Note 9 — Chapter V

In my Lives of the Saints, written in 1874, I accepted M. Barthélemy's view, that Virgilius held that there were underground folk, gnomes; but I do not hold this now, knowing more than I then did of the learning of the great Irish scholars, and of the voyages made by the Irish. The earliest gloss on the Senchus Mor says, "God formed the firmament around the earth; and the earth, in the form of a perfectly round ball, was fixed in the midst of the firmament."—I. p. 27.