of Delisle. If that were the case, then Dedan would not be Cathema, as Assemani asserts, but the island mentioned above; and this is rendered probable by the _resemblance of names, which is a certain guide_.” If the “_resemblance_ of names” be “a certain guide,” _identity_ of names must be still more certain; and then must my _proofs_ already prevail, and the professor’s _conjectures_ fall to the ground! Surely he cannot say that there is any even resemblance between _D-Irin_ and _Dehroon_! But he admits that the place alluded to is called indifferently _Dedan_[530] and _D-Irin_; and have I not shown that each of those names, identical and unadulterated, belonged _properly_ to Ireland? Ireland, therefore, _alone_ can be the country alluded to by the inspired penman. In denying, however, a _Dodona_ to the Greeks, and an oracle also, General Vallancey was quite incorrect. What he should have maintained was, that both _name_ and _oracle_ had their _prototypes_ in Ireland; but that, so remote was the date at which the transfer occurred, all insight into the mysteries had long since perished. Indeed, their priests very frankly acknowledged the fact to Herodotus, when, in his thirst for information, he waited upon them at Dodona. “We do not,” said they, “know even the _names_ of the deities to whom we make our offerings--we distinguish them, it is true, by titles and designations; but these are all adventitious and modern in comparison of the worship, which is of great antiquity.” Upon which the historian very truly concludes, “that their _nature_ and _origin had been always a secret_; and that even the Pelasgi, who first introduced them and their rites, had been equally unacquainted with their history.” Like a true Greek, however, he must set about _coining_ an origin for them; and so he tells us _a cock-and-a-bull_ story of two _pigeons_ (Peleiai) having taken flight from Thebes in Upper Egypt, and never stopped until they perched, one upon the top of Dodona, and the other God knows where; and then he flatters himself he has the allegory solved, by _imagining_ that those _pigeons_ were _priestesses_, or _old women_, carried off by Phœnician pirates, and sold into the land of Greece!