The hypothesis which seems to account much more satisfactorily for the facts as we know them assumes that an ancestral worshipping people inhabited the Spanish peninsula from remote prehistoric times. If so, they certainly occupied the pastoral plains of Castile and the fertile regions of Valencia and Andalusia, as well as the bleak hills of Gallicia and the Asturias. Whether we call them Iberians, or Celtiberians, or, to use a more general term, Turanians, they were a dead-reverencing, ancestral worshipping people, but had not in prehistoric times learnt to use stone for the adornment of their tombs.
The first people, so far as we know, who disturbed the Iberians in their possessions were the Carthaginians. They occupied the sea coast at least of Murcia and Valencia, and if, according to their custom, they sought to reduce the natives to slavery, they probably frightened multitudes from the coast into the interior, but there is no proof that they ever made any extensive settlements in the centre of the country, nor on its west or north coast. It was different with the Romans: with them the genius of conquest was strong; they longed to annex all Spain to their dominions, and no doubt drove all those who were impatient of their yoke into the remote districts of Portugal and the rugged fastnesses of the Asturias and the northern mountains. It is also probable that many, to avoid their oppressions, sought refuge beyond the sea; but the great migrations are probably due to the intolerance of the early Christian missionaries. It thus seems that it was to avoid Carthaginian rapacity, Roman tyranny, and Christian intolerance, that the unfortunate aborigines were forced first into the fastnesses of the hills, and thence driven literally into the sea, to seek refuge from their oppressors in the islands of the ocean.[448]
Such an hypothesis seems perfectly consonant with all the facts as we now know them, and it also accounts for the absence of dolmens in the centre of Spain; for if this is correct, these migrations took place in the pre-dolmen period, and just as we find the Bryts beginning to use stones after having been driven from the fertile plains of the east into the fastnesses of Cumberland and Wales, so we find the Spaniards first adopting rude-stone monuments after having been driven into Portugal and the Asturias.
The one point which this theory does not seem to account for is the presence of dolmens in Andalusia. They however are, if I am not mistaken, an outlying branch of the great African dolmen field, and belong to the same age as these do, of which we shall be better able to judge presently. That there was a close or intimate connection from very early times between the south coast of Spain and the north of Africa hardly admits of a doubt. The facility with which the Moors occupied it in the seventh century, and the permanence of their dominion for so many centuries, is in itself sufficient to prove that a people of the same race had been established there before them, and that they were not a foreign race holding the natives in subjection, but dwelling among their own kith and kin.
It seems in vain to look among the written annals, either of Spain or Ireland, for a rational account of these events. Both countries acknowledge to the fullest extent that the migration did take place; and the Spanish race of Heremon is one of the most illustrious of those of Ireland, and fills a large page in its history. So, too, the Spanish annalists fill volumes with the successful expeditions of their countrymen to the Green Island.[449] The mania, however, of the annalists of both countries for carrying everything back to the Flood, and the sons and daughters of Noah, so vitiates everything they say, that beyond the fact, which seems undoubted that such migration did occur no reliance can be placed on their accounts of these transactions.
One only paragraph that I know of seems to have escaped perversion. In his second chapter of his fourth book, D. O'Campo states:—"Certain natives of Spain called Siloros (the Siluri), a Biscayan tribe, joined with another, named Brigantes, migrated to Britain about 261 years before our era, and obtained possession of a territory there on which they settled."[450] This is so consonant with what we know of the settlement of the Silures on the banks of the Severn that there seems no good reason for doubting its correctness. It is more doubtful, however, whether any Spanish colonies reached Ireland at so early an age. Even allowing for the existence in the north-east of Ireland of the realm of Emania, the only kingdom in Ireland of which we have any authentic annals before the Christian era, there was plenty of room for the contemporary existence of the race of Heremon in the south and west. Tara did not then exist, and, in fact, according to the annals of the 'Four Masters,' was founded by Heremon himself, and took its first name, Teamair, from Tea, his wife, who selected this spot. All this is perfectly consistent with what we know of the history of the place. The earliest monument at Tara is the Rath of Cormac[451] (218 A.D., or probably fifty years later). Though therefore chosen by Heremon as a sacred or desirable spot for residence, there is no proof that his race ever occupied it; and in the two centuries that elapsed from his advent to the time of Cormac his race had passed away from Meath at least, and was only to be found in the south and west of Ireland. The one reminiscence of the Milesian race that remained at Tara, in historical times, is the Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, which these "veneratores lapidum" are said to have brought with them from Spain, but which, with all due deference to Petrie, is not the obelisk still standing there,[452] but may be the stone now in Westminster Abbey. The Spanish colonists seem principally to have occupied the country about Wexford and Galway,[453] and to these places, especially the latter, a continual stream of immigration appears to have flowed from the first century of our era down to the time of Elizabeth. No one can travel in these counties without remarking the presence of a dark-haired, dark-eyed race that prevails everywhere; but, strange to say, the darkest-complexioned people in the west are those who still linger among the long-neglected dolmens of Glen Malim More.
According to the annals of the 'Four Masters,' Heremon landed in Ireland fifty years after the death of the great Dagdha. The Irish historians say that the country was then ruled by three princesses, wives of the grandsons of the Dagdha, and add that the event took place 1002 years after Forann (Pharaoh) had been drowned in the Red Sea.[454] If that event took place in 1312, as I believe it did,[455] this would fix their advent in 310 B.C., which, though less extravagant than the chronology of the 'Four Masters, is still, I believe, at least three centuries too early. All this may not be—is not in fact—capable of absolute proof; but it has at least the merit that it pieces together satisfactorily all we know of the history and ethnography of these races, and explains in a reasonable manner all the architectural forms which we meet with. It is hardly fair to expect more from the annals of a rude people who could not write, and whose history has never been carefully investigated in modern times. It is too early yet to say so, but the fact is, that it is these rude-stone monuments which alone can reveal the secrets of their long forgotten past. As they have hitherto been treated, they have only added mystery to obscurity. But the time is not far off when this will be altered, and we may learn from a comparison of the Irish with Spanish dolmens, not only what truth there is in the migrations of Heremon, but also at what time these Spanish tribes first settled as colonists in the Irish isle.
Dolmens.
