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.