Phases of Irish History
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Title: Phases of Irish History
Author: Eoin Mac Neill
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHASES OF IRISH HISTORY ***
PHASES OF IRISH HISTORY
PHASES
OF
IRISH HISTORY
BY
EOIN MACNEILL
_Professor of Ancient Irish History in
the National University of Ireland_
M. H. GILL & SON, LTD.
50 UPPER O'CONNELL STREET, DUBLIN
1920
[Illustration: _Printed and Bound in Ireland by :: :: M. H. Gill &
Son, :: :: Ltd. :: :: 50 Upper O'Connell Street :: :: Dublin_]
_First Edition_ 1919
_Second Impression_ 1920
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD vi
I. THE ANCIENT IRISH A CELTIC PEOPLE 1
II. THE CELTIC COLONISATION OF IRELAND AND BRITAIN 31
III. THE PRE-CELTIC INHABITANTS OF IRELAND 61
IV. THE FIVE FIFTHS OF IRELAND 98
V. GREEK AND LATIN WRITERS ON PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND 133
VI. INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND LETTERS 161
VII. THE IRISH KINGDOM IN SCOTLAND 194
VIII. IRELAND'S GOLDEN AGE 222
IX. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NORSEMEN 249
X. MEDIEVAL IRISH INSTITUTIONS 274
XI. THE NORMAN CONQUEST 300
XII. THE IRISH RALLY 323
INDEX 357
FOREWORD
The twelve chapters in this volume, delivered as lectures before
public audiences in Dublin, make no pretence to form a full course of
Irish history for any period. Their purpose is to correct and
supplement. For the standpoint taken, no apology is necessary. Neither
apathy nor antipathy can ever bring out the truth of history.
I have been guilty of some inconsistency in my spelling of early Irish
names, writing sometimes earlier, sometimes later forms. In the Index,
I have endeavoured to remedy this defect.
Since these chapters presume the reader's acquaintance with some
general presentation of Irish history, they may be read, for the
pre-Christian period, with Keating's account, for the Christian
period, with any handbook of Irish history in print.
EOIN MACNEILL.
I. THE ANCIENT IRISH A CELTIC PEOPLE
Every people has two distinct lines of descent--by blood and by
tradition. When we consider the physical descent of a people, we
regard them purely as animals. As in any breed of animals, so in a
people, the tokens of physical descent are mainly physical
attributes--such as stature, complexion, the shape of the skull and
members, the formation of the features. When we speak of a particular
_race_ of men, if we speak accurately, we mean a collection of people
whose personal appearance and bodily characters, inherited from their
ancestors and perhaps modified by climate and occupation, distinguish
them notably from the rest of mankind. It is important for us to be
quite clear in our minds about this meaning of Race, for the word Race
is often used in a very loose and very misleading way in popular
writings and discussions. Thus we hear and read of the Latin races,
the Teutonic race, the Anglo-Saxon race, the Celtic race. If these
phrases had any value in clear thinking, they would imply that in each
instance it is possible to distinguish a section of mankind which, by
its inherited physical characters, differs notably from the rest of
mankind. Now in not one of the instances mentioned is any such
distinction known to those who have made the races of man the subject
of their special study. There is no existing Latin race, no Teutonic
race, no Anglo-Saxon race, and no Celtic race. Each of the groups to
whom these names are popularly applied is a mixture of various races
which can be distinguished, and for the most part they are a mixture
of the same races, though not in every case in the same proportions.
In the case of the populations which are recognised to be Celtic, it
is particularly true that no distinction of race is found among them.
And this is true of them even in the earliest times of their history.
Tacitus, in the remarkable introductory chapters of his book, "De
Moribus Germanorum," gives a brief physical description of the Germans
of his time. "Their physical aspect," he says, "even in so numerous a
population, is the same for all of them: fierce blue eyes, reddish
hair, bodies of great size and powerful only in attack." Upon this the
well-read editor of the Elzevir edition of 1573 has the following
remarks: "What Tacitus says here of the Germans, the same is said by
Florus and Livy in describing the Gauls.... Hence," he continues, "it
appears that those ancient Gauls and Germans were remarkably similar
in the nature of their bodies as well as of their minds." He goes on
to develop the comparison, and sums up as follows: "Who then will deny
that those earliest Celts were similar to the Germans and were in fact
Germans?"
These Latin writers were contemporary witnesses, and among the
captives taken by Roman armies they must have seen the men that they
describe. Thus, in early times the Romans observed the same physical
semblance in the two peoples, Celts and Germans. It may be pointed
out, however, that the physical characteristics on which they lay
stress are those which exhibit the greatest difference between these
northern peoples and the peoples of southern Europe. For that reason
we may suspect a certain element of exaggeration in the description.
We may take leave to doubt whether all the Germans of antiquity were
fair-haired and blue-eyed, as Tacitus describes them. It was the
fair-haired and blue-eyed Germans and Celts that attracted the
attention of Latin writers, accustomed to a population almost
uniformly dark-haired and dark-eyed, and they would naturally seize
upon the points of distinction and regard them as generally typical.
If, then, by the name Celts we cannot properly understand a distinct
race, what are we to understand by it? By what criterion do we
recognise any ancient population to have been Celts? The answer is
undoubted--every ancient people that is known to have spoken any
Celtic language is said to be a Celtic people. The term Celtic is
indicative of language, not of race. We give the name Celts to the
Irish and the Britons because we know that the ancient language of
each people is a Celtic language.
A certain amount of enthusiasm, culminating in what is called
Pan-Celticism, has gathered around the recognition of this fact that
the Irish, the Gaels of Scotland, the Welsh and the Bretons are Celtic
peoples. So much favour attached to the name Celtic that in our own
time the Irish language was, so to speak, smuggled into the curricula
of the Royal University and of the Intermediate Board under that name.
What ancient writers called _opus Hibernicum_, "Irish work," is
popularly known in Ireland as Celtic ornament. In the same way people
speak of Celtic crosses, and there are even Celtic athletic clubs.
There is no small amount of pride in the notion of being Celtic. It is
somewhat remarkable, then, to find that throughout all their early
history and tradition the Irish and the Britons alike show not the
slightest atom of recognition that they were Celtic peoples. We do not
find them acknowledging any kinship with the Gauls, or even with each
other. In Christian times, their men of letters shaped out
genealogical trees tracing the descent of each people from Japhet--and
in these genealogies Gael and Briton and Gaul descend by lines as
distinct as German and Greek. This absence of acknowledgment of
kinship is all the more noteworthy because there is little reason to
suppose that, before Latin displaced the Celtic speech of Gaul, the
differences of dialect in the Celtic speech of Gaul, Britain, and
Ireland were sufficient to prevent intercourse without interpreters.
From this ignorance of their Celtic kinship and origin we must draw
one important conclusion. The extraordinary vitality of popular
tradition in some respects must be set off by its extraordinary
mortality in other respects. There must have been a time when the
Celts of Ireland, Britain and Gaul were fully aware that they were
nearer akin to each other than to the Germans and Italians, but this
knowledge perished altogether from the popular memory and the popular
consciousness.
It was re-discovered and re-established by a Scottish Gael, George
Buchanan, in the sixteenth century. Buchanan, in his history of
Scotland, published in 1589, dismissed as fabulous that section of the
Irish and British genealogies that purported to trace the origin of
each people, generation by generation, from Japhet. He was a man of
great classical learning. No better refutation could be adduced of the
notion that Bacon, who was a child when Buchanan wrote, established
the inductive method of scientific proof than the clear and
well-marshalled argument by which Buchanan proves from numerous Greek
and Latin sources that the Gaels and the Britons were branches of the
ancient Celtic people of the Continent.
An account of Buchanan's discourse on this subject will be found in an
article by me in the "Irish Review," of December, 1913. Buchanan's
discovery seems to have lain dormant, as regards any effect on
learning or the popular mind, for more than a century. In his argument
he dealt rather severely with the statements of a contemporary Welsh
antiquary, Humphrey Llwyd, and this controversy had probably the
effect of sowing the seed of what may be called Celtic consciousness
in the soil of Welsh learning. In Ireland, though Buchanan's work was
doubtless known and read, his theory of the Celtic origin of the Irish
people and their language, and of their kinship to the Britons and the
Continental Celts, does not appear to have been thought worth
discussion, so firmly established were the ancient accounts which
attributed to the Gaels of Ireland a Scythian origin. Yet these
ancient accounts, as I propose to show in the third lecture of this
series, did not belong to the true national tradition, ran counter to
tradition, and owed their invention to the Latin learning of Ireland
in the early Christian period.
In 1707 the publication of the first volume of Edward Llwyd's
"Archæologia Britannica" exhibits the first fruiting of Buchanan's
theory, in the form of a sort of conspectus of the Celtic languages
then extant, namely, the Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland, and the
British languages of Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. From this time
onward, the existence of a group of Celtic peoples may be taken as a
recognised fact in the learned world. I do not know whether anyone has
yet traced the early stages of the recognition of the same fact in
Continental learning.
The Celtic languages now began to attract attention from outside. I
ought, however, to note here that already for a brief period the Irish
language had seemed about to extend its influence beyond the limits of
its own people. It will be remembered that Edmund Spenser, during his
residence in Ireland (1586-1598), made some small acquaintance with
Irish poetry which was translated for him, and that he was pleased in
some degree with its peculiarities. About the same time an English
official in Dublin reports to his masters in London that "the English
in Dublin do now all speak Irish," and adds that they take a pleasure
in speaking Irish. A primer of the Irish language was composed by the
Baron of Delvin for the special use of Queen Elizabeth, and a
facsimile of portion of it may be seen in Sir John Gilbert's "National
Manuscripts of Ireland."
The growing interest in Celtic literature among outsiders is
exemplified in some of the work of the English poet Gray, who died in
1771. His poem of "The Bard," reflected, if it did not initiate, the
notions long afterwards fashionable of the character of the Celtic
bards and of the spirit of their poetry. Gray had the reputation in
his time of being an antiquarian. He made an English version of the
vision-poem on the battle of Clontarf from the Icelandic saga of Burnt
Njal, and from this same poem part of the inspiration of his "Bard" is
acknowledged by him to have been derived. Gray also wrote English
versions of some Welsh poems, and the novelty of poetic expression
which he borrowed here seems to have baffled for once the critical
experience of Johnson, who contents himself with saying that "the
language is unlike the language of other poets." "The Bard" was
published in 1755, and, if I am not mistaken, its weird rhapsodical
spirit contained the germ of the Celtic literary revival, for Gray's
"Bard" may be regarded as the literary parent of Macpherson's
"Ossian." In 1760, five years after the publication of "The Bard,"
appeared the first collection of Macpherson's pretended translations,
entitled "Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of
Scotland." The consequences of this publication are fitly described by
Dr. Magnus MacLean: "The arrival of James Macpherson marks a great
moment in the history of Celtic literature. It was the signal for a
general resurrection. It would seem as if he sounded the trumpet, and
the graves of ancient manuscripts were opened, the books were read,
and the dead were judged out of the things that were written in them."
In 1764 was published Evans's "Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient
Welsh Bards"--which supplied Gray with fresh material. In 1784
appeared "Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards," and from
that time onward the stream of translations from Welsh to English was
fairly continuous. Notwithstanding the controversy that soon arose
about the authenticity of Macpherson's compositions, their direct
influence and vogue went on increasing for half a century. Among those
who shared in the Macpherson craze were Goethe and Napoleon Bonaparte.
In France, de Villemarqué published his "Chants populaires de la
Bretagne," a collection of poems from the Breton. In Scotland,
Macpherson had several imitators. In Wales, the new movement took
shape in the revival of the National Eisteddfod in 1819. In Ireland,
the first fruits of Macpherson's genius are found in Walker's
"Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards," published in 1786, and in
Charlotte Brooke's "Reliques of Irish Poetry," published in 1789. The
originals in this case were genuine, including a number of poems of
the kind called, since Macpherson's time, Ossianic.[1] The English
versions supplied by Miss Brooke were in close imitation of the style
and diction of Macpherson. The same influence extends to Hardiman's
"Irish Minstrelsy," published in 1831.
[Footnote 1: The Irish term for this class of poetry is
"Fianaidheacht," and is of great antiquity.]
The expansion of the new Celtic consciousness is exemplified in the
publication in 1804 of a tract in French on the Irish Alphabet by Jean
Jacques Marcel. The first important philological treatise on the
Celtic languages was published by the French philologist Pictet in
1837, dealing with "the affinity of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit."
Next year, 1838, appeared Bopp's work in German, showing the relation
of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, German, etc.
The Celtic literary enthusiasm was henceforth supplemented by solid
scientific research.
In these particulars is presented, I think, a fairly accurate sketch
of the wholly modern development of the Celtic consciousness. I wish
to recall here the fact that from the earliest traceable traditions of
the Gaelic people down to the time of George Buchanan, there is not
found the slightest glimmer of recognition that the Celts of Ireland
were Celts, or that they were more nearly akin to the Celts of Britain
and the Continent than to any other population of white men. The
second fact which I wish particularly to emphasise is that throughout
all its history the term Celtic bears a linguistic and not a racial
significance.
It need hardly be re-stated here that the Celts are a linguistic
offshoot of a prehistoric people whose descendants--also in the line
of language--comprise many ancient and modern populations in Europe
and Asia. It would be out of place now to discuss the central location
from which the various branches of this prehistoric people spread
themselves over so wide an area. Indeed, it is a facile and fanciful
assumption to suppose that the spreading took place from one central
habitat. It is enough to say that, whereas the earlier philologists
took for granted that the original population, before its division
into various linguistic groups, was located in Western Asia, the later
philologists are strongly inclined to place its home in Europe, in the
region south-east of the Baltic Sea.
The oldest known geographical descriptions of Europe are those of
Hecatæus, who flourished about 500 years before the Christian Era, and
Herodotus, about half a century after him. Their knowledge of the
European mainland, north of the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean and its inlets, was of the most vague and general kind.
They divided the whole of northern and middle Europe between two
peoples, the Scythians in the eastern, and the Celts in the western
parts. They also knew of the Iberians in the south-west, in the
Spanish peninsula and the adjoining parts of France. Herodotus,
however, recognised to the west of the Celts a people whom he calls
Kunēsioi and Kunētai, and in the furthest north of Europe a population
distinct from the Celts and Scythians, but unknown to him by any name
of their own, for he calls them Hyperboreans, _i.e._, out and out
northerns. In the time of Eratosthenes, about 200 B.C., this knowledge
does not appear to have been very much increased among the Greeks.
They knew, however, of the existence of the islands of Ireland, which
they called Ierne, and Britain, which they called Albion, and also of
a country beyond the Baltic; but they still divided the northern
mainland of Europe between the Celts and the Scythians.
I have already remarked how ancient Irish tradition ignores the Celtic
origin and affinities of the Irish. We may go farther and say that our
ancient writers, when they set about exploring the geographical
knowledge of the world that came to them in Latin writings, had it
very definitely in their minds that the Irish were not of Celtic
origin; for, of the three great populations of northern and western
Europe known to the oldest classical writers--the Iberians, the Celts,
and the Scythians--they excluded the Celts, and included the other
two, some selecting the Iberians and others the Scythians as the
ancestral people from which the Gaels were descended.
The reason why to the Greek mind, in the early centuries of history,
the Celts appeared to occupy so much of Middle Europe and to occupy it
so exclusively, was I think this: the Celts at that time actually
occupied the upper valleys of the Danube, the Rhone, the Rhine, and
the Elbe, and the high ground between. These rivers were the principal
highways of such transcontinental commerce as then existed, and this
commerce was probably considerable, comprising various metals, salt,
amber, etc. Whatever came and went in the course of transcontinental
trade from north-western Europe to the Mediterranean countries
followed trade routes which lay through the central region north of
the Alps, and all this region was held by the Celts. In this way, the
Celts seem to be more extensively spread over northern middle Europe
than they actually were.
Archæology takes us back farther and tells us more than history in
relation to the Celts while they were as yet, so far as we know,
located solely or mainly in the mid-European region to the north of
the Alps. It is not questioned that the ancient cemetery discovered
and explored many years ago at Hallstatt in Upper Austria belonged to
Celts and that the curious remains of art and industry found there are
the work of a Celtic people. The period assigned for that work begins
in the ninth century before the Christian Era and may extend onward
for several centuries. The discoveries indicate an organised and
progressive community, among whose resources were agriculture and the
working of mines for metals and salt; but the principal fact disclosed
is that, already in that early time, the Celts were acquainted with
the use and manufacture of iron. In the northern parts of Europe, in
Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland, as archæologists are agreed, the
Iron Age did not make its appearance until several centuries later.
We need not doubt that it was this possession of iron in abundance
and of skill in its manufacture, at a time when neighbouring peoples
found in bronze the highest class of material for their implements of
industry and war, that gave the Celts the power and prosperity which
they long enjoyed in Mid-Europe and enabled them to conquer and
colonize all the countries that surrounded them.
One effect of the mastery of iron, for a people occupying an inland
region with small facilities for water-traffic, was that the Celts
acquired a notable skill in the making of vehicles. From them in a
later age the Romans borrowed the names of nearly every variety of
wheeled vehicle that the Romans used: _carrus_ or _carrum_,
_carpentum_, _esseda_, _rheda_, _petorritum_. From this it obviously
follows that the Celts were also great road-makers. During the nine
years that Julius Cæsar spent in the conquest of Transalpine Gaul, and
marched his legions in every direction over that vast region, it is
quite evident that he was operating in a country already well supplied
with roads.
The earliest recorded expansion of the Celts from the region north of
the Alps was over northern Italy, and no historian supposes or
suggests that the first Celtic occupation of northern Italy was
earlier than about 600 B.C. This item ought to be borne in mind, for
it has an important bearing on the date of the early Celtic migrations
to Britain and Ireland. It was probably about the same time that they
began to move westward across the Rhone, occupying the parts of France
between the Garonne on the south and the English Channel on the north,
which parts are specifically described by Julius Cæsar as Gallia
Celtica, Celtic Gaul. Between 500 and 400 B.C. they spread
south-westward into Spain, apparently more as conquerors than as
colonists, for the resultant of the Celtic occupation of the Spanish
Peninsula was the formation of a mixed people, partly Celts and partly
Iberians, whom ancient writers distinguish from the Celts by giving
them what we may call a hyphenated name, Celtiberians. We are not to
imagine from this that Celtic conquests elsewhere were of an
exterminating character, or that they did not result in a fusion of
peoples. The notion that the migratory conquests of antiquity resulted
in the displacement of one population by another is one of the
favourite illusions of popular history. In Spain no doubt the Celtic
element was relatively less numerous than in Gallia Celtica, and also
perhaps the Celtic civilisation became less dominant, for the Iberians
were in touch more or less with another and still more highly
developed civilisation, that of the Phœnicians. That there was a
somewhat distinctive civilisation south of the Garonne is clearly to
be inferred from Cæsar's account, which tells us that the people of
Celtic Gaul differed from those of Aquitaine, as well as from those of
Belgic Gaul, in language, culture, and institutions.
In the fourth century B.C. a second wave of Celtic migration poured
over Italy. The Celts in this movement captured and destroyed the city
of Rome. But they also appear to have destroyed the predominance of
the Etrurians, and thereby to have facilitated the later imperial
expansion of the Roman power. There was also an eastward Celtic
movement along the Danube. In the third century B.C. the Celts overran
most of what is called the Balkan Peninsula, including Greece, and in
278 B.C. large bodies of them passed over into Asia Minor and settled
in the country which after them was named Galatia.
Let it be noted at this point that so far as history casts light on
the subject, the known period of Celtic expansion on the Continent
lies within the years 650 B.C. and 250 B.C. We shall have to recur to
this fact when we come to consider, in the following lecture, the
probable date of the Celtic colonisation of Ireland. We shall see also
that the evidence from archæology leads to the same conclusion as the
evidence from history.
History recognises the expansion of the Celts from inland and central
Europe southward, westward and eastward, but is silent about any
expansion northward. No one doubts that in these early times the parts
of Europe northward of the old Celtic country already described were
occupied by the Germans, but Greek and Latin writings have no word of
the Germans until the last quarter of the third century B.C. Yet we
know from archæology that there was trade intercourse long before that
time between the Mediterranean countries and the shores of the Baltic,
extending even to Scandinavia. As geographical facts, the Baltic and
Scandinavia were known to the Greeks, if only vaguely known to them,
in the time of Eratosthenes, _i.e._, about 200 B.C. How is it, then,
that the Germans are not mentioned by that name or by any name? I
suggest that the reason was that the Germans of that period were so
much under Celtic domination that they were not recognised as a
distinct people of importance.
The first mention of Germans in history is found in the Roman Acta
Triumphalia for the year 222 B.C., in the record of the battle of
Clastidium. Clastidium, now called Casteggio, is in northern Italy, on
the south side of the river Po and a few miles from that river. It is
a little west of the meridian of Milan, which at the time of the
battle was Mediolanum, the chief town of the Insubrian Gauls. In the
battle, the Roman consul Marcellus overcame the Insubrians and gained
the _spolia opima_ by slaying with his own hand their commander
Virdumarus. The Acta Triumphalia state that he triumphed "over the
Insubrian Gauls and the Germans." Now so far as is known or thought
probable there was no German population at the time settled anywhere
within hundreds of miles of Clastidium, whereas the Insubrian Gauls
were settled on the spot or in its near neighbourhood. Moreover,
unless the Germans were there fighting in considerable force, it is
most unlikely that any notice of them would have appeared in the
record. The commander was a Gaul, bearing an undoubted Celtic name.
Therefore the Germans at Clastidium were not fighting for their own
hand, they had not come there as invaders. Thus we are brought to the
interesting conclusion that, on this first appearance of the Germans
in history, they had been brought from their own country, hundreds of
miles away, to assist a Celtic people resident in the valley of the
Po. To assist them in what capacity? Undoubtedly either as hired
troops or as forces levied on a subject territory. Whichever view we
take, the presence of German forces at the battle of Clastidium in 222
B.C. must be regarded as an indication that the German people, or
portion of them, were still at that time under Celtic predominance. I
say "still at that time," because it will be seen that the Celtic
ascendancy over the Germans soon afterwards came to an end.
What is thus inferred from the historical record is corroborated by
philology. A number of words of Celtic origin are found spread through
the whole group of Germanic languages, including the Scandinavian
languages and English, which was originally a mixture of Low German
dialects. Some of these words are especially connected with the
political side of civilisation and are therefore especially indicative
of Celtic political predominance at the time of their adoption into
Germanic speech. Thus the German word _reich_, meaning realm or royal
dominion, is traced to the Celtic _rigion_, represented in early Irish
by _rige_, meaning kingship. From the Celtic word _ambactus_, used by
Cæsar in the sense of "client" or "dependent," indicating one of the
retainers of a Gallic nobleman, but originally signifying "one who is
sent about," a minister or envoy--from _ambactus_ is derived the
German word _amt_, meaning "office, charge, employment." From
_ambactus_ are also derived the words _embassy_ and _ambassador_, with
their kindred terms in the Romance languages. From the Celtic word
_dunon_, a fortified place, represented in Irish by _dun_, is derived
the word _town_ in English and the cognate words in the other Germanic
languages. Professor Marstrander holds that several of the names of
the numerals in all the Germanic languages, and therefore in the
original German speech from which they have diverged, are formed from
or influenced by Celtic names of the same numerals. If this is so, it
indicates a thoroughly penetrating Celtic influence among the ancient
Germans, for the names of the numerals may be regarded as among the
most native elements of speech, so much so that it is said that
facility in the speaking of two languages rarely exists to the degree
of being able to reckon numbers with equal readiness in both, and that
the language a person uses in ordinary reckoning must be regarded as
his native and natural speech.
This matter of the early intermingling of Celts and Germans in
northern Mid-Europe will be afterwards seen to have a special interest
in reference to the Celtic colonisation of Britain and Ireland. Before
concluding the evidence I have to bring forward on the subject, it
will make the drift of the matter clearer if I state the later outcome
of the Celtic migrations northward among the Germanic population. We
have already seen that, as archaeologists are agreed, the Celts north
of the Alps were in possession of iron long before the use and
manufacture of iron was established in the more northern parts of
Europe. It is mainly to this advantage that we may ascribe the
predominance acquired by the Celts among the Germans. In the German
regions, however, the Celts were for the most part an ascendant
minority. Their domination must have lasted for several centuries. A
time came when, in those parts which in the Celts were numerically and
otherwise in greatest strength, a fusion of peoples took place,
resulting in a Celto-Germanic population, Celtic in language but
mainly Germanic in race. Meanwhile, the less blended section of the
Germans, retaining their native language, had acquired the craft of
ironwork, and were advancing in civilisation and no doubt increasing
at the same time in numbers. Eventually the German-speaking Germans
became more powerful than the once dominant Celtic minority and more
powerful also than the Celto-Germanic folk who had become Celtic in
language. A sense of distinct nationality grew up between the two
populations. The Celticised Germans were located in western Germany,
towards the Rhine, the un-Celticised Germans farther east. Under
hostile pressure from the German-speaking element, the Celtic-speaking
element were forced westwards across the Rhine into Gaul. Here they in
turn pressed back the Celts who had settled in north-eastern Gaul, and
modern events will help to fix in the mind the fact that this overflow
of Celto-Germans into Gaul extended as far west as the river Marne,
where it was brought to a stand by the resistance of the earlier
Celtic inhabitants. The date of this migration was probably later than
that of the battle of Clastidium, 222 B.C., when, as we have seen, the
Celts appear to have still held sway over the Germans. The
Celto-Germanic settlers between the Rhine and the Marne were the
Belgae of Cæsar's time.
At first sight, this account may seem to be too precise an effort to
fill up a blank in history, but the testimony of Cæsar and Tacitus,
witnesses of prime authority, seems to leave no room for any
alternative view.
Cæsar is the first writer in whom any mention of the Belgae is found.
Holding the Gallic command for about nine years, he reduced the whole
of Gaul to obedience to the Roman power. For him, Gaul, Gallia,
signified the whole country between the Rhine and the Pyrenees. All
its inhabitants in general were named Galli by him, but we also find
that he uses the name Galli in a more precise sense as proper to the
people of those parts which were not occupied by the Belgae. He also
calls this people Celtae, Celts. Therefore in Cæsar's mind the Belgae
were less Gallic and less Celtic than their neighbours to the west.
His evidence on this subject however is much more precise.
The Rhine was for Cæsar the main boundary line between Gaul and
Germany, between the Belgae and the Germans. The Belgae, he states,
differ from the Celtae, as these from the Aquitani, in language,
culture, and institutions. The difference between the Celtae proper
and the Aquitani has already been accounted for. The Aquitani,
bordering on Spain, were the same Celtiberian mixture as the people of
Spain; they were Celtic, or mainly so, in language, but otherwise
mainly Iberian. I am proceeding to show that the difference between
the Celtae and the Belgae is to be explained in a similar way. The
Belgae were likewise Celtic in language, at all events mainly so, but
otherwise they were mainly Germanic. When Cæsar says that the three
divisions of Gaul differed from each other in language, we must
understand that he refers to broad distinctions of dialect, for the
names of persons and places in Belgic Gaul at that time appear to the
reader to be quite as Celtic as those in Gallia Celtica or western
Gaul. Cæsar tells us that the Belgae are ruder, less civilised and
more warlike than the Celtae or Galli more properly so called, and his
explanation for this is that they have less commerce and less
intercourse with outsiders, and so are less softened by refinement and
luxury. This is interesting, because it implies that Gallia Celtica
had a sufficient degree of commerce, intercourse, refinement and
luxury to considerably soften down the character of its inhabitants.
The westward and southward pressure of the Germans, then a very
powerful and numerous people, was in full force in Cæsar's time, so
much so that it seems certain that Cæsar's conquest of Gaul came just
in time to stay and delay that tide of Germanic invasion which overran
Gaul some centuries later. His first operations in Gaul were against
the Helvetii, whose country corresponded to the modern Switzerland. He
tells us that the Belgae are at continual war with the Germans along
the Rhine, and also that the Helvetii in their own country fight
almost daily battles with the Germans. In the first year of Cæsar's
Gallic command, the Helvetii came to a decision to migrate from their
country westward, and Cæsar's first campaign was conducted with the
purpose of forcing them to return to their own country. He ordered
them to return thither, he states, lest the Germans should take
possession of the territory and thus become neighbours to the old
Roman province in southern Gaul.
Cæsar states plainly that the Belgae for the most part are of German
origin; that in former times they had crossed the Rhine and
dispossessed the Galli (here he used the name Galli as proper to the
other inhabitants of Gaul in distinction from the Belgae). He
indicates that, after this migration, they had offered a successful
resistance to the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones (between 113 and
102 B.C.).
Modern Frenchmen, though their national name is in origin the name of
a Germanic people, show a tendency, easily understood, to minimise the
Germanic element in their composition, and M. D'Arbois de Jubainville,
dealing with Cæsar's statement that the Belgae were mainly of Germanic
origin, seeks to explain that this was true geographically not
ethnographically, that they came from German lands but did not come of
German ancestry. Against the plain statement of a contemporary
observer, such explanations are always to be received with caution. In
this instance, there is corroborative evidence which indicates that
Cæsar's words are to be taken at their face value. Cæsar also tells us
that the Condrusi, Eburones, Cærosi and Paemani "uno nomine Germani
vocantur"--are called by the common name of Germans. Again he says
that the Segni and Condrusi are "ex gente et numero Germanorum"--of
the German nation and so accounted. Strabo, writing within a century
of Cæsar, says that "the Nervii are a Germanic people." According to
Cæsar, the Nervii had no commerce, avoided wine and other luxuries,
and were fierce men of great valour. They led the rest of the Belgae
in opposing him. Tacitus is a hardly less valid authority, for his
father-in-law Agricola had been engaged in long campaigns against the
Germans in the Rhine country. "The Treveri and the Nervii," he says,
"are especially forward in asserting their German origin, as though by
this boast of race to be distinguished from the pacific character of
the Gauls." It was surely not a geographical origin that was claimed
in such a way. The Treveri dwelt on the west side of the Rhine. They
were a Celtic-speaking people, and unlike most of the inhabitants of
Gaul they seem to have retained their Celtic language throughout the
period of Roman domination, for St. Jerome, writing in the late part
of the fourth century, says that "the Galatians (of Asia Minor), apart
from the Greek language, which all the East speaks, have a language of
their own almost the same as the Treveri." In one respect the Treveri,
Cæsar tells us, resembled the Germans of his time--they excelled in
cavalry; and his continuator, Hirtius, writes that "in fierceness and
in manner of life they differed little from the Germans." The
Advatuci, he writes, "were descendants of the Cimbri and Teutoni."
All these peoples dwelt in Belgic Gaul and came under the common
appellation of Belgae. In addition to Cæsar's statement that the
Belgae as he learned, not supposed, were, for the most part of German
origin, we have detailed evidence that, of about eighteen States
composing Belgic Gaul, no fewer than eight, in Cæsar's time and long
after it, were still accounted to be German.
On the other hand, then and afterwards, a number of peoples reckoned
to be Celtic continued to inhabit countries to the east of the Rhine.
The Tencteri and the Usipetae, on the German side of the Rhine, were
Celts, according to Dio Cassius. Tacitus, speaking of the Helvetii and
the Boii, says that "both are Gallic nations," yet in another passage
he speaks of "the Boii, a nation of the Germans." Still further east
dwelt the Cotini and the Osi, of whom he writes: "The Cotini by their
use of the Gallic language and the Osi by their use of the Pannonic
language are proved not to be Germans": from which it appears that
language was the criterion by which the Romans were accustomed to
distinguish Germans from Celts. Again Tacitus writes: "The Triboci,
Vangiones and Nemetes are certainly Germans," but modern German
authorities recognise that the Triboci and Nemetes are Celtic in these
very names. Of the Aestyi, dwelling apparently on the northern
seaboard of Germany, Tacitus says that their language resembles that
of Britain.
Further evidence of Celtic occupation of regions considered German in
Cæsar's time and ever since then is afforded by a number of ancient
place-names. For example, there were two towns or stations named
Carrodunon, _i.e._ "wagon-fortress," one on the river Oder, the other
in the upper valley of the Vistula. Other Celtic place-names, like
Lugidunum, Eburodunum, Meliodunum, are found in central Germany.
Tacitus confirms the evidence of Cæsar to the effect that the Belgae
were a Germano-Celtic people who came westward over the Rhine and
conquered part of the country already occupied by the Celts. "Those,"
he says, "who first crossed the Rhine and expelled the Gauls were then
named Germans but now Tungri." The Tungri inhabited a part of Belgic
Gaul between the Nervii and the Treveri.
It seems to me, then, to be certain that the Belgae not only came into
Gaul from Germany, but were themselves a mixed population of Celts and
Germans speaking a Celtic dialect. Holder assigns their migration into
Gaul to the third century B.C. It is, however, undesirable to attempt
to fix anything but a somewhat extended period for migratory movements
of the kind. The instance of the Helvetii proves that down to Cæsar's
time the Celts in contact with the Germans were still in a very mobile
condition.
Before using the facts hitherto stated and the conclusions derived
from them to throw whatever light they can on the Celtic colonisation
of Ireland, it may be well to state in a general way what can be said
as to the stage of civilisation reached by the continental Celts
before their subjugation by the Romans.
Some modern writers, but not very recently, have written about a
Celtic Empire in ancient Europe. The nearest approach to authority for
the existence of such an empire is a statement by Livy, who says:
"While the elder Tarquin reigned in Rome, the supremacy among the
Celts belonged to the Bituriges. They gave a king to the Celtic land.
Ambigatus was his name, a very mighty man in valour and in his private
and public resources, under whose rule Gaul was so abounding in men
and in the fruits of the earth that it seemed impossible to govern so
great a population."
The most that can be made of this passage, supposing that Livy had it
on better authority than some other parts of his history, is that at
one time the Bituriges held what the Greeks called hegemony, a
political primacy among the Gauls, and this, too, only in the time of
a single king. It may reflect a genuine Celtic tradition, going back
to the time when the Celts were still a compact nation inhabiting a
relatively small territory.
When we come to contemporary evidence of the political condition of
the Celts, we find that everywhere on the continent and in Asia Minor,
their form of government resembles that of the Roman Republic. There
are no kings, and the power of the state is vested in a senate with
certain high executive officers. The Celtic form of government in
historical time was that of a patrician republic. The Celtic people
was divided into a large number of small states without any organised
superior power. From time to time, however, one or other of these
states might acquire a degree of political pre-eminence over a group
of neighbouring states, forming a loose federation in which it took
chief direction of the common affairs. We find the same tendency among
the states of ancient Greece. In Asia Minor, the three states of the
Galatae formed themselves into a strict federation, with a fixed
constitution, a common council of state and a common executive both
civil and military.
So far as I have been able to trace, wherever the Greeks and Romans
came in contact with Celts so as to acquire a closer knowledge of
Celtic affairs, they found this kind of patrician republican
government. Cæsar found no kings in Transalpine Gaul, and the
governing authority, when he mentions it, belongs to senates and
magistrates, _i.e._, chief officers of state. It was apparently so in
Spain a century earlier; and in distant Lusitania, corresponding to
the modern Portugal, the most western Celtic region on the continent,
in resisting the Roman conquest the chief command is held by Viriatus,
who is not called a king by the Roman and Greek historians, nor is any
king mentioned in his time. Nor do we read of kings in Cisalpine Gaul.
Thus from farthest east to farthest west, the patrician republican
form of government seems to have prevailed in all Celtic communities
with the probable exception of Ireland; and this was probably their
political condition as far back as 300 B.C., or earlier, before the
Galatians passed into Asia Minor.
At some earlier period, the Celts were undoubtedly governed by kings.
The word for king, represented by the Irish word _ri_, is widely
exemplified in ancient Celtic names. From it, as I have already
remarked, the Germanic languages took their word for kingdom or realm.
Sometimes it is found in the names of peoples, _e.g._, the Bituriges,
Caturiges, etc.; sometimes in the names of men, _e.g._, Dumnorix,
Ambiorix, Vercingetorix. We find evidence, too, of a strong
anti-monarchical sentiment, as among the Romans. The law of the
Helvetii made it a capital offence, under penalty of being burned
alive, to aim at autocratic power.
Not only the Celts, but the Germans of that time, were governed
without kings, as Tacitus records. He adds, however, that they
appointed kings to command them when they went to war. Here we have a
parallel to the Roman dictatorship, the vesting of the power of the
republic in the hands of a single ruler during a time of critical
warfare.
I have already mentioned the proficiency of the Celts in the
construction of wheeled vehicles, and the consequent deduction that
they were practised in the making of roads. The passage already quoted
from Livy shows that, with all their military ardour, they were known
to be active in agriculture; and this is corroborated by other ancient
authorities. The countries occupied by the Celts excelled in ordinary
agriculture not only during what we may call Celtic times but in
subsequent ages, and it is these countries that have furnished the
most excellent breeds of domestic animals--cattle, sheep, poultry,
dogs.
Originally an inland people, the Celts who occupied the seaboard soon
became proficient in navigation. Cæsar bears witness to their skill in
ship building, and he seems to have found no great difficulty in
collecting from the Belgic coast a sufficient fleet of ships to
transport his army and supplies to Britain.
From the Greek settlement at Massilia (Marseille) two arts especially
appear to have spread among the Celts of Transalpine Gaul: sculpture
and the use of letters. The remains of Celtic sculpture in Gaul show
evident signs of Greek origin. Cæsar makes the remarkable statement
that the Gauls in his time use Greek writing in almost all their
business, both public and private. The Romans of Cæsar's time had not
long emerged, under Greek influence, from a state of comparative
illiteracy, as every student of Latin literature must recognise. Among
the spoils of the Helvetii captured by Cæsar, he found a complete
census of the people written in Greek characters. Inscriptions in the
Celtic language before the Roman conquest are in Greek characters,
except in Cisalpine Gaul, where the characters are Etruscan.
On the subject of ancient Celtic art on the continent, reference may
be made to the book by Romilly Allen, from which also a good idea of
the skill and taste of the Celts in metal work may be obtained.
In general, it is clear that the Celts were a highly progressive
people with a strong civilising tendency. Under the Druids, the
western Celts developed a system of education and some kind of
philosophy. With regard to their religion and to the part played by
the Druids in Celtic life, I have summarised my own studies in a
brochure entitled "Celtic Religion," which is published by the
Catholic Truth Society of England.
II. THE CELTIC COLONISATION OF IRELAND AND BRITAIN
In the preceding lecture, I have claimed to show that, so far as
positive knowledge goes, the period of Celtic expansion from
Mid-Europe lies between the years 600 B.C. and 250 B.C. The spread of
the Celtic peoples and of their power was arrested by a movement of
German expansion on the north, beginning perhaps about 200 B.C., and
by the growth of the Roman Empire, for which a starting point may be
found in the final subjugation of Etruria, 265 B.C. I have also
claimed to show that there was a large northward expansion of the
Celts, resulting in a partial fusion of Celts and Germans, and that
this Celto-Germanic population was afterwards for the most part, but
not all, forced westward across the Rhine by the more purely German
population, and was represented by the Belgae of Cæsar's time.
From the objects discovered at Hallstatt, the early period of Celtic
art in the Iron Age is called by archæologists the Hallstatt period.
It is succeeded by a later stage and higher development of ornamental
art, exemplified in discoveries at La Tène in Switzerland. The period
in which this higher development is found has been named the La Tène
period; but the same stage of Celtic art is exemplified by objects
discovered in the valley of the Marne in northern France, and the term
"Marnian period" is used by French archæologists as an equivalent of
"La Tène period." So far as I am aware these Marnian remains represent
the earliest known substantial appearance of Celtic work, of Celtic
activities of any kind, in the north-western parts of Europe. The La
Tène or Marnian period is estimated to begin about 400 B.C., and not
earlier than 500 B.C. This estimated date is an important part of the
evidence that goes to establish the date of the Celtic migrations to
Britain and Ireland.
Before going more fully into the evidence, it is necessary to deal
with the theory which at present holds the field in British
archæology, and which is based principally on the authority of the
late Sir John Rhys. So completely has his theory dominated, that we
find it stated in summary in books for general instruction. I find a
good exemplification in the volume on Lincolnshire of the Cambridge
County Geographies, a series devised for school study and general
information. The following paragraph purports to tell us how Britain
was peopled before the Roman occupation:
"We may now pause for a moment," says the writer, "to consider who
these people were who inhabited our land in these far-off ages. Of
Palæolithic man we can say nothing. His successors, the people of the
Later Stone Age, are believed to have been largely of Iberian
stock--people, that is, from south-western Europe--who brought with
them their knowledge of such primitive arts and crafts as were then
discovered. How long they remained in undisturbed possession of our
land we do not know, but they were later conquered or driven westward
by a very different race of Celtic origin--the Goidels or Gaels, a
tall light-haired people, workers in bronze, whose descendants and
language are to be found to-day in many parts of Scotland, Ireland,
and the Isle of Man. Another Celtic people poured into the country
about the fourth century b.c.--the Brythons or Britons, who in turn
dispossessed the Gaels, at all events as far as England and Wales are
concerned. The Brythons were the first users of iron in our country."
So far the quotation. The writer is a man of scientific education, a
master of arts, a doctor of medicine, and a Fellow of the Society of
Antiquaries. This is the age of science, not of credulity, and in
matters of science men of scientific education are believed to require
scientific proof before they state anything as a fact. If it is the
age of science, it is also the age of invention. The statements made
in the passage I have quoted are definite enough. In fairness to their
writer, however, I shall quote his next paragraph, in which this
definite assurance is somewhat qualified:
"The Romans," he writes, "who first reached our shores in B.C. 55,
held the land till about A.D. 410; but in spite of the length of their
domination they do not seem to have left much mark on the people.
After their departure, treading close on their heels, came the Saxons,
Jutes, and Angles. But with these, and with the incursions of the
Danes and Irish, we have left the uncertain region of the Prehistoric
Age for the surer ground of History."
From what is said just afterwards on the surer ground of History, we
are prepared in some measure to assess the value of what has been
said, very definitely indeed, in the uncertain region of the
Prehistoric Age:
"Of the Celtic population of this county [Lincolnshire]," we are told
in continuation, "at the time of the Roman invasion, but few traces
are left, thus contrasting greatly with what has happened in counties
such as Somerset, Cornwall, and the wilder parts of Wales, and the
Lake district, where the Brythons (hence the name Britain) fled before
the Roman advance and later from the Saxons. These Celts, belonging to
the tribe of Coritani, have left little impression on the names of
places (Lincoln itself being an exception), and probably none on the
actual people of Lincolnshire. On the other hand, the Saxon invasion
and settlement must have been complete early in the sixth century."
Now let us consider first what the English reader and student is asked
to believe in regard of the effect of strictly historical movements on
the population of an English county. "The Romans," we are told, during
about four centuries of occupation, "do not seem to have left much
mark on the people." The writer's object is to show from what early
population elements the modern population is composed. By what tokens
does he assure us that the prolonged Roman occupation left no
permanent element behind? Is it by the scarcity of Roman noses in the
Lincolnshire of to-day? Let us regard the facts.
For generation after generation, the Romans sent legion after legion
of their soldiers into Britain. These legionaries were not all
Italians. They were recruited from various parts of the Roman Empire.
We know that one of the Roman emperors, holding command in Britain,
took a woman of British birth to wife, and that Constantine the Great
was their child. Are we asked to believe that the thousands upon
thousands of Roman legionaries in Britain lived a life of celibacy,
and left no descendants after them? The city of Lincoln was itself no
mere military station but a Roman colony, Lindi Colonia, and the
volume from which I quote shows that Lincolnshire has produced very
extensive traces of its Roman occupation, civil as well as military.
The county appears to have contained no fewer than six Roman military
stations, and was traversed by four Roman roads.
In the preceding lecture, I have alluded to that common illusion of
popular history through which people are led to imagine that the
migratory conquests of ancient times led to the extermination of the
older inhabitants by the newcomers. On this same illusion, lodged in
the mind of a man of scientific education, is based the notion that
the Roman occupation left no mark, in the ethnographical sense, on the
later population. We find the definite expression of this illusion in
the words in which the writer professes to account for the total
disappearance of the Celtic population of Lincolnshire, on whose
people, he says, still speaking ethnographically, the Celts have
probably left no impression. "The Brythons," he tells us, "fled
before the Roman advance." Bear well in mind that we are now on the
surer ground of history. The Roman conquest of Britain was completed
by Agricola in the year 80 of the Christian era. We have the account
of this conquest from a contemporary authority, Tacitus, who was
son-in-law to the conqueror, Agricola. In a remarkable passage,
Tacitus tells how the Britons behaved after Agricola had warred down
their pride:
"During the following winter," he writes, "Agricola was occupied in
carrying out a most salutary policy. The Britons were a rude people,
dwelling in the open country, and for that reason they were readily
disposed to war. Agricola's aim was to reduce them to peace and a life
of ease by ministering to their pleasures. He exhorted them in private
and assisted them in public to build temples, places of assembly, and
houses. [He means, in the Roman manner, and obviously refers
especially to the noble and wealthy of the Britons.] Those who were
quick to act in this way he praised, those who were reluctant he
punished; so that they could not avoid competing with each other for
distinction. He set about providing the culture of a liberal education
for the sons of their chief men, and he used to award the Britons the
palm of excellence over the Gauls in their studies, so that those who
not long before refused to speak the Roman tongue were now actually
eager to exhibit their eloquence in Latin. Even our fashion of dress
became honourable among them, and the toga was quite generally worn.
By degrees they yielded to the attractive apparatus of vices, lounging
in covered walks, frequenting public baths, and enjoying elegant
banquets." The comment of the Imperial historian on the real aim and
character of this "salutary policy" carried out by his father-in-law
has a cynical frankness which is quite refreshing in comparison with
the studied attitude of moral justification that we might expect from
a modern Tacitus: "And this," he says, "was called civilisation by the
ignorant Britons, whereas it was in fact an element of their
enslavement."
We have here a graphic picture of the British nobility, under
distinguished patronage, making themselves familiar with the luxuries
and vices of Imperial Rome, and their sons at school learning to
become eloquent Dempseys in the conqueror's tongue. Compare it with
Dr. Sympson's statement on the surer ground of History: "The Brythons
fled before the Roman advance," to take refuge in the remoter and
wilder parts of the island. Having already fled before the Romans,
they again fled, we are told, before the Saxons. There is just as much
historical foundation for the one statement as for the other. I
remember reading, in one of Archbishop Trench's works on the origin
and growth of the English language, a list of words which passed from
the ancient British tongue into Anglo-Saxon--most of them being names
of things used in ordinary rural industry, and the conclusion drawn
from this class of words, that, under the Anglo-Saxon conquest and
occupation, the menial work of the country continued to be done by
the conquered Britons. There is an old yarn about a whaling crew in
the northern seas. The cold was so intense that, when the seamen tried
to speak, the words were frozen hard as they came from their lips and
could be heard falling on the deck. It must have been under the
operation of some similarly marvellous phenomenon, shall we say the
excessive coolness of the Anglo-Saxons, that they were able to capture
and preserve the vocabulary of the fugitive Britons.
In my first lecture, I have attempted to trace the somewhat academic
origin and growth of the modern Celtic consciousness. The Anglo-Saxon
consciousness has a very similar history. It begins in learned circles
of the reign of Elizabeth, when, under the stimulus of the Anglican
controversy and the special patronage of Archbishop Parker, a keen
interest was aroused in the remains of Anglo-Saxon literature. The
Anglo-Saxon craze appears to reach its high-water mark in some
American universities. I wonder if it will survive the war. The
compiler of the Cambridge Geography of Lincolnshire has outdone Attila
himself in extermination. He has completely wiped out five successive
populations to make Lincolnshire an exclusive habitat for pure-blooded
Low Germans.
Let us now return to the paragraph which summarizes Sir John Rhys's
theory of the peopling of prehistoric Britain. Its first article is
this: "Of Palæolithic man we can say nothing," and we pass on to "his
successors." The people who inhabited Britain in the Early Stone Age
are extirpated in a phrase of six words. It is a less interesting, if
less appalling fate than that which overtook Parthalon's people in the
Book of Invasions. They all died of a plague, and then apparently the
dead buried their dead in "the plague-cemetery of Parthalon's
people"--Támhlacht Mhuinntire Parthalóin, now called Tallaght.
Let us take up another current handbook of popular instruction, the
volume entitled "Prehistoric Britain," by Dr. Munro, in the Home
University Library series. The date of writing is 1913; the same as
the date of the Cambridge volume on Lincolnshire. Dr. Munro discusses
a certain type of skulls found in various parts of England. "All of
these," he says (p. 234), "are usually assigned to the Neolithic
period (the later Stone Age), and represent the prevailing type of
Englishman at the commencement of that period, and probably also in
the latter part of the Palæolithic period (the Early Stone Age). The
skulls mentioned may represent British men and women living thousands
of years apart. They clearly belong to the same race, which, for lack
of a better, we may name 'the river-bed race.' IT IS THE PREVAILING
TYPE IN ENGLAND TO-DAY, and from the scanty evidence at our disposal
we may presume that it _has been_ the dominant form many thousands of
years.... All trace of this race has disappeared in Switzerland,
whereas in England, in spite of invasion of Saxon, Jute, Dane and
Norman, it still thrives abundantly." And further he says (p. 235):
"According to Dr. Keith, Palæolithic blood is as rife in the British
people of to-day as in those of the European continent--a conclusion,"
adds Dr. Munro, "which entirely meets with the present writer's
views."
Thus we see that, according to two eminent British authorities, the
race which inhabited Britain in the Early Stone Age is still the
prevalent type in that island, and has not been displaced by Celt or
Roman or Anglo-Saxon.
[It is, however, due to Dr. Sympson to say that a year earlier, in
1912, Dr. Munro, as he himself observes, thought it "possible that (at
the close of the Early Stone Age) the Palæolithic people would shrink
back to Europe and thus, for a time, leave a gap in the continuity of
human life in Britain" (p. 236); and this, he says, was formerly the
general idea.]
The second population of Britain, "the people of the Later Stone Age,"
says Dr. Sympson, "are believed to have been largely of Iberian
stock--people, that is, from south-western Europe."
Before the discovery of "the law of gravity" and of the operation of
atmospheric pressure, the old-fashioned scientists used to explain the
rising of water in a pump by saying that "Nature abhors a vacuum."
There is no doubt that when the human mind becomes interested in any
department of knowledge and inquiry, it abhors a vacuum, and this very
laudable abhorrence often leaves the mind a victim to almost any
plausible and positive effort to fill the vacuum. That is why such a
very precise and particular term as Iberian comes so handy and brings
so much satisfaction. Ethnologists, however, are agreed that in
prehistoric times, before the Celts had invaded south-western Europe,
there were already at least two very distinct races in that region,
and that both are still well represented in it. To speak of them as
one race, and to call that race Iberian, or to use the term "Iberian"
without distinguishing between them, is merely filling the vacuum.
Rhys has succeeded in popularising the term "Iberian" as a name for
the population which occupied Britain and Ireland before the first
coming of the Celts, and he has identified the Picts with this Iberian
stock. Politics, as well as war, is eager to turn to account the
services of science. There is, perhaps, no more acute and more highly
educated mind in England of to-day than that of Mr. Arthur Balfour. I
wish to remark here that I am only dealing with certain prevalent
views about ancient history, and that I am not arguing politically one
way or the other. But Mr. Balfour, in a written document supporting
certain political views of his with regard to the political claims of
a certain proportion of the Irish people, gave it as a reason for
rejecting the claims in question, that the people of Ireland were in a
large degree of the Iberian race, descendants of the primitive
inhabitants during the Later Stone Age. As for any political
controversy on that point, I have nothing at all to say. I should
prefer to hear it discussed between Mr. Balfour and the Portuguese
ambassador to London. I do confess that I am very curious to know
what political conclusion Mr. Balfour would derive from the scientific
conclusion of Dr. Keith and Dr. Munro, that the prevailing type in the
English population of to-day represents something still more primitive
than Sir John Rhys's Iberians, and is the survival of that "river-bed
race" who, in the words of Dr. Munro, were "miserable shell-eaters."
In Sir John Rhys's theory, the Iberians of the Later Stone Age are
succeeded by the Goidels or Gaels, of Celtic origin, who introduced
the Bronze Age in Britain and also in Ireland. Many centuries after
these came the Brythons, who introduced the Iron Age, and drove the
Gaels out of the greater part of England. Dr. Sympson says that the
Brythons of that invasion drove the Gaels out of Wales also, but for
this he has no warrant from Sir John Rhys. According to Rhys, the
Gaels continued to occupy the more westerly parts of the island, even
after the Roman occupation.
Rhys's theory is still more elaborate. The three divisions of Gaul
with which Cæsar begins the account of his Gallic war are familiar to
students of Latin. Rhys equates his Neolithic Iberians of Britain and
Ireland with the Iberian element in Aquitanian Gaul and Spain, his
Bronze-Age Goidels or Gaels with the Celtae of Cæsar's Gallia Celtica,
and his Iron-Age Brythons of England with the Belgae of Cæsar's Gallia
Belgica. He goes still farther with this process of equation. Finding
that the consonant Q, where it occurs in the most ancient forms of
the Irish language, is replaced by P in the corresponding forms of the
British or ancient Welsh language, he divides the Celts into two
linguistic groups which he labels the Q-Celts and the P-Celts, and
this division he makes to correspond to the other classification into
Celtae and Belgae. In this way, he produces a most interesting and
symmetrical set of equations showing the successive stages of
population-change in Britain.
First, there are the people of the Early Stone Age, not named.
Secondly, the people of the Later Stone Age, Iberians.
Thirdly, the people of the Bronze Age, Goidels or Gaels, or Celtae, or
Q-Celts.
Fourthly, the people of the Iron Age, Brythons or Britons, or Belgae,
or P-Celts.
For the present, let us pass away from the Iberians, and consider the
theory as it concerns the Celtic migrations to Britain and Ireland.
The earliest known habitat of the Celts is the region to the north of
the Alps. The earliest definitely known migration of the Celts is
their southward movement into Northern Italy. For this migration no
earlier date than 600 B.C. is assigned.
The chief authority on the Bronze Age in Ireland belongs to the late
Mr. George Coffey. In his book on the subject, "The Bronze Age in
Ireland," he hesitates to date the close of the Stone Age and the
introduction of the Copper Period as far back as 2500 B.C., which is
the approximate date estimated by Montelius. He puts the close of the
Copper Period between 2000 and 1800 B.C. and the first period of the
true Bronze Age between 1800 and 1500 B.C. Now, according to the
theory prevalent in Britain, the first Celtic invaders introduced the
Bronze Age, and these were the Gaels or Goidels. If we accept this
view and combine it with the best archæological authority, we shall
conclude that the Celts reached Ireland at least 1,200 years before
they are known to have entered Italy--that they pushed out to a
distant island in the ocean more than a millennium before they
occupied the fertile and attractive plains which lay on their very
borders.
But, it may be objected, is it not possible that the Celts of the
Bronze Age had settled far away from the Alps, on the coasts of
north-western Europe. Possible, perhaps, but what is the value of mere
possibilities? We have seen it stated, and the Cambridge handbook is
only a specimen of many publications that accept the view, stated most
definitely that the Gaelic branch of the Celts introduced the Bronze
Age to Britain and Ireland. Surely something more than a mere
possibility, some shade or degree of probability should appear in
support of teaching so positive.
Now let us suppose that the dominant Bronze Age population of Britain
and Ireland were Celts, as we are instructed to believe. Let us see
what would follow from this position. It would follow, beyond
question, that the peculiar art and works of the Bronze Age in Britain
and Ireland would be mainly connected with the art and works of the
Bronze Age in those parts of Europe which were likewise inhabited by
Celts, rather than with other parts of the Continent. I cannot find
that any such connection has been established or is believed in by
archæologists.
The Brythons, we are told, were Belgic invaders who introduced the
Iron Age. Not the faintest probability has been brought forward to
establish this very precise and positive doctrine. Coffey places the
close of the Bronze Age in Ireland and the coming of iron into general
use at about 350 B.C. It is admitted that the Celts of central Europe
were in possession of iron about four centuries earlier. This affords
a most cogent argument that, during the intervening four centuries,
there was no such social and industrial continuity between central
Europe and these islands as must undoubtedly have been if both regions
and the intervening parts of the Continent had been occupied by Celtic
populations.
Again, if the Brythons or Belgic Celts, armed with iron, were able to
cross the channel and displace the western Celts in Britain, it would
surely have been much easier for them to cross the Marne and the Seine
and displace the western Celts in Gaul. The theory seems to presuppose
that an invasion was necessary to bring the Iron Age into Britain, but
the same theory would have it that the Iron Age found its way into
Ireland without any invasion, for it leaves the Bronze Age Goidels of
Ireland to learn the use of iron in some more pleasant way than by
meeting iron-headed spears in the hands of Belgic conquerors.
It is certain that after the withdrawal of the Roman legions from
Britain and after the Anglo-Saxon invasions, there were Gaelic
populations in various parts of western Britain, in Argyllshire, North
and South Wales, and the Cornish peninsula. Rhys supposed these to be
the remnants of the Gaelic population which, in his view, had occupied
all England during the Bronze Age. There is sufficient evidence to
show that they were fresh settlements made by the Irish of Ireland
during and after the collapse of the Roman power in Britain.
The "P and Q" element in the theory is equally unsound. It is certain
that, where the Irish Celts retained the consonant Q in their
language, the British Celts replaced it by P. But no such distinction
has been shown to have existed between the language of the western
Celts and the language of the Belgic Celts on the Continent. Such
phonetic changes as the substitution of P for Q spread in an almost
mysterious way through languages. Their spread may be arrested by a
geographical barrier so considerable as the Irish Sea, but it was not
at all likely to have been brought to a stand by the waters of the
Seine and Marne. Nor can a phonetic change of the kind be taken as
necessarily corresponding to any racial or political boundaries. In
all the western dialects of Latin which grew into the Romance
languages, the initial W of Germanic words was changed into GW, and
this identical change also took place in the Welsh language, but not
in Irish. It took place in Spanish, yet that does not appear to prove
that the Welsh are more near akin to the Spaniards than they are to
the Irish, nor, if history happened to be silent, would it prove that
Britain after the Roman occupation was peopled by a Spanish invasion
which did not extend to Ireland.
There is one serious argument which has been adduced in support of the
view that Britain was in Celtic occupation during the Bronze Age. The
existence of the word _kassiteros_, meaning "tin," is traced in the
Greek language as far back as about 900 B.C. There seems very good
reason for thinking that _kassiteros_ was a Celtic word adopted into
Greek. From this it is argued that the metal itself came from the
Celts to the Greeks, which seems reasonable enough. It is further
argued that the Celts must accordingly have been in possession of the
country which produced the metal, and that this country was Britain.
The conclusion is that the Celts were in occupation of Britain earlier
than 900 B.C. It seems to me, however, that the fact, granting it to
be a fact, that the metal tin reached the Greeks bearing a Celtic name
is by no means proof that it came from a country inhabited at the time
by Celts. If you visit the Zoological Gardens in the Phœnix Park, you
will be invited, before you reach the entrance, to purchase for the
delectation of the monkeys a certain vegetable product, the name of
which, upon inquiry, you will learn to be "pea-nuts." No one will be
rash enough to deny that "pea-nuts" is an English word. I have not
the least idea where pea-nuts grow, but I am quite certain that the
fact of their being named "pea-nuts" is no proof that they grow in
England or in any English-speaking country. It is very good proof,
however, if proof were needed, that the trade in pea-nuts has passed
through the hands of English-speaking people. If _kassiteros_ is a
Celtic word, as I think it very probably is, it proves no more than
that, when the Greeks learned this Celtic name for tin, the trade in
tin passed towards them through the hands of a Celtic-speaking people.
If it was British tin, which again is not improbable, I suggest that
it came to Greece by an overland route through the Celtic region in
Mid-Europe, probably along the Rhine and the Danube or to the head of
the Adriatic. As a matter of fact, the Greek writer Poseidonios states
that in his time British tin reached the Mediterranean by an overland
route. "It is brought," he says, "on horses through the interior of
the Celtic country to the people of Massilia and to the city called
Narbon."
There is, then, no evidence from archæology, history, or language,
sufficient to establish even a moderate degree of probability for the
theory of a Celtic occupation of Ireland or Britain during the Bronze
Age.
On the other hand, taking Coffey's approximate date of 350 B.C. as the
beginning of the period of the general use of iron in Ireland, we
shall, I think, find sufficient evidence to warrant the belief that
the Celts reached Britain and Ireland about that time, and not
earlier, at all events not considerably earlier than that time.
Why not earlier? I think we have conclusive grounds for believing that
the Celtic migrations to Ireland cannot have begun very much, if at
all, sooner than the fourth century B.C. Before stating these grounds,
let us ask is there any discoverable reason for supposing that the
Gaels inhabited Ireland from a time many centuries farther back. I
think it possible that those who in modern times have entertained this
view have been influenced by the dates assigned to the Gaelic
immigration by Irish writers like the Four Masters and Keating. These
dates may be taken to correspond closely enough with the estimates of
archæological authorities for the commencement of the insular Bronze
Age, and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it might be
imagined that they were founded on some basis of tradition.
It is not the habit of popular tradition to encumber itself with
chronology. There is no known instance of ancient reckoning in years
and periods of years that is not based on some era, on the accepted
date of some real or supposed event or events. Nowhere in Irish
tradition has any trace been found of the existence of a native system
of chronology before the introduction of Christian learning. In a
paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (July,
1910), I have shown how the extant written chronology of the Irish
Invasions was first originated. The method was not unlike Sir John
Rhys's series of equations.
The Irish historian found in Latin histories a set of definite epochs
by which antiquity was divided: the beginning of the Assyrian empire,
the beginning of the Median empire, the beginning of the Persian
empire, the usurpation of the Magi in Persia, and the beginning of
Alexander's empire. The chronology of the Irish Invasions was settled
by the easy process of making each invasion coincide exactly in time
with each of these epochs. It is evident that no traditional value can
be attached to a chronological system of this kind.
But, it may be objected, the very remoteness of the time assigned to
the Gaelic invasion by Irish historians may reflect the popular belief
in its remoteness. If that be so, then the earlier the historian is
the more near he is to the popular tradition. In the paper just cited,
I have shown that, in the earliest known version of this chronology of
the Invasions, the Gaelic migration to Ireland coincides with the date
of Alexander's empire, 331 B.C. That is not very far from the date
assigned by Coffey for the end of the Bronze Age in Ireland, about 350
B.C. For my own part, I attach no traditional value to this
coincidence, but if it pleases anyone to insist that Irish prehistoric
chronology has a traditional value, then it must be conceded that
tradition, as far as it is valid, is altogether favourable to the view
that the Gaelic occupation of Ireland belongs to the end, and not to
the beginning, of the Bronze Age.
The migratory movements of the Celts on the Continent have a bearing
which cannot be ignored on the time of the Celtic migrations to
Britain and Ireland. So far as I am aware, no modern investigator has
suggested that the Celts were not already in the Iron Age at the time
of their expansion into Italy and Spain. Why then should it be
imagined, in the absence of any positive indication to the purpose,
that they occupied these islands more than a thousand years earlier?
If I am not mistaken, the archæological evidence is fairly decisive on
the point. Archæologists are agreed in dividing the Celtic Iron Age
into two main periods, the Early Celtic or Hallstatt period, and the
Late Celtic or La Tène period, also called the Marnian period. Each of
these periods is taken to consist roundly of about four centuries, and
the two periods on the Continent together correspond roughly to the
last eight or nine centuries before the Christian Era. The Late Celtic
period is abundantly represented in the antiquities of Great Britain
and Ireland, but the objects that have been found in either country
belonging to the Early Celtic Period are extremely rare. On this head
Coffey writes as follows ("Bronze Age in Ireland," page 5):
"It must be remembered that the Continental Hallstatt period is not at
present well represented in Great Britain and Ireland, and though,
under Hallstatt influence, certain Continental Iron-Age types such as
bronze caldrons, trumpets, round shields, etc., found their way into
Ireland, we cannot as yet definitely separate this period from the end
of the Bronze Age."
In fact, "sporadic finds" are all that represent the Early Celtic
period in Ireland, in Britain, and even in the neighbouring regions of
the Continent. It will not be questioned that during the Hallstatt
period there was quite sufficient intercourse of trade between the
islands and the Continent to explain these sporadic finds as
importations.
The main fact is that, so far as archæological research has
ascertained, the Early Celtic period of the Iron Age is substantially
absent from Ireland and Britain, whereas the Late Celtic period is
abundantly represented. The Bronze Age in Ireland comes down to about
350 B.C., and its Continental affinities are not specially or notably
Celtic. The Bronze Age is succeeded in both Britain and Ireland by the
Late Celtic period of the Iron Age. The inference, to my mind, is
obvious, that the Celts did not reach either Britain or Ireland until
the Late Celtic period, _i.e._, until the fourth or fifth century B.C.
This conclusion agrees well with all that is known of the migratory
movements of the Celts on the Continent.
Let us now revert to the Belgic migrations and consider their bearing
on the matter of the Celtic colonisation of Ireland. The Belgae, we
have seen, were a Celto-Germanic group which, according to Cæsar and
Tacitus, occupied the lands stretching from the Rhine to the Seine and
Marne, and expelled from that region the Celtae proper. There is no
indication in what Cæsar says that in his time this movement was one
of remote antiquity. In fact, it is perfectly clear that it was a
movement by no means exhausted but still in active progress when he
took command of the Roman armies in Gaul. The attempted migration of
the Helvetii in the first year of his command, B.C. 58, was a part of
this movement. A little later, Cæsar had to repel similar attempts of
the Usipetes and the Tencteri to cross the middle Rhine and settle in
Gaul; and these, according to Dio, were two Celtic peoples. Still
later, in the time of Augustus, the Ubii migrated from the eastern to
the western side of the Rhine. From all this it is clear that the
Belgic migration was a continuous movement and that its force was far
from being spent at the time of the Roman conquest of the country west
of the Rhine. Cæsar indicates that there were powerful Belgic
settlements west of the Rhine during the great wandering movement of
the Cimbri and the Teutones, _i.e._, about half a century before he
began his Gallic campaigns. There is nothing, however, to show that
these settlements were of earlier date than the second century B.C.,
and I have seen no reason for thinking that they could have been much
earlier.
We now come to the question of the Belgic invasion of Britain and its
probable date. In Rhys's theory, which is still accepted in England,
the Belgic invaders were the first to establish the Iron Age in
Britain. I claim to have shown good grounds for believing that there
was no Celtic occupation of Britain before the Iron Age. I have
already suggested that, if this Celto-Germanic movement was brought to
a standstill on the banks of the Marne, it was not likely to have
succeeded in over-running all England at the commencement of the Iron
Age in England. It will be seen that the Celto-Germanic migrations
extended not merely to Britain but also to Ireland, and I suggest that
if these Celto-German Belgae had been the first people to come over
armed with iron, they would have made an easy conquest of Ireland as
well as of England.
Let us look at the actual evidence of the Belgic conquest of England.
The sole historical witness on the point is Julius Cæsar, and this is
his testimony:
"The interior of Britain is inhabited by those who say that, according
to tradition they are natives of the island; the maritime part by
those who had crossed over from Belgium [meaning Belgic Gaul] for the
sake of plunder, nearly all of whom are called by the same names of
states as the states from which they originated and came thither, and
having made war they settled permanently there and began to till the
land."
From this it is clear that Cæsar was informed of two populations in
Britain, one which was more ancient and claimed to be native, another
which resulted from comparatively recent invasion. The older
population he assigned to the interior, the more recent to the
seaboard. What did Cæsar mean by the seaboard, the maritime part? Sir
John Rhys has no difficulty in supposing that Cæsar did not mean the
whole seaboard of Britain or if he did mean it that he was not fully
informed, for according to Rhys's theory, the older population, which
he supposed to be Gaelic, continued to inhabit the western seaboard of
England and Wales. I also agree that, whatever Cæsar may have
understood, his statement about the maritime part must be taken in a
restricted sense, for no one believes that the Celtic occupation in
Cæsar's time extended to the seaboard of the northern parts of the
island. I agree also with the view that the traditional natives of
whom Cæsar speaks probably included the earlier Celtic colonists,
whose settlements dated, according to my argument, from the fourth
century B.C., about three centuries before Cæsar's time. The more
recent maritime settlements, in that case, would have been very recent
in his time, and I think that his statement leads us to that
conclusion. These later settlers on the seaboard, he tells us, are
known collectively by the same names as the states on the Continent
from which they originated. Now this is a statement about a fact
likely to be within Cæsar's personal knowledge. He was certainly well
acquainted with the names of the states of Belgic Gaul, and there is
no reason why he should have said that populations retaining the same
names existed in his time on the British coast if he did not know it
to be a fact. His testimony on this point, touching a matter within
the scope of his personal observation, is of higher evidential value
than any other part of the statement quoted. Cæsar does not himself
name these states, but in the two following centuries the names of the
various states of Britain are given by Ptolemy and other writers, and
when we compare these names with those of the states of Belgic Gaul,
we find that they coincide only in three instances. These are the
Parisii on the foreland north of the Humber, the Atrebatii in the
district of Berkshire, and the Belgae, eastward from these to the
Bristol Channel. There are some eighteen other states enumerated in
Britain, so that the coincidence of names amounts to only one in
seven, a proportion which by no means corresponds to Cæsar's words,
_fere omnes_, "nearly all." Except for the Parisii, who occupied the
promontory north of the Humber, the states bearing names also found in
Belgic Gaul are located in southern England, south of the Thames and
the Bristol Channel. One of these, and the most extensive, bears the
general name Belgae, which certainly does not suggest that the
remainder of the population was also Belgic. Now the _fere omnes_,
"nearly all," in Cæsar's statement cannot refer to such a small
minority of the states of Britain. Therefore, either Cæsar was grossly
in error, in which case there is not much to be built on his whole
statement, or, if he stated the truth, which is much more likely, then
there were Belgic settlements on the British seaboard in his time
which had lost their identity and passed into insignificance a century
later. This I take to be true, for it will be seen that there were
also Belgic settlements on the Irish coast after Cæsar's time and that
as states they had disappeared a few centuries later. It is indeed
quite possible that the Belgae so named, in southern England,
consisted of a collection of colonies from various states of Belgic
Gaul, whose names were preserved in Cæsar's time, but not one of which
was sufficiently populous or otherwise considerable to be worth naming
by later writers. There may have been similar Belgic colonies on other
parts of the southern and eastern seaboard of Britain, none of them
considerable enough to be reckoned as a state. At all events, I submit
that Cæsar's statement, far from justifying the assumption of a Belgic
conquest on a grand scale, comprising the greater part of Celtic
Britain, is rather contrary to that assumption; also, that it cannot
reasonably be taken to refer to settlements made in Britain at the
close of the Bronze Age three or four centuries before Cæsar's time.
I have referred to the existence at one time of Celto-Germanic
settlements on the coast of Ireland. The authority on the point is
Ptolemy the geographer, who flourished about A.D. 150. In the
south-eastern angle of Ireland, the region of Wexford, he places a
population named Brigantes. There was a very extensive state of this
name in the north of Roman Britain. Its territory extended across the
country from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. Whether the Brigantes
were or were not Belgic colonists in Britain and Ireland, I find no
means to determine. North of the Brigantes, on the Leinster coast,
Ptolemy locates the Manapii. It can hardly be doubted that these were
a Belgic people, a branch of the Menapii,[2] whose territory on the
Continent lay in parts of the countries now called Belgium and
Holland. North of the Manapii on the Leinster coast, Ptolemy places
the Cauci. The topography of Ireland from the time of Saint Patrick
onward is very copious and minute, but no trace has been discovered in
it of these three peoples in the location ascribed to them by
Ptolemy. It seems to me possible that the Manapii may be represented
in later times by a scattered people called the Monaigh or Manaigh.
Some of these dwelt in eastern Ulster, near Belfast. Another branch of
them dwelt in the west of Ulster, and their name is preserved in that
of the county Fermanagh. It is interesting to note that the Irish
genealogists derive the origin of both from Leinster. The only trace
known to me in Irish tradition of a people similarly named on the
south-eastern seaboard is found in the name of Forgall Monach, the
father of Emer who was wife of Cú Chulainn. Who were the Cauci? Their
name, in the Germanic form Chauci, was that of a people of the German
seaboard bordering on the North Sea, who are described in Smith's
_Ancient Geography_ as "skilful navigators and much addicted to
piracy." Tacitus praises them for their love of justice and says that,
though ready for war, they do not provoke war. It must be remembered,
however, that Tacitus was an extreme "pro-German." Elsewhere, he tells
of incursions made by them against neighbouring peoples. We find,
then, two peoples, the Menapii and the Chauci, on the Belgic and
German shores of the North Sea, and also on the Leinster shores of the
Irish Sea; and this shows that in Ireland as well as in Britain there
were Celto-Germanic settlements about the beginning of the Christian
era.
[Footnote 2: The syllables _en_ and _an_ are found interchangeable in
many Celtic words, perhaps varying according to dialect.]
Cæsar is the earliest known writer to give the name Brittania to the
island of Britain and the name Brittani to its people. In earlier
writings the name of the island is Albion. In Cæsar's term Brittani,
there seems to be a confusion of two existing names, one Brittani, the
name of a small local population, the other Pretani which is
recognised to be a British and probably Gaulish equivalent of the
Irish name for the Picts, Cruithin, more anciently Qreteni. Cæsar
fixed the name Brittani in Latin usage, but the form Pretanoi
continued after his time to be used by Greek writers. Polybius and
Ptolemy apply the adjective Pretanic to the two islands, and a still
later geographical tract in Greek says, "the Pretanic islands are two
in number one called Albion and the other Ierne." The Pretanic islands
means the Pictish islands, and this name for them must have been taken
from the Gauls. It points to a time before the Celtic occupation, when
the Pretani or Picts were still regarded as the principal people of
both islands. Here we have another indication of the relatively late
period of the Celtic occupation. Cæsar learned that the natives of
Britain had some curious marital customs which he did not observe
among the Gauls, including the Belgae, on the Continent. A later
writer, Solinus, in whose time the customs of the Britons were more
intimately known to the Romans, ascribes a similar custom, not to the
Britons but to the inhabitants of the Hebrides. Both accounts are
based on a well-established fact, recorded also in Irish writings, the
custom of matriarchy which was peculiar to the Picts. Cæsar's
statement is readily explained, if we understand that the Gauls, from
whom his information was likely to have been derived, still spoke of
Britain and Ireland as the Pictish islands, and regarded this social
custom, which was foreign to them, as a Pictish custom. In the time of
Solinus, the Romans knew that the Picts were limited to the northern
parts of Britain, and the story is accordingly told of the people of
the Hebrides. If a custom peculiar to the Picts was spoken of in
Cæsar's time as common to the inhabitants of Britain, and if Britain
and Ireland were then still regarded in Gaul as Pictish islands, I
suggest that this was because the Celts of Gaul did not look upon the
two islands as having been mainly occupied from any remote period by a
people akin to themselves.
The conclusions which I wish to draw in this lecture are: that neither
Britain nor Ireland was colonised by the Celts until the Late Celtic
period, corresponding to the period which followed the Bronze Age in
these countries; that the Belgic or Celto-Germanic settlements were of
still later date, and extended to Ireland as well as Britain; that the
Belgic settlements in England were not so widespread as they are
represented in modern British writers; and that the distinction
between the ancient Gaels and Britons does not correspond to the
distinction between the Celtae and Belgae of Gaul in Cæsar's time.
III. THE PRE-CELTIC INHABITANTS OF IRELAND
In the second lecture, I remarked how the name Iberians has been
adopted to fill a vacuum as regards the naming of the population which
occupied Great Britain and Ireland before the Celtic immigration. This
kind of naming is unscientific and misleading. It implies that the
ancient population thus artificially named can be identified as a
branch of the population which actually bore that name in Greek and
Latin literature. From this implied identification other equally
unwarranted assumptions are likely to follow. Rhys expended a vast
amount of study, ingenuity, and argument in the effort to show that
very definite traces of a language akin to modern Basque survived in
ancient Ireland and Scotland. On this point it may be remarked that we
do not even know that the Basque population was originally Iberian.
Ethnologists are agreed that, apart altogether from the Celtic
migrations, there must have been a mixture of very distinct races in
south-western Europe in prehistoric times. If there was a mixture of
races, there was also no doubt more than one language, and if the
Basque language has been able to survive the conquests of Celt and
Roman and Goth, and last until our own time it may also well have
survived the extinction of other languages in south western Europe.
So far as the Iberian theory is not mere vacuum-filling, it appears to
rest on a single passage of Tacitus. He is describing the Silures, a
British people whose territory was in the south of Wales, and who
offered a very fierce resistance to the Romans. "The swarthy
complexion of the Silures," he says, "the prevalence of curly hair
among them, and their position over against Spain, argue that the
ancient Iberians must have crossed over [from Spain] and occupied
their territory." We have often heard the occurrence of similar
physical traits in the west of Ireland ascribed to a more recent
Spanish mixture. It all amounts to this, which Irish tradition bears
out, and which nobody questions, that these western isles contain
descendants of an ancient dark-complexioned population, probably
already of mixed race, which existed in western Europe before the
arrival of the fair-complexioned people, whose distinctive features
appear by all indications to have originated in the lands forming the
basin of the Baltic Sea.
If I am right in suggesting that the Greeks adopted from the Gauls the
name Pretanic Islands, as a joint name for Britain and Ireland, it
follows that the Gauls themselves supposed the chief population of
both islands, before the Celtic occupation, to have been the Pretani,
_i.e._, the Picts. During the early historical period, the Picts are
chiefly known as the people of the northern mainland of Scotland,
north of the Grampian mountains. The Venerable Bede speaks of their
language as still existing in his time, the early part of the eighth
century, and as being distinct from the Irish and British languages.
We have abundant and clear evidence that the Picts were at one time
widely spread throughout Ireland. Early Irish writings recognise the
existence, in their own time, of sections of the population known to
be Pictish. The Picts were especially numerous in Ulster. They are
described as a subject population, spread over the whole of ancient
Oriel, which at that time comprised the counties of Armagh, Monaghan,
Tyrone and the greater part of Derry and Fermanagh. There was also a
large Pictish element in Connacht, and there were smaller groups,
traditionally known to be Pictish, in Munster, Meath, and various
parts of Leinster. In Ulster, the ruling or dominant population of a
large belt of territory, extending from Carlingford Loch to the mouth
of the Bann, is named in the Annals both by the Latin name Picti, and
its Irish equivalent Cruithni or Cruithin, which is the Irish form
corresponding to Pretani. They continue to be so named until the
eighth century, when apparently their Pictish identity ceased to find
favour among themselves. It may be observed, however, that, while some
proper names which contain non-Gaelic elements survived in ancient
Ireland, no trace has been discovered of any language other than
Gaelic continuing to be spoken in any part of Ireland within the
traditional memory of the people. From this it will appear that the
Gaelic language had become universal throughout Ireland some centuries
before Irish history and traditions began to be written. The earliest
writing of Irish history still extant belongs to the closing years of
the sixth century.
In the case of the Picts, we find an interesting example of the method
that recommended itself to the learned folk of ancient Ireland when
they desired to fill the vacuum. In the Irish "Nennius," the Picts are
said to have come of the stock of the Geloni, a people of Scythia
mentioned by Herodotus. The explanation of this curious piece of
history is found in a passage of Virgil, in which he speaks of the
_picti Geloni_, i.e., the painted Geloni. They were supposed to dye
their skin with some colouring stuff. In one of the versions of the
wanderings of the Gaels before they reached Ireland, instead of
sailing the Mediterranean they marched from Scythia across Europe. On
their way they fraternised with a people called the Agathyrsi, who
dwelt in Thrace. They made a compact with these people, with the
result that later on a body of the Agathyrsi, having taken the name of
Picts, followed in the track of the Gaels and came to Ireland. On
their way they passed through a part of Gaul, where some of them
remained, and were afterwards known as Pictavi. From these is named
Poitou in France. Virgil is at the back of this story also. In a verse
of the Æneid, he speaks of the _picti Agathyrsi_, "the painted
Agathyrsi."
From these instances, we can see how closely Virgil was read in the
ancient Irish schools. We can also see from what materials our ancient
scholars could weave their legends of antiquity. And later on we
shall see how similar materials and a similar process enabled the
Latin scholars of ancient Ireland to construct their accounts--for
they have more than one account--of the origin and early wanderings of
the Gaelic people.
Another considerable element of the ancient population was the Iverni,
as they were called by Ptolemy in the second century. Ptolemy locates
them in the middle of southern Ireland. The Irish form of their name
in the time of our most ancient writings was Érainn, more familiar in
later usage in the accusative form Érna. They have been sometimes
called Erneans in English. In the older heroic literature, the Iverni
or Érainn are the chief people of Munster. In an important early
tract, which gives the names and distribution of the principal subject
communities throughout Ireland, the Sen-Érainn are placed in the
district of Luachair, _i.e._, in the north of Kerry and the adjoining
parts of the counties of Limerick and Cork. The peoples enumerated in
this tract are regarded as being not of Gaelic origin. Sen-Érainn
means the old or original Iverni, and the term is used to distinguish
them from others also called Érainn, who were of free status and are
attached by the genealogists to the Gaelic stock. My opinion is that
the dominant element in every part of Ireland during the historical
period, including the dynastic families and higher nobility, was
Celtic. Otherwise, if we suppose that large communities of pre-Celtic
inhabitants continued to exist under rulers and nobles of their own
stock down to medieval times, the universality of the Gaelic language
as far back as tradition reaches would be hard to account for. I
suppose that, when a Celtic dynasty and nobility became established
over a non-Celtic commonalty, the old name of the community became
attached to them all. So we find that Giraldus calls the nobles who
invaded Ireland in his time Angli, giving them the name of the subject
people over whom they had ruled in England, though they had been
barely a century in England and some of them not nearly so long. I
think the same is probably true of the free and dominant Picts in the
north-east, _i.e._, that they consisted of a common population of
Pictish stock ruled by kings and nobles of Celtic origin.
Not only in Munster but also in Connacht, Meath and Ulster, our
ancient genealogists recognise the existence of Ivernian communities.
Rhys put forward the view that the Iverni were only a southern
division of the Picts, but this view cannot well be reconciled with
Irish tradition, which seems always to distinguish between Picts and
Iverni, and recognises Picts in southern Ireland and Iverni in
northern Ireland. For example, in county Antrim, Dál Riada, the
north-eastern portion, was Ivernian, and the rest of the county for
the most part was Pictish. We are on safer ground in regarding the
Picts and the Iverni as two fairly distinct peoples.
From the Iverni the whole island took the names by which it was known
to the ancient Irish, the Britons, the Greeks, the Romans, and
therefore no doubt to the Celts in the neighbouring parts of the
Continent. But we have seen that the original Iverni, in Irish
tradition, were a remnant of the pre-Celtic population. Ireland
therefore was named by the Celts, as Britain and Ireland were jointly
named, from an older population which the invading Celts found in
possession. The Romans changed Iverni into Hiberni, through a process
known as popular etymology. Hiberni suggested to them the Latin word
meaning "wintry." Though Ireland was known to some Latin writers to be
by no means a wintry country, but quite the contrary, this verbal
resemblance naturally caught the imagination, and one Latin poet
actually speaks of "glacialis Ierne," ice-cold Ireland.
The Irish and Welsh names of Ireland are not directly taken from the
name of the Iverni, but evidently from an older form which must have
been Ivéri. Both the Irish name _Éire_ (formerly Ériu) and the Welsh
_Iwerddon_ go back to an older name _Iverio_, and this older name is
actually found in the writings of Saint Patrick in the slightly
disguised Latin form _Hiberio_. The Irish genealogies corroborate this
view that the name _Iverni_ is itself a derivative from an older name
_Iveri_. A common feature in genealogical lore is the tracing of a
people's descent from an ancestor of the same name. It is found in the
Bible, in the genealogies of the Arabs, in the legends of the Greeks,
and in our own legends, for example, when the Gaels are said to have
taken their name from an ancestor named Gaedheal Glas. In like manner
all the pedigrees of the Érainn or Iverni in the Irish genealogies are
traced to an ancestor named _Iar_. Iar is a word of two syllables,
and represents an older form Iveros. From this and from the Irish and
Welsh names of Ireland, I infer that the people called Iverni were at
a still earlier period called Iveri. The change in the name of a
people from a simple to a derivative form is of very common
occurrence. Thus, instead of Angles, people now say the English,
instead of Scots, the Scotch; in Irish, the names for the English and
the Welsh have undergone a similar change; and so with numerous other
names in many countries and languages.
Rhys derives the old Celtic name of Ireland, Iverio, from a word
cognate with the Greek _piaira_, meaning "fat," and understands Iverio
to mean the fat, _i.e._, the fertile country. This explanation,
however, will not hold good if, as I think, the name Iverio means the
country of the Iveri, unless we suppose the name Iveri to be Celtic
and to mean "the fat people!" But we have seen that, in Irish
tradition, the original Iverni were a pre-Celtic people, and we are
under no necessity to discover a Celtic origin for their name.
For my part, granted that this people bore the name Iveri, changed
afterwards into the adjectival form Iverni, I see no serious
difficulty in supposing that this name was a local variant of Iberi,
the name by which the people of Spain were known to the ancient Greeks
and Romans.
Authorities on Irish archæology are agreed that the Early Stone Age is
not exemplified in the most ancient remains of human occupation that
have been discovered in Ireland. The explanation for this is supplied
by the geologists. Some thousands of years ago, the conditions of
perpetual snow and ice that at present prevail in the Arctic regions
extended much farther into the temperate zones. The northern parts of
Europe were covered with perpetual ice. Ireland lay entirely within
this glacial zone. The southern limit of the ice ran through the south
of England and eastward across the Continent. The time during which
this southward extension of ice lasted is called the Glacial Period.
Already before that time, Europe was inhabited by man, and the Early
Stone Age or Palæolithic Age is held to have preceded the Glacial
Period.
The condition of Ireland during that period was like the present
condition of Greenland, under a heavy covering of ice formed by the
accumulation of snow. By its own weight the ice kept moving from the
mountains into the valleys and plains, and from the higher land level
into the surrounding seas. Under its moving action, the solid
rock-formation of the mountains was ground down and rounded off and
scooped into hollows, and great sheets and ridges of stones, gravel,
sand and boulder-clay were accumulated on the slopes and low grounds.
It is evident that any traces of human life and habitation that may
have existed before this process were not likely to be found after it.
The consequence is that the earliest traceable population of Ireland
was Neolithic, _i.e._, belonged to the Late Stone Age. By the Stone
Age is meant that time in which the use of metals was still unknown,
and in which the most durable material of implements used by men was
stone. Needless to say, they also used wood, bone, and any other
material that came to hand. The Late Stone Age is distinguished from
the Early Stone Age by the use of polished and finely shaped stone
implements.
In England, according to eminent authorities already quoted, the
descendants of Palæolithic Man survived and are still the prevalent
type. In Ireland, they did not survive, and whatever Palæolithic blood
is in our veins to-day is due to immigration. Regarding the Neolithic
population of Ireland, whatever is to be said belongs rather to
archæology than to history. In Britain, we are told, the Neolithic
population consisted of at least three distinct races, one which had
remained there from Palæolithic times, and two new races, or rather a
mixture of two races, which came in from the Continent. One sees how
futile it is to attempt to fix upon such a population a name like
Iberian. It is assuming a knowledge which does not belong to us.
The Late Stone Age was followed by the Bronze Age, but between the two
came a transitional period now generally recognised, in which copper
replaced stone as the most durable material of manufacture. This
Copper Period is well exemplified in Ireland. Bronze, the distinctive
material of the Bronze Age, was made by adding a small proportion of
tin to copper, producing a metal very much superior to pure copper for
the manufacture of tools and weapons. So far as I have been able to
learn, the presence of tin in quantities that could be worked is
unknown in Ireland. There seems to have been no scarcity of bronze,
and from this I conclude that during the Bronze Age, Ireland had an
import trade in tin, and probably therefore an export trade in copper
or some other product. This is the earliest evidence of Irish
commerce. Bronze cannot have been the material of ordinary industry,
nor, unless the inhabitants were very unwarlike, can bronze have been
the material of ordinary weapons of war. It is a very durable
material, almost unaffected by the action of the elements during
centuries. Numerous as the finds of bronze tools and weapons have been
in Ireland, they should have been immeasurably more numerous if tools
and weapons of bronze had been in every man's hands throughout the
Bronze Age, which, according to Coffey, lasted from about 1800 B.C. to
about 350 B.C. In fact, Sir Robert Kane, in his work on "The
Industrial Resources of Ireland," in a footnote regarding the once
extensive copper mines of the Danes' Island on the Waterford coast,
supplies an interesting proof of what otherwise we should reasonably
expect to be true, that the ordinary working population of the Bronze
Age continued to use the implements of the preceding Stone Age.[3]
Weapons and tools of bronze must therefore have been in the hands
chiefly of a more opulent class than the general population. Gold was
also used for ornaments, and Ireland is noted for the abundance of its
gold ornaments dating from the Bronze Age. Native Irish gold was
worked from very remote times, but it is also certain that in the
early Christian period gold was brought to Ireland by Oriental
merchants in exchange for other products of the country. Sickles of
bronze bear witness to the tillage of the soil for corn during this
period. It will be seen that there was a mixture of various peoples in
Ireland at the time. From this we might expect that there were various
degrees of civilisation, and so the remains of Bronze Age sepulchres
indicate. The simpler and ruder forms of these are found all over the
country. The highly elaborate sepulchres of the region of the lower
Boyne, its tributary the Blackwater, and the lower Liffey, are
indicative of a relatively high civilisation in those parts, the
ancient territory of Bregia. Along with these we may take into account
an old Gaelic tradition. It tells that when the Gaels came to Ireland
many of the fertile plains had still to be cleared of forest, but
there was one plain, Magh n-Ealta, stretching northward from Dublin,
which was called the Ancient Plain and was already clear of forest
before they arrived. Its name is interpreted as meaning "the plain of
the flocks of birds," by which we may understand that it was
frequented by the various kinds of gregarious birds which we see in
our own time hovering around the plough, rooks, jackdaws, starlings
and seagulls. It is worth noting that towards the opposite border of
the same region of Bregia there is another plain of the same name,
still represented in the name of Moynalty village, about four miles
north of Kells and on the Moynalty river, which is a tributary of the
Meath Blackwater.
[Footnote 3: "In the abandoned workings, antique tools have been
found, stone hammers and chisels and wooden shovels."]
I shall here mention an additional indication that the Gaels were not
in occupation of Ireland during the Bronze Age. In ancient Gaelic
tradition, the great chambered tumuli of the Boyne are taken to be the
tombs or the dwellings of an earlier race.
We pass on now to consider some of the evidence supplied by our
ancient literature regarding the population which inhabited Ireland
before the coming of the Gaels, that is, according to the conclusions
I have already drawn, before the Iron Age. The Gaels occupied Ireland
as a conquering and dominant people. During the early centuries of
their occupation, whatever language or languages had been spoken in
Ireland before them completely disappeared as languages, leaving no
doubt some traces behind in the names of places, etc., and probably
also influencing to some degree the Gaelic language itself. But for a
long time there was nothing like a complete fusion of the old and the
new population. The older population remained, not as a mere
promiscuous swarm of subject folk, but preserving in a large measure
its ancient organisation and sub-divisions. This state of things
continued during the early centuries of Christianity in Ireland.
Most of the manuscript evidence concerning these ancient communities
is still awaiting collection, publication, and study. Some of it is to
be found here and there in the old genealogical tracts, which are
still unpublished, and some in the annals. There is a good deal of
very ancient material on the subject quoted in the introductory part
of the great Book of Genealogies by Dubhaltach Mac Fir-Bhisigh. There
is one particular tract dealing specially with the names and
topography of these ancient subject communities. It exists in a number
of MSS., and has been printed by Craigie in the Revue Celtique from a
single MS. of the Edinburgh collection. From internal evidence I think
that this tract is of not later date than the eighth century. I
mention these facts to show how much has still to be done before we
can claim a near approach to full and accurate knowledge of the
existing evidence.
There are, however, some larger divisions of the ancient population,
spread over wide areas and comprising in each instance several of the
smaller named groups; and about these larger divisions there is
sufficient information to warrant the essaying of some account of
them. Chief among these may be reckoned the Picts. The tract just
mentioned shows that there were subject communities of the Picts
around Cruachain, the seat of the Connacht kings, and all over
Mid-Ulster, from Meath to Loch Foyle.
Along the lower part of the Shannon, in the counties of Galway,
Tipperary and Limerick, there was an ancient population known as Fir
Iboth, or by the adjectival name Ibdaig. These names contain the Irish
equivalent of the name by which the western islands of Scotland were
known to Greek and Latin writers of the first and second centuries of
the Christian era, _i.e._, Ebudae. The modern name Hebrides originated
in a mistaken writing of this name, and it is curious that the most
celebrated island of the group got its English name, "Iona," in the
same way. Ptolemy makes these islands belong to Ireland not to
Britain. Solinus says the inhabitants in his time grow no crops and
live on fish and milk. It is possible that an ancient branch of this
population preserved their identity by forming, so to speak, a
fisherman caste on the banks of the Shannon. There is evidence that
something like the Hindu caste system, in so far as it is linked with
the occupations of the people, existed among the descendants of the
Pre-Celtic population in Ireland. One of these subject communities is
known by the variant names Tuath Semon, Semonrige, Semrige, and
Semaine. Each of these names contains the Irish word seim, meaning a
rivet, and may be translated the Rivet-folk. This people dwelt in the
Desi territory of Munster, where those copper-mines are found which
were worked in the Bronze Age by miners using tools of stone and wood.
Taking the facts together, it seems reasonable to infer that the
Semonrige tribe were the descendants of the ancient copper-smiths of
the district, and that they obtained their name from the commodity in
which they paid their tribute to the dominant Celts, for the name is
Celtic. It should be well noted here that these Irish metal-workers
are presented to us in early Irish records as descendants of the
pre-Gaelic population; whereas, as we have seen, the current theory in
British archæology assumes that the occupation of working bronze was
distinctive of the Gaels themselves and was introduced by them.
Another copper-producing district is that of Béarra in West Munster,
bordering on Berehaven. Here in ancient times dwelt another
"rent-paying" community bearing the significant name of Ceardraighe,
"the Smith Folk." There was also either a branch of this folk or
another community of the same name situate around the ancient seat of
the Munster kings, Teamhair Luachra, a suitable locality in which to
find constant employment for a caste of workers in bronze.
According to the tract on the Rent-paying Communities, all over the
parts of Munster which, in historical time, were regarded as being
specifically Ivernian, including large districts in the present
counties of Tipperary, Limerick, Cork and Kerry, there was distributed
one of these subject communities which bore the name Tuath Cathbarr,
_i.e._, "the people of helmets." Since there is no record and no
likelihood that this subject people were a fighting caste, as
undoubtedly some of the subject-communities were in other parts of
Ireland, we may infer that they got their name from being employed in
the manufacture of battle-gear.
I come now to the most celebrated of all the pre-Celtic folks that
inhabited Ireland, the Fir Bolg. In including these among the
industrial castes of ancient Ireland, I claim the support of the
oldest written traditions, which clearly tell that the Fir Bolg, or
"Men of Bags," obtained that name from an industrial connection with
leathern bags. The story of the origin of the name, as found in the
Book of Invasions, Keating's History, etc., is no doubt well-known.
They migrated, we are told, from Ireland to Greece (Greece in ancient
Irish writings means the Eastern Empire). There, being outlanders,
according to the ideas of our forefathers, they did not obtain the
local franchises and became a serf people. Their occupation was to
carry sand and earth in leathern bags and spread a soil over rocky
places, as is still done in parts of Ireland, to make fertile land.
From this occupation, they were named Fir Bolg. They afterwards used
the hides in which they worked to construct ships in the ancient
fashion, and in these ships they escaped back to Ireland and liberty.
Quite a different version of the story is found in the Book of Lecan,
a book which contains a great miscellany, awaiting most desirable
publication, of excerpts from older writings, especially excerpts of
material which does not accord with what one may call the received
teachings of later times on matters of Irish legend and tradition.
This particular passage contains what is doubtless the oldest extant
account of the Fir Bolg. Its language, in my opinion, is of not later
date than the eighth century. Like the accepted story, it says that
they were a branch of the race of Nemed, but unlike the accepted
story, it does not say that they left Ireland in a body and came back
to it in a body after many years. On the contrary, it tells us that
they continued to inhabit Ireland all the time, but carried on a
particular trade with the eastern world. The manner of their trade was
this. They put Irish earth into leathern bags and exported it to the
east, where they sold it to the Greeks to be spread on the ground
around their cities as a protection against venomous reptiles. From
this trade they got the name of Bagmen.
Dubhaltach Mac Fir Bhisigh, in the unpublished introduction to his
Book of Genealogies, tells us that Fir Bolg was the specific name of a
particular section of the pre-Gaelic population, but became extended
in common usage so as to be applied to the whole of that population.
Of this statement we have abundant corroboration, with details
enabling us to locate the abode of various sections of the Bag-folk
properly so called. One section, called Bolgraighe, was the principal
Rent-paying community of the ancient Tir Conaill, a territory of much
smaller extent than the Tir Conaill of later times. Another section
inhabited the district of Sliabh Badbgna (Slieve Baune) in the east of
County Roscommon, where, I have been told, popular tradition still
recognises their descendants. Another section dwelt in the district of
Cong in the south of County Mayo, another in Sliabh Eachtgha (Aughty)
in the south of County Galway.
The manufacture of bags from hide or leather was no doubt not a highly
esteemed occupation, and it was probably out of contempt that the name
Fir Bolg was extended to the whole conquered population by the Celtic
ascendancy. The subject communities produced not only skilled artisans
but men of great piety and learning in early Christian times. Saint
Mo-Chuarog, for example, who is called _Sapiens_, "the Learned," and
who introduced a reform into the Irish chronography of his time, was a
member of the Rivet-folk, the Seamonraighe of the Déisi. But the
general attitude of the Gaels towards the older population was
undoubtedly disdainful. The passage quoted by Dubhaltach from "an
ancient book" is familiar to many in O'Curry's translation:
"Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler, guileful,
tale-telling, noisy, contemptible; every wretched, mean, strolling,
unsteady, harsh and inhospitable person; every slave, every mean
thief, every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music and
entertainment, the disturbers of every council and every assembly, and
the promoters of discord among people--these are the descendants of
the Firbolgs, of the Galians, of the Liogairne, and of the Fir
Domhnann in Eirinn. But the descendants of the Fir Bolg are the most
numerous of all these."
This is fine old ascendancy talk, the sort of language that has served
in many ages to justify the oppression of liberty; and there is plenty
of evidence that the older population was in some instances subjected
to very harsh treatment--in some instances, not in all, nor were the
ancient communities always spoken of in such terms of contempt.
Among them, besides industrial groups or castes, there were also
others which appear to have followed the profession of arms. Cú
Chulainn, according to one tradition preserved by Dubhaltach, belonged
to a non-Gaelic tribe called Tuath Tabhairn, and it will be remembered
that he is once described as "a small dark man." "Thou little elf!"
his charioteer used to call him, to provoke him to do his utmost in
the fight. His rival, Fear Diadh, was a noble of the Fir Domhnann from
Connacht, and the Fir Domhnann still existed as a subject community in
the times to which the tract on the Rent-paying Folks has relation.
They are located in a stretch of country comprising the greater part
of the counties of Mayo and Sligo. In the eastern Midlands, from the
Shannon to the Irish Sea, the same tract places another of these
ancient tribes named the Luaighni--a name still preserved in that of
the barony of Lune in Meath. These are represented as forming the
chief fighting force of the kings of North Leinster in the heroic
period. When Conchobhar sets out to exact reparation for the Táin and
the invasion of Ulster, he is met by the forces of the Luaighni at
Rosnaree on the Boyne, his heroes one after another are worsted in the
fight, his army almost routed, and it is only when their king has
fallen in single combat that the Luaighni abandon the field. In the
curious story of the revolution brought about by the revolt of the
Rent-paying tribes against the oppressive rule of the Gaelic nobility,
it is the chief of the Luaighni, Cairbre of the Cat's Head, who
becomes king of Ireland for twenty years.
Still more remarkable is the tribute of the ancient saga to the valour
and discipline of the Galians. In the ninth century the Galians are
still described by the poet Mael Muru as one of the outstanding
sections of the population who are not Gaels. The tract on the
Rent-paying Folks divides them into three _tuatha_ and gives the
location of each. They inhabited the northern parts of old Leinster,
in the present counties of Wicklow, Kildare, and King's County. The
story of the Táin tells how the Galians excelled all the other troops
that joined Medb on her march from Cruachain for the invasion of
Ulster. "This enterprise," said the warlike queen, "will be a barren
one for all of us, except for one force alone, the Galians of
Leinster." "Why blamest thou these men?" said her consort. "Blame them
we do not," replied Medb. "What good service then have they done that
they are praised above the rest?" said Ailill. "There is reason to
praise them," said Medb. "They are splendid soldiers. When the rest
are beginning to make their pens and pitch their camps, the Galians
have already finished setting up their booths and huts. When the rest
are still building booths and huts, the Galians have finished
preparing their food and drink. While the others are getting ready
their food and drink, the Galians have done eating and feasting, and
their harps are playing for them. When all the others have finished
eating and feasting, by that time the Galians are asleep. And even as
their servants and thralls are distinguished above the servants and
thralls of the Men of Erin, so shall their heroes and champions be
distinguished above the heroes and champions of the men of Erin on
this hosting. It is folly then for the rest to go, for the Galians
will enjoy the victory." And in fear and jealousy the queen declared
that nothing would please her but to fall upon the Galians and destroy
them. Her husband expostulated. "Shame on thy speech!" he said, "a
woman's counsel, for no better reason than because they pitch their
tents and make their pens so promptly and unwearily." And Fergus
interposing swore that he and his Ulstermen would stand by the Galians
to the death. The Galians, he said, are but one division in eighteen
of our army. Even so, we shall take care that they shall be no danger
to us. And he took and divided the forces of the Galians among the
rest so that not five of them were in one place together.
Of this Galian stock came Fionn and Oisin and Oscar and all their
kindred, according to some accounts. They were of the sept Ui
Tairsigh, one of the three folks who, says Mael Muru, are not of the
Gaedhil. This sept dwelt at Drumcree in the barony of Delvin in
Westmeath. Their name and existence as a sept is probably not so
ancient as the time of Fionn, but we may suppose that in their own
time they claimed descent from the family of Fionn, from Clann
Bhaoisgne.
Other possible instances of occupation-castes are found in the names
Céchtraighe "plough-folk," Corbraighe and Corbetrighe "chariot-folk"
(Carbantorigion, the name of a town of the Selgovae in southern
Scotland), Gruthraighe "curd-folk," Lusraighe "herb-folk," Medraighe
"weight or balance-folk," Rosraighe "linseed-folk," Rothraighe
"wheel-folk," Sciathraighe "shield-folk."
The tinker clans of recent times in Ireland and Scotland may well be
survivals of some of these ancient industrial communities.
It is certain that ancient tribes remained in every part of Ireland
after their conquest by the Gaels, and retained in some measure during
the early Christian period in Ireland their ancient organisation,
often under their own ancient lines of chiefs. This is matter of
strictly historical record, and if any similar records had existed and
were still extant in Britain, we should hear less of the cheap and
easy history of successive populations, each of them completely
exterminating those that inhabited the land before them. Writers on
history would not find themselves flatly contradicting ethnologists on
the strength of their own gratuitous assumptions, when ethnologists
say that the modern English race is largely composed of descendants of
the primitive inhabitants.
On this subject of primitive races, there is one point which, in
passing, I desire to bring out. One of the founders of the modern
study of ethnology, Quatrefages, has given a good illustration of a
sort of scientific method akin to some that we have had already under
consideration. A glance at the map showed him that Ireland represented
a north-western limit of the likely spread of the human race in remote
times. The migratory movements of antiquity were thought to have,
generally speaking, a western trend in Europe. Ireland besides was an
island, which in the distant past must have been reached through
Britain. Conclusion: Ireland was the place in which to look for
primitive European types, and in Ireland the surest place to find the
primitive types must be the extreme north-western part. Accordingly,
M. Quatrefages packed his portmanteau in Paris and labelled it for
Belmullet. This kind of scientific quest is usually successful. It
succeeds after the manner of the schoolboy who, before entering into
the intricacies of a question in algebra, takes the precaution of
providing himself with the answer from the end of the book. M.
Quatrefages found the Mayo seaboard swarming with a primitive race of
men. I do not propose to examine his discoveries in detail. Anyone who
is curious about them is referred to the late Dr. Hogan's little book
on "The Irish People," which is the source of my information. In a
paper contributed by me to the Royal Irish Academy's "Clare Island
Survey," on the Place-names and Family-names of Clare Island, I showed
that nearly half of the families now living there could be traced to
an earlier home in distant parts of Ireland. I pointed out that in
remote ages, the parts of the sea that adjoin the land and the parts
of the land that adjoin the sea must have afforded the freest highway
for movements of population. It must have been so in the glacial
period and during its decline, when the scanty population must have
lived a life like that of the modern Eskimos who travel long journeys
in their canoes and change their habitation at will. It must have been
so in the barren period that succeeded the age of ice, when animal and
vegetable food was much more abundant on the sea-shore than inland.
And it must have been so in the succeeding forest period, when the
inland regions became difficult to traverse. In fact, until men became
tillers of the ground and road-makers, the sea-edge was their grand
highway. Hence it is that the population of the seaboard is always the
most mixed and variable. The place to look for the least movement and
least variation is inland, especially in deeply wooded, swampy or
mountain areas, which offer the least attraction to newcomers and from
which an older population is hardest to dislodge. And this, I think,
is also the lesson of ethnological research conducted without foregone
conclusions. In all western Europe, there is no region that contains a
larger proportion of a late-coming population than the Orkneys,
Shetlands and Hebrides and distant Iceland, the uttermost extremes of
the north-west.
The ancient legends of Ireland tell of certain peoples which are not
represented by territorial groups in the historical record. Most
conspicuous among these are the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomori
("Fomorians"). The late D'Arbois de Jubainville showed very clearly
that these two peoples belonged to pagan mythology. His work on the
subject can be read in the English translation by Mr. Best, "The Irish
Mythological Cycle." I cannot now attempt to go over the ground it
covers, even in summary, but shall content myself by adding a few
cogent proofs to those which it supplies. About the year 1000 the poet
Eochaidh O'Flainn wrote a poem on the Tuatha de Danann. He began by
setting himself the question, were these folks human or were they
demons. He answers that they were mortal men of Adam's race, and we
are even told by what deaths they died. The very fact that the
question had to be asked is conclusive as to the popular belief. But
the poet was not satisfied with having brushed this popular belief, a
survival of paganism, to one side. In his concluding verses he
protests "I do not worship them, I worship the one true God." So that
as late as the year 1000 people in Ireland still spoke of the Tuatha
De Danann as objects of heathen worship.
An older writer, quoted in the Book of Lecan, tells a plainer tale. He
does not admit the truth of the ancient mythology, and says that the
Tuatha De Danann were a remnant of the fallen angels. They assume, he
says, bodies of airy substance so as to become visible to men, the
better to tempt them. They come at the call of sorcerers and those who
practise malevolent incantations by walking in circles lefthandwise.
They used to be worshipped, and it was they who invented the spells
sung by smiths and druids and wise-women and pilots and cupbearers.
From them druidism came in Ireland.
The poet-historians did not succeed in killing off the Tuatha De
Danann. In 1088 the annalist Tigernach died, and in 1084, four years
before his death, his chronicle contains an account of a pestilence
which visited Ireland at that time. The cause of this pestilence, says
the chronicler, was revealed in that year to a certain man, Gilla
Lugán, who was in the habit of frequenting a fairy mound at
Hallowtide, the old heathen festival of Samhain. There in the year
1084, Oengus appeared to him and told him that the plague was brought
to Ireland by legions of evil spirits from the islands of the northern
ocean, who spread it over the country with their fiery breath. And
Gilla Lugán himself, says the chronicler, afterwards saw one of these
demon legions on the rath of Mullaghmast, and in whatsoever direction
their fiery breath came on the land, there the plague broke out among
the people.
In _Agallamh na Seanorach_, the rulers of the Tuatha Dé Danann are
still alive in St. Patrick's time, and inhabit the hills associated
with their memory. One of them has recently come to life once more in
Dublin, Finnbheara of Cnoc Meadha. From the hills at Tourmakeady you
can see Cnoc Meadha, a low round hill, on the eastern horizon. It was
pointed out to me by a man who knew all about it. That is where Finn
Bheara lives, he said. He is the king of the Good People. He is not
always there. When Finn Bheara is living in Cnoc Meadha, it is a good
year for the country. When he goes away, it is a bad year.
A poem in Duanaire Finn tells how Oengus aided the Fiana in their
hostilities with king Cormac, and, like the gods in the Homeric poems,
remained invisible while he fought on their behalf.
The passage already cited from the Book of Lecan tells how the Tuatha
De Danann arrived in Ireland. They came, it says, without ships or
boats and first alighted on Sliabh an Iarainn, in the heart of the
country.
The mythology of the Irish Celts was not originally shaped in Ireland.
They brought it along with them from central Europe, and just as the
ancient scriptures of the Hindus bear traces of having been originally
composed in a climate very different from that of Hindustan, so I
think the Irish mythology shows some traces of its continental origin.
The Fomori of Irish tradition were not inhabitants of Ireland. They
always appear as invaders. They come from the north, from the unknown
places of the northern ocean. The demons who brought the pestilence to
Ireland in 1084 were Fomorians. They are always enemies of the people
of Ireland. They were enemies to Parthalon's people, and after them to
Nemed's people, the Fir Bolg, and after them to the Gaels. They were a
malevolent race of immortals. In the popular view, among heathens, a
people expected to be defended by the gods of its own worship. If a
hostile people had other gods, these were expected to fight on the
other side. Hence there was a natural tendency to regard a double set
of immortals, one party being foreign and malevolent, the other
domestic and benevolent. But the Irish people, before the Norse
invasions, knew no human enemies in the northern ocean. Accordingly, I
think that the Fomorians originally belonged to the continental
geography of Celtic mythology, and that the sea from which they came
was not the ocean to the north of Ireland but the Baltic and the North
Sea, and that their islands were originally perhaps Britain and
Ireland and the islands of the Baltic and the Scandinavian peninsula
itself, which was thought to be an island when it first became known
to the Greeks. The Fomorians would be perhaps in part identical with,
in part associated with, the gods of the peoples dwelling on the
shores of those northern seas before the Celtic expansion northward
and north-westward.
We have glanced at the process by which one of our poet-historians
endeavoured to transform popular tradition into a kind of history more
acceptable to his own school. Christian learning brought into Ireland
a double stream of history, derived from the Old Testament and from
the Greek and Latin historians. The two streams had already been
mingled in one by early Christian historians like Eusebius and
Orosius. The works of these writers were well-known in early Christian
Ireland. The Chronicle of Eusebius, a history of the ancient kingdoms
of the world, written in parallel columns, a column to each kingdom,
was known through the Latin translation by St. Jerome and its
continuation by Prosper of Aquitaine in the fifth century. It became
the basis of the writing of Irish history, and was continued in
Ireland, with an Irish section added, down to the early years of the
seventh century. By adopting this basis and model, the early Christian
historians of Ireland brought themselves inevitably face to face with
the task of linking and fitting the old Gaelic tradition to this
existing framework of Biblical and Greco-Latin history.
We cannot doubt that the Celts, like the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians,
Northmen and other ancient peoples, had what is called a cosmogony of
their own, an account of the beginning of the world. Cæsar tells us
that the Druids expounded the nature of the gods and also of the
material universe. This cosmogony could find no place in the new
scheme, and it disappeared, leaving perhaps a few traces in the
genealogies. In like manner, other parts of the popular tradition and
native lore required to be transformed and recast to find a place in
the accepted scheme of world history. That is why the Tuatha De Danann
became mortals in the teaching of the learned while they remained and
still remain immortal in the traditions that come down from heathen
times.
The native tradition had its own account of the origin of the Celtic
people. That account, as we shall see, was not such as could be
adopted into the Christian world-history received from Eusebius and
St. Jerome. It was completely rejected by the Irish historians, as
completely as modern Irish people reject the substituted account when
they say that their ancestors were Celtic.
To provide a theory of the origin of the Gaels more in keeping with
the received world-history, a search was made through the Latin
historical and geographical writings that were used in the Christian
schools of Ireland and suitable discoveries were made. The most
serviceable material for the purpose was found in the world-history of
Orosius, a Spanish historian who wrote in Latin about the year 400.
Quotations from Orosius by name and word for word show that his book
was well-known in the Irish schools. It had the advantage of combining
a geography of the world with a history of the world.
In those times, the ordinary Latin name for the people of Ireland was
Scotti, Scots. It is the name used for them by Orosius, and also by
St. Patrick, and it was accepted by all the early Irish writers who
wrote in Latin. But this name Scotti does not appear in Latin before
the fourth century and gave no direct clue to trace the origin of the
Gaels. In the historical and geographical Latin writings to hand, the
people's name that most nearly resembled Scotti was Scythi,
Scythians. Accordingly, we are told that the Gaelic people were of
Scythian origin.
There was an independent and evidently earlier effort to account for
their origin in a precisely similar way. The man of learning who
undertook this effort fastened his attention not on the name Scotti
but on the older Latin name Hiberni, and searched his Latin
authorities for a corresponding name of some ancient people. He found
that there was an ancient people in the region of the Caucasus
mountains who bore the name Iberi, and we have the result in an old
tract quoted in the Book of Lecan:
"Question: what is the true origin of the Sons of Mil [_i.e._ the
Gaels]? Answer: A race there is in the mountains of Armenia, Hiberi
they are named. They had a famous king, Mil, son of Bile, son of Nem.
He was contesting the kingship with his father's brother, Refellair
son of Nem, and he went into exile with the manning of four barks, and
twelve married couples to each bark, and a soldier over and above
without wife...." And so the story goes on until the descendants of
these Iberi come to Ireland.
It is not unlikely that this account was known to Saint Columbanus of
Bobbio. In letters written about the year 600, he speaks of his own
people not as Scotti or Hiberni, but as Iberi.
The two accounts appear to have been blended together by making the
Scythians, before they reached Ireland, sojourn for a time in Spain,
the country of the western Iberi. This gave a satisfactory
explanation of both names, Hiberni and Scotti.
The story of their wanderings through the world is itself a
geographical description of the ancient world, based in detail on the
geographical chapters of Orosius. Of this story also there are two
distinct versions. In one they travel overland through the continent
of Europe, passing through the various peoples and territories named
by Orosius. It was on this journey that they fell in with the Picts,
for whom also a close scrutiny of Virgil provided two distinct
origins, as already told. In the other account they sailed round the
world, and the names of the various places they touched or passed in
the narrative are also taken from the geography of Orosius. A
noteworthy feature of that geography is that it is based on the early
writings of Eratosthenes and Strabo and entirely ignores the much
larger and more accurate knowledge recorded by Ptolemy in the second
century. For example, according to Orosius, the Caspian Sea opens by a
strait directly into the northern ocean, and the river Ganges flows
into the eastern ocean on the eastern side of Asia. Accordingly we
find in the Irish story that our ancestors sailed right out of the
Caspian into the northern ocean, then turning eastward came round by
the eastern coast of Asia, and passed on that coast the outlet of the
Ganges.
This view of the world's geography continued to be taught in the Irish
schools for centuries. It may be remarked here that the rotundity of
the earth was also the common teaching of these schools.
It is still more curious to note how the wording of Orosius has
supplied some remarkable details in the Irish story. It will be
remembered how Bregon, chief of the Gaels in Spain, built a tower on
the northern Spanish coast, the Tower of Bregon, and how, one fine
evening in spring, his grandson went up to the top of this tower and
from it descried the land of Ireland. When the Gaels afterwards took
ship and came to Ireland, the place where they landed was Inbhear
Scéine. All this comes from the actual phraseology of Orosius.
"The second angle of Spain," he writes, "points to the north-west,
where Brigantia, a city of Galicia, is situated and rears its lofty
lighthouse, of a structure with which few can be compared, looking
towards Britain." The last words might also be taken to mean "for a
view of Britain," and it was in this sense that they struck the
imagination of the Irish schoolman. He thought of a tower so tall that
Britain was actually visible from it. A few chapters further on he
read that "Hibernia is an island situated between Britain and Spain,"
a notion of its position due to the fact that ships sailing by the old
Atlantic trade route were accustomed to call at some Irish harbour on
their voyages between Spain and Britain. If then Britain was visible
from the lofty tower of Brigantia, and Ireland lay between Britain and
Spain, Ireland must also be visible from the tower. Bregon or Breogan
appears to have been a real name in Irish tradition. It resembled the
name Brigantia. So we are told that Brigantia took its name from
Bregon, the Gaelic chief, and that the tower there was built by him.
This impression of Ireland lying within sight of Spain was confirmed
by other passages of Orosius. "The ocean," he says, "has islands which
they call Britain and Ireland, which are situated over against one
side of Gaul and looking to Spain (_ad prospectum Hispaniae_)." And
again speaking of Ireland: "The fore parts of this island, stretching
towards the Cantabrian ocean (_i.e._, the Cantabrian part of the
ocean, the Bay of Biscay) behold far away over a wide intervening
space Brigantia, the city of Galicia, facing them towards the
north-west, especially from that promontory where the mouth of the
river Scena is, and where the Velabri and Luceni inhabit." The tower
of Brigantia "looked towards" Ireland, and the south-western parts of
Ireland "beheld" Brigantia. It is quite possible that Orosius himself
used these expressions in their literal sense. At all events they were
so interpreted by his Irish reader. The Irish legend tells us that the
Sons of Mil, who was grandson of Bregon, having learned that a land
was seen to the north-west from the tower of Bregon, set sail for that
land and, after certain adventures, put into a haven called Inbhear
Scéine. Where was Inbhear Scéine? Its locality has been the subject of
some discussion. If you turn up the name in Dr. Hogan's Onomasticon,
you will find that there are no data to enable you to decide which of
the havens of south-western Ireland bore that name, and for a very
good reason. The name Inbhear Scéine did not belong to Irish
topography. It belonged to this story, and is a translation of the
words of Orosius, _ostium Scenae_. There is no river of the name and
no known record of the name as that of any river in Ireland: nor is
there evidence that those who wrote and re-wrote the story of the
Gaelic invasion in ancient times had any more definite notion of the
locality of Inbhear Scéine than you or I have.
The fact is that the whole story of the origin of the Gaels in Scythia
or in Armenia, their wanderings by land and sea, their settlement in
Spain, and their landing in Ireland, is an artificial product of the
schools, and does not represent a primitive tradition. It must have
displaced the popular tradition. If so, can we find any surviving
traces of the older native account of the origin of the Irish Celts? I
think we can. We have seen that the Tuatha Dé Danann were an immortal
race. They were not all gods. We are expressly told that they were
gods and non-gods. They were _tuatha_, i.e., states or communities
like those of the ancient Irish people. Their chiefs were gods. When
they first came to Ireland, their king was Nuadu Silverhand. As a god,
Nuadu was worshipped also in Britain, as several inscriptions of the
Roman period testify. From him, according to several genealogical
tracts, the whole Gaelic population of Ireland was descended. Other
gods as well as Nuadu are clearly named in the ancient pedigrees.
We have seen how the divine race of the Tuatha De Danann came to
Ireland in the clouds of the air, without ship or boat, and alighted
on the Iron Mountain in the heart of the country. I have found
nothing to show clearly whether their human descendants, the Gaels,
were thought to have originated in Ireland or outside of it, except
perhaps one scrap of ancient tradition. It was from the northern parts
of Europe that the Tuatha De Danann came. The Gaels, according to the
learned legend already discussed, came from Spain to south-western
Ireland. There is, however, a totally distinct version of their
arrival, which says that they first arrived at the opposite corner, in
the north-east, in the locality of Fair Head. If this is genuine
tradition, it would follow that the Gaels, the offspring of the gods
they worshipped, were thought to have originated outside of Ireland,
somewhere in northern Europe.
The Book of Invasions, of which a convenient summary is given by
Keating, forming the first part of his history, is in its true aspect
a national epic which took shape gradually in the early Christian
period and under the influence of Christian and Latin learning. It
treats the principal elements of the ancient population, both Celtic
and Pre-Celtic, as offshoots of one stock, united in ancestry, and it
thus symbolises the effective national unity and fusion which had come
about. The land of Ireland is the unifying principle, and all the
children of the land are joined into one genealogical tree. Some
recent writer, I think it is Mr. George Moore, has remarked how Irish
people, apparently quite naturally and unconsciously, speak and think
of their country as a person. This they have been accustomed to do
through all the ages of their literature. The first words spoken by a
Gael on Irish soil, in the ancient legend, were an invocation
addressed to Ireland herself by the druid Amorgen: "I entreat the land
of Eire," and the land itself, under its three names, Éire, Fódla, and
Banbha, when the Gaels arrived, was reigning as queen over the Men of
Ireland. Thus we find the clearly formed idea of one nation, composed
of diverse peoples, but made one by their affiliation to the land that
bore them--the clearest and most concrete conception of nationality to
be found in all antiquity.
IV. THE FIVE FIFTHS OF IRELAND
We have seen how the poet-historians of early Christian Ireland took
over certain Latin histories of the world, especially St. Jerome's
translation of Eusebius and the history of Orosius, and adopted these
as the established framework of the world's history, thereby
compelling themselves to adjust their own accounts of the Irish past
to that framework. In the process of adjustment they did not all work
hand in hand, and so we have different and sometimes contradictory
accounts and at least half-a-dozen distinct chronologies. They found a
mass of Irish traditions and legends embodied in stories long and
short. They set to work on this material, endeavouring to arrange it
all in sequence and to provide it with dates--the original matter
being largely independent of date or sequence. This task became in
fact the principal work of a certain school or class of poets, as we
learn from a passage which, though found in the Book of Leinster, is
held to date from about the eighth century. It is headed: "Of the
Qualification of Poets." The word translated "qualification" by
O'Curry, and not inaptly so translated, is _nemthigud_, derived from
the word _nemed_, the Old Celtic adjective _nemetos_, meaning
"sacred." A sacred place was called _nemed_, and a sacred person was
also called _nemed_. The old law tract which deals with the
privileges and rights of the poets is entitled _Bretha Nemed_, i.e.,
decisions regarding sacred persons. The tract in the Book of Leinster
tells us that certain kinds of knowledge were necessary qualifications
for certain classes of poets, in order that they might be entitled to
the privileges of their class and become in that sense sacred persons,
who, in virtue of the reverence due to them, might enjoy special
rights and immunities. The knowledge required of them was not a
knowledge of prosody or grammar, nor of chronology or geography, or
any other science of the times. It was a knowledge of the stories of
ancient Ireland, so thorough that they should be able to recite these
stories in the presence of kings and chiefs, not a select few of the
stories but scores and fifties of them. A mere memorised knowledge of
the stories, however, was not sufficient, and something more than the
ability to recite them to the satisfaction of courtly patrons was
deemed essential to qualify the person as a poet, for the tract
concludes by saying: "He is no poet who does not synchronise and
adjust together all the stories." This means clearly that it was, at
the time, an essential part of the poet's work to make a consecutive
and dated history out of the sagas of antiquity.
In this way was produced a history of Ireland from the beginning down
to Saint Patrick's time. From that time onward the ancients, like
ourselves, relied on the written chronicles of Ireland.
Among the written stories of antiquity, the primacy was accorded to
those of the Ulster epic, Táin Bó Cuailnge and the other tales that
range around it. Evidence of this primacy will be found in the oldest
known Irish chronicle, in poems assigned by Meyer to the seventh
century, and in the framework of the ancient genealogies. A number of
modern investigators assure us that the antiquarian tradition of the
Ulster sagas is marvellously true to the facts established by
archæological research in regard of the age to which those sagas
relate, the beginning of the Christian era. Their historical tradition
was adopted without question by our medieval historians. The main fact
of that historical tradition was that Ireland, in the time of Cú
Chulainn, was divided into five coordinate chief kingdoms, whose kings
were equal in rank and were not subordinate to a central monarchy. The
old historians consequently call this period _Aimser na Cóicedach_
(Aimsir na gCúigeadhach), the Time of the Pentarchs (the five equal
kings), and leave the monarchy a blank at that time, though they
profess to be able to give a list of kings of all Ireland for the
earlier and later periods. This list of the pagan Monarchs of Ireland
is not historical. It is compiled in a very artificial way from the
pedigrees of various Irish dynasties, in a way so artificial that one
name, the origin of which can be traced to the sleepy blundering of a
copyist, a name which never belonged to any man, is found as the name
of a king of Ireland in the list, with appropriate details telling how
he acquired the sovereignty and how he lost it, and how many years he
reigned. On the other hand, we are told that the fivefold division of
Ireland was older than the Gaelic occupation. In fact, its origin was
prehistoric, and the Pentarchy is the oldest certain fact in the
political history of Ireland. That it is a certain fact, nobody who is
acquainted with Irish literature and tradition will be disposed to
question. To this day the word _cuigeadh_, "a fifth," is in general
use among speakers of Irish as the term to denote each of the
principal sub-divisions of the country; and _cuig cuigidh na
hEireann_, "the Five Fifths of Ireland," is an expression familiar to
all who speak the Irish language. This term _cuigeadh_, in this sense,
is found in every age and generation of our written literature. And
yet it is certain that throughout the whole period of our written
literature, the political division of Ireland represented by this word
_cuigeadh_, "a fifth," and "the Five Fifths of Ireland," had no
existence. Already in St. Patrick's time the Five Fifths were only a
memory of the past. Then and for centuries afterwards, instead of
five, there were seven coordinate chief kingdoms and a monarchy over
them.
It is evident that a political fact which impressed itself so
permanently on the vocabulary, the literature, and the folk-memory of
the people for at least fifteen hundred years was not the transitory
thing that appears in the lists of Irish monarchs before Christianity,
a Pentarchy which lasted only during a few years and interrupted for
that time the course of an earlier and later Monarchy. The details of
tradition, upon examination, indicate that the Pentarchy preceded the
Monarchy and lasted for a long time, long enough to become the chief
outstanding fact in tradition as regards the internal political state
of Ireland in the early Celtic period.
Now we come to the question, what were the five principal divisions of
Ireland under the Pentarchy? In my experience, the less erudite who
are interested in such matters usually answer, Ulster, Leinster,
Munster, Connacht and Meath. Those who are better read in Irish
history will answer, as a rule, leaving out Meath and will say that
there were two Fifths comprised in Munster, and this is the teaching
of Irish historians for some centuries back. In this case, it will be
seen that the less learned folk are nearer to the truth.
Let us first consider what our information is regarding the Two Fifths
comprised in Munster. Keating gives two alternative divisions of
Munster to form the Two Fifths. In one division, the dividing line
runs north and south, from Limerick to Cork Harbour. This delimitation
seems to be based on the ancient extent of Munster, which did not
include County Clare. The second partition of Munster, according to
Keating, is by a line running from Tralee to Slieve Bloom, a very
unlikely boundary, as will be evident to anyone who tries to place it
on the map. The portion south of this line, we are told, was the realm
of Cú Raoi, and the portion north of it was the realm of Eochaidh
MacLuchta. These two names belong to the Ulster cycle, and we should
expect the division connected with them to hold good in the topography
of the Ulster tales, but we shall find that the Ulster tales speak of
Eochaidh MacLuchta as king of all Munster and speak of Cú Raoi as a
great Munster hero, but not as king of half Munster. That is not the
whole story. Keating tells us that Tuathal Teachtmhar, when he became
king of Ireland, established a small domestic realm for himself in the
centre of Ireland, around Uisneach, by cutting off a section from each
of the Five Great Fifths, and that the boundaries of all five, until
his time, met at one point, the rock called Aill na Mireann, on the
slope of Uisneach hill. Look at the map of Ireland, bearing in mind
that the county Clare was not at that time and long after it a part of
Munster, and ask yourself what possible dividing line between two
kingdoms of Munster could have terminated in the hill of Uisneach,
which stands ten or twelve miles westward from Mullingar.
The Five Great Fifths of Ireland are a living fact in the political
framework of the stories of the Ulster Cycle. Surely then it is in
those stories themselves and in the antiquity of their tradition that
we must seek the evidence about these divisions, their location and
extent, and not in the unreconciled statements of writers in a later
age. The teaching of the Ulster stories on this matter is clear and
unmistakable. It is the same throughout all of them and will be found
summarised in a few sentences of the story of the Battle of Rosnaree.
First we are told how this battle was caused. In the great expedition
of Táin Bó Cuailnge, four of the Great Fifths had joined together for
the invasion of Ulster. The invasion was not a military success, but
it had secured its object, the carrying away of the Brown Bull in
spite of the Ulster king, and Ulster had suffered from the ravages of
war. Conchobhar, following up the retreating army of Connacht, had
overtaken and defeated it on the banks of the Shannon, but he had not
recovered the Brown Bull, and the other three Fifths of Ireland had
got away without making any reparation for the great raid. And
Conchobhar vowed that he would exact reparation or inflict punishment.
He called the forces of Ulster together. These things were speedily
reported to the other four Fifths of Ireland, and without delay the
king of each Fifth prepared for resistance and summoned his forces to
meet him at his royal seat. Here follows a recitation of the names of
the four kings and their four capital places in which their armies
were mustered.
The king of Tara, Cairbre Nia Fear, called out the Luaighni of Tara to
meet him at Tara. It is to be remembered that in these stories Tara is
not the royal seat of kings of all Ireland. There are no kings of all
Ireland.
The Galians of Leinster are summoned to meet their king, Fionn File,
at Dinn Riogh on the banks of the Barrow.
The Clanna Deadhadh, which is another name for the Iverni or Érainn of
Munster, are summoned to meet their king, Eochaidh MacLuchta, at his
royal seat of Teamhair Érann.
The muster of Connacht is held by Ailill and Meadhbh at Cruachain.
In this account of the five musters, there is no room for
misconception. The author of the story was not in the slightest doubt
as to the identity of the Five Fifths. His account is in complete
harmony with the whole tenour of the stories relative to that age. In
it, there is one Fifth of Munster, and all possibility of another is
precluded. There is one Fifth of Connacht and one Fifth of Ulster. How
are the two remaining Fifths constituted?
The capital of one of them is Tara, that of the other is Dinn Riogh on
the Barrow. We learn from Keating and all other authorities and
traditions that, in the period of Cú Chulainn and the Ulster hero
tales, the river Boyne, in its lower course, separated Ulster from
Leinster. Tara, on the south side of the Boyne, was in Leinster
territory. Hence it is plain that Leinster and not Munster comprised
two of the Five Great Fifths.
People sometimes say to me and have said to me since these lectures
began, "You are very ruthless in tearing away from us some of our most
cherished traditions." Now, if I showed any contempt for tradition,
this reproach would be altogether too mild. Tradition, if it is indeed
tradition, is worthy of all reverence. It is not infallible. Tradition
is a people's memory, and a people's memory, like yours or mine, has
its limitations. We are all agreed that the Gaels are of Celtic origin
and that their language is a Celtic language, but there is no
tradition for it. From the earliest recorded traditions of Ireland
and Britain down to the writing of the history of Scotland by
Buchanan, not the faintest trace of such a tradition has been found.
Nevertheless there are fields of historical inquiry in which tradition
is the most faithful witness, and one such field is the internal
polity of Ireland during the centuries that precede the written
record. In that field, so far am I from despising tradition, that my
main effort is to find tradition and establish its authority. We must
get away from the notion that everything that is written by Keating or
the Four Masters or in the Book of Invasions about that early time is
tradition. The Scythian origin of the Gaels, the geographical details
of their wanderings, the tower of Bregon, the landing at an unknown
Inbhear Scéine--these things do not belong to tradition, they are the
inventions of Latin scholars, suggested to them by ancient Latin
writers.
The evidence on which I rely with regard to the Five Fifths of ancient
Ireland is unquestionably traditional. The evidence that I have quoted
on the point does not stand alone. It is not singular and
inconsistent. On the contrary, it will be found to fit in with the
whole body of ancient tradition, and taken along with the other
evidences, it will be found to give life and reality to the history of
an obscure yet most interesting period.
Following up the ancient testimony, we find that Cairbre Nia Fear, the
king of Tara in Cú Chulainn's time, was brother to Fionn File, the
king of Dinn Riogh. Both were Leinstermen, Lagenians. Turning to the
genealogies we find that the descent of all the Leinster kings in
Christian times is traced from Fionn File. Tara therefore was the
capital or royal seat of a Leinster kingdom, and that kingdom was one
of the Great Fifths. If we look up Father Hogan's Onomasticon, we
shall see that this fact was otherwise clearly recognised. The kingdom
of which Tara was the capital was named in ancient writings by the
name "Cairbre's Fifth," Cóiced Coirpri.
Further we find that in many old documents the former existence of two
Fifths belonging to the Laighin, or ruling folk of Leinster, is
definitely recognised. One of these divisions is called Cúigeadh
Laighean Tuadh-Gabhair and the other Cúigeadh Laighean Deas-Gabhair.
These names mean that one of the Fifths lay to the north and the other
to the south of a place or district called Gabhair. There were a
number of places so named in various parts of Ireland, several of them
in ancient Leinster. The word _gabhair_ was evidently a topographical
term having a definite meaning indicating some physical feature of the
country, but I have not found it defined in any dictionary or
glossary. Examining the various instances of its use in place-names
and the conformation of the localities so named, I have come to the
conclusion that _gabhair_ most probably denoted a low broad ridge
between two river valleys. There were two localities so named in the
middle of Leinster. One was called Gabhair Life, with reference to the
river Liffey. In the first poem of _Duanaire Finn_ it is mentioned as
the place where dwelt the maiden Life from whom the river, we are
told, took its name: "In Gabhair between two mountains, there the
modest maid abode." This probably refers to the district of Donard in
Co. Wicklow, between the waters of the Liffey and the Slaney. The two
valleys are separated by a low watershed, and bounded on their outer
sides by mountainous country. Westward from this, in the south of
County Kildare, is a district which was anciently called Gabhair
Laighean. This means Gabhair of the Lagenians, and the name suggests
that it was the distinctive boundary between the two Fifths of the
Lagenians. It is situated between the valleys of the Barrow, the
Liffey and the Slaney, and may be regarded as the westward extension
of Gabhair Life. Further evidence on the point is supplied by two
glosses in the Book of Rights. One of these says that Laighin
Deas-Gabhair is Ui Ceinnsealaigh, the other says it is Osraighe. I
think we may take both together and regard the southern Fifth of
Leinster as comprising both territories, which are represented by the
dioceses of Ferns and Ossory. If O'Donovan is right in identifying
Dinn Riogh with a site near Leighlin Bridge, on the bank of the
Barrow, we should add to the territories named the diocese of
Leighlin, which lies between Ossory and Ferns. But there is good
evidence that the ancient Fifth of South Leinster was still more
extensive. It extended over a considerable part of eastern Munster,
taking in almost the whole county of Tipperary and a small part of
County Limerick.
The territory of Ossory, we are told, stretched from Gabhrán to Grian,
_i.e._, from the district of Gowran in County Kilkenny to the
district of Pallasgreen in County Limerick.
There were several stories which explained how and why this western
part of Leinster was transferred to Munster. According to one account
Osraige ö Gabrán co Gréin
tucad i n-éiric Eterscéil.
The territory of Ossory was forfeited to Munster in consequence of the
slaying of Ederscél, king of Ireland, father of Conaire Mór. Ederscél
was of the Ivernian race. A second account is alluded to by a poem in
the Book of Rights, claiming that Ossory was rightfully subject to the
kings of Munster, having been forfeited for the killing of Fergus
Scannal, king of Munster. The third account is much more elaborate. It
is found in the story of the Migration of the Déisi, a story which in
its extant form dates from about the year 750. It tells how the Dési
were expelled from the region of Tara; how one part of them crossed
the sea and settled in Wales; how another part sojourned for a long
time in Leinster, but at last entered the service of the king of
Munster and acquired a territorial settlement by conquering and
annexing to Munster the western part of the territory of Ossory. The
story relates that the men of Ossory were first driven eastward over
the Suir; they rallied near Clonmel and were again defeated and driven
across the Anner; were followed up by the Déisi and finally forced
over the Lingaun river, which to this day forms part of the boundary
between Ossory and Munster. The baronies of Iffa and Offa took their
name and origin from a branch of the Déisi settled in the conquered
territory. West of the Suir in County Tipperary are the baronies of
Upper and Lower Kilnamanagh. These were formerly O'Dwyer's country,
and the territory was ruled by the ancestors of the O'Dwyers from time
immemorial. But the line of the O'Dwyers and their forefathers was an
offshoot of the ruling people of South Leinster. In the genealogies,
Fionn File is their ancestor, the same who was king of South Leinster
in Cú Chulainn's time. Of the same Leinster stock came the sept Ui
Cuanach, whose name and territory is represented in the present barony
of Coonagh in County Limerick, adjoining O'Dwyer's country. On the
western side of this territory was the district of Grian, the western
limit-point of ancient Ossory.
I have found no very decisive indication of the westward extent of
ancient Leinster along the southern coast. However, the story of the
Déisi migration shows no distinction between the Déisi settlements
south of the Suir in County Waterford and those north of the Suir in
County Tipperary. There is nothing to indicate that the Munster king
settled one portion of his allies on conquered territory and another
portion on territory already in his possession, and the whole tenour
of the story associates the settlement with the displacement and
dispossession of the Men of Ossory. Therefore, I think it probable
that the territory of Ossory included the greater part of County
Waterford, as far west as Cappoquin and the Blackwater from Cappoquin
to the sea.
As in the case of the eastern parts of Munster so in the case of the
part beyond the Shannon, now County Clare, there is more than one
story to account for the annexation. When several stories are given to
explain a fact, though they contradict each other in the manner of the
explanation, they form a strong corroboration of each other as to the
fact itself. That Clare was at one time part of Connacht is the
universal testimony of antiquity.
Ancient Munster, therefore, the Munster of the heroic period,
comprised the counties of Cork and Kerry, the greater part of Limerick
and some small area of Tipperary and Waterford. It was the smallest of
the Five Great Fifths and there is no need to bisect it to form two of
them. The bisecting lines mentioned by Keating, however, are not
likely to have been purely imaginary. They refer in my opinion to
political boundaries of a later age. We have evidence of the division
of Munster in early Christian times into what may be called two
distinct spheres of influence. Besides the Eoghanacht dynasty which
then ruled in Cashel, there were other branches of the same dynasty
ruling in various parts of Munster. Of these the most powerful was the
Eoghanacht of Loch Léin, also called the Eoghanacht of Iarmuma, "West
Munster." Some of its kings are reckoned as kings of Munster, and
hostile to the kings of Cashel. The dividing line from Limerick to
Cork Harbour may indicate the boundary between the groups of states
which acknowledged the eastern and the western authority. As regards
the other line from Tralee to Slieve Bloom, I think it is founded on
the fluctuating extent of the rival authority of the Dalcassian and
Eoghanacht dynasties during the period between the battle of Clontarf
and the Norman invasion. During that period we read of kings of the
Eoghanacht lineage who are called kings of Cashel and Desmond. They
are of the family of MacCarthaigh. North of the line, the power of the
kings of Thomond was predominant.
The boundaries of ancient Connacht are fairly certain. The Shannon
throughout its course formed the principal limit. From the head of the
Shannon to the sea at Donegal Bay the boundary was nearly the same as
it still is.
Between Ulster and North Leinster, the boundary ran from Loch Bóderg
on the Shannon through the southern part of County Leitrim, and thence
in the direction of Granard; thence by the present boundary of Ulster
eastward as far as the Blackwater, down along the Blackwater to Navan
and from Navan along the Boyne to the Irish Sea. On the expedition of
the Táin, Medb's army skirted this boundary, keeping on the Leinster
side, until they reached the Blackwater; and the story tells how they
looked across the Blackwater at "the foreign territory" (_in chrich
aineoil_).
Such was the division of Ireland under the Pentarchy at the beginning
of the Christian Era, as disclosed by the oldest traditions.
When we come to St. Patrick's time, the fifth century, we feel
ourselves within the scope of clear and definite written records.
These ancient boundaries are for the most part only memories. There is
no longer a Pentarchy but a Heptarchy, which remains substantially
unchanged for several centuries and is described in detail by the Book
of Rights, compiled about the year 900 and revised about a century
later.
In this new arrangement, Munster has its present extent plus the
southern angle of King's County. Connacht has lost County Clare, but
has annexed territory east of the Shannon as far as Loch Erne and Loch
Ramor in County Cavan. This territory has been taken from Ulster,
which no longer exists as a political unit, but is divided into three
of the seven chief kingdoms. These are the kingdom of Ailech on the
west, the kingdom of Ulaidh on the east, and the kingdom of Airgialla
or Oriel in the middle. The Fifth of North Leinster has ceased to be a
kingdom. There is only one kingdom of Leinster, which extends as far
north as Dublin, the river Liffey and its tributary the Rye, which
runs by Maynooth. This kingdom contains what remains of North and
South Leinster and is ruled by the ancient dynasty of South Leinster.
The seventh chief realm is that of Meath which has been formed from
parts of North Leinster and of Ulster. Its northern boundary is nearly
but not quite the same as the present northern boundary of Leinster.
It takes in part of County Cavan and excludes the northern part of
County Louth, north of Ardee.
The strictly historical period in Ireland begins with St. Patrick. The
authentic writings of St. Patrick are the earliest written documents
of Irish history. But I do not think it would be just to say that all
before that time is prehistoric. If all we had for the first four
centuries of the Christian Era was a slender thread of narrative like
Livy's story of ancient Rome, we might wonder how much profit, if any,
could come from examining it. We are not in so poor a case. We have a
substantial mass of traditions, connected and disconnected, which, I
think, enable us to supply the void of written documents in a manner
that will carry conviction.
The period in question begins with the solid background of the
Pentarchy. It ends with the solid foreground of the Christian
Heptarchy. The problem before the student is not merely to fill up the
intervening space with a random collection of traditional material,
but to find out by what stages and through what causes the
transformation took place; how a central monarchy came into being; how
Ulster was broken up into three distinct realms; how Leinster
contracted from two great kingdoms into one; how the new and powerful
kingdom of Meath was established; and how Munster grew to about twice
its ancient extent.
Our old native historians did not concern themselves with accounting
for anything. Their chief model was Eusebius, and Eusebius was content
to give lists of kings with the length of each king's reign as the
sole history of various realms of antiquity throughout centuries. So
the only consecutive history we find of Ireland before St. Patrick's
time consists in like manner of regnal lists with little bits of
anecdotal matter added here and there. Even these regnal lists are not
authentic. They are made up artificially from pedigrees, and I have
already shown that the method was so recklessly artificial as to make
a king out of a misread note to one of the pedigrees. Even the oldest
written history of Ireland extant follows this method. It does not
indeed extend the Irish monarchy back to the Gaelic invasion. It
declares the authentic history of Ireland to begin with the foundation
of Emain Macha, dated 305 B.C., and it begins the Tara monarchy in
A.D. 46. But from this date onward it gives the succession of the
high-kings, and that succession is one of a kind unknown in the
historical period. It is a succession from father to son, which is
contrary to the known custom of all the insular Celts, in Ireland,
Wales, and Scotland. In other words, it is again merely a pedigree
converted into a dynastic succession.
When a single pedigree is utilised in this way, the fact is easily
discovered. Later historians adopted a less obvious artifice, and one
at the same time which made their account more widely acceptable. They
shortened the reigns of the kings in the earlier history so as to
leave gaps between them, and into these gaps they inserted names from
other pedigrees besides that of the Tara monarchs. They took these
names in turn from the genealogies of the kings of Munster, Leinster,
Oriel, etc., and thus, by giving every part of Ireland a share in the
monarchy, they produced a regnal history which was flattering in an
all-round way and which succeeded in relegating the earlier device to
comparative oblivion.
I had become familiar with this plan of transforming pedigrees into
regnal lists before I first read Buchanan's history of Scotland. In
that book I found a list of forty-three kings who reigned over
Scotland before Fergus of Dal Riada went over from Ireland. All the
names seemed strange. They were apparently Latinised from some other
language, the history being written in Latin. Were they invented, like
the names in "Gulliver's Travels," or, if not, where were they found?
Can it be, I asked myself, that the Scottish historians, like the
Irish, filled the vacuum out of pedigrees? And if so, out of what
pedigrees? Now it is a matter of historical record that, on the
inauguration of a king of Scotland, a part of the ceremony consisted
in the recitation of his pedigree, and this custom was kept up until
the Dal Riada line died out with Alexander III in 1285. Therefore, I
argued, the pedigree most familiar to an early Scottish historian was
that of the kings of Dal Riada. I turned up this pedigree in the Irish
genealogies and my conjecture was confirmed. Scotland and Ireland are
all along agreed that Fergus MacEirc, an Irish prince, settled in
Scotland and founded there a new kingdom and dynasty. But the
forty-three kings of Scotland named before Fergus are nevertheless the
forty-three ancestors of Fergus, from father to son, in the Irish
genealogy. The list comprises names so well known in Irish story as
Ederscél, that Munster king, whose death is said to account for the
forfeiture of Leinster territory to Munster; his son Conaire Mór,
whose tragic fate is told in the story of Da Derga's Hostel; and the
younger Conaire, son of Mugh Lámha, who also figures in the Irish
hero-lore. All these and their forefathers, up to the eponymous Iar,
head of the Ivernian stock, figure one after another in the artificial
history of the first Scottish dynasty beyond the sea.
Let us get away then from such unprofitable material and let us see
what comes to us in the guise of traditions of substance. We start off
from the Pentarchy and the Ulster cycle. The Ulster stories have for
their main basis the hostile relations between Ulster and Connacht.
Being Ulster stories, they do not prolong their scope beyond a time in
which Ulster has generally the best of it. Ulster's mishaps merely
serve to heighten the effect, which is Ulster's heroism and victory.
It was when this time of glory was but a memory, when Emain was a
deserted site and the remnant of the Ulaidh occupied only a tiny
fraction of their former territory, that these stories took their
present shape and were committed to writing. We have to turn to
another set of traditions, to those connected with the monarchical
kindred of historical time, to learn how things developed from the
stage depicted in the Ulster tales.
The course of development will be more clearly followed if it is
stated in summary beforehand. The hostile relations between Ulster
and Connacht continued, but the kings of Connacht grew gradually more
powerful. They extended their power step by step over central-eastern
Ireland, the ancient Fifth of North Leinster, and then step by step
over all Ulster except what is now comprised in the counties of Down
and Antrim. Upon the increase of power thus acquired they established
a hegemony or primacy over all Ireland. This primacy found its
definite expression in the institution of the high-kingship or
Monarchy.
The first stage in the process was the occupation of Uisneach by
Tuathal Teachtmhar. Who was this Tuathal? According to the genealogies
he was sixth in descent from Eochu Feidlech, who was the father of
Medb, queen of Connacht. Accepting Medb's date as fixed or estimated
by all our ancient writers, she flourished just at the commencement of
the Christian Era. Tuathal was five generations later, and from dated
Irish pedigrees we can calculate an average of almost exactly three
generations to a century. Tuathal therefore would have flourished in
the third quarter of the second century, say between A.D. 150 and A.D.
175. Exact dates are assigned to him in the extant regnal lists, but
these lists do not agree with each other, and it is safer to rely on
the law of averages. Tuathal, we are told, set up a new kingdom for
himself around Uisneach. The territory surrounding Uisneach was part
of the old Fifth of North Leinster. Consequently the alliance of the
Four Great Fifths against Ulster was no longer operative. Tuathal was
a prince of the Connacht dynasty, and his occupation of Uisneach was
an invasion of North Leinster and the first stage in the break-up of
the Pentarchy.
With regard to Tuathal we are told that before his birth the
Rent-paying tribes throughout Ireland revolted against the Gaelic
ascendancy and overthrew it. Tuathal's mother fled to Britain and in
Britain he was born. By the time he came of age the revolution had
spent its force and a reaction set in. Tuathal returned to Ireland, by
some he was welcomed, others he overcame by force, and he became the
strongest king in Ireland. It was then that he took possession of
Uisneach.
It is difficult to know what exactly to make of this story of a
plebeian revolution. In its actual terms, the story is full of
improbabilities, and reads like a fairy tale for children. Another
difficulty about it is that a similar story is told of Tuathal's
grandfather. There is no inherent improbability in the main fact of
the story, the occurrence of a plebeian revolution which for a time
displaced the Gaelic ascendancy, and the occurrence of a subsequent
complete reaction. Something like it happened in France little more
than a century ago and in England under Oliver Cromwell. The
occurrence of a revolution and the successful survival of the Connacht
dynasty may help us to understand how the kings of Connacht were able
afterwards to make such headway not only against their ancient rivals
in Ulster but against their former allies in North Leinster; that is,
if we understand that Connacht was less shaken and weakened by the
revolution than the other provinces were. Again, in the Ulster
stories, we hardly hear of the existence of the Picts in Ulster; they
are completely dominated by the Ulaidh. But when Ireland emerges into
the full light of written history, we find the Picts a very powerful
people in east Ulster, Cuailnge itself, the home of the Brown Bull,
and the neighbouring plain of Muirtheimhne, Cú Chulainn's patrimony,
being now Pictish territory. This may well have been the consequence
of some such revolution as the story indicates.
The next stage is the occupation of Tara, the old capital of North
Leinster, by Cormac, who is fourth in descent from Tuathal, and who
should therefore have flourished in the period A.D. 275-300, a time
corresponding closely enough with that to which the regnal lists
assign him. The fact of the annexation of Tara and the surrounding
region, the territory of Brega, is always glossed over by our old
historians. This tacit treatment may perhaps be explained. In their
histories generally, the monarchy goes back to the Gaelic invasion,
and Tara is the seat of the monarchs in remote antiquity, as it
actually was in the early Christian period. This location of the
monarchy in Tara from time immemorial, like the assumed existence of
such a monarchy, exemplifies a very common tendency, the tendency to
project the known present into the unknown past.
The fact of the annexation of Tara and eastern Meath underlies the
story of the Battle of Crinna. The cause of this battle, as stated,
was the continued hostility of the Ulstermen to king Cormac's line.
One king after another of this line, which, be it remembered, was the
Connacht dynasty and still ruled over Connacht, had fallen in fight
with the Ulster enemy. Cormac had forced Ulster to give him hostages.
Such hostages were by custom honourably entertained according to their
rank. The Ulster hostages sat at Cormac's own table. So unsubdued was
their spirit that on one occasion they did the king the gross affront
of setting fire to his beard. After this, Ulster again took up arms
and drove Cormac out of Meath, forcing him to take refuge in his
native realm of Connacht. There he gathered his forces and took a
Munster prince, Tadhg, son of Cian, into alliance. This Tadhg figures
in the genealogies as being the ancestor of a group of dynastic
families which in later times ruled over certain states of Connacht,
Meath and Ulster, the Luighni, Gaileanga, Cianachta, etc. These
states, when we trace them back as far as possible, are native to
Connacht; their branches in Meath and Ulster are frontier colonies
planted to guard the conquests of the Connacht kings. Tadhg macCéin,
in the story, is the personification of these colonies.
Before going into battle, Tadhg made a compact with Cormac the king.
They agreed that, if Tadhg came off victorious, Cormac would grant him
as much territory as he could ride around in his chariot on the day of
victory.
In the battle of Crinna, Tadhg engaged the Ulstermen and completely
defeated them. He himself was sorely wounded. He mounted his chariot
and set out to ride around the territory he desired to win for
himself and his descendants, and he commanded the charioteer to take
such a course as to bring Tara within the circuit. Then, overcome with
loss of blood from his many wounds, he fell into a swoon and lay
unconscious in the chariot.
King Cormac had foreseen that Tadhg would try to get possession of
Tara. He desired Tara for himself, and he bribed the charioteer to
leave Tara out of the circuit of the ride. At intervals during the
ride, Tadhg awoke from his swoon and on each occasion he asked the
charioteer "Have we brought in Tara?" and the charioteer answered "Not
yet." At nightfall, Tadhg came to his senses and saw that they had
reached the banks of the Liffey near Dublin. "Have we brought in
Tara?" he asked again. The charioteer could not answer yes. Tadhg saw
that he had been cheated, and he slew the charioteer.
Now the territory that fell to Tadhg's share in the story extended
along the coast from Ardee to Dublin and inland along the northern
frontier of Meath to Loch Ramor--and these territories in later times
were occupied by the Connacht colonies whose rulers claimed descent
from Tadhg. Roughly speaking the whole stretch of country forms an L
inverted and in the angle of this L stands Tara the ancient capital of
North Leinster, but henceforth the capital of Cormac's kingdom.
Except this story of the Battle of Crinna, there is no other story or
even title of a story known to me which explains how Tara ceased to be
the seat of the North Leinster kings and passed into the possession of
the kings of Connacht and Uisneach. There is no other account which
explains why or how the Leinster frontier, which formerly lay along
the Boyne and the Blackwater, was afterwards pushed back to the Liffey
and the Rye. The territory which fell to Tadhg was partly Ulster
territory and partly Leinster territory. Yet in the story itself,
there is no mention of Leinster and Cormac's only enemies were the
Ulstermen. The story, which in its extant form belongs to a very late
period, is evidently defective. It is written in conformity with the
theory that the Monarchy existed before the Pentarchy and that Tara
was the seat of the Monarchy from time immemorial. Consequently it
ignores what we may call the Leinster aspect of the matter, and the
conflict seems to be altogether between Cormac and Ulster. Ulster lost
land on the north side of the Boyne, and this conquered territory,
under the compact, fell to the share of Tadhg. The underlying notion,
in this episode of the chariot-ride, is obviously that the victor is
to be rewarded with a share of the spoils. If, then, the conquered
part of Ulster formed part of his reward, and if in the same bargain
he gained part of Leinster between the Boyne and the Liffey, and if he
expected to gain Tara, we must, I think, infer that this part of
Leinster and Tara likewise were no less conquered territory than the
piece of Ulster that fell to Tadhg.
Therefore, there should have been an earlier version of the story, now
lost, which showed that not Ulster alone but North Leinster also
resisted Cormac and suffered defeat from him and his ally. Such an
account would explain, what remains a complete blank, so far as I
know, in this traditional history, how the dynasty of North Leinster
came to an end and how Tara and Bregia, south as well as north of the
Boyne, passed into the possession of the kings of Connacht and
Uisneach.
The reign of Cormac is regarded in our earliest histories as an epoch
in Irish history. This, I think, was because it marked the end of the
Pentarchy and the rise of the Monarchy seated at Tara.
The next stage in the growth of the Connacht power brings us to the
overthrow of the Ulster kingdom and the conquest of the greater part
of Ulster. In the century after Cormac, his descendant Muiredach
Tireach becomes king of Tara. Muiredach, we are told, in his youth
took command for his father, Fiacha Sroibhtine, king of Tara, and was
successful in establishing his father's authority in southern Ireland.
His uncles, the three Collas, became jealous of his success. The young
prince, they said, will be chosen king when his father dies, and we
shall be shut out from the succession. They then conspired to
overthrow their brother and win the kingship for one of themselves
while Muiredach was still absent in the South. They raised an army
against the king. Fiacha consulted his druid. The druid answered: You
have two alternatives. You can be victorious. If you are, the kingship
will pass from your son and your descendants. But if you are defeated
and slain, your son and your posterity will rule Ireland. It is the
symbol in Irish story of the Triumph of Failure. The king said, Then
I choose defeat and death. The three Collas were victorious, the king
fell in the fight. Then all Ireland arose against the victors.
Muiredach was chosen king, and the Collas were banished over the sea.
They dwelt in exile for some years in Britain, but the guilt of their
brother's blood oppressed their souls, and at last they said, We can
bear it no longer, we shall go back to Ireland and lay down our lives
for our crime. The young king forgave them and took them to his
favour. After this, they spoke to him one day and said: Though thou
and we are at peace, our sons will grow up and contend with thy sons
for the kingship. Give us a kingdom for ourselves and our posterity.
It shall be so, said the king. What part of Ireland will you give us?
said they. The Ulstermen, said the king, have ever been hostile
towards me and towards our fathers. Go and conquer their kingdom, and
it shall be yours.
The Collas then went to Connacht, which was still the homeland of the
new Tara dynasty, raised an army there, invaded Ulster, were
victorious, and captured the Ulster capital. The conquered territory
comprised the present counties of Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, and the
greater part of Fermanagh and Derry.
I wish to dwell on the fact that the conquerors were princes of the
Connacht dynasty, then ruling also in Tara. Their army was drawn from
Connacht. In fact, all this chain of events is the direct sequel of
the old rivalry between Connacht and Ulster that forms the basis of
Táin Bó Cuailnge and the Ulster cycle in general. The inhabitants of
the conquered parts of Ulster got the significant name of Airgialla,
Oirghialla, "the eastern subjects." In relation to Meath and Tara,
they were northern not eastern subjects. The name Airgialla then is
based on the fact that the conquering power at the time when the name
came into use was still regarded as the western power, its home was
Connacht.
Thus ended the Fifth of Ulster. Let us see what was happening
meanwhile in southern Ireland. In Munster, under the Pentarchy, the
kings of the Érainn or Iverni held rule. In St. Patrick's time, these
no longer ruled in Munster. The kings of Munster belonged to a
distinct line, called the Eoghanachta. Their capital was no longer in
the west. It was Cashel, not far from the eastern border of their
kingdom and in territory formerly part of Leinster. To the original
extent of the Munster Fifth had been added in the meantime the
counties of Clare and Tipperary, a small part of Limerick, and the
larger part of Waterford, making the bounds of Munster almost but not
exactly what they are at present.
In face of the growing power of the kings of Connacht, how it came
about that Clare was detached from Connacht and added to Munster, I
cannot explain to my own satisfaction, beyond saying that, within a
smaller scope, the Eoghanacht kings of Munster became even more
powerful than the kings of Connacht and ruled over a more firmly
consolidated realm. During the early Christian centuries, before the
Norse invasions, Munster appears to have enjoyed greater tranquillity
than any other realm in Western Europe. The genealogies show that
there was an early Eoghanacht settlement in the Clare area, called
Eoghanacht Ninuis, and another, still called Eoghanacht, in the island
of Arainn Mhór, to the north of Clare.
There were at least two accounts in ancient story of the transfer of
Clare to Munster. The time of this event differs by centuries in the
two stories, and I shall not endeavour to reconcile them or to choose
between them. There are three distinct accounts of the eastern
annexation from South Leinster. The only one of these that is full and
explanatory, and that fits with the known later stage of things, is
the account connected with the Migration of the Déisi.
Let it be noted that Cashel, the seat of the Munster kings in
Christian times, stands outside of ancient Munster. Keating relates an
ancient story telling how Cashel was "discovered" in the time of Corc,
king of Munster, _i.e._, about A.D. 400, and got a new name. This new
name was a Latin one, for Caiseal is the Irish representative of the
Latin word _castellum_, "fortress." These things show how late was the
use of Cashel as the seat of Munster sovereignty.
What and whence was this new ruling power in Munster, the Eoghanachta?
Their genealogies show that at one time they were worshippers of a god
named Segomo--one of their ancestors is named Nia Segomon, "Segomo's
champion." This god Segomo is unknown to Irish tradition, in which his
name is never found outside of the Eoghanacht genealogy. He was
known, however, and worshipped in Gaul, where he is commemorated in
several inscriptions of the Roman period. He was a war-god and is
equated, according to the fashion of Roman Gaul, with the Latin god
Mars--"Deus Mars Segomo." The descendants of Segomo's Champion are
named in three Ogham inscriptions, all found in the district of
Dungarvan and Ardmore, on the southern seaboard. The indications
therefore are that the Eoghanachta represent a relatively late Gaulish
settlement in that part of Ireland. The story of the Déisi Migration
mentions several bodies of Gaulish settlers.
The Migration of the Déisi is an evident sequel of the conquest of
Tara and eastern Meath under Cormac. Déisi means "vassal communities."
These particular vassal communities dwelt around Tara, and were
possibly identical with the Luaighni, who formed the chief fighting
force of North Leinster in Cú Chulainn's time. They quarrelled with
Cormac, we are told, and he drove them, or a large part of them, out
of Meath. They migrated in two bodies. One body crossed the sea and
settled in southern Wales where the descendants of their princes still
held sway in the eighth century. The other body settled for a time in
Leinster.
Later on this Leinster section entered into an alliance with the
Eoghanacht king, Oengus, whose queen was the daughter of their chief.
By their aid, Oengus conquered what is now the south-eastern part of
Munster, and he settled the Déisi as frontier colonists on the
conquered territory. Oengus flourished in St. Patrick's time, the
second and third quarter of the fifth century.
The loss of the large territories about the Boyne and the Suir reduced
Leinster to much smaller dimensions. What remained of the two ancient
Fifths was now united in one kingdom, ruled over by the line of the
ancient kings of South Leinster. This reduction and unification means
the final passing away of the Pentarchy described in the Ulster tales.
The seat of the Leinster kings is no longer either Tara or Dinn Riogh,
but Ailinn, which lies between them, on the southern side of the
Curragh of Kildare.
The Connacht kings continued, however, to extend their conquests and
their power. A grandson of Muiredach Tirech was king of Tara at the
beginning of the fifth century (_c._ A.D. 400), Niall of the Nine
Hostages. His brother, Brión (or Brian) took possession of a
south-western section of Ulster, comprising a large part of the
counties of Leitrim and Cavan, afterwards called Brian's Land--Tír
Briúin. Three sons of Niall took possession of what remained of
western Ulster, now comprised in th
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