The longitude of Ireland extends four degrees, from the meridian of eleven degrees and a half to that of fifteen and a half, and the latitude extends also four degrees, from the parallel of fifty-four degrees to that of fifty-eight degrees. In the geographical description I will follow Cambden as formerly.4
This famous island in the Virginian sea is by old writers called Ierna, Inverna, and Iris, by the old inhabitants Erin, by the old Britains Yuerdhen, by the English at this day Ireland, and by the Irish Bards at this day Banno, in which sense of the Irish word, Avicen calls it the Holy Island; besides, Plutarch of old called it Ogygia, and after him Isidore named it Scotia.5 This Ireland, according to the inhabitants, is divided into two parts, the wild Irish, and the English-Irish, living in the English pale. But of the old kingdoms, five in number, it is divided into five parts.
1. The first is by the Irish called Mowne, by the English Munster, and is subdivided into six counties—of Kerry, of Limerick, of Cork, of Tipperary, of the Holy Cross, and of Waterford—to which the seventh county of Desmond is now added. The Gangavi, a Scythian people, coming into Spain, and from thence into Ireland, inhabited the county of Kerry, full of woody mountains, in which the Earls of Desmond had the dignity of palatines, having their house in Trailes, a little town now almost uninhabited. Not far thence lies
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St. Mary Wic, vulgarly called Smerwick, where the Lord Arthur Gray, being Lord Deputy, happily overthrew the aiding troops sent to the Earl of Desmond from the Pope and the King of Spain. On the south side of Kerry lies the county of Desmond, of old inhabited by three kinds of people, the Luceni (being Spaniards), the Velabri (so called of their seat upon the sea-waters or marshes), and the Iberni, called the upper Irish, inhabiting about Beer-haven and