choliast suggests,
have been born at Alcluid, or Dumbarton. It is curious to observe how
unconsciously the Scholiast connects Calphurnius and his family with
Boulogne. Calphurnius and his family are made to sail from Dumbarton,
over the Sea of Itius or Ictius, to Armorica. Hersart de la Villemarque
has already identified Bonaven under its various names as Bononia or
Boulogne. It was called Itius or Ictius by Caesar, Bononia by the
Romans, and Bonauen Armorik by the Gaulish Celts. The Scholiast,
therefore, when he directs the course of Calphurnius and his family
across the Sea of Ictius, seems to be steering their ship directly to
Boulogne.

Nemthur cannot possibly be the name of the town near which St. Patrick
was born, simply because the Saint gives the name of Bonaven, or
Bononia, as the city of his birth. St. Fiacc does not name Nemthur as a
town; he simply tells us that St. Patrick was born at Nemthur, which,
as has been proved, was both the name of the Caligula's tower and of
the district in which that tower stood in the suburbs of Bonaven. The
Scholiast is the first to call Nemthur a town, and evidently puts it
down as the ancient name of Alcluid, or Dumbarton. This is the obvious
meaning of the scholion: "Nemthur est civitas in septentrional!
Britanni nempe Alcluida." Nemthur is a city in northern Britain, namely
Alcluid. The "nempe Alcluida" looks very much like an interpolation,
and if an interpolation, the statement of the Scholiast that Nemthur is
a city in northern Britain, without the addition "nempe Alcluida,"
might easily refer to Northern Britain in Gaul where, however, Nemthur
was not the name of a city, but the name both of a tower and of the
district of the city where St. Patrick was born.

Neither the Scholiast, nor those who have adopted his views as to the
Saint's birth at Dumbarton, have ever answered Lanigan's challenge, who
boldly states that the name Nemthur is not to be found in Nennius's
"List of British Towns," which Usher himself had illustrated, nor in
any of the old "Itineraries," or in Ricardus Corinensis, or in Camden,
or Horsley &c. (vol. i, b. 3, p. 91).

The learned Cardinal Moran, in the March of the _Dublin Review_, 1880,
endeavoured to take up the gauntlet and answer Lanigan's challenge by
quoting one of Taliessin's poems from the "Black Book of Carmarthen,"
which represents a Welsh hero sailing away with an army to Scotland and
recovering his lost inheritance in a battle fough