During the Late Celtic Period the Britons, like the Gauls, were armed with gladii sine mucrone, which Tacitus[1040] calls ingentes and enormes, These Spathæ must have grown out of the bronze rapier. A monument found in London and preserved at Oxford shows the blade to have been between three and four feet long.[1041]
All history declares the Ancient Britons to have been of right warlike race; and Solinus[1042] relates of them a characteristic trait. ‘When a woman is delivered of a male child, she places its first food upon the father’s Sword, and gently puts it to the little one’s mouth, praying to her country gods that its death may be, in like manner, amidst arms.’
The ancient Irish seem to have been rather savages than barbarians, amongst whom the wild non-Celts long prevailed over the Goidels or Gaels. Ptolemy calls the former Ivernii, and it has been lately suggested[1043] that this may have been the racial name throughout the British Islands. The same savage element, which is still persistent, was noticed by Tasso, when speaking of the Hibernian crusaders:
Questi dall’ alte selve irsuti manda
La divisa del mondo ultima Irlanda.[1044]
The modern Irish, who in historical falsification certainly rival, if they do not excel, the Hindús, claim for their ancestry an exalted grade of culture. They found their pretensions upon illuminated manuscripts and similar works of high art; but it is far easier to account for these triumphs as the exceptional labours of students who wandered to the classic regions about the Mediterranean. If ancient Ireland ever was anything but savage, where, let us ask, are the ruins that show any sign of civilisation? A people of artists does not pig in wooden shanties, surrounded by a rude vallum of earth-work.
Ireland, like modern Central Africa, would receive all her civilised weapons from her neighbours. The Picts of Scotland would transmit a knowledge of iron-working and of the Sword to the Scotti or Picts of the north-east of Hibernia.[1045] This is made evident by the names of the articles.
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