Phases of Irish History

by Eoin Mac Neill

The dating of the extant Ogham inscriptions is a matter of very great difficulty, and the more closely I have attempted to examine them, the greater the difficulty has become. I shall only say that the latest forms of Irish names that they contain appear to be about identical in their stage of phonetic change with the earliest forms found in Irish writers, for example in the Life of St. Columba by Adamnanus who quotes from older documents—probably forms of the latter part of the sixth century. The weight of evidence, in my opinion, goes to show that the cult of the Ogham inscriptions was mainly associated with Paganism.

The manuscript literature of Irish does not come in a line of continuity from the Ogham writing. The system of spelling in the oldest specimens of MS. Irish has its basis in a British pronunciation of Latin—that is, in Latin modified and changed as a spoken language among the Britons during the centuries of the Roman occupation. One of the tasks incidental to the work of St. Patrick and his helpers in missionary work in Ireland was to give lessons in Latin to those who were to be the future clergy of the country. Thus we read again and again that St. Patrick wrote an alphabet for this and that convert—alphabet in this case meaning a primer or possibly a book of psalms—at all events a set of lessons in Latin. It is easy to show that a similar pronunciation of Latin prevailed in the early Christian schools of Ireland and in Britain at the same time; that this pronunciation differed systematically from the Italian pronunciation; that the differences represent changes which had taken place also in the British language, though not in Irish; and that the orthography of Old and Middle Welsh and also of Old and Middle Irish was moulded by this modified British pronunciation of Latin. The peculiarities of spelling produced in this way do not appear at all in the Ogham inscriptions; and on the other hand, there are peculiarities in the orthographic system of the Ogham inscriptions which leave no trace in Irish MS. writing. The oldest Irish grammarians speak of the Ogham method of writing as the Irish method and of the MS. method as the Latin method; and they report current sayings which show that among the early Irish Christians the use of the Irish method was regarded as profane and even tainted with impiety—meaning, beyond doubt, that it was closely associated in their minds with heathenism. On the other hand the earliest specimens of written Irish are distinctively Christian. The oldest known piece of Irish MS. writing is, or was until recently, preserved in Cambrai and is ascribed to the seventh century—but pieces as old or older exist in various transcripts.

In a paper on the Annals of Tigernach, I have shown that a chronicle of the world, written in continuation of the Chronicle of Eusebius, Jerome, and Prosper, and embodying a skeleton of Irish history, was brought to conclusion in Ireland in the year 609. From certain indications this chronicle would appear to have been commenced in the closing years of the sixth century—say between 590 and 600. Part of this chronicle is embodied in the Annals of Tigernach and in the Annals of Ulster, and extracts from it in the Annals of Innisfallen. What survives of it with relation to Ireland is the oldest known history of Ireland. From its manner of dealing with Irish affairs, I think we must conclude that even before its time, a certain body of Irish heroic literature existed in MS. and consequently that the writing of this literature had already begun in the course of the sixth century. There are other evidences that during the sixth century a blending of the old heathen lore and learned tradition with the new Christian learning was taking place—the native schools of poets, originally druids, becoming Christian and adopting the apparatus of Christian learning. St. Columba, we are told, had a poet named Gemmán for tutor, and we may be quite certain that the friendship which Columba is said to have shown to the poets as a body in the Assembly of Druim Ceata in 575 was not extended to a class which he associated with heathenism.

Nevertheless, a good deal of specifically heathen practice and teaching was preserved, more or less covertly, among the secular poets of Ireland for centuries after St. Columba's time.

In the seventh century, writing in Irish appears to become very common, but Adamnanus, about the beginning of the eighth century, writing from the standpoint of Latin and Christian learning, still speaks of his native tongue in depreciation. This sentiment did not extend to the Irish secular school of literati. An old grammar of Irish, dating in part from the seventh century, speaks of Irish as a "choice language," and proclaims its superiority over other languages. In the seventh century, too, new metrical forms in Irish poetry, based on Latin hymns, make their appearance, and afterwards develop into a varied and elaborate system of metric.

Let us now return to the political side of Irish history. I have endeavoured to trace the stages by which the Pentarchy of the old heroic tales became broken up and transformed into a quite different state of things when the early Christian period is reached. The chief agencies in this transformation were the extension of the power of the Connacht dynasty and its branches over northern Ireland, and the rise of the Eoghanacht dynasty in southern Ireland, with its seat at Cashel. The growth in power of the two ascendant dynasties, those of Tara and Cashel, is marked by a sort of colonising process. Offshoots from each dynasty are planted in authority over petty kingdoms, displacing or rather depressing the rulers previously in possession.

Something similar took place in later times under the Feudal system. In virtue of the supposed Donation of Constantine, now long recognised to have been fabulous, but accepted as genuine in the Middle Ages, the Popes claimed temporal dominion over all the islands of the ocean. In exercise of this temporal claim, Adrian IV conferred the lordship of Ireland on Henry of Anjou. But in virtue of the same supposed right, Adrian had already an immediate feudatory for Ireland in the person of the king of Ireland—Ruaidhri. Henry thus took the place of a "mean lord" or intermediate feudatory between the existing lord and the overlord. Henry himself repeated this process. He granted the lordship of Ireland to his son John, and this grant was confirmed by the Pope then reigning, Alexander III. Sir John Gilbert has pointed out that, had the issue of John's elder brothers survived, John would not have become king, and the lordship of Ireland would have been separate from and independent of the Crown of England, and subject only to the feudal overlordship of the Pope while it lasted. The result of granting the lordship of Ireland to Henry II was that the existing possessor was depressed in rank, not dispossessed—this apart from the cession of rights which Ruaidhri made to Henry by the short-lived Treaty of Windsor.

An almost identical process was a staple part of the policy of Irish kings from the beginning of the fourth century until the middle of the sixteenth. Such lordships can be shown to have been created either by Shane O'Neill or his father Conn, acting as king of Ulster. During the whole intervening period, we can trace the same process, the creation of mean lords, in every part of Ireland under Irish kings. In most cases the new lord was a member of the king's family, a brother, a son, or other near relative. A number of very clear and noteworthy instances of this exercise of royal dominion by Irish kings took place in consequence of the Norman conquest.

Events of this kind are not recorded in the Irish annals, except in a few instances when the exercise of power was somewhat abnormal. Since we have now reached a point at which the annals begin to figure as chief witnesses, some notice of the general character of the annals will be in place. At first sight, the pages of our native chronicles appear as a sort of trackless morass to the inquirer after Irish history. The reason is this—the chroniclers hardly ever tell us anything that an Irish reader of their times could be expected to know as a matter of course. They say almost nothing about institutions or about anything that is normal. Just as they record earthquakes, comets, eclipses, excessive frosts or floods or droughts, but say nothing about the normal course of the stars or the seasons, so, in regard of human affairs, they are silent about all that is regular or institutional, about matters of common knowledge in their time, and they are silent also, as a rule, about the institutional aspect, so to speak, of events which they relate. We are told, for example, that a certain king puts a prince of his own house to death—and that is all. From some subsidiary document we may learn that the act was a judicial act, done after trial and sentence. Or we are told that a certain king leads his forces against another king and how the battle went—but we have to consult some other source to find that the action was taken in consequence of the refusal to pay tribute according to ancient claim and precedent.

Among the subsidiary material which helps to explain the annals, and to give their events a place in historical sequence, the genealogies have the highest importance. In particular, they throw a great deal of light on the process above-mentioned, the extension of the power of dynastic families by the creation of lordships over the head of existing feudatories—to use a borrowed term.