on of Noah, the son of Lamech, the
son of Methusalem, the son of Enoch, the son of Jareth, the son of
Malalel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of
Adam, the son of the living God."

Surely this is but a piece of book-learning spoilt in the application.
Yet what says the author?

"This genealogy I found in the traditions of the ancients, who were the
inhabitants of Britain in the earliest times."--_Historia Britonum_,
cap. xiii.

The next two works are chronicles, so-called; one British and one
Anglo-Saxon; the _Annales Cambriae_ and the _Saxon Chronicle_.

The notices of the _Annales Cambriae_ are remarkably brief and scanty. It
has scarcely one for every second year, and what it has is short and
unimportant.

It begins with A.D. 447, and ends with the Norman Conquest. It is
closely confined to the events of Wales.

The date and authorship are uncertain. Of the three MSS. which supply
the text, one is said to be as old as A.D. 954.

When the entries began to be cotemporary with the events registered is
uncertain; indeed, there is no proof that they are so anywhere. On the
other hand, they cannot be earlier than A.D. 521, since the event
registered there is the _birth of St. Columba_. Now the entry of the
birth of an illustrious personage is not likely to be a cotemporaneous
entry; since his greatness has yet to be achieved, and it is only the
spirit of prophecy and anticipation that such a record would be made at
the time he merely came into the world.

The year 522, then, is the earliest possible cotemporary entry, and this
is, most likely, much too early.

But the work has not the appearance of being a register of
cotemporaneous events at all. In such a composition the idlest
chronicler would find something to say under each year, and notices of
either local events, or the great events of general interest, could
scarcely fail to be entered. No one, however, will say that such a
series of entries as the following from A.D. 501 to A.D. 601, can ever
have constituted cotemporary history.

LVII. Annus. Episcopus Ebur pausat in Christo, anno cccl. aetatis
suae.

LVIII. Annus.

LXXI. Annus.

LXXII. Annus. Bellum Badonis in quo Arthur portavit crucem Domini
nostri Jesu Christi tribus diebus et tribus noctibus in humeros
suos, et Brittones victores fuerunt.

LXXIII. Annus.

LXXVI. Annus.

LXXVII. Annus. Sanctus Columcille nascitur. Quie