Phases of Irish History

by Eoin Mac Neill

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.