1     CH. 6.  COMMON LAW AMONG THE ANCIENT IRISH AFTER B.C. 2600 Sir James McIntosh once explained that the Irish nation possesses genuine history several centuries more ancient than any other European nation possesses its present-day spoken language.  Dr. Johnson held Ireland was in early times the school of the whole of the West, and also the quiet habitation of sanctity and learning.  Lord Lyttleton added that most light which in times past cast its beams over Europe, proceeded from Ireland.   Even the great German rationalist historian Dr. J.L. Mosheim admitted that Ancient Ireland supplied Gaul, Germany and Italy with their scholars and professors.#1# The Historians' History of the World argues that Ancient Ireland's stable tribal government and its professional class of suide (or sages) and their ancient writings in Ogham, created circumstances favourable to the growth and preservation of annals. Early extant accounts rightly seek to synchronize Biblical history with Irish history.  Yet later, some accounts also try to syncretize true history with false myth.  Even some modern accounts would similarly syncretize revised myths with an evolutionistic approach to history.#2# Nevertheless, as also the critical Professor Dr. L.A. Waddell (LL.D.) has rightly pointed out,#3# the relative historicity of a considerable part of the traditions of Ancient Ireland is quite apparent.   The reliable old traditions found in the Ancient Irish Book of Ballymote, the Book of Lecan and the Book of Leinster are indeed quite disfigured by the later legends which there encrust them.  Yet those books do contain a residual outline of very consistent tradition.   See, on this, the end of our previous chapter.   Indeed, such books also preserve some genuine memory of the remote prehistoric period. This is true also of the Irish Chronicle -- alias the Chronicum Scotorum.  That claims to be and is "a Chronicle of Irish Affairs from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1135." Inscripturated in its present form at that latter time, it includes a lot of much older material. Thus, it tells us that God created the World through His Word; and that He sabbathed in man whose name was his very soul (ainm).  Then follow the seven ages of man, the first of which contains "1656 years" alias "ten generations"#4# (cf. Genesis chapter 5).   This, of course, is describing the age before Noah's ark and the deluge. There are also the Ancient Irish fursundud poems.  These trace genealogies for Munster's Eoghanacht Kings in the southwest of Eire right back to Adam. Was Ireland inhabited before the tower of Babel, or even before Noah's ark? According to the great Irish scholar Dr. G. Keating's famous book Elements of the History of Ireland,#5# three daughters of Cain visited Ireland together with their husbands and a colony of beautiful ladies.  All of them, however, perished during the deluge.  This is a remarkable claim.   However, it is not in any way irreconcilable with