Amergin was, according to universal usage in ancient
times, at once Poet, Priest, and Prophet; yet when his
warlike brethren divided the island between them, they
left the Poet out of reckoning. He was finally drowned
in the waters of the river Avoca, which is probably the
reason why that river has been so suggestive of melody
and song ever since.

Such are the stories told of the _five_ successive hordes
of adventurers who first attempted to colonize our wooded
Island. Whatever moiety of truth may be mixed up with
so many fictions, two things are certain, that long before
the time when our Lord and Saviour came upon earth, the
coasts and harbours of Erin were known to the merchants
of the Mediterranean, and that from the first to the
fifth Christian century, the warriors of the wooded Isle
made inroads on the Roman power in Britain and even in
Gaul. Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain in the
reign of Domitian--the first century--retained an Irish
chieftain about his person, and we are told by his
biographer that an invasion of Ireland was talked of at
Rome. But it never took place; the Roman eagles, although
supreme for four centuries in Britain, never crossed the
Irish Sea; and we are thus deprived of those Latin helps
to our early history, which are so valuable in the first
period of the histories of every western country, with
which the Romans had anything to do.