PHASES OF IRISH HISTORY

First Edition 1919
Second Impression 1920

FOREWORD

The twelve chapters in this volume, delivered as lectures before public audiences in Dublin, make no pretence to form a full course of Irish history for any period. Their purpose is to correct and supplement. For the standpoint taken, no apology is necessary. Neither apathy nor antipathy can ever bring out the truth of history.

I have been guilty of some inconsistency in my spelling of early Irish names, writing sometimes earlier, sometimes later forms. In the Index, I have endeavoured to remedy this defect.

Since these chapters presume the reader's acquaintance with some general presentation of Irish history, they may be read, for the pre-Christian period, with Keating's account, for the Christian period, with any handbook of Irish history in print.

Eoin MacNeill.

I. THE ANCIENT IRISH A CELTIC PEOPLE

Every people has two distinct lines of descent—by blood and by tradition. When we consider the physical descent of a people, we regard them purely as animals. As in any breed of animals, so in a people, the tokens of physical descent are mainly physical attributes—such as stature, complexion, the shape of the skull and members, the formation of the features. When we speak of a particular race of men, if we speak accurately, we mean a collection of people whose personal appearance and bodily characters, inherited from their ancestors and perhaps modified by climate and occupation, distinguish them notably from the rest of mankind. It is important for us to be quite clear in our minds about this meaning of Race, for the word Race is often used in a very loose and very misleading way in popular writings and discussions. Thus we hear and read of the Latin races, the Teutonic race, the Anglo-Saxon race, the Celtic race. If these phrases had any value in clear thinking, they would imply that in each instance it is possible to distinguish a section of mankind which, by its inherited physical characters, differs notably from the rest of mankind. Now in not one of the instances mentioned is any such distinction known to those who have made the races of man the subject of their special study. There is no existing Latin race, no Teutonic race, no Anglo-Saxon race, and no Celtic race. Each of the groups to whom these names are popularly applied is a mixture of various races which can be distinguished, and for the most part they are a mixture of the same races, though not in every case in the same proportions.

In the case of the populations which are recognised to be Celtic, it is particularly true that no distinction of race is found among them. And this is true of them even in the earliest times of their history. Tacitus, in the remarkable introductory chapters of his book, "De Moribus Germanorum," gives a brief physical description of the Germans of his time. "Their physical aspect," he says, "even in so numerous a population, is the same for all of them: fierce blue eyes, reddish hair, bodies of great size and powerful only in attack." Upon this the well-read editor of the Elzevir edition of 1573 has the following remarks: "What Tacitus says here of the Germans, the same is said by Florus and Livy in describing the Gauls.... Hence," he continues, "it appears that those ancient Gauls and Germans were remarkably similar in the nature of their bodies as well as of their minds." He goes on to develop the comparison, and sums up as follows: "Who then will deny that those earliest Celts were similar to the Germans and were in fact Germans?"

These Latin writers were contemporary witnesses, and among the captives taken by Roman armies they must have seen the men that they describe. Thus, in early times the Romans observed the same physical semblance in the two peoples, Celts and Germans. It may be pointed out, however, that the physical characteristics on which they lay stress are those which exhibit the greatest difference between these northern peoples and the peoples of southern Europe. For that reason we may suspect a certain element of exaggeration in the description. We may take leave to doubt whether all the Germans of antiquity were fair-haired and blue-eyed, as Tacitus describes them. It was the fair-haired and blue-eyed Germans and Celts that attracted the attention of Latin writers, accustomed to a population almost uniformly dark-haired and dark-eyed, and they would naturally seize upon the points of distinction and regard them as generally typical.

If, then, by the name Celts we cannot properly understand a distinct race, what are we to understand by it? By what criterion do we recognise any ancient population to have been Celts? The answer is undoubted—every ancient people that is known to have spoken any Celtic language is said to be a Celtic people. The term Celtic is indicative of language, not of race. We give the name Celts to the Irish and the Britons because we know that the ancient language of each people is a Celtic language.

A certain amount of enthusiasm, culminating in what is called Pan-Celticism, has gathered around the recognition of this fact that the Irish, the Gaels of Scotland, the Welsh and the Bretons are Celtic peoples. So much favour attached to the name Celtic that in our own time the Irish language was, so to speak, smuggled into the curricula of the Royal University and of the Intermediate Board under that name. What ancient writers called opus Hibernicum, "Irish work," is popularly known in Ireland as Celtic ornament. In the same way people speak of Celtic crosses, and there are even Celtic athletic clubs. There is no small amount of pride in the notion of being Celtic. It is somewhat remarkable, then, to find that throughout all their early history and tradition the Irish and the Britons alike show not the slightest atom of recognition that they were Celtic peoples. We do not find them acknowledging any kinship with the Gauls, or even with each other. In Christian times, their men of letters shaped out genealogical trees tracing the descent of each people from Japhet—and in these genealogies Gael and Briton and Gaul descend by lines as distinct as German and Greek. This absence of acknowledgment of kinship is all the more noteworthy because there is little reason to suppose that, before Latin displaced the Celtic speech of Gaul, the differences of dialect in the Celtic speech of Gaul, Britain, and Ireland were sufficient to prevent intercourse without interpreters.

From this ignorance of their Celtic kinship and origin we must draw one important conclusion. The extraordinary vitality of popular tradition in some respects must be set off by its extraordinary mortality in other respects. There must have been a time when the Celts of Ireland, Britain and Gaul were fully aware that they were nearer akin to each other than to the Germans and Italians, but this knowledge perished altogether from the popular memory and the popular consciousness.

It was re-discovered and re-established by a Scottish Gael, George Buchanan, in the sixteenth century. Buchanan, in his history of Scotland, published in 1589, dismissed as fabulous that section of the Irish and British genealogies that purported to trace the origin of each people, generation by generation, from Japhet. He was a man of great classical learning. No better refutation could be adduced of the notion that Bacon, who was a child when Buchanan wrote, established the inductive method of scientific proof than the clear and well-marshalled argument by which Buchanan proves from numerous Greek and Latin sources that the Gaels and the Britons were branches of the ancient Celtic people of the Continent.

An account of Buchanan's discourse on this subject will be found in an article by me in the "Irish Review," of December, 1913. Buchanan's discovery seems to have lain dormant, as regards any effect on learning or the popular mind, for more than a century. In his argument he dealt rather severely with the statements of a contemporary Welsh antiquary, Humphrey Llwyd, and this controversy had probably the effect of sowing the seed of what may be called Celtic consciousness in the soil of Welsh learning. In Ireland, though Buchanan's work was doubtless known and read, his theory of the Celtic origin of the Irish people and their language, and of their kinship to the Britons and the Continental Celts, does not appear to have been thought worth discussion, so firmly established were the ancient accounts which attributed to the Gaels of Ireland a Scythian origin. Yet these ancient accounts, as I propose to show in the third lecture of this series, did not belong to the true national tradition, ran counter to tradition, and owed their invention to the Latin learning of Ireland in the early Christian period.

In 1707 the publication of the first volume of Edward Llwyd's "Archæologia Britannica" exhibits the first fruiting of Buchanan's theory, in the form of a sort of conspectus of the Celtic languages then extant, namely, the Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland, and the British languages of Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. From this time onward, the existence of a group of Celtic peoples may be taken as a recognised fact in the learned world. I do not know whether anyone has yet traced the early stages of the recognition of the same fact in Continental learning.

The Celtic languages now began to attract attention from outside. I ought, however, to note here that already for a brief period the Irish language had seemed about to extend its influence beyond the limits of its own people. It will be remembered that Edmund Spenser, during his residence in Ireland (1586-1598), made some small acquaintance with Irish poetry which was translated for him, and that he was pleased in some degree with its peculiarities. About the same time an English official in Dublin reports to his masters in London that "the English in Dublin do now all speak Irish," and adds that they take a pleasure in speaking Irish. A primer of the Irish language was composed by the Baron of Delvin for the special use of Queen Elizabeth, and a facsimile of portion of it may be seen in Sir John Gilbert's "National Manuscripts of Ireland."

The growing interest in Celtic literature among outsiders is exemplified in some of the work of the English poet Gray, who died in 1771. His poem of "The Bard," reflected, if it did not initiate, the notions long afterwards fashionable of the character of the Celtic bards and of the spirit of their poetry. Gray had the reputation in his time of being an antiquarian. He made an English version of the vision-poem on the battle of Clontarf from the Icelandic saga of Burnt Njal, and from this same poem part of the inspiration of his "Bard" is acknowledged by him to have been derived. Gray also wrote English versions of some Welsh poems, and the novelty of poetic expression which he borrowed here seems to have baffled for once the critical experience of Johnson, who contents himself with saying that "the language is unlike the language of other poets." "The Bard" was published in 1755, and, if I am not mistaken, its weird rhapsodical spirit contained the germ of the Celtic literary revival, for Gray's "Bard" may be regarded as the literary parent of Macpherson's "Ossian." In 1760, five years after the publication of "The Bard," appeared the first collection of Macpherson's pretended translations, entitled "Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland." The consequences of this publication are fitly described by Dr. Magnus MacLean: "The arrival of James Macpherson marks a great moment in the history of Celtic literature. It was the signal for a general resurrection. It would seem as if he sounded the trumpet, and the graves of ancient manuscripts were opened, the books were read, and the dead were judged out of the things that were written in them." In 1764 was published Evans's "Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards"—which supplied Gray with fresh material. In 1784 appeared "Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards," and from that time onward the stream of translations from Welsh to English was fairly continuous. Notwithstanding the controversy that soon arose about the authenticity of Macpherson's compositions, their direct influence and vogue went on increasing for half a century. Among those who shared in the Macpherson craze were Goethe and Napoleon Bonaparte. In France, de Villemarqué published his "Chants populaires de la Bretagne," a collection of poems from the Breton. In Scotland, Macpherson had several imitators. In Wales, the new movement took shape in the revival of the National Eisteddfod in 1819. In Ireland, the first fruits of Macpherson's genius are found in Walker's "Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards," published in 1786, and in Charlotte Brooke's "Reliques of Irish Poetry," published in 1789. The originals in this case were genuine, including a number of poems of the kind called, since Macpherson's time, Ossianic.[1] The English versions supplied by Miss Brooke were in close imitation of the style and diction of Macpherson. The same influence extends to Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," published in 1831.

[1] The Irish term for this class of poetry is "Fianaidheacht," and is of great antiquity.

The expansion of the new Celtic consciousness is exemplified in the publication in 1804 of a tract in French on the Irish Alphabet by Jean Jacques Marcel. The first important philological treatise on the Celtic languages was published by the French philologist Pictet in 1837, dealing with "the affinity of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit." Next year, 1838, appeared Bopp's work in German, showing the relation of the Celtic languages to Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, German, etc. The Celtic literary enthusiasm was henceforth supplemented by solid scientific research.

In these particulars is presented, I think, a fairly accurate sketch of the wholly modern development of the Celtic consciousness. I wish to recall here the fact that from the earliest traceable traditions of the Gaelic people down to the time of George Buchanan, there is not found the slightest glimmer of recognition that the Celts of Ireland were Celts, or that they were more nearly akin to the Celts of Britain and the Continent than to any other population of white men. The second fact which I wish particularly to emphasise is that throughout all its history the term Celtic bears a linguistic and not a racial significance.

It need hardly be re-stated here that the Celts are a linguistic offshoot of a prehistoric people whose descendants—also in the line of language—comprise many ancient and modern populations in Europe and Asia. It would be out of place now to discuss the central location from which the various branches of this prehistoric people spread themselves over so wide an area. Indeed, it is a facile and fanciful assumption to suppose that the spreading took place from one central habitat. It is enough to say that, whereas the earlier philologists took for granted that the original population, before its division into various linguistic groups, was located in Western Asia, the later philologists are strongly inclined to place its home in Europe, in the region south-east of the Baltic Sea.

The oldest known geographical descriptions of Europe are those of Hecatæus, who flourished about 500 years before the Christian Era, and Herodotus, about half a century after him. Their knowledge of the European mainland, north of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean and its inlets, was of the most vague and general kind. They divided the whole of northern and middle Europe between two peoples, the Scythians in the eastern, and the Celts in the western parts. They also knew of the Iberians in the south-west, in the Spanish peninsula and the adjoining parts of France. Herodotus, however, recognised to the west of the Celts a people whom he calls Kunēsioi and Kunētai, and in the furthest north of Europe a population distinct from the Celts and Scythians, but unknown to him by any name of their own, for he calls them Hyperboreans, i.e., out and out northerns. In the time of Eratosthenes, about 200 B.C., this knowledge does not appear to have been very much increased among the Greeks. They knew, however, of the existence of the islands of Ireland, which they called Ierne, and Britain, which they called Albion, and also of a country beyond the Baltic; but they still divided the northern mainland of Europe between the Celts and the Scythians.

I have already remarked how ancient Irish tradition ignores the Celtic origin and affinities of the Irish. We may go farther and say that our ancient writers, when they set about exploring the geographical knowledge of the world that came to them in Latin writings, had it very definitely in their minds that the Irish were not of Celtic origin; for, of the three great populations of northern and western Europe known to the oldest classical writers—the Iberians, the Celts, and the Scythians—they excluded the Celts, and included the other two, some selecting the Iberians and others the Scythians as the ancestral people from which the Gaels were descended.

The reason why to the Greek mind, in the early centuries of history, the Celts appeared to occupy so much of Middle Europe and to occupy it so exclusively, was I think this: the Celts at that time actually occupied the upper valleys of the Danube, the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Elbe, and the high ground between. These rivers were the principal highways of such transcontinental commerce as then existed, and this commerce was probably considerable, comprising various metals, salt, amber, etc. Whatever came and went in the course of transcontinental trade from north-western Europe to the Mediterranean countries followed trade routes which lay through the central region north of the Alps, and all this region was held by the Celts. In this way, the Celts seem to be more extensively spread over northern middle Europe than they actually were.

Archæology takes us back farther and tells us more than history in relation to the Celts while they were as yet, so far as we know, located solely or mainly in the mid-European region to the north of the Alps. It is not questioned that the ancient cemetery discovered and explored many years ago at Hallstatt in Upper Austria belonged to Celts and that the curious remains of art and industry found there are the work of a Celtic people. The period assigned for that work begins in the ninth century before the Christian Era and may extend onward for several centuries. The discoveries indicate an organised and progressive community, among whose resources were agriculture and the working of mines for metals and salt; but the principal fact disclosed is that, already in that early time, the Celts were acquainted with the use and manufacture of iron. In the northern parts of Europe, in Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland, as archæologists are agreed, the Iron Age did not make its appearance until several centuries later.

We need not doubt that it was this possession of iron in abundance and of skill in its manufacture, at a time when neighbouring peoples found in bronze the highest class of material for their implements of industry and war, that gave the Celts the power and prosperity which they long enjoyed in Mid-Europe and enabled them to conquer and colonize all the countries that surrounded them.

One effect of the mastery of iron, for a people occupying an inland region with small facilities for water-traffic, was that the Celts acquired a notable skill in the making of vehicles. From them in a later age the Romans borrowed the names of nearly every variety of wheeled vehicle that the Romans used: carrus or carrum, carpentum, esseda, rheda, petorritum. From this it obviously follows that the Celts were also great road-makers. During the nine years that Julius Cæsar spent in the conquest of Transalpine Gaul, and marched his legions in every direction over that vast region, it is quite evident that he was operating in a country already well supplied with roads.

The earliest recorded expansion of the Celts from the region north of the Alps was over northern Italy, and no historian supposes or suggests that the first Celtic occupation of northern Italy was earlier than about 600 B.C. This item ought to be borne in mind, for it has an important bearing on the date of the early Celtic migrations to Britain and Ireland. It was probably about the same time that they began to move westward across the Rhone, occupying the parts of France between the Garonne on the south and the English Channel on the north, which parts are specifically described by Julius Cæsar as Gallia Celtica, Celtic Gaul. Between 500 and 400 B.C. they spread south-westward into Spain, apparently more as conquerors than as colonists, for the resultant of the Celtic occupation of the Spanish Peninsula was the formation of a mixed people, partly Celts and partly Iberians, whom ancient writers distinguish from the Celts by giving them what we may call a hyphenated name, Celtiberians. We are not to imagine from this that Celtic conquests elsewhere were of an exterminating character, or that they did not result in a fusion of peoples. The notion that the migratory conquests of antiquity resulted in the displacement of one population by another is one of the favourite illusions of popular history. In Spain no doubt the Celtic element was relatively less numerous than in Gallia Celtica, and also perhaps the Celtic civilisation became less dominant, for the Iberians were in touch more or less with another and still more highly developed civilisation, that of the Phœnicians. That there was a somewhat distinctive civilisation south of the Garonne is clearly to be inferred from Cæsar's account, which tells us that the people of Celtic Gaul differed from those of Aquitaine, as well as from those of Belgic Gaul, in language, culture, and institutions.

In the fourth century B.C. a second wave of Celtic migration poured over Italy. The Celts in this movement captured and destroyed the city of Rome. But they also appear to have destroyed the predominance of the Etrurians, and thereby to have facilitated the later imperial expansion of the Roman power. There was also an eastward Celtic movement along the Danube. In the third century B.C. the Celts overran most of what is called the Balkan Peninsula, including Greece, and in 278 B.C. large bodies of them passed over into Asia Minor and settled in the country which after them was named Galatia.

Let it be noted at this point that so far as history casts light on the subject, the known period of Celtic expansion on the Continent lies within the years 650 B.C. and 250 B.C. We shall have to recur to this fact when we come to consider, in the following lecture, the probable date of the Celtic colonisation of Ireland. We shall see also that the evidence from archæology leads to the same conclusion as the evidence from history.

History recognises the expansion of the Celts from inland and central Europe southward, westward and eastward, but is silent about any expansion northward. No one doubts that in these early times the parts of Europe northward of the old Celtic country already described were occupied by the Germans, but Greek and Latin writings have no word of the Germans until the last quarter of the third century B.C. Yet we know from archæology that there was trade intercourse long before that time between the Mediterranean countries and the shores of the Baltic, extending even to Scandinavia. As geographical facts, the Baltic and Scandinavia were known to the Greeks, if only vaguely known to them, in the time of Eratosthenes, i.e., about 200 B.C. How is it, then, that the Germans are not mentioned by that name or by any name? I suggest that the reason was that the Germans of that period were so much under Celtic domination that they were not recognised as a distinct people of importance.

The first mention of Germans in history is found in the Roman Acta Triumphalia for the year 222 B.C., in the record of the battle of Clastidium. Clastidium, now called Casteggio, is in northern Italy, on the south side of the river Po and a few miles from that river. It is a little west of the meridian of Milan, which at the time of the battle was Mediolanum, the chief town of the Insubrian Gauls. In the battle, the Roman consul Marcellus overcame the Insubrians and gained the spolia opima by slaying with his own hand their commander Virdumarus. The Acta Triumphalia state that he triumphed "over the Insubrian Gauls and the Germans." Now so far as is known or thought probable there was no German population at the time settled anywhere within hundreds of miles of Clastidium, whereas the Insubrian Gauls were settled on the spot or in its near neighbourhood. Moreover, unless the Germans were there fighting in considerable force, it is most unlikely that any notice of them would have appeared in the record. The commander was a Gaul, bearing an undoubted Celtic name. Therefore the Germans at Clastidium were not fighting for their own hand, they had not come there as invaders. Thus we are brought to the interesting conclusion that, on this first appearance of the Germans in history, they had been brought from their own country, hundreds of miles away, to assist a Celtic people resident in the valley of the Po. To assist them in what capacity? Undoubtedly either as hired troops or as forces levied on a subject territory. Whichever view we take, the presence of German forces at the battle of Clastidium in 222 B.C. must be regarded as an indication that the German people, or portion of them, were still at that time under Celtic predominance. I say "still at that time," because it will be seen that the Celtic ascendancy over the Germans soon afterwards came to an end.

What is thus inferred from the historical record is corroborated by philology. A number of words of Celtic origin are found spread through the whole group of Germanic languages, including the Scandinavian languages and English, which was originally a mixture of Low German dialects. Some of these words are especially connected with the political side of civilisation and are therefore especially indicative of Celtic political predominance at the time of their adoption into Germanic speech. Thus the German word reich, meaning realm or royal dominion, is traced to the Celtic rigion, represented in early Irish by rige, meaning kingship. From the Celtic word ambactus, used by Cæsar in the sense of "client" or "dependent," indicating one of the retainers of a Gallic nobleman, but originally signifying "one who is sent about," a minister or envoy—from ambactus is derived the German word amt, meaning "office, charge, employment." From ambactus are also derived the words embassy and ambassador, with their kindred terms in the Romance languages. From the Celtic word dunon, a fortified place, represented in Irish by dun, is derived the word town in English and the cognate words in the other Germanic languages. Professor Marstrander holds that several of the names of the numerals in all the Germanic languages, and therefore in the original German speech from which they have diverged, are formed from or influenced by Celtic names of the same numerals. If this is so, it indicates a thoroughly penetrating Celtic influence among the ancient Germans, for the names of the numerals may be regarded as among the most native elements of speech, so much so that it is said that facility in the speaking of two languages rarely exists to the degree of being able to reckon numbers with equal readiness in both, and that the language a person uses in ordinary reckoning must be regarded as his native and natural speech.

This matter of the early intermingling of Celts and Germans in northern Mid-Europe will be afterwards seen to have a special interest in reference to the Celtic colonisation of Britain and Ireland. Before concluding the evidence I have to bring forward on the subject, it will make the drift of the matter clearer if I state the later outcome of the Celtic migrations northward among the Germanic population. We have already seen that, as archaeologists are agreed, the Celts north of the Alps were in possession of iron long before the use and manufacture of iron was established in the more northern parts of Europe. It is mainly to this advantage that we may ascribe the predominance acquired by the Celts among the Germans. In the German regions, however, the Celts were for the most part an ascendant minority. Their domination must have lasted for several centuries. A time came when, in those parts which in the Celts were numerically and otherwise in greatest strength, a fusion of peoples took place, resulting in a Celto-Germanic population, Celtic in language but mainly Germanic in race. Meanwhile, the less blended section of the Germans, retaining their native language, had acquired the craft of ironwork, and were advancing in civilisation and no doubt increasing at the same time in numbers. Eventually the German-speaking Germans became more powerful than the once dominant Celtic minority and more powerful also than the Celto-Germanic folk who had become Celtic in language. A sense of distinct nationality grew up between the two populations. The Celticised Germans were located in western Germany, towards the Rhine, the un-Celticised Germans farther east. Under hostile pressure from the German-speaking element, the Celtic-speaking element were forced westwards across the Rhine into Gaul. Here they in turn pressed back the Celts who had settled in north-eastern Gaul, and modern events will help to fix in the mind the fact that this overflow of Celto-Germans into Gaul extended as far west as the river Marne, where it was brought to a stand by the resistance of the earlier Celtic inhabitants. The date of this migration was probably later than that of the battle of Clastidium, 222 B.C., when, as we have seen, the Celts appear to have still held sway over the Germans. The Celto-Germanic settlers between the Rhine and the Marne were the Belgae of Cæsar's time.

At first sight, this account may seem to be too precise an effort to fill up a blank in history, but the testimony of Cæsar and Tacitus, witnesses of prime authority, seems to leave no room for any alternative view.

Cæsar is the first writer in whom any mention of the Belgae is found. Holding the Gallic command for about nine years, he reduced the whole of Gaul to obedience to the Roman power. For him, Gaul, Gallia, signified the whole country between the Rhine and the Pyrenees. All its inhabitants in general were named Galli by him, but we also find that he uses the name Galli in a more precise sense as proper to the people of those parts which were not occupied by the Belgae. He also calls this people Celtae, Celts. Therefore in Cæsar's mind the Belgae were less Gallic and less Celtic than their neighbours to the west. His evidence on this subject however is much more precise.

The Rhine was for Cæsar the main boundary line between Gaul and Germany, between the Belgae and the Germans. The Belgae, he states, differ from the Celtae, as these from the Aquitani, in language, culture, and institutions. The difference between the Celtae proper and the Aquitani has already been accounted for. The Aquitani, bordering on Spain, were the same Celtiberian mixture as the people of Spain; they were Celtic, or mainly so, in language, but otherwise mainly Iberian. I am proceeding to show that the difference between the Celtae and the Belgae is to be explained in a similar way. The Belgae were likewise Celtic in language, at all events mainly so, but otherwise they were mainly Germanic. When Cæsar says that the three divisions of Gaul differed from each other in language, we must understand that he refers to broad distinctions of dialect, for the names of persons and places in Belgic Gaul at that time appear to the reader to be quite as Celtic as those in Gallia Celtica or western Gaul. Cæsar tells us that the Belgae are ruder, less civilised and more warlike than the Celtae or Galli more properly so called, and his explanation for this is that they have less commerce and less intercourse with outsiders, and so are less softened by refinement and luxury. This is interesting, because it implies that Gallia Celtica had a sufficient degree of commerce, intercourse, refinement and luxury to considerably soften down the character of its inhabitants.

The westward and southward pressure of the Germans, then a very powerful and numerous people, was in full force in Cæsar's time, so much so that it seems certain that Cæsar's conquest of Gaul came just in time to stay and delay that tide of Germanic invasion which overran Gaul some centuries later. His first operations in Gaul were against the Helvetii, whose country corresponded to the modern Switzerland. He tells us that the Belgae are at continual war with the Germans along the Rhine, and also that the Helvetii in their own country fight almost daily battles with the Germans. In the first year of Cæsar's Gallic command, the Helvetii came to a decision to migrate from their country westward, and Cæsar's first campaign was conducted with the purpose of forcing them to return to their own country. He ordered them to return thither, he states, lest the Germans should take possession of the territory and thus become neighbours to the old Roman province in southern Gaul.

Cæsar states plainly that the Belgae for the most part are of German origin; that in former times they had crossed the Rhine and dispossessed the Galli (here he used the name Galli as proper to the other inhabitants of Gaul in distinction from the Belgae). He indicates that, after this migration, they had offered a successful resistance to the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones (between 113 and 102 B.C.).

Modern Frenchmen, though their national name is in origin the name of a Germanic people, show a tendency, easily understood, to minimise the Germanic element in their composition, and M. D'Arbois de Jubainville, dealing with Cæsar's statement that the Belgae were mainly of Germanic origin, seeks to explain that this was true geographically not ethnographically, that they came from German lands but did not come of German ancestry. Against the plain statement of a contemporary observer, such explanations are always to be received with caution. In this instance, there is corroborative evidence which indicates that Cæsar's words are to be taken at their face value. Cæsar also tells us that the Condrusi, Eburones, Cærosi and Paemani "uno nomine Germani vocantur"—are called by the common name of Germans. Again he says that the Segni and Condrusi are "ex gente et numero Germanorum"—of the German nation and so accounted. Strabo, writing within a century of Cæsar, says that "the Nervii are a Germanic people." According to Cæsar, the Nervii had no commerce, avoided wine and other luxuries, and were fierce men of great valour. They led the rest of the Belgae in opposing him. Tacitus is a hardly less valid authority, for his father-in-law Agricola had been engaged in long campaigns against the Germans in the Rhine country. "The Treveri and the Nervii," he says, "are especially forward in asserting their German origin, as though by this boast of race to be distinguished from the pacific character of the Gauls." It was surely not a geographical origin that was claimed in such a way. The Treveri dwelt on the west side of the Rhine. They were a Celtic-speaking people, and unlike most of the inhabitants of Gaul they seem to have retained their Celtic language throughout the period of Roman domination, for St. Jerome, writing in the late part of the fourth century, says that "the Galatians (of Asia Minor), apart from the Greek language, which all the East speaks, have a language of their own almost the same as the Treveri." In one respect the Treveri, Cæsar tells us, resembled the Germans of his time—they excelled in cavalry; and his continuator, Hirtius, writes that "in fierceness and in manner of life they differed little from the Germans." The Advatuci, he writes, "were descendants of the Cimbri and Teutoni." All these peoples dwelt in Belgic Gaul and came under the common appellation of Belgae. In addition to Cæsar's statement that the Belgae as he learned, not supposed, were, for the most part of German origin, we have detailed evidence that, of about eighteen States composing Belgic Gaul, no fewer than eight, in Cæsar's time and long after it, were still accounted to be German.

On the other hand, then and afterwards, a number of peoples reckoned to be Celtic continued to inhabit countries to the east of the Rhine. The Tencteri and the Usipetae, on the German side of the Rhine, were Celts, according to Dio Cassius. Tacitus, speaking of the Helvetii and the Boii, says that "both are Gallic nations," yet in another passage he speaks of "the Boii, a nation of the Germans." Still further east dwelt the Cotini and the Osi, of whom he writes: "The Cotini by their use of the Gallic language and the Osi by their use of the Pannonic language are proved not to be Germans": from which it appears that language was the criterion by which the Romans were accustomed to distinguish Germans from Celts. Again Tacitus writes: "The Triboci, Vangiones and Nemetes are certainly Germans," but modern German authorities recognise that the Triboci and Nemetes are Celtic in these very names. Of the Aestyi, dwelling apparently on the northern seaboard of Germany, Tacitus says that their language resembles that of Britain.

Further evidence of Celtic occupation of regions considered German in Cæsar's time and ever since then is afforded by a number of ancient place-names. For example, there were two towns or stations named Carrodunon, i.e. "wagon-fortress," one on the river Oder, the other in the upper valley of the Vistula. Other Celtic place-names, like Lugidunum, Eburodunum, Meliodunum, are found in central Germany.

Tacitus confirms the evidence of Cæsar to the effect that the Belgae were a Germano-Celtic people who came westward over the Rhine and conquered part of the country already occupied by the Celts. "Those," he says, "who first crossed the Rhine and expelled the Gauls were then named Germans but now Tungri." The Tungri inhabited a part of Belgic Gaul between the Nervii and the Treveri.

It seems to me, then, to be certain that the Belgae not only came into Gaul from Germany, but were themselves a mixed population of Celts and Germans speaking a Celtic dialect. Holder assigns their migration into Gaul to the third century B.C. It is, however, undesirable to attempt to fix anything but a somewhat extended period for migratory movements of the kind. The instance of the Helvetii proves that down to Cæsar's time the Celts in contact with the Germans were still in a very mobile condition.

Before using the facts hitherto stated and the conclusions derived from them to throw whatever light they can on the Celtic colonisation of Ireland, it may be well to state in a general way what can be said as to the stage of civilisation reached by the continental Celts before their subjugation by the Romans.

Some modern writers, but not very recently, have written about a Celtic Empire in ancient Europe. The nearest approach to authority for the existence of such an empire is a statement by Livy, who says: "While the elder Tarquin reigned in Rome, the supremacy among the Celts belonged to the Bituriges. They gave a king to the Celtic land. Ambigatus was his name, a very mighty man in valour and in his private and public resources, under whose rule Gaul was so abounding in men and in the fruits of the earth that it seemed impossible to govern so great a population."

The most that can be made of this passage, supposing that Livy had it on better authority than some other parts of his history, is that at one time the Bituriges held what the Greeks called hegemony, a political primacy among the Gauls, and this, too, only in the time of a single king. It may reflect a genuine Celtic tradition, going back to the time when the Celts were still a compact nation inhabiting a relatively small territory.

When we come to contemporary evidence of the political condition of the Celts, we find that everywhere on the continent and in Asia Minor, their form of government resembles that of the Roman Republic. There are no kings, and the power of the state is vested in a senate with certain high executive officers. The Celtic form of government in historical time was that of a patrician republic. The Celtic people was divided into a large number of small states without any organised superior power. From time to time, however, one or other of these states might acquire a degree of political pre-eminence over a group of neighbouring states, forming a loose federation in which it took chief direction of the common affairs. We find the same tendency among the states of ancient Greece. In Asia Minor, the three states of the Galatae formed themselves into a strict federation, with a fixed constitution, a common council of state and a common executive both civil and military.

So far as I have been able to trace, wherever the Greeks and Romans came in contact with Celts so as to acquire a closer knowledge of Celtic affairs, they found this kind of patrician republican government. Cæsar found no kings in Transalpine Gaul, and the governing authority, when he mentions it, belongs to senates and magistrates, i.e., chief officers of state. It was apparently so in Spain a century earlier; and in distant Lusitania, corresponding to the modern Portugal, the most western Celtic region on the continent, in resisting the Roman conquest the chief command is held by Viriatus, who is not called a king by the Roman and Greek historians, nor is any king mentioned in his time. Nor do we read of kings in Cisalpine Gaul. Thus from farthest east to farthest west, the patrician republican form of government seems to have prevailed in all Celtic communities with the probable exception of Ireland; and this was probably their political condition as far back as 300 B.C., or earlier, before the Galatians passed into Asia Minor.

At some earlier period, the Celts were undoubtedly governed by kings. The word for king, represented by the Irish word ri, is widely exemplified in ancient Celtic names. From it, as I have already remarked, the Germanic languages took their word for kingdom or realm. Sometimes it is found in the names of peoples, e.g., the Bituriges, Caturiges, etc.; sometimes in the names of men, e.g., Dumnorix, Ambiorix, Vercingetorix. We find evidence, too, of a strong anti-monarchical sentiment, as among the Romans. The law of the Helvetii made it a capital offence, under penalty of being burned alive, to aim at autocratic power.

Not only the Celts, but the Germans of that time, were governed without kings, as Tacitus records. He adds, however, that they appointed kings to command them when they went to war. Here we have a parallel to the Roman dictatorship, the vesting of the power of the republic in the hands of a single ruler during a time of critical warfare.

I have already mentioned the proficiency of the Celts in the construction of wheeled vehicles, and the consequent deduction that they were practised in the making of roads. The passage already quoted from Livy shows that, with all their military ardour, they were known to be active in agriculture; and this is corroborated by other ancient authorities. The countries occupied by the Celts excelled in ordinary agriculture not only during what we may call Celtic times but in subsequent ages, and it is these countries that have furnished the most excellent breeds of domestic animals—cattle, sheep, poultry, dogs.

Originally an inland people, the Celts who occupied the seaboard soon became proficient in navigation. Cæsar bears witness to their skill in ship building, and he seems to have found no great difficulty in collecting from the Belgic coast a sufficient fleet of ships to transport his army and supplies to Britain.

From the Greek settlement at Massilia (Marseille) two arts especially appear to have spread among the Celts of Transalpine Gaul: sculpture and the use of letters. The remains of Celtic sculpture in Gaul show evident signs of Greek origin. Cæsar makes the remarkable statement that the Gauls in his time use Greek writing in almost all their business, both public and private. The Romans of Cæsar's time had not long emerged, under Greek influence, from a state of comparative illiteracy, as every student of Latin literature must recognise. Among the spoils of the Helvetii captured by Cæsar, he found a complete census of the people written in Greek characters. Inscriptions in the Celtic language before the Roman conquest are in Greek characters, except in Cisalpine Gaul, where the characters are Etruscan.

On the subject of ancient Celtic art on the continent, reference may be made to the book by Romilly Allen, from which also a good idea of the skill and taste of the Celts in metal work may be obtained.

In general, it is clear that the Celts were a highly progressive people with a strong civilising tendency. Under the Druids, the western Celts developed a system of education and some kind of philosophy. With regard to their religion and to the part played by the Druids in Celtic life, I have summarised my own studies in a brochure entitled "Celtic Religion," which is published by the Catholic Truth Society of England.

II. THE CELTIC COLONISATION OF IRELAND AND BRITAIN

In the preceding lecture, I have claimed to show that, so far as positive knowledge goes, the period of Celtic expansion from Mid-Europe lies between the years 600 B.C. and 250 B.C. The spread of the Celtic peoples and of their power was arrested by a movement of German expansion on the north, beginning perhaps about 200 B.C., and by the growth of the Roman Empire, for which a starting point may be found in the final subjugation of Etruria, 265 B.C. I have also claimed to show that there was a large northward expansion of the Celts, resulting in a partial fusion of Celts and Germans, and that this Celto-Germanic population was afterwards for the most part, but not all, forced westward across the Rhine by the more purely German population, and was represented by the Belgae of Cæsar's time.

From the objects discovered at Hallstatt, the early period of Celtic art in the Iron Age is called by archæologists the Hallstatt period. It is succeeded by a later stage and higher development of ornamental art, exemplified in discoveries at La Tène in Switzerland. The period in which this higher development is found has been named the La Tène period; but the same stage of Celtic art is exemplified by objects discovered in the valley of the Marne in northern France, and the term "Marnian period" is used by French archæologists as an equivalent of "La Tène period." So far as I am aware these Marnian remains represent the earliest known substantial appearance of Celtic work, of Celtic activities of any kind, in the north-western parts of Europe. The La Tène or Marnian period is estimated to begin about 400 B.C., and not earlier than 500 B.C. This estimated date is an important part of the evidence that goes to establish the date of the Celtic migrations to Britain and Ireland.

Before going more fully into the evidence, it is necessary to deal with the theory which at present holds the field in British archæology, and which is based principally on the authority of the late Sir John Rhys. So completely has his theory dominated, that we find it stated in summary in books for general instruction. I find a good exemplification in the volume on Lincolnshire of the Cambridge County Geographies, a series devised for school study and general information. The following paragraph purports to tell us how Britain was peopled before the Roman occupation:

"We may now pause for a moment," says the writer, "to consider who these people were who inhabited our land in these far-off ages. Of Palæolithic man we can say nothing. His successors, the people of the Later Stone Age, are believed to have been largely of Iberian stock—people, that is, from south-western Europe—who brought with them their knowledge of such primitive arts and crafts as were then discovered. How long they remained in undisturbed possession of our land we do not know, but they were later conquered or driven westward by a very different race of Celtic origin—the Goidels or Gaels, a tall light-haired people, workers in bronze, whose descendants and language are to be found to-day in many parts of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. Another Celtic people poured into the country about the fourth century b.c.—the Brythons or Britons, who in turn dispossessed the Gaels, at all events as far as England and Wales are concerned. The Brythons were the first users of iron in our country."

So far the quotation. The writer is a man of scientific education, a master of arts, a doctor of medicine, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. This is the age of science, not of credulity, and in matters of science men of scientific education are believed to require scientific proof before they state anything as a fact. If it is the age of science, it is also the age of invention. The statements made in the passage I have quoted are definite enough. In fairness to their writer, however, I shall quote his next paragraph, in which this definite assurance is somewhat qualified:

"The Romans," he writes, "who first reached our shores in B.C. 55, held the land till about A.D. 410; but in spite of the length of their domination they do not seem to have left much mark on the people. After their departure, treading close on their heels, came the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles. But with these, and with the incursions of the Danes and Irish, we have left the uncertain region of the Prehistoric Age for the surer ground of History."

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.

Let us take up another current handbook of popular instruction, the volume entitled "Prehistoric Britain," by Dr. Munro, in the Home University Library series. The date of writing is 1913; the same as the date of the Cambridge volume on Lincolnshire. Dr. Munro discusses a certain type of skulls found in various parts of England. "All of these," he says (p. 234), "are usually assigned to the Neolithic period (the later Stone Age), and represent the prevailing type of Englishman at the commencement of that period, and probably also in the latter part of the Palæolithic period (the Early Stone Age). The skulls mentioned may represent British men and women living thousands of years apart. They clearly belong to the same race, which, for lack of a better, we may name 'the river-bed race.' It is the prevailing type in England to-day, and from the scanty evidence at our disposal we may presume that it has been the dominant form many thousands of years.... All trace of this race has disappeared in Switzerland, whereas in England, in spite of invasion of Saxon, Jute, Dane and Norman, it still thrives abundantly." And further he says (p. 235): "According to Dr. Keith, Palæolithic blood is as rife in the British people of to-day as in those of the European continent—a conclusion," adds Dr. Munro, "which entirely meets with the present writer's views."

Thus we see that, according to two eminent British authorities, the race which inhabited Britain in the Early Stone Age is still the prevalent type in that island, and has not been displaced by Celt or Roman or Anglo-Saxon.

[It is, however, due to Dr. Sympson to say that a year earlier, in 1912, Dr. Munro, as he himself observes, thought it "possible that (at the close of the Early Stone Age) the Palæolithic people would shrink back to Europe and thus, for a time, leave a gap in the continuity of human life in Britain" (p. 236); and this, he says, was formerly the general idea.]

The second population of Britain, "the people of the Later Stone Age," says Dr. Sympson, "are believed to have been largely of Iberian stock—people, that is, from south-western Europe."

Before the discovery of "the law of gravity" and of the operation of atmospheric pressure, the old-fashioned scientists used to explain the rising of water in a pump by saying that "Nature abhors a vacuum." There is no doubt that when the human mind becomes interested in any department of knowledge and inquiry, it abhors a vacuum, and this very laudable abhorrence often leaves the mind a victim to almost any plausible and positive effort to fill the vacuum. That is why such a very precise and particular term as Iberian comes so handy and brings so much satisfaction. Ethnologists, however, are agreed that in prehistoric times, before the Celts had invaded south-western Europe, there were already at least two very distinct races in that region, and that both are still well represented in it. To speak of them as one race, and to call that race Iberian, or to use the term "Iberian" without distinguishing between them, is merely filling the vacuum. Rhys has succeeded in popularising the term "Iberian" as a name for the population which occupied Britain and Ireland before the first coming of the Celts, and he has identified the Picts with this Iberian stock. Politics, as well as war, is eager to turn to account the services of science. There is, perhaps, no more acute and more highly educated mind in England of to-day than that of Mr. Arthur Balfour. I wish to remark here that I am only dealing with certain prevalent views about ancient history, and that I am not arguing politically one way or the other. But Mr. Balfour, in a written document supporting certain political views of his with regard to the political claims of a certain proportion of the Irish people, gave it as a reason for rejecting the claims in question, that the people of Ireland were in a large degree of the Iberian race, descendants of the primitive inhabitants during the Later Stone Age. As for any political controversy on that point, I have nothing at all to say. I should prefer to hear it discussed between Mr. Balfour and the Portuguese ambassador to London. I do confess that I am very curious to know what political conclusion Mr. Balfour would derive from the scientific conclusion of Dr. Keith and Dr. Munro, that the prevailing type in the English population of to-day represents something still more primitive than Sir John Rhys's Iberians, and is the survival of that "river-bed race" who, in the words of Dr. Munro, were "miserable shell-eaters."

In Sir John Rhys's theory, the Iberians of the Later Stone Age are succeeded by the Goidels or Gaels, of Celtic origin, who introduced the Bronze Age in Britain and also in Ireland. Many centuries after these came the Brythons, who introduced the Iron Age, and drove the Gaels out of the greater part of England. Dr. Sympson says that the Brythons of that invasion drove the Gaels out of Wales also, but for this he has no warrant from Sir John Rhys. According to Rhys, the Gaels continued to occupy the more westerly parts of the island, even after the Roman occupation.

Rhys's theory is still more elaborate. The three divisions of Gaul with which Cæsar begins the account of his Gallic war are familiar to students of Latin. Rhys equates his Neolithic Iberians of Britain and Ireland with the Iberian element in Aquitanian Gaul and Spain, his Bronze-Age Goidels or Gaels with the Celtae of Cæsar's Gallia Celtica, and his Iron-Age Brythons of England with the Belgae of Cæsar's Gallia Belgica. He goes still farther with this process of equation. Finding that the consonant Q, where it occurs in the most ancient forms of the Irish language, is replaced by P in the corresponding forms of the British or ancient Welsh language, he divides the Celts into two linguistic groups which he labels the Q-Celts and the P-Celts, and this division he makes to correspond to the other classification into Celtae and Belgae. In this way, he produces a most interesting and symmetrical set of equations showing the successive stages of population-change in Britain.

First, there are the people of the Early Stone Age, not named.

Secondly, the people of the Later Stone Age, Iberians.

Thirdly, the people of the Bronze Age, Goidels or Gaels, or Celtae, or Q-Celts.

Fourthly, the people of the Iron Age, Brythons or Britons, or Belgae, or P-Celts.

For the present, let us pass away from the Iberians, and consider the theory as it concerns the Celtic migrations to Britain and Ireland. The earliest known habitat of the Celts is the region to the north of the Alps. The earliest definitely known migration of the Celts is their southward movement into Northern Italy. For this migration no earlier date than 600 B.C. is assigned.

The chief authority on the Bronze Age in Ireland belongs to the late Mr. George Coffey. In his book on the subject, "The Bronze Age in Ireland," he hesitates to date the close of the Stone Age and the introduction of the Copper Period as far back as 2500 B.C., which is the approximate date estimated by Montelius. He puts the close of the Copper Period between 2000 and 1800 B.C. and the first period of the true Bronze Age between 1800 and 1500 B.C. Now, according to the theory prevalent in Britain, the first Celtic invaders introduced the Bronze Age, and these were the Gaels or Goidels. If we accept this view and combine it with the best archæological authority, we shall conclude that the Celts reached Ireland at least 1,200 years before they are known to have entered Italy—that they pushed out to a distant island in the ocean more than a millennium before they occupied the fertile and attractive plains which lay on their very borders.

But, it may be objected, is it not possible that the Celts of the Bronze Age had settled far away from the Alps, on the coasts of north-western Europe. Possible, perhaps, but what is the value of mere possibilities? We have seen it stated, and the Cambridge handbook is only a specimen of many publications that accept the view, stated most definitely that the Gaelic branch of the Celts introduced the Bronze Age to Britain and Ireland. Surely something more than a mere possibility, some shade or degree of probability should appear in support of teaching so positive.

Now let us suppose that the dominant Bronze Age population of Britain and Ireland were Celts, as we are instructed to believe. Let us see what would follow from this position. It would follow, beyond question, that the peculiar art and works of the Bronze Age in Britain and Ireland would be mainly connected with the art and works of the Bronze Age in those parts of Europe which were likewise inhabited by Celts, rather than with other parts of the Continent. I cannot find that any such connection has been established or is believed in by archæologists.

The Brythons, we are told, were Belgic invaders who introduced the Iron Age. Not the faintest probability has been brought forward to establish this very precise and positive doctrine. Coffey places the close of the Bronze Age in Ireland and the coming of iron into general use at about 350 B.C. It is admitted that the Celts of central Europe were in possession of iron about four centuries earlier. This affords a most cogent argument that, during the intervening four centuries, there was no such social and industrial continuity between central Europe and these islands as must undoubtedly have been if both regions and the intervening parts of the Continent had been occupied by Celtic populations.

Again, if the Brythons or Belgic Celts, armed with iron, were able to cross the channel and displace the western Celts in Britain, it would surely have been much easier for them to cross the Marne and the Seine and displace the western Celts in Gaul. The theory seems to presuppose that an invasion was necessary to bring the Iron Age into Britain, but the same theory would have it that the Iron Age found its way into Ireland without any invasion, for it leaves the Bronze Age Goidels of Ireland to learn the use of iron in some more pleasant way than by meeting iron-headed spears in the hands of Belgic conquerors.

It is certain that after the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain and after the Anglo-Saxon invasions, there were Gaelic populations in various parts of western Britain, in Argyllshire, North and South Wales, and the Cornish peninsula. Rhys supposed these to be the remnants of the Gaelic population which, in his view, had occupied all England during the Bronze Age. There is sufficient evidence to show that they were fresh settlements made by the Irish of Ireland during and after the collapse of the Roman power in Britain.

The "P and Q" element in the theory is equally unsound. It is certain that, where the Irish Celts retained the consonant Q in their language, the British Celts replaced it by P. But no such distinction has been shown to have existed between the language of the western Celts and the language of the Belgic Celts on the Continent. Such phonetic changes as the substitution of P for Q spread in an almost mysterious way through languages. Their spread may be arrested by a geographical barrier so considerable as the Irish Sea, but it was not at all likely to have been brought to a stand by the waters of the Seine and Marne. Nor can a phonetic change of the kind be taken as necessarily corresponding to any racial or political boundaries. In all the western dialects of Latin which grew into the Romance languages, the initial W of Germanic words was changed into GW, and this identical change also took place in the Welsh language, but not in Irish. It took place in Spanish, yet that does not appear to prove that the Welsh are more near akin to the Spaniards than they are to the Irish, nor, if history happened to be silent, would it prove that Britain after the Roman occupation was peopled by a Spanish invasion which did not extend to Ireland.

There is one serious argument which has been adduced in support of the view that Britain was in Celtic occupation during the Bronze Age. The existence of the word kassiteros, meaning "tin," is traced in the Greek language as far back as about 900 B.C. There seems very good reason for thinking that kassiteros was a Celtic word adopted into Greek. From this it is argued that the metal itself came from the Celts to the Greeks, which seems reasonable enough. It is further argued that the Celts must accordingly have been in possession of the country which produced the metal, and that this country was Britain. The conclusion is that the Celts were in occupation of Britain earlier than 900 B.C. It seems to me, however, that the fact, granting it to be a fact, that the metal tin reached the Greeks bearing a Celtic name is by no means proof that it came from a country inhabited at the time by Celts. If you visit the Zoological Gardens in the Phœnix Park, you will be invited, before you reach the entrance, to purchase for the delectation of the monkeys a certain vegetable product, the name of which, upon inquiry, you will learn to be "pea-nuts." No one will be rash enough to deny that "pea-nuts" is an English word. I have not the least idea where pea-nuts grow, but I am quite certain that the fact of their being named "pea-nuts" is no proof that they grow in England or in any English-speaking country. It is very good proof, however, if proof were needed, that the trade in pea-nuts has passed through the hands of English-speaking people. If kassiteros is a Celtic word, as I think it very probably is, it proves no more than that, when the Greeks learned this Celtic name for tin, the trade in tin passed towards them through the hands of a Celtic-speaking people. If it was British tin, which again is not improbable, I suggest that it came to Greece by an overland route through the Celtic region in Mid-Europe, probably along the Rhine and the Danube or to the head of the Adriatic. As a matter of fact, the Greek writer Poseidonios states that in his time British tin reached the Mediterranean by an overland route. "It is brought," he says, "on horses through the interior of the Celtic country to the people of Massilia and to the city called Narbon."

There is, then, no evidence from archæology, history, or language, sufficient to establish even a moderate degree of probability for the theory of a Celtic occupation of Ireland or Britain during the Bronze Age.

On the other hand, taking Coffey's approximate date of 350 B.C. as the beginning of the period of the general use of iron in Ireland, we shall, I think, find sufficient evidence to warrant the belief that the Celts reached Britain and Ireland about that time, and not earlier, at all events not considerably earlier than that time.

Why not earlier? I think we have conclusive grounds for believing that the Celtic migrations to Ireland cannot have begun very much, if at all, sooner than the fourth century B.C. Before stating these grounds, let us ask is there any discoverable reason for supposing that the Gaels inhabited Ireland from a time many centuries farther back. I think it possible that those who in modern times have entertained this view have been influenced by the dates assigned to the Gaelic immigration by Irish writers like the Four Masters and Keating. These dates may be taken to correspond closely enough with the estimates of archæological authorities for the commencement of the insular Bronze Age, and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it might be imagined that they were founded on some basis of tradition.

It is not the habit of popular tradition to encumber itself with chronology. There is no known instance of ancient reckoning in years and periods of years that is not based on some era, on the accepted date of some real or supposed event or events. Nowhere in Irish tradition has any trace been found of the existence of a native system of chronology before the introduction of Christian learning. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (July, 1910), I have shown how the extant written chronology of the Irish Invasions was first originated. The method was not unlike Sir John Rhys's series of equations.

The Irish historian found in Latin histories a set of definite epochs by which antiquity was divided: the beginning of the Assyrian empire, the beginning of the Median empire, the beginning of the Persian empire, the usurpation of the Magi in Persia, and the beginning of Alexander's empire. The chronology of the Irish Invasions was settled by the easy process of making each invasion coincide exactly in time with each of these epochs. It is evident that no traditional value can be attached to a chronological system of this kind.

But, it may be objected, the very remoteness of the time assigned to the Gaelic invasion by Irish historians may reflect the popular belief in its remoteness. If that be so, then the earlier the historian is the more near he is to the popular tradition. In the paper just cited, I have shown that, in the earliest known version of this chronology of the Invasions, the Gaelic migration to Ireland coincides with the date of Alexander's empire, 331 B.C. That is not very far from the date assigned by Coffey for the end of the Bronze Age in Ireland, about 350 B.C. For my own part, I attach no traditional value to this coincidence, but if it pleases anyone to insist that Irish prehistoric chronology has a traditional value, then it must be conceded that tradition, as far as it is valid, is altogether favourable to the view that the Gaelic occupation of Ireland belongs to the end, and not to the beginning, of the Bronze Age.

The migratory movements of the Celts on the Continent have a bearing which cannot be ignored on the time of the Celtic migrations to Britain and Ireland. So far as I am aware, no modern investigator has suggested that the Celts were not already in the Iron Age at the time of their expansion into Italy and Spain. Why then should it be imagined, in the absence of any positive indication to the purpose, that they occupied these islands more than a thousand years earlier?

If I am not mistaken, the archæological evidence is fairly decisive on the point. Archæologists are agreed in dividing the Celtic Iron Age into two main periods, the Early Celtic or Hallstatt period, and the Late Celtic or La Tène period, also called the Marnian period. Each of these periods is taken to consist roundly of about four centuries, and the two periods on the Continent together correspond roughly to the last eight or nine centuries before the Christian Era. The Late Celtic period is abundantly represented in the antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland, but the objects that have been found in either country belonging to the Early Celtic Period are extremely rare. On this head Coffey writes as follows ("Bronze Age in Ireland," page 5):

"It must be remembered that the Continental Hallstatt period is not at present well represented in Great Britain and Ireland, and though, under Hallstatt influence, certain Continental Iron-Age types such as bronze caldrons, trumpets, round shields, etc., found their way into Ireland, we cannot as yet definitely separate this period from the end of the Bronze Age."

In fact, "sporadic finds" are all that represent the Early Celtic period in Ireland, in Britain, and even in the neighbouring regions of the Continent. It will not be questioned that during the Hallstatt period there was quite sufficient intercourse of trade between the islands and the Continent to explain these sporadic finds as importations.

The main fact is that, so far as archæological research has ascertained, the Early Celtic period of the Iron Age is substantially absent from Ireland and Britain, whereas the Late Celtic period is abundantly represented. The Bronze Age in Ireland comes down to about 350 B.C., and its Continental affinities are not specially or notably Celtic. The Bronze Age is succeeded in both Britain and Ireland by the Late Celtic period of the Iron Age. The inference, to my mind, is obvious, that the Celts did not reach either Britain or Ireland until the Late Celtic period, i.e., until the fourth or fifth century B.C. This conclusion agrees well with all that is known of the migratory movements of the Celts on the Continent.

Let us now revert to the Belgic migrations and consider their bearing on the matter of the Celtic colonisation of Ireland. The Belgae, we have seen, were a Celto-Germanic group which, according to Cæsar and Tacitus, occupied the lands stretching from the Rhine to the Seine and Marne, and expelled from that region the Celtae proper. There is no indication in what Cæsar says that in his time this movement was one of remote antiquity. In fact, it is perfectly clear that it was a movement by no means exhausted but still in active progress when he took command of the Roman armies in Gaul. The attempted migration of the Helvetii in the first year of his command, B.C. 58, was a part of this movement. A little later, Cæsar had to repel similar attempts of the Usipetes and the Tencteri to cross the middle Rhine and settle in Gaul; and these, according to Dio, were two Celtic peoples. Still later, in the time of Augustus, the Ubii migrated from the eastern to the western side of the Rhine. From all this it is clear that the Belgic migration was a continuous movement and that its force was far from being spent at the time of the Roman conquest of the country west of the Rhine. Cæsar indicates that there were powerful Belgic settlements west of the Rhine during the great wandering movement of the Cimbri and the Teutones, i.e., about half a century before he began his Gallic campaigns. There is nothing, however, to show that these settlements were of earlier date than the second century B.C., and I have seen no reason for thinking that they could have been much earlier.

We now come to the question of the Belgic invasion of Britain and its probable date. In Rhys's theory, which is still accepted in England, the Belgic invaders were the first to establish the Iron Age in Britain. I claim to have shown good grounds for believing that there was no Celtic occupation of Britain before the Iron Age. I have already suggested that, if this Celto-Germanic movement was brought to a standstill on the banks of the Marne, it was not likely to have succeeded in over-running all England at the commencement of the Iron Age in England. It will be seen that the Celto-Germanic migrations extended not merely to Britain but also to Ireland, and I suggest that if these Celto-German Belgae had been the first people to come over armed with iron, they would have made an easy conquest of Ireland as well as of England.

Let us look at the actual evidence of the Belgic conquest of England. The sole historical witness on the point is Julius Cæsar, and this is his testimony:

"The interior of Britain is inhabited by those who say that, according to tradition they are natives of the island; the maritime part by those who had crossed over from Belgium [meaning Belgic Gaul] for the sake of plunder, nearly all of whom are called by the same names of states as the states from which they originated and came thither, and having made war they settled permanently there and began to till the land."

From this it is clear that Cæsar was informed of two populations in Britain, one which was more ancient and claimed to be native, another which resulted from comparatively recent invasion. The older population he assigned to the interior, the more recent to the seaboard. What did Cæsar mean by the seaboard, the maritime part? Sir John Rhys has no difficulty in supposing that Cæsar did not mean the whole seaboard of Britain or if he did mean it that he was not fully informed, for according to Rhys's theory, the older population, which he supposed to be Gaelic, continued to inhabit the western seaboard of England and Wales. I also agree that, whatever Cæsar may have understood, his statement about the maritime part must be taken in a restricted sense, for no one believes that the Celtic occupation in Cæsar's time extended to the seaboard of the northern parts of the island. I agree also with the view that the traditional natives of whom Cæsar speaks probably included the earlier Celtic colonists, whose settlements dated, according to my argument, from the fourth century B.C., about three centuries before Cæsar's time. The more recent maritime settlements, in that case, would have been very recent in his time, and I think that his statement leads us to that conclusion. These later settlers on the seaboard, he tells us, are known collectively by the same names as the states on the Continent from which they originated. Now this is a statement about a fact likely to be within Cæsar's personal knowledge. He was certainly well acquainted with the names of the states of Belgic Gaul, and there is no reason why he should have said that populations retaining the same names existed in his time on the British coast if he did not know it to be a fact. His testimony on this point, touching a matter within the scope of his personal observation, is of higher evidential value than any other part of the statement quoted. Cæsar does not himself name these states, but in the two following centuries the names of the various states of Britain are given by Ptolemy and other writers, and when we compare these names with those of the states of Belgic Gaul, we find that they coincide only in three instances. These are the Parisii on the foreland north of the Humber, the Atrebatii in the district of Berkshire, and the Belgae, eastward from these to the Bristol Channel. There are some eighteen other states enumerated in Britain, so that the coincidence of names amounts to only one in seven, a proportion which by no means corresponds to Cæsar's words, fere omnes, "nearly all." Except for the Parisii, who occupied the promontory north of the Humber, the states bearing names also found in Belgic Gaul are located in southern England, south of the Thames and the Bristol Channel. One of these, and the most extensive, bears the general name Belgae, which certainly does not suggest that the remainder of the population was also Belgic. Now the fere omnes, "nearly all," in Cæsar's statement cannot refer to such a small minority of the states of Britain. Therefore, either Cæsar was grossly in error, in which case there is not much to be built on his whole statement, or, if he stated the truth, which is much more likely, then there were Belgic settlements on the British seaboard in his time which had lost their identity and passed into insignificance a century later. This I take to be true, for it will be seen that there were also Belgic settlements on the Irish coast after Cæsar's time and that as states they had disappeared a few centuries later. It is indeed quite possible that the Belgae so named, in southern England, consisted of a collection of colonies from various states of Belgic Gaul, whose names were preserved in Cæsar's time, but not one of which was sufficiently populous or otherwise considerable to be worth naming by later writers. There may have been similar Belgic colonies on other parts of the southern and eastern seaboard of Britain, none of them considerable enough to be reckoned as a state. At all events, I submit that Cæsar's statement, far from justifying the assumption of a Belgic conquest on a grand scale, comprising the greater part of Celtic Britain, is rather contrary to that assumption; also, that it cannot reasonably be taken to refer to settlements made in Britain at the close of the Bronze Age three or four centuries before Cæsar's time.

I have referred to the existence at one time of Celto-Germanic settlements on the coast of Ireland. The authority on the point is Ptolemy the geographer, who flourished about A.D. 150. In the south-eastern angle of Ireland, the region of Wexford, he places a population named Brigantes. There was a very extensive state of this name in the north of Roman Britain. Its territory extended across the country from the North Sea to the Irish Sea. Whether the Brigantes were or were not Belgic colonists in Britain and Ireland, I find no means to determine. North of the Brigantes, on the Leinster coast, Ptolemy locates the Manapii. It can hardly be doubted that these were a Belgic people, a branch of the Menapii,[2] whose territory on the Continent lay in parts of the countries now called Belgium and Holland. North of the Manapii on the Leinster coast, Ptolemy places the Cauci. The topography of Ireland from the time of Saint Patrick onward is very copious and minute, but no trace has been discovered in it of these three peoples in the location ascribed to them by Ptolemy. It seems to me possible that the Manapii may be represented in later times by a scattered people called the Monaigh or Manaigh. Some of these dwelt in eastern Ulster, near Belfast. Another branch of them dwelt in the west of Ulster, and their name is preserved in that of the county Fermanagh. It is interesting to note that the Irish genealogists derive the origin of both from Leinster. The only trace known to me in Irish tradition of a people similarly named on the south-eastern seaboard is found in the name of Forgall Monach, the father of Emer who was wife of Cú Chulainn. Who were the Cauci? Their name, in the Germanic form Chauci, was that of a people of the German seaboard bordering on the North Sea, who are described in Smith's Ancient Geography as "skilful navigators and much addicted to piracy." Tacitus praises them for their love of justice and says that, though ready for war, they do not provoke war. It must be remembered, however, that Tacitus was an extreme "pro-German." Elsewhere, he tells of incursions made by them against neighbouring peoples. We find, then, two peoples, the Menapii and the Chauci, on the Belgic and German shores of the North Sea, and also on the Leinster shores of the Irish Sea; and this shows that in Ireland as well as in Britain there were Celto-Germanic settlements about the beginning of the Christian era.

[2] The syllables en and an are found interchangeable in many Celtic words, perhaps varying according to dialect.

Cæsar is the earliest known writer to give the name Brittania to the island of Britain and the name Brittani to its people. In earlier writings the name of the island is Albion. In Cæsar's term Brittani, there seems to be a confusion of two existing names, one Brittani, the name of a small local population, the other Pretani which is recognised to be a British and probably Gaulish equivalent of the Irish name for the Picts, Cruithin, more anciently Qreteni. Cæsar fixed the name Brittani in Latin usage, but the form Pretanoi continued after his time to be used by Greek writers. Polybius and Ptolemy apply the adjective Pretanic to the two islands, and a still later geographical tract in Greek says, "the Pretanic islands are two in number one called Albion and the other Ierne." The Pretanic islands means the Pictish islands, and this name for them must have been taken from the Gauls. It points to a time before the Celtic occupation, when the Pretani or Picts were still regarded as the principal people of both islands. Here we have another indication of the relatively late period of the Celtic occupation. Cæsar learned that the natives of Britain had some curious marital customs which he did not observe among the Gauls, including the Belgae, on the Continent. A later writer, Solinus, in whose time the customs of the Britons were more intimately known to the Romans, ascribes a similar custom, not to the Britons but to the inhabitants of the Hebrides. Both accounts are based on a well-established fact, recorded also in Irish writings, the custom of matriarchy which was peculiar to the Picts. Cæsar's statement is readily explained, if we understand that the Gauls, from whom his information was likely to have been derived, still spoke of Britain and Ireland as the Pictish islands, and regarded this social custom, which was foreign to them, as a Pictish custom. In the time of Solinus, the Romans knew that the Picts were limited to the northern parts of Britain, and the story is accordingly told of the people of the Hebrides. If a custom peculiar to the Picts was spoken of in Cæsar's time as common to the inhabitants of Britain, and if Britain and Ireland were then still regarded in Gaul as Pictish islands, I suggest that this was because the Celts of Gaul did not look upon the two islands as having been mainly occupied from any remote period by a people akin to themselves.

The conclusions which I wish to draw in this lecture are: that neither Britain nor Ireland was colonised by the Celts until the Late Celtic period, corresponding to the period which followed the Bronze Age in these countries; that the Belgic or Celto-Germanic settlements were of still later date, and extended to Ireland as well as Britain; that the Belgic settlements in England were not so widespread as they are represented in modern British writers; and that the distinction between the ancient Gaels and Britons does not correspond to the distinction between the Celtae and Belgae of Gaul in Cæsar's time.

III. THE PRE-CELTIC INHABITANTS OF IRELAND

In the second lecture, I remarked how the name Iberians has been adopted to fill a vacuum as regards the naming of the population which occupied Great Britain and Ireland before the Celtic immigration. This kind of naming is unscientific and misleading. It implies that the ancient population thus artificially named can be identified as a branch of the population which actually bore that name in Greek and Latin literature. From this implied identification other equally unwarranted assumptions are likely to follow. Rhys expended a vast amount of study, ingenuity, and argument in the effort to show that very definite traces of a language akin to modern Basque survived in ancient Ireland and Scotland. On this point it may be remarked that we do not even know that the Basque population was originally Iberian. Ethnologists are agreed that, apart altogether from the Celtic migrations, there must have been a mixture of very distinct races in south-western Europe in prehistoric times. If there was a mixture of races, there was also no doubt more than one language, and if the Basque language has been able to survive the conquests of Celt and Roman and Goth, and last until our own time it may also well have survived the extinction of other languages in south western Europe.

So far as the Iberian theory is not mere vacuum-filling, it appears to rest on a single passage of Tacitus. He is describing the Silures, a British people whose territory was in the south of Wales, and who offered a very fierce resistance to the Romans. "The swarthy complexion of the Silures," he says, "the prevalence of curly hair among them, and their position over against Spain, argue that the ancient Iberians must have crossed over [from Spain] and occupied their territory." We have often heard the occurrence of similar physical traits in the west of Ireland ascribed to a more recent Spanish mixture. It all amounts to this, which Irish tradition bears out, and which nobody questions, that these western isles contain descendants of an ancient dark-complexioned population, probably already of mixed race, which existed in western Europe before the arrival of the fair-complexioned people, whose distinctive features appear by all indications to have originated in the lands forming the basin of the Baltic Sea.

If I am right in suggesting that the Greeks adopted from the Gauls the name Pretanic Islands, as a joint name for Britain and Ireland, it follows that the Gauls themselves supposed the chief population of both islands, before the Celtic occupation, to have been the Pretani, i.e., the Picts. During the early historical period, the Picts are chiefly known as the people of the northern mainland of Scotland, north of the Grampian mountains. The Venerable Bede speaks of their language as still existing in his time, the early part of the eighth century, and as being distinct from the Irish and British languages.

We have abundant and clear evidence that the Picts were at one time widely spread throughout Ireland. Early Irish writings recognise the existence, in their own time, of sections of the population known to be Pictish. The Picts were especially numerous in Ulster. They are described as a subject population, spread over the whole of ancient Oriel, which at that time comprised the counties of Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone and the greater part of Derry and Fermanagh. There was also a large Pictish element in Connacht, and there were smaller groups, traditionally known to be Pictish, in Munster, Meath, and various parts of Leinster. In Ulster, the ruling or dominant population of a large belt of territory, extending from Carlingford Loch to the mouth of the Bann, is named in the Annals both by the Latin name Picti, and its Irish equivalent Cruithni or Cruithin, which is the Irish form corresponding to Pretani. They continue to be so named until the eighth century, when apparently their Pictish identity ceased to find favour among themselves. It may be observed, however, that, while some proper names which contain non-Gaelic elements survived in ancient Ireland, no trace has been discovered of any language other than Gaelic continuing to be spoken in any part of Ireland within the traditional memory of the people. From this it will appear that the Gaelic language had become universal throughout Ireland some centuries before Irish history and traditions began to be written. The earliest writing of Irish history still extant belongs to the closing years of the sixth century.

In the case of the Picts, we find an interesting example of the method that recommended itself to the learned folk of ancient Ireland when they desired to fill the vacuum. In the Irish "Nennius," the Picts are said to have come of the stock of the Geloni, a people of Scythia mentioned by Herodotus. The explanation of this curious piece of history is found in a passage of Virgil, in which he speaks of the picti Geloni, i.e., the painted Geloni. They were supposed to dye their skin with some colouring stuff. In one of the versions of the wanderings of the Gaels before they reached Ireland, instead of sailing the Mediterranean they marched from Scythia across Europe. On their way they fraternised with a people called the Agathyrsi, who dwelt in Thrace. They made a compact with these people, with the result that later on a body of the Agathyrsi, having taken the name of Picts, followed in the track of the Gaels and came to Ireland. On their way they passed through a part of Gaul, where some of them remained, and were afterwards known as Pictavi. From these is named Poitou in France. Virgil is at the back of this story also. In a verse of the Æneid, he speaks of the picti Agathyrsi, "the painted Agathyrsi."

From these instances, we can see how closely Virgil was read in the ancient Irish schools. We can also see from what materials our ancient scholars could weave their legends of antiquity. And later on we shall see how similar materials and a similar process enabled the Latin scholars of ancient Ireland to construct their accounts—for they have more than one account—of the origin and early wanderings of the Gaelic people.

Another considerable element of the ancient population was the Iverni, as they were called by Ptolemy in the second century. Ptolemy locates them in the middle of southern Ireland. The Irish form of their name in the time of our most ancient writings was Érainn, more familiar in later usage in the accusative form Érna. They have been sometimes called Erneans in English. In the older heroic literature, the Iverni or Érainn are the chief people of Munster. In an important early tract, which gives the names and distribution of the principal subject communities throughout Ireland, the Sen-Érainn are placed in the district of Luachair, i.e., in the north of Kerry and the adjoining parts of the counties of Limerick and Cork. The peoples enumerated in this tract are regarded as being not of Gaelic origin. Sen-Érainn means the old or original Iverni, and the term is used to distinguish them from others also called Érainn, who were of free status and are attached by the genealogists to the Gaelic stock. My opinion is that the dominant element in every part of Ireland during the historical period, including the dynastic families and higher nobility, was Celtic. Otherwise, if we suppose that large communities of pre-Celtic inhabitants continued to exist under rulers and nobles of their own stock down to medieval times, the universality of the Gaelic language as far back as tradition reaches would be hard to account for. I suppose that, when a Celtic dynasty and nobility became established over a non-Celtic commonalty, the old name of the community became attached to them all. So we find that Giraldus calls the nobles who invaded Ireland in his time Angli, giving them the name of the subject people over whom they had ruled in England, though they had been barely a century in England and some of them not nearly so long. I think the same is probably true of the free and dominant Picts in the north-east, i.e., that they consisted of a common population of Pictish stock ruled by kings and nobles of Celtic origin.

Not only in Munster but also in Connacht, Meath and Ulster, our ancient genealogists recognise the existence of Ivernian communities. Rhys put forward the view that the Iverni were only a southern division of the Picts, but this view cannot well be reconciled with Irish tradition, which seems always to distinguish between Picts and Iverni, and recognises Picts in southern Ireland and Iverni in northern Ireland. For example, in county Antrim, Dál Riada, the north-eastern portion, was Ivernian, and the rest of the county for the most part was Pictish. We are on safer ground in regarding the Picts and the Iverni as two fairly distinct peoples.

From the Iverni the whole island took the names by which it was known to the ancient Irish, the Britons, the Greeks, the Romans, and therefore no doubt to the Celts in the neighbouring parts of the Continent. But we have seen that the original Iverni, in Irish tradition, were a remnant of the pre-Celtic population. Ireland therefore was named by the Celts, as Britain and Ireland were jointly named, from an older population which the invading Celts found in possession. The Romans changed Iverni into Hiberni, through a process known as popular etymology. Hiberni suggested to them the Latin word meaning "wintry." Though Ireland was known to some Latin writers to be by no means a wintry country, but quite the contrary, this verbal resemblance naturally caught the imagination, and one Latin poet actually speaks of "glacialis Ierne," ice-cold Ireland.

The Irish and Welsh names of Ireland are not directly taken from the name of the Iverni, but evidently from an older form which must have been Ivéri. Both the Irish name Éire (formerly Ériu) and the Welsh Iwerddon go back to an older name Iverio, and this older name is actually found in the writings of Saint Patrick in the slightly disguised Latin form Hiberio. The Irish genealogies corroborate this view that the name Iverni is itself a derivative from an older name Iveri. A common feature in genealogical lore is the tracing of a people's descent from an ancestor of the same name. It is found in the Bible, in the genealogies of the Arabs, in the legends of the Greeks, and in our own legends, for example, when the Gaels are said to have taken their name from an ancestor named Gaedheal Glas. In like manner all the pedigrees of the Érainn or Iverni in the Irish genealogies are traced to an ancestor named Iar. Iar is a word of two syllables, and represents an older form Iveros. From this and from the Irish and Welsh names of Ireland, I infer that the people called Iverni were at a still earlier period called Iveri. The change in the name of a people from a simple to a derivative form is of very common occurrence. Thus, instead of Angles, people now say the English, instead of Scots, the Scotch; in Irish, the names for the English and the Welsh have undergone a similar change; and so with numerous other names in many countries and languages.

Rhys derives the old Celtic name of Ireland, Iverio, from a word cognate with the Greek piaira, meaning "fat," and understands Iverio to mean the fat, i.e., the fertile country. This explanation, however, will not hold good if, as I think, the name Iverio means the country of the Iveri, unless we suppose the name Iveri to be Celtic and to mean "the fat people!" But we have seen that, in Irish tradition, the original Iverni were a pre-Celtic people, and we are under no necessity to discover a Celtic origin for their name.

For my part, granted that this people bore the name Iveri, changed afterwards into the adjectival form Iverni, I see no serious difficulty in supposing that this name was a local variant of Iberi, the name by which the people of Spain were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Authorities on Irish archæology are agreed that the Early Stone Age is not exemplified in the most ancient remains of human occupation that have been discovered in Ireland. The explanation for this is supplied by the geologists. Some thousands of years ago, the conditions of perpetual snow and ice that at present prevail in the Arctic regions extended much farther into the temperate zones. The northern parts of Europe were covered with perpetual ice. Ireland lay entirely within this glacial zone. The southern limit of the ice ran through the south of England and eastward across the Continent. The time during which this southward extension of ice lasted is called the Glacial Period. Already before that time, Europe was inhabited by man, and the Early Stone Age or Palæolithic Age is held to have preceded the Glacial Period.

The condition of Ireland during that period was like the present condition of Greenland, under a heavy covering of ice formed by the accumulation of snow. By its own weight the ice kept moving from the mountains into the valleys and plains, and from the higher land level into the surrounding seas. Under its moving action, the solid rock-formation of the mountains was ground down and rounded off and scooped into hollows, and great sheets and ridges of stones, gravel, sand and boulder-clay were accumulated on the slopes and low grounds. It is evident that any traces of human life and habitation that may have existed before this process were not likely to be found after it.

The consequence is that the earliest traceable population of Ireland was Neolithic, i.e., belonged to the Late Stone Age. By the Stone Age is meant that time in which the use of metals was still unknown, and in which the most durable material of implements used by men was stone. Needless to say, they also used wood, bone, and any other material that came to hand. The Late Stone Age is distinguished from the Early Stone Age by the use of polished and finely shaped stone implements.

In England, according to eminent authorities already quoted, the descendants of Palæolithic Man survived and are still the prevalent type. In Ireland, they did not survive, and whatever Palæolithic blood is in our veins to-day is due to immigration. Regarding the Neolithic population of Ireland, whatever is to be said belongs rather to archæology than to history. In Britain, we are told, the Neolithic population consisted of at least three distinct races, one which had remained there from Palæolithic times, and two new races, or rather a mixture of two races, which came in from the Continent. One sees how futile it is to attempt to fix upon such a population a name like Iberian. It is assuming a knowledge which does not belong to us.

The Late Stone Age was followed by the Bronze Age, but between the two came a transitional period now generally recognised, in which copper replaced stone as the most durable material of manufacture. This Copper Period is well exemplified in Ireland. Bronze, the distinctive material of the Bronze Age, was made by adding a small proportion of tin to copper, producing a metal very much superior to pure copper for the manufacture of tools and weapons. So far as I have been able to learn, the presence of tin in quantities that could be worked is unknown in Ireland. There seems to have been no scarcity of bronze, and from this I conclude that during the Bronze Age, Ireland had an import trade in tin, and probably therefore an export trade in copper or some other product. This is the earliest evidence of Irish commerce. Bronze cannot have been the material of ordinary industry, nor, unless the inhabitants were very unwarlike, can bronze have been the material of ordinary weapons of war. It is a very durable material, almost unaffected by the action of the elements during centuries. Numerous as the finds of bronze tools and weapons have been in Ireland, they should have been immeasurably more numerous if tools and weapons of bronze had been in every man's hands throughout the Bronze Age, which, according to Coffey, lasted from about 1800 B.C. to about 350 B.C. In fact, Sir Robert Kane, in his work on "The Industrial Resources of Ireland," in a footnote regarding the once extensive copper mines of the Danes' Island on the Waterford coast, supplies an interesting proof of what otherwise we should reasonably expect to be true, that the ordinary working population of the Bronze Age continued to use the implements of the preceding Stone Age.[3] Weapons and tools of bronze must therefore have been in the hands chiefly of a more opulent class than the general population. Gold was also used for ornaments, and Ireland is noted for the abundance of its gold ornaments dating from the Bronze Age. Native Irish gold was worked from very remote times, but it is also certain that in the early Christian period gold was brought to Ireland by Oriental merchants in exchange for other products of the country. Sickles of bronze bear witness to the tillage of the soil for corn during this period. It will be seen that there was a mixture of various peoples in Ireland at the time. From this we might expect that there were various degrees of civilisation, and so the remains of Bronze Age sepulchres indicate. The simpler and ruder forms of these are found all over the country. The highly elaborate sepulchres of the region of the lower Boyne, its tributary the Blackwater, and the lower Liffey, are indicative of a relatively high civilisation in those parts, the ancient territory of Bregia. Along with these we may take into account an old Gaelic tradition. It tells that when the Gaels came to Ireland many of the fertile plains had still to be cleared of forest, but there was one plain, Magh n-Ealta, stretching northward from Dublin, which was called the Ancient Plain and was already clear of forest before they arrived. Its name is interpreted as meaning "the plain of the flocks of birds," by which we may understand that it was frequented by the various kinds of gregarious birds which we see in our own time hovering around the plough, rooks, jackdaws, starlings and seagulls. It is worth noting that towards the opposite border of the same region of Bregia there is another plain of the same name, still represented in the name of Moynalty village, about four miles north of Kells and on the Moynalty river, which is a tributary of the Meath Blackwater.

[3] "In the abandoned workings, antique tools have been found, stone hammers and chisels and wooden shovels."

I shall here mention an additional indication that the Gaels were not in occupation of Ireland during the Bronze Age. In ancient Gaelic tradition, the great chambered tumuli of the Boyne are taken to be the tombs or the dwellings of an earlier race.

We pass on now to consider some of the evidence supplied by our ancient literature regarding the population which inhabited Ireland before the coming of the Gaels, that is, according to the conclusions I have already drawn, before the Iron Age. The Gaels occupied Ireland as a conquering and dominant people. During the early centuries of their occupation, whatever language or languages had been spoken in Ireland before them completely disappeared as languages, leaving no doubt some traces behind in the names of places, etc., and probably also influencing to some degree the Gaelic language itself. But for a long time there was nothing like a complete fusion of the old and the new population. The older population remained, not as a mere promiscuous swarm of subject folk, but preserving in a large measure its ancient organisation and sub-divisions. This state of things continued during the early centuries of Christianity in Ireland.

Most of the manuscript evidence concerning these ancient communities is still awaiting collection, publication, and study. Some of it is to be found here and there in the old genealogical tracts, which are still unpublished, and some in the annals. There is a good deal of very ancient material on the subject quoted in the introductory part of the great Book of Genealogies by Dubhaltach Mac Fir-Bhisigh. There is one particular tract dealing specially with the names and topography of these ancient subject communities. It exists in a number of MSS., and has been printed by Craigie in the Revue Celtique from a single MS. of the Edinburgh collection. From internal evidence I think that this tract is of not later date than the eighth century. I mention these facts to show how much has still to be done before we can claim a near approach to full and accurate knowledge of the existing evidence.

There are, however, some larger divisions of the ancient population, spread over wide areas and comprising in each instance several of the smaller named groups; and about these larger divisions there is sufficient information to warrant the essaying of some account of them. Chief among these may be reckoned the Picts. The tract just mentioned shows that there were subject communities of the Picts around Cruachain, the seat of the Connacht kings, and all over Mid-Ulster, from Meath to Loch Foyle.

Along the lower part of the Shannon, in the counties of Galway, Tipperary and Limerick, there was an ancient population known as Fir Iboth, or by the adjectival name Ibdaig. These names contain the Irish equivalent of the name by which the western islands of Scotland were known to Greek and Latin writers of the first and second centuries of the Christian era, i.e., Ebudae. The modern name Hebrides originated in a mistaken writing of this name, and it is curious that the most celebrated island of the group got its English name, "Iona," in the same way. Ptolemy makes these islands belong to Ireland not to Britain. Solinus says the inhabitants in his time grow no crops and live on fish and milk. It is possible that an ancient branch of this population preserved their identity by forming, so to speak, a fisherman caste on the banks of the Shannon. There is evidence that something like the Hindu caste system, in so far as it is linked with the occupations of the people, existed among the descendants of the Pre-Celtic population in Ireland. One of these subject communities is known by the variant names Tuath Semon, Semonrige, Semrige, and Semaine. Each of these names contains the Irish word seim, meaning a rivet, and may be translated the Rivet-folk. This people dwelt in the Desi territory of Munster, where those copper-mines are found which were worked in the Bronze Age by miners using tools of stone and wood. Taking the facts together, it seems reasonable to infer that the Semonrige tribe were the descendants of the ancient copper-smiths of the district, and that they obtained their name from the commodity in which they paid their tribute to the dominant Celts, for the name is Celtic. It should be well noted here that these Irish metal-workers are presented to us in early Irish records as descendants of the pre-Gaelic population; whereas, as we have seen, the current theory in British archæology assumes that the occupation of working bronze was distinctive of the Gaels themselves and was introduced by them.

Another copper-producing district is that of Béarra in West Munster, bordering on Berehaven. Here in ancient times dwelt another "rent-paying" community bearing the significant name of Ceardraighe, "the Smith Folk." There was also either a branch of this folk or another community of the same name situate around the ancient seat of the Munster kings, Teamhair Luachra, a suitable locality in which to find constant employment for a caste of workers in bronze.

According to the tract on the Rent-paying Communities, all over the parts of Munster which, in historical time, were regarded as being specifically Ivernian, including large districts in the present counties of Tipperary, Limerick, Cork and Kerry, there was distributed one of these subject communities which bore the name Tuath Cathbarr, i.e., "the people of helmets." Since there is no record and no likelihood that this subject people were a fighting caste, as undoubtedly some of the subject-communities were in other parts of Ireland, we may infer that they got their name from being employed in the manufacture of battle-gear.

I come now to the most celebrated of all the pre-Celtic folks that inhabited Ireland, the Fir Bolg. In including these among the industrial castes of ancient Ireland, I claim the support of the oldest written traditions, which clearly tell that the Fir Bolg, or "Men of Bags," obtained that name from an industrial connection with leathern bags. The story of the origin of the name, as found in the Book of Invasions, Keating's History, etc., is no doubt well-known. They migrated, we are told, from Ireland to Greece (Greece in ancient Irish writings means the Eastern Empire). There, being outlanders, according to the ideas of our forefathers, they did not obtain the local franchises and became a serf people. Their occupation was to carry sand and earth in leathern bags and spread a soil over rocky places, as is still done in parts of Ireland, to make fertile land. From this occupation, they were named Fir Bolg. They afterwards used the hides in which they worked to construct ships in the ancient fashion, and in these ships they escaped back to Ireland and liberty.

Quite a different version of the story is found in the Book of Lecan, a book which contains a great miscellany, awaiting most desirable publication, of excerpts from older writings, especially excerpts of material which does not accord with what one may call the received teachings of later times on matters of Irish legend and tradition. This particular passage contains what is doubtless the oldest extant account of the Fir Bolg. Its language, in my opinion, is of not later date than the eighth century. Like the accepted story, it says that they were a branch of the race of Nemed, but unlike the accepted story, it does not say that they left Ireland in a body and came back to it in a body after many years. On the contrary, it tells us that they continued to inhabit Ireland all the time, but carried on a particular trade with the eastern world. The manner of their trade was this. They put Irish earth into leathern bags and exported it to the east, where they sold it to the Greeks to be spread on the ground around their cities as a protection against venomous reptiles. From this trade they got the name of Bagmen.

Dubhaltach Mac Fir Bhisigh, in the unpublished introduction to his Book of Genealogies, tells us that Fir Bolg was the specific name of a particular section of the pre-Gaelic population, but became extended in common usage so as to be applied to the whole of that population. Of this statement we have abundant corroboration, with details enabling us to locate the abode of various sections of the Bag-folk properly so called. One section, called Bolgraighe, was the principal Rent-paying community of the ancient Tir Conaill, a territory of much smaller extent than the Tir Conaill of later times. Another section inhabited the district of Sliabh Badbgna (Slieve Baune) in the east of County Roscommon, where, I have been told, popular tradition still recognises their descendants. Another section dwelt in the district of Cong in the south of County Mayo, another in Sliabh Eachtgha (Aughty) in the south of County Galway.

The manufacture of bags from hide or leather was no doubt not a highly esteemed occupation, and it was probably out of contempt that the name Fir Bolg was extended to the whole conquered population by the Celtic ascendancy. The subject communities produced not only skilled artisans but men of great piety and learning in early Christian times. Saint Mo-Chuarog, for example, who is called Sapiens, "the Learned," and who introduced a reform into the Irish chronography of his time, was a member of the Rivet-folk, the Seamonraighe of the Déisi. But the general attitude of the Gaels towards the older population was undoubtedly disdainful. The passage quoted by Dubhaltach from "an ancient book" is familiar to many in O'Curry's translation:

"Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler, guileful, tale-telling, noisy, contemptible; every wretched, mean, strolling, unsteady, harsh and inhospitable person; every slave, every mean thief, every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music and entertainment, the disturbers of every council and every assembly, and the promoters of discord among people—these are the descendants of the Firbolgs, of the Galians, of the Liogairne, and of the Fir Domhnann in Eirinn. But the descendants of the Fir Bolg are the most numerous of all these."

This is fine old ascendancy talk, the sort of language that has served in many ages to justify the oppression of liberty; and there is plenty of evidence that the older population was in some instances subjected to very harsh treatment—in some instances, not in all, nor were the ancient communities always spoken of in such terms of contempt.

Among them, besides industrial groups or castes, there were also others which appear to have followed the profession of arms. Cú Chulainn, according to one tradition preserved by Dubhaltach, belonged to a non-Gaelic tribe called Tuath Tabhairn, and it will be remembered that he is once described as "a small dark man." "Thou little elf!" his charioteer used to call him, to provoke him to do his utmost in the fight. His rival, Fear Diadh, was a noble of the Fir Domhnann from Connacht, and the Fir Domhnann still existed as a subject community in the times to which the tract on the Rent-paying Folks has relation. They are located in a stretch of country comprising the greater part of the counties of Mayo and Sligo. In the eastern Midlands, from the Shannon to the Irish Sea, the same tract places another of these ancient tribes named the Luaighni—a name still preserved in that of the barony of Lune in Meath. These are represented as forming the chief fighting force of the kings of North Leinster in the heroic period. When Conchobhar sets out to exact reparation for the Táin and the invasion of Ulster, he is met by the forces of the Luaighni at Rosnaree on the Boyne, his heroes one after another are worsted in the fight, his army almost routed, and it is only when their king has fallen in single combat that the Luaighni abandon the field. In the curious story of the revolution brought about by the revolt of the Rent-paying tribes against the oppressive rule of the Gaelic nobility, it is the chief of the Luaighni, Cairbre of the Cat's Head, who becomes king of Ireland for twenty years.

Still more remarkable is the tribute of the ancient saga to the valour and discipline of the Galians. In the ninth century the Galians are still described by the poet Mael Muru as one of the outstanding sections of the population who are not Gaels. The tract on the Rent-paying Folks divides them into three tuatha and gives the location of each. They inhabited the northern parts of old Leinster, in the present counties of Wicklow, Kildare, and King's County. The story of the Táin tells how the Galians excelled all the other troops that joined Medb on her march from Cruachain for the invasion of Ulster. "This enterprise," said the warlike queen, "will be a barren one for all of us, except for one force alone, the Galians of Leinster." "Why blamest thou these men?" said her consort. "Blame them we do not," replied Medb. "What good service then have they done that they are praised above the rest?" said Ailill. "There is reason to praise them," said Medb. "They are splendid soldiers. When the rest are beginning to make their pens and pitch their camps, the Galians have already finished setting up their booths and huts. When the rest are still building booths and huts, the Galians have finished preparing their food and drink. While the others are getting ready their food and drink, the Galians have done eating and feasting, and their harps are playing for them. When all the others have finished eating and feasting, by that time the Galians are asleep. And even as their servants and thralls are distinguished above the servants and thralls of the Men of Erin, so shall their heroes and champions be distinguished above the heroes and champions of the men of Erin on this hosting. It is folly then for the rest to go, for the Galians will enjoy the victory." And in fear and jealousy the queen declared that nothing would please her but to fall upon the Galians and destroy them. Her husband expostulated. "Shame on thy speech!" he said, "a woman's counsel, for no better reason than because they pitch their tents and make their pens so promptly and unwearily." And Fergus interposing swore that he and his Ulstermen would stand by the Galians to the death. The Galians, he said, are but one division in eighteen of our army. Even so, we shall take care that they shall be no danger to us. And he took and divided the forces of the Galians among the rest so that not five of them were in one place together.

Of this Galian stock came Fionn and Oisin and Oscar and all their kindred, according to some accounts. They were of the sept Ui Tairsigh, one of the three folks who, says Mael Muru, are not of the Gaedhil. This sept dwelt at Drumcree in the barony of Delvin in Westmeath. Their name and existence as a sept is probably not so ancient as the time of Fionn, but we may suppose that in their own time they claimed descent from the family of Fionn, from Clann Bhaoisgne.

Other possible instances of occupation-castes are found in the names Céchtraighe "plough-folk," Corbraighe and Corbetrighe "chariot-folk" (Carbantorigion, the name of a town of the Selgovae in southern Scotland), Gruthraighe "curd-folk," Lusraighe "herb-folk," Medraighe "weight or balance-folk," Rosraighe "linseed-folk," Rothraighe "wheel-folk," Sciathraighe "shield-folk."

The tinker clans of recent times in Ireland and Scotland may well be survivals of some of these ancient industrial communities.

It is certain that ancient tribes remained in every part of Ireland after their conquest by the Gaels, and retained in some measure during the early Christian period in Ireland their ancient organisation, often under their own ancient lines of chiefs. This is matter of strictly historical record, and if any similar records had existed and were still extant in Britain, we should hear less of the cheap and easy history of successive populations, each of them completely exterminating those that inhabited the land before them. Writers on history would not find themselves flatly contradicting ethnologists on the strength of their own gratuitous assumptions, when ethnologists say that the modern English race is largely composed of descendants of the primitive inhabitants.

On this subject of primitive races, there is one point which, in passing, I desire to bring out. One of the founders of the modern study of ethnology, Quatrefages, has given a good illustration of a sort of scientific method akin to some that we have had already under consideration. A glance at the map showed him that Ireland represented a north-western limit of the likely spread of the human race in remote times. The migratory movements of antiquity were thought to have, generally speaking, a western trend in Europe. Ireland besides was an island, which in the distant past must have been reached through Britain. Conclusion: Ireland was the place in which to look for primitive European types, and in Ireland the surest place to find the primitive types must be the extreme north-western part. Accordingly, M. Quatrefages packed his portmanteau in Paris and labelled it for Belmullet. This kind of scientific quest is usually successful. It succeeds after the manner of the schoolboy who, before entering into the intricacies of a question in algebra, takes the precaution of providing himself with the answer from the end of the book. M. Quatrefages found the Mayo seaboard swarming with a primitive race of men. I do not propose to examine his discoveries in detail. Anyone who is curious about them is referred to the late Dr. Hogan's little book on "The Irish People," which is the source of my information. In a paper contributed by me to the Royal Irish Academy's "Clare Island Survey," on the Place-names and Family-names of Clare Island, I showed that nearly half of the families now living there could be traced to an earlier home in distant parts of Ireland. I pointed out that in remote ages, the parts of the sea that adjoin the land and the parts of the land that adjoin the sea must have afforded the freest highway for movements of population. It must have been so in the glacial period and during its decline, when the scanty population must have lived a life like that of the modern Eskimos who travel long journeys in their canoes and change their habitation at will. It must have been so in the barren period that succeeded the age of ice, when animal and vegetable food was much more abundant on the sea-shore than inland. And it must have been so in the succeeding forest period, when the inland regions became difficult to traverse. In fact, until men became tillers of the ground and road-makers, the sea-edge was their grand highway. Hence it is that the population of the seaboard is always the most mixed and variable. The place to look for the least movement and least variation is inland, especially in deeply wooded, swampy or mountain areas, which offer the least attraction to newcomers and from which an older population is hardest to dislodge. And this, I think, is also the lesson of ethnological research conducted without foregone conclusions. In all western Europe, there is no region that contains a larger proportion of a late-coming population than the Orkneys, Shetlands and Hebrides and distant Iceland, the uttermost extremes of the north-west.

The ancient legends of Ireland tell of certain peoples which are not represented by territorial groups in the historical record. Most conspicuous among these are the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomori ("Fomorians"). The late D'Arbois de Jubainville showed very clearly that these two peoples belonged to pagan mythology. His work on the subject can be read in the English translation by Mr. Best, "The Irish Mythological Cycle." I cannot now attempt to go over the ground it covers, even in summary, but shall content myself by adding a few cogent proofs to those which it supplies. About the year 1000 the poet Eochaidh O'Flainn wrote a poem on the Tuatha de Danann. He began by setting himself the question, were these folks human or were they demons. He answers that they were mortal men of Adam's race, and we are even told by what deaths they died. The very fact that the question had to be asked is conclusive as to the popular belief. But the poet was not satisfied with having brushed this popular belief, a survival of paganism, to one side. In his concluding verses he protests "I do not worship them, I worship the one true God." So that as late as the year 1000 people in Ireland still spoke of the Tuatha De Danann as objects of heathen worship.

An older writer, quoted in the Book of Lecan, tells a plainer tale. He does not admit the truth of the ancient mythology, and says that the Tuatha De Danann were a remnant of the fallen angels. They assume, he says, bodies of airy substance so as to become visible to men, the better to tempt them. They come at the call of sorcerers and those who practise malevolent incantations by walking in circles lefthandwise. They used to be worshipped, and it was they who invented the spells sung by smiths and druids and wise-women and pilots and cupbearers. From them druidism came in Ireland.

The poet-historians did not succeed in killing off the Tuatha De Danann. In 1088 the annalist Tigernach died, and in 1084, four years before his death, his chronicle contains an account of a pestilence which visited Ireland at that time. The cause of this pestilence, says the chronicler, was revealed in that year to a certain man, Gilla Lugán, who was in the habit of frequenting a fairy mound at Hallowtide, the old heathen festival of Samhain. There in the year 1084, Oengus appeared to him and told him that the plague was brought to Ireland by legions of evil spirits from the islands of the northern ocean, who spread it over the country with their fiery breath. And Gilla Lugán himself, says the chronicler, afterwards saw one of these demon legions on the rath of Mullaghmast, and in whatsoever direction their fiery breath came on the land, there the plague broke out among the people.

In Agallamh na Seanorach, the rulers of the Tuatha Dé Danann are still alive in St. Patrick's time, and inhabit the hills associated with their memory. One of them has recently come to life once more in Dublin, Finnbheara of Cnoc Meadha. From the hills at Tourmakeady you can see Cnoc Meadha, a low round hill, on the eastern horizon. It was pointed out to me by a man who knew all about it. That is where Finn Bheara lives, he said. He is the king of the Good People. He is not always there. When Finn Bheara is living in Cnoc Meadha, it is a good year for the country. When he goes away, it is a bad year.

A poem in Duanaire Finn tells how Oengus aided the Fiana in their hostilities with king Cormac, and, like the gods in the Homeric poems, remained invisible while he fought on their behalf.

The passage already cited from the Book of Lecan tells how the Tuatha De Danann arrived in Ireland. They came, it says, without ships or boats and first alighted on Sliabh an Iarainn, in the heart of the country.

The mythology of the Irish Celts was not originally shaped in Ireland. They brought it along with them from central Europe, and just as the ancient scriptures of the Hindus bear traces of having been originally composed in a climate very different from that of Hindustan, so I think the Irish mythology shows some traces of its continental origin. The Fomori of Irish tradition were not inhabitants of Ireland. They always appear as invaders. They come from the north, from the unknown places of the northern ocean. The demons who brought the pestilence to Ireland in 1084 were Fomorians. They are always enemies of the people of Ireland. They were enemies to Parthalon's people, and after them to Nemed's people, the Fir Bolg, and after them to the Gaels. They were a malevolent race of immortals. In the popular view, among heathens, a people expected to be defended by the gods of its own worship. If a hostile people had other gods, these were expected to fight on the other side. Hence there was a natural tendency to regard a double set of immortals, one party being foreign and malevolent, the other domestic and benevolent. But the Irish people, before the Norse invasions, knew no human enemies in the northern ocean. Accordingly, I think that the Fomorians originally belonged to the continental geography of Celtic mythology, and that the sea from which they came was not the ocean to the north of Ireland but the Baltic and the North Sea, and that their islands were originally perhaps Britain and Ireland and the islands of the Baltic and the Scandinavian peninsula itself, which was thought to be an island when it first became known to the Greeks. The Fomorians would be perhaps in part identical with, in part associated with, the gods of the peoples dwelling on the shores of those northern seas before the Celtic expansion northward and north-westward.

We have glanced at the process by which one of our poet-historians endeavoured to transform popular tradition into a kind of history more acceptable to his own school. Christian learning brought into Ireland a double stream of history, derived from the Old Testament and from the Greek and Latin historians. The two streams had already been mingled in one by early Christian historians like Eusebius and Orosius. The works of these writers were well-known in early Christian Ireland. The Chronicle of Eusebius, a history of the ancient kingdoms of the world, written in parallel columns, a column to each kingdom, was known through the Latin translation by St. Jerome and its continuation by Prosper of Aquitaine in the fifth century. It became the basis of the writing of Irish history, and was continued in Ireland, with an Irish section added, down to the early years of the seventh century. By adopting this basis and model, the early Christian historians of Ireland brought themselves inevitably face to face with the task of linking and fitting the old Gaelic tradition to this existing framework of Biblical and Greco-Latin history.

We cannot doubt that the Celts, like the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Northmen and other ancient peoples, had what is called a cosmogony of their own, an account of the beginning of the world. Cæsar tells us that the Druids expounded the nature of the gods and also of the material universe. This cosmogony could find no place in the new scheme, and it disappeared, leaving perhaps a few traces in the genealogies. In like manner, other parts of the popular tradition and native lore required to be transformed and recast to find a place in the accepted scheme of world history. That is why the Tuatha De Danann became mortals in the teaching of the learned while they remained and still remain immortal in the traditions that come down from heathen times.

The native tradition had its own account of the origin of the Celtic people. That account, as we shall see, was not such as could be adopted into the Christian world-history received from Eusebius and St. Jerome. It was completely rejected by the Irish historians, as completely as modern Irish people reject the substituted account when they say that their ancestors were Celtic.

To provide a theory of the origin of the Gaels more in keeping with the received world-history, a search was made through the Latin historical and geographical writings that were used in the Christian schools of Ireland and suitable discoveries were made. The most serviceable material for the purpose was found in the world-history of Orosius, a Spanish historian who wrote in Latin about the year 400. Quotations from Orosius by name and word for word show that his book was well-known in the Irish schools. It had the advantage of combining a geography of the world with a history of the world.

In those times, the ordinary Latin name for the people of Ireland was Scotti, Scots. It is the name used for them by Orosius, and also by St. Patrick, and it was accepted by all the early Irish writers who wrote in Latin. But this name Scotti does not appear in Latin before the fourth century and gave no direct clue to trace the origin of the Gaels. In the historical and geographical Latin writings to hand, the people's name that most nearly resembled Scotti was Scythi, Scythians. Accordingly, we are told that the Gaelic people were of Scythian origin.

There was an independent and evidently earlier effort to account for their origin in a precisely similar way. The man of learning who undertook this effort fastened his attention not on the name Scotti but on the older Latin name Hiberni, and searched his Latin authorities for a corresponding name of some ancient people. He found that there was an ancient people in the region of the Caucasus mountains who bore the name Iberi, and we have the result in an old tract quoted in the Book of Lecan:

"Question: what is the true origin of the Sons of Mil [i.e. the Gaels]? Answer: A race there is in the mountains of Armenia, Hiberi they are named. They had a famous king, Mil, son of Bile, son of Nem. He was contesting the kingship with his father's brother, Refellair son of Nem, and he went into exile with the manning of four barks, and twelve married couples to each bark, and a soldier over and above without wife...." And so the story goes on until the descendants of these Iberi come to Ireland.

It is not unlikely that this account was known to Saint Columbanus of Bobbio. In letters written about the year 600, he speaks of his own people not as Scotti or Hiberni, but as Iberi.

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.

IV. THE FIVE FIFTHS OF IRELAND

We have seen how the poet-historians of early Christian Ireland took over certain Latin histories of the world, especially St. Jerome's translation of Eusebius and the history of Orosius, and adopted these as the established framework of the world's history, thereby compelling themselves to adjust their own accounts of the Irish past to that framework. In the process of adjustment they did not all work hand in hand, and so we have different and sometimes contradictory accounts and at least half-a-dozen distinct chronologies. They found a mass of Irish traditions and legends embodied in stories long and short. They set to work on this material, endeavouring to arrange it all in sequence and to provide it with dates—the original matter being largely independent of date or sequence. This task became in fact the principal work of a certain school or class of poets, as we learn from a passage which, though found in the Book of Leinster, is held to date from about the eighth century. It is headed: "Of the Qualification of Poets." The word translated "qualification" by O'Curry, and not inaptly so translated, is nemthigud, derived from the word nemed, the Old Celtic adjective nemetos, meaning "sacred." A sacred place was called nemed, and a sacred person was also called nemed. The old law tract which deals with the privileges and rights of the poets is entitled Bretha Nemed, i.e., decisions regarding sacred persons. The tract in the Book of Leinster tells us that certain kinds of knowledge were necessary qualifications for certain classes of poets, in order that they might be entitled to the privileges of their class and become in that sense sacred persons, who, in virtue of the reverence due to them, might enjoy special rights and immunities. The knowledge required of them was not a knowledge of prosody or grammar, nor of chronology or geography, or any other science of the times. It was a knowledge of the stories of ancient Ireland, so thorough that they should be able to recite these stories in the presence of kings and chiefs, not a select few of the stories but scores and fifties of them. A mere memorised knowledge of the stories, however, was not sufficient, and something more than the ability to recite them to the satisfaction of courtly patrons was deemed essential to qualify the person as a poet, for the tract concludes by saying: "He is no poet who does not synchronise and adjust together all the stories." This means clearly that it was, at the time, an essential part of the poet's work to make a consecutive and dated history out of the sagas of antiquity.

In this way was produced a history of Ireland from the beginning down to Saint Patrick's time. From that time onward the ancients, like ourselves, relied on the written chronicles of Ireland.

Among the written stories of antiquity, the primacy was accorded to those of the Ulster epic, Táin Bó Cuailnge and the other tales that range around it. Evidence of this primacy will be found in the oldest known Irish chronicle, in poems assigned by Meyer to the seventh century, and in the framework of the ancient genealogies. A number of modern investigators assure us that the antiquarian tradition of the Ulster sagas is marvellously true to the facts established by archæological research in regard of the age to which those sagas relate, the beginning of the Christian era. Their historical tradition was adopted without question by our medieval historians. The main fact of that historical tradition was that Ireland, in the time of Cú Chulainn, was divided into five coordinate chief kingdoms, whose kings were equal in rank and were not subordinate to a central monarchy. The old historians consequently call this period Aimser na Cóicedach (Aimsir na gCúigeadhach), the Time of the Pentarchs (the five equal kings), and leave the monarchy a blank at that time, though they profess to be able to give a list of kings of all Ireland for the earlier and later periods. This list of the pagan Monarchs of Ireland is not historical. It is compiled in a very artificial way from the pedigrees of various Irish dynasties, in a way so artificial that one name, the origin of which can be traced to the sleepy blundering of a copyist, a name which never belonged to any man, is found as the name of a king of Ireland in the list, with appropriate details telling how he acquired the sovereignty and how he lost it, and how many years he reigned. On the other hand, we are told that the fivefold division of Ireland was older than the Gaelic occupation. In fact, its origin was prehistoric, and the Pentarchy is the oldest certain fact in the political history of Ireland. That it is a certain fact, nobody who is acquainted with Irish literature and tradition will be disposed to question. To this day the word cuigeadh, "a fifth," is in general use among speakers of Irish as the term to denote each of the principal sub-divisions of the country; and cuig cuigidh na hEireann, "the Five Fifths of Ireland," is an expression familiar to all who speak the Irish language. This term cuigeadh, in this sense, is found in every age and generation of our written literature. And yet it is certain that throughout the whole period of our written literature, the political division of Ireland represented by this word cuigeadh, "a fifth," and "the Five Fifths of Ireland," had no existence. Already in St. Patrick's time the Five Fifths were only a memory of the past. Then and for centuries afterwards, instead of five, there were seven coordinate chief kingdoms and a monarchy over them.

It is evident that a political fact which impressed itself so permanently on the vocabulary, the literature, and the folk-memory of the people for at least fifteen hundred years was not the transitory thing that appears in the lists of Irish monarchs before Christianity, a Pentarchy which lasted only during a few years and interrupted for that time the course of an earlier and later Monarchy. The details of tradition, upon examination, indicate that the Pentarchy preceded the Monarchy and lasted for a long time, long enough to become the chief outstanding fact in tradition as regards the internal political state of Ireland in the early Celtic period.

Now we come to the question, what were the five principal divisions of Ireland under the Pentarchy? In my experience, the less erudite who are interested in such matters usually answer, Ulster, Leinster, Munster, Connacht and Meath. Those who are better read in Irish history will answer, as a rule, leaving out Meath and will say that there were two Fifths comprised in Munster, and this is the teaching of Irish historians for some centuries back. In this case, it will be seen that the less learned folk are nearer to the truth.

Let us first consider what our information is regarding the Two Fifths comprised in Munster. Keating gives two alternative divisions of Munster to form the Two Fifths. In one division, the dividing line runs north and south, from Limerick to Cork Harbour. This delimitation seems to be based on the ancient extent of Munster, which did not include County Clare. The second partition of Munster, according to Keating, is by a line running from Tralee to Slieve Bloom, a very unlikely boundary, as will be evident to anyone who tries to place it on the map. The portion south of this line, we are told, was the realm of Cú Raoi, and the portion north of it was the realm of Eochaidh MacLuchta. These two names belong to the Ulster cycle, and we should expect the division connected with them to hold good in the topography of the Ulster tales, but we shall find that the Ulster tales speak of Eochaidh MacLuchta as king of all Munster and speak of Cú Raoi as a great Munster hero, but not as king of half Munster. That is not the whole story. Keating tells us that Tuathal Teachtmhar, when he became king of Ireland, established a small domestic realm for himself in the centre of Ireland, around Uisneach, by cutting off a section from each of the Five Great Fifths, and that the boundaries of all five, until his time, met at one point, the rock called Aill na Mireann, on the slope of Uisneach hill. Look at the map of Ireland, bearing in mind that the county Clare was not at that time and long after it a part of Munster, and ask yourself what possible dividing line between two kingdoms of Munster could have terminated in the hill of Uisneach, which stands ten or twelve miles westward from Mullingar.

The Five Great Fifths of Ireland are a living fact in the political framework of the stories of the Ulster Cycle. Surely then it is in those stories themselves and in the antiquity of their tradition that we must seek the evidence about these divisions, their location and extent, and not in the unreconciled statements of writers in a later age. The teaching of the Ulster stories on this matter is clear and unmistakable. It is the same throughout all of them and will be found summarised in a few sentences of the story of the Battle of Rosnaree. First we are told how this battle was caused. In the great expedition of Táin Bó Cuailnge, four of the Great Fifths had joined together for the invasion of Ulster. The invasion was not a military success, but it had secured its object, the carrying away of the Brown Bull in spite of the Ulster king, and Ulster had suffered from the ravages of war. Conchobhar, following up the retreating army of Connacht, had overtaken and defeated it on the banks of the Shannon, but he had not recovered the Brown Bull, and the other three Fifths of Ireland had got away without making any reparation for the great raid. And Conchobhar vowed that he would exact reparation or inflict punishment. He called the forces of Ulster together. These things were speedily reported to the other four Fifths of Ireland, and without delay the king of each Fifth prepared for resistance and summoned his forces to meet him at his royal seat. Here follows a recitation of the names of the four kings and their four capital places in which their armies were mustered.

The king of Tara, Cairbre Nia Fear, called out the Luaighni of Tara to meet him at Tara. It is to be remembered that in these stories Tara is not the royal seat of kings of all Ireland. There are no kings of all Ireland.

The Galians of Leinster are summoned to meet their king, Fionn File, at Dinn Riogh on the banks of the Barrow.

The Clanna Deadhadh, which is another name for the Iverni or Érainn of Munster, are summoned to meet their king, Eochaidh MacLuchta, at his royal seat of Teamhair Érann.

The muster of Connacht is held by Ailill and Meadhbh at Cruachain.

In this account of the five musters, there is no room for misconception. The author of the story was not in the slightest doubt as to the identity of the Five Fifths. His account is in complete harmony with the whole tenour of the stories relative to that age. In it, there is one Fifth of Munster, and all possibility of another is precluded. There is one Fifth of Connacht and one Fifth of Ulster. How are the two remaining Fifths constituted?

The capital of one of them is Tara, that of the other is Dinn Riogh on the Barrow. We learn from Keating and all other authorities and traditions that, in the period of Cú Chulainn and the Ulster hero tales, the river Boyne, in its lower course, separated Ulster from Leinster. Tara, on the south side of the Boyne, was in Leinster territory. Hence it is plain that Leinster and not Munster comprised two of the Five Great Fifths.

People sometimes say to me and have said to me since these lectures began, "You are very ruthless in tearing away from us some of our most cherished traditions." Now, if I showed any contempt for tradition, this reproach would be altogether too mild. Tradition, if it is indeed tradition, is worthy of all reverence. It is not infallible. Tradition is a people's memory, and a people's memory, like yours or mine, has its limitations. We are all agreed that the Gaels are of Celtic origin and that their language is a Celtic language, but there is no tradition for it. From the earliest recorded traditions of Ireland and Britain down to the writing of the history of Scotland by Buchanan, not the faintest trace of such a tradition has been found. Nevertheless there are fields of historical inquiry in which tradition is the most faithful witness, and one such field is the internal polity of Ireland during the centuries that precede the written record. In that field, so far am I from despising tradition, that my main effort is to find tradition and establish its authority. We must get away from the notion that everything that is written by Keating or the Four Masters or in the Book of Invasions about that early time is tradition. The Scythian origin of the Gaels, the geographical details of their wanderings, the tower of Bregon, the landing at an unknown Inbhear Scéine—these things do not belong to tradition, they are the inventions of Latin scholars, suggested to them by ancient Latin writers.

The evidence on which I rely with regard to the Five Fifths of ancient Ireland is unquestionably traditional. The evidence that I have quoted on the point does not stand alone. It is not singular and inconsistent. On the contrary, it will be found to fit in with the whole body of ancient tradition, and taken along with the other evidences, it will be found to give life and reality to the history of an obscure yet most interesting period.

Following up the ancient testimony, we find that Cairbre Nia Fear, the king of Tara in Cú Chulainn's time, was brother to Fionn File, the king of Dinn Riogh. Both were Leinstermen, Lagenians. Turning to the genealogies we find that the descent of all the Leinster kings in Christian times is traced from Fionn File. Tara therefore was the capital or royal seat of a Leinster kingdom, and that kingdom was one of the Great Fifths. If we look up Father Hogan's Onomasticon, we shall see that this fact was otherwise clearly recognised. The kingdom of which Tara was the capital was named in ancient writings by the name "Cairbre's Fifth," Cóiced Coirpri.

Further we find that in many old documents the former existence of two Fifths belonging to the Laighin, or ruling folk of Leinster, is definitely recognised. One of these divisions is called Cúigeadh Laighean Tuadh-Gabhair and the other Cúigeadh Laighean Deas-Gabhair. These names mean that one of the Fifths lay to the north and the other to the south of a place or district called Gabhair. There were a number of places so named in various parts of Ireland, several of them in ancient Leinster. The word gabhair was evidently a topographical term having a definite meaning indicating some physical feature of the country, but I have not found it defined in any dictionary or glossary. Examining the various instances of its use in place-names and the conformation of the localities so named, I have come to the conclusion that gabhair most probably denoted a low broad ridge between two river valleys. There were two localities so named in the middle of Leinster. One was called Gabhair Life, with reference to the river Liffey. In the first poem of Duanaire Finn it is mentioned as the place where dwelt the maiden Life from whom the river, we are told, took its name: "In Gabhair between two mountains, there the modest maid abode." This probably refers to the district of Donard in Co. Wicklow, between the waters of the Liffey and the Slaney. The two valleys are separated by a low watershed, and bounded on their outer sides by mountainous country. Westward from this, in the south of County Kildare, is a district which was anciently called Gabhair Laighean. This means Gabhair of the Lagenians, and the name suggests that it was the distinctive boundary between the two Fifths of the Lagenians. It is situated between the valleys of the Barrow, the Liffey and the Slaney, and may be regarded as the westward extension of Gabhair Life. Further evidence on the point is supplied by two glosses in the Book of Rights. One of these says that Laighin Deas-Gabhair is Ui Ceinnsealaigh, the other says it is Osraighe. I think we may take both together and regard the southern Fifth of Leinster as comprising both territories, which are represented by the dioceses of Ferns and Ossory. If O'Donovan is right in identifying Dinn Riogh with a site near Leighlin Bridge, on the bank of the Barrow, we should add to the territories named the diocese of Leighlin, which lies between Ossory and Ferns. But there is good evidence that the ancient Fifth of South Leinster was still more extensive. It extended over a considerable part of eastern Munster, taking in almost the whole county of Tipperary and a small part of County Limerick.

The territory of Ossory, we are told, stretched from Gabhrán to Grian, i.e., from the district of Gowran in County Kilkenny to the district of Pallasgreen in County Limerick.

There were several stories which explained how and why this western part of Leinster was transferred to Munster. According to one account

Osraige ö Gabrán co Gréin
tucad i n-éiric Eterscéil.

The territory of Ossory was forfeited to Munster in consequence of the slaying of Ederscél, king of Ireland, father of Conaire Mór. Ederscél was of the Ivernian race. A second account is alluded to by a poem in the Book of Rights, claiming that Ossory was rightfully subject to the kings of Munster, having been forfeited for the killing of Fergus Scannal, king of Munster. The third account is much more elaborate. It is found in the story of the Migration of the Déisi, a story which in its extant form dates from about the year 750. It tells how the Dési were expelled from the region of Tara; how one part of them crossed the sea and settled in Wales; how another part sojourned for a long time in Leinster, but at last entered the service of the king of Munster and acquired a territorial settlement by conquering and annexing to Munster the western part of the territory of Ossory. The story relates that the men of Ossory were first driven eastward over the Suir; they rallied near Clonmel and were again defeated and driven across the Anner; were followed up by the Déisi and finally forced over the Lingaun river, which to this day forms part of the boundary between Ossory and Munster. The baronies of Iffa and Offa took their name and origin from a branch of the Déisi settled in the conquered territory. West of the Suir in County Tipperary are the baronies of Upper and Lower Kilnamanagh. These were formerly O'Dwyer's country, and the territory was ruled by the ancestors of the O'Dwyers from time immemorial. But the line of the O'Dwyers and their forefathers was an offshoot of the ruling people of South Leinster. In the genealogies, Fionn File is their ancestor, the same who was king of South Leinster in Cú Chulainn's time. Of the same Leinster stock came the sept Ui Cuanach, whose name and territory is represented in the present barony of Coonagh in County Limerick, adjoining O'Dwyer's country. On the western side of this territory was the district of Grian, the western limit-point of ancient Ossory.

I have found no very decisive indication of the westward extent of ancient Leinster along the southern coast. However, the story of the Déisi migration shows no distinction between the Déisi settlements south of the Suir in County Waterford and those north of the Suir in County Tipperary. There is nothing to indicate that the Munster king settled one portion of his allies on conquered territory and another portion on territory already in his possession, and the whole tenour of the story associates the settlement with the displacement and dispossession of the Men of Ossory. Therefore, I think it probable that the territory of Ossory included the greater part of County Waterford, as far west as Cappoquin and the Blackwater from Cappoquin to the sea.

As in the case of the eastern parts of Munster so in the case of the part beyond the Shannon, now County Clare, there is more than one story to account for the annexation. When several stories are given to explain a fact, though they contradict each other in the manner of the explanation, they form a strong corroboration of each other as to the fact itself. That Clare was at one time part of Connacht is the universal testimony of antiquity.

Ancient Munster, therefore, the Munster of the heroic period, comprised the counties of Cork and Kerry, the greater part of Limerick and some small area of Tipperary and Waterford. It was the smallest of the Five Great Fifths and there is no need to bisect it to form two of them. The bisecting lines mentioned by Keating, however, are not likely to have been purely imaginary. They refer in my opinion to political boundaries of a later age. We have evidence of the division of Munster in early Christian times into what may be called two distinct spheres of influence. Besides the Eoghanacht dynasty which then ruled in Cashel, there were other branches of the same dynasty ruling in various parts of Munster. Of these the most powerful was the Eoghanacht of Loch Léin, also called the Eoghanacht of Iarmuma, "West Munster." Some of its kings are reckoned as kings of Munster, and hostile to the kings of Cashel. The dividing line from Limerick to Cork Harbour may indicate the boundary between the groups of states which acknowledged the eastern and the western authority. As regards the other line from Tralee to Slieve Bloom, I think it is founded on the fluctuating extent of the rival authority of the Dalcassian and Eoghanacht dynasties during the period between the battle of Clontarf and the Norman invasion. During that period we read of kings of the Eoghanacht lineage who are called kings of Cashel and Desmond. They are of the family of MacCarthaigh. North of the line, the power of the kings of Thomond was predominant.

The boundaries of ancient Connacht are fairly certain. The Shannon throughout its course formed the principal limit. From the head of the Shannon to the sea at Donegal Bay the boundary was nearly the same as it still is.

Between Ulster and North Leinster, the boundary ran from Loch Bóderg on the Shannon through the southern part of County Leitrim, and thence in the direction of Granard; thence by the present boundary of Ulster eastward as far as the Blackwater, down along the Blackwater to Navan and from Navan along the Boyne to the Irish Sea. On the expedition of the Táin, Medb's army skirted this boundary, keeping on the Leinster side, until they reached the Blackwater; and the story tells how they looked across the Blackwater at "the foreign territory" (in chrich aineoil).

Such was the division of Ireland under the Pentarchy at the beginning of the Christian Era, as disclosed by the oldest traditions.

When we come to St. Patrick's time, the fifth century, we feel ourselves within the scope of clear and definite written records. These ancient boundaries are for the most part only memories. There is no longer a Pentarchy but a Heptarchy, which remains substantially unchanged for several centuries and is described in detail by the Book of Rights, compiled about the year 900 and revised about a century later.

In this new arrangement, Munster has its present extent plus the southern angle of King's County. Connacht has lost County Clare, but has annexed territory east of the Shannon as far as Loch Erne and Loch Ramor in County Cavan. This territory has been taken from Ulster, which no longer exists as a political unit, but is divided into three of the seven chief kingdoms. These are the kingdom of Ailech on the west, the kingdom of Ulaidh on the east, and the kingdom of Airgialla or Oriel in the middle. The Fifth of North Leinster has ceased to be a kingdom. There is only one kingdom of Leinster, which extends as far north as Dublin, the river Liffey and its tributary the Rye, which runs by Maynooth. This kingdom contains what remains of North and South Leinster and is ruled by the ancient dynasty of South Leinster.

The seventh chief realm is that of Meath which has been formed from parts of North Leinster and of Ulster. Its northern boundary is nearly but not quite the same as the present northern boundary of Leinster. It takes in part of County Cavan and excludes the northern part of County Louth, north of Ardee.

The strictly historical period in Ireland begins with St. Patrick. The authentic writings of St. Patrick are the earliest written documents of Irish history. But I do not think it would be just to say that all before that time is prehistoric. If all we had for the first four centuries of the Christian Era was a slender thread of narrative like Livy's story of ancient Rome, we might wonder how much profit, if any, could come from examining it. We are not in so poor a case. We have a substantial mass of traditions, connected and disconnected, which, I think, enable us to supply the void of written documents in a manner that will carry conviction.

The period in question begins with the solid background of the Pentarchy. It ends with the solid foreground of the Christian Heptarchy. The problem before the student is not merely to fill up the intervening space with a random collection of traditional material, but to find out by what stages and through what causes the transformation took place; how a central monarchy came into being; how Ulster was broken up into three distinct realms; how Leinster contracted from two great kingdoms into one; how the new and powerful kingdom of Meath was established; and how Munster grew to about twice its ancient extent.

Our old native historians did not concern themselves with accounting for anything. Their chief model was Eusebius, and Eusebius was content to give lists of kings with the length of each king's reign as the sole history of various realms of antiquity throughout centuries. So the only consecutive history we find of Ireland before St. Patrick's time consists in like manner of regnal lists with little bits of anecdotal matter added here and there. Even these regnal lists are not authentic. They are made up artificially from pedigrees, and I have already shown that the method was so recklessly artificial as to make a king out of a misread note to one of the pedigrees. Even the oldest written history of Ireland extant follows this method. It does not indeed extend the Irish monarchy back to the Gaelic invasion. It declares the authentic history of Ireland to begin with the foundation of Emain Macha, dated 305 B.C., and it begins the Tara monarchy in A.D. 46. But from this date onward it gives the succession of the high-kings, and that succession is one of a kind unknown in the historical period. It is a succession from father to son, which is contrary to the known custom of all the insular Celts, in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. In other words, it is again merely a pedigree converted into a dynastic succession.

When a single pedigree is utilised in this way, the fact is easily discovered. Later historians adopted a less obvious artifice, and one at the same time which made their account more widely acceptable. They shortened the reigns of the kings in the earlier history so as to leave gaps between them, and into these gaps they inserted names from other pedigrees besides that of the Tara monarchs. They took these names in turn from the genealogies of the kings of Munster, Leinster, Oriel, etc., and thus, by giving every part of Ireland a share in the monarchy, they produced a regnal history which was flattering in an all-round way and which succeeded in relegating the earlier device to comparative oblivion.

I had become familiar with this plan of transforming pedigrees into regnal lists before I first read Buchanan's history of Scotland. In that book I found a list of forty-three kings who reigned over Scotland before Fergus of Dal Riada went over from Ireland. All the names seemed strange. They were apparently Latinised from some other language, the history being written in Latin. Were they invented, like the names in "Gulliver's Travels," or, if not, where were they found? Can it be, I asked myself, that the Scottish historians, like the Irish, filled the vacuum out of pedigrees? And if so, out of what pedigrees? Now it is a matter of historical record that, on the inauguration of a king of Scotland, a part of the ceremony consisted in the recitation of his pedigree, and this custom was kept up until the Dal Riada line died out with Alexander III in 1285. Therefore, I argued, the pedigree most familiar to an early Scottish historian was that of the kings of Dal Riada. I turned up this pedigree in the Irish genealogies and my conjecture was confirmed. Scotland and Ireland are all along agreed that Fergus MacEirc, an Irish prince, settled in Scotland and founded there a new kingdom and dynasty. But the forty-three kings of Scotland named before Fergus are nevertheless the forty-three ancestors of Fergus, from father to son, in the Irish genealogy. The list comprises names so well known in Irish story as Ederscél, that Munster king, whose death is said to account for the forfeiture of Leinster territory to Munster; his son Conaire Mór, whose tragic fate is told in the story of Da Derga's Hostel; and the younger Conaire, son of Mugh Lámha, who also figures in the Irish hero-lore. All these and their forefathers, up to the eponymous Iar, head of the Ivernian stock, figure one after another in the artificial history of the first Scottish dynasty beyond the sea.

Let us get away then from such unprofitable material and let us see what comes to us in the guise of traditions of substance. We start off from the Pentarchy and the Ulster cycle. The Ulster stories have for their main basis the hostile relations between Ulster and Connacht. Being Ulster stories, they do not prolong their scope beyond a time in which Ulster has generally the best of it. Ulster's mishaps merely serve to heighten the effect, which is Ulster's heroism and victory. It was when this time of glory was but a memory, when Emain was a deserted site and the remnant of the Ulaidh occupied only a tiny fraction of their former territory, that these stories took their present shape and were committed to writing. We have to turn to another set of traditions, to those connected with the monarchical kindred of historical time, to learn how things developed from the stage depicted in the Ulster tales.

The course of development will be more clearly followed if it is stated in summary beforehand. The hostile relations between Ulster and Connacht continued, but the kings of Connacht grew gradually more powerful. They extended their power step by step over central-eastern Ireland, the ancient Fifth of North Leinster, and then step by step over all Ulster except what is now comprised in the counties of Down and Antrim. Upon the increase of power thus acquired they established a hegemony or primacy over all Ireland. This primacy found its definite expression in the institution of the high-kingship or Monarchy.

The first stage in the process was the occupation of Uisneach by Tuathal Teachtmhar. Who was this Tuathal? According to the genealogies he was sixth in descent from Eochu Feidlech, who was the father of Medb, queen of Connacht. Accepting Medb's date as fixed or estimated by all our ancient writers, she flourished just at the commencement of the Christian Era. Tuathal was five generations later, and from dated Irish pedigrees we can calculate an average of almost exactly three generations to a century. Tuathal therefore would have flourished in the third quarter of the second century, say between A.D. 150 and A.D. 175. Exact dates are assigned to him in the extant regnal lists, but these lists do not agree with each other, and it is safer to rely on the law of averages. Tuathal, we are told, set up a new kingdom for himself around Uisneach. The territory surrounding Uisneach was part of the old Fifth of North Leinster. Consequently the alliance of the Four Great Fifths against Ulster was no longer operative. Tuathal was a prince of the Connacht dynasty, and his occupation of Uisneach was an invasion of North Leinster and the first stage in the break-up of the Pentarchy.

With regard to Tuathal we are told that before his birth the Rent-paying tribes throughout Ireland revolted against the Gaelic ascendancy and overthrew it. Tuathal's mother fled to Britain and in Britain he was born. By the time he came of age the revolution had spent its force and a reaction set in. Tuathal returned to Ireland, by some he was welcomed, others he overcame by force, and he became the strongest king in Ireland. It was then that he took possession of Uisneach.

It is difficult to know what exactly to make of this story of a plebeian revolution. In its actual terms, the story is full of improbabilities, and reads like a fairy tale for children. Another difficulty about it is that a similar story is told of Tuathal's grandfather. There is no inherent improbability in the main fact of the story, the occurrence of a plebeian revolution which for a time displaced the Gaelic ascendancy, and the occurrence of a subsequent complete reaction. Something like it happened in France little more than a century ago and in England under Oliver Cromwell. The occurrence of a revolution and the successful survival of the Connacht dynasty may help us to understand how the kings of Connacht were able afterwards to make such headway not only against their ancient rivals in Ulster but against their former allies in North Leinster; that is, if we understand that Connacht was less shaken and weakened by the revolution than the other provinces were. Again, in the Ulster stories, we hardly hear of the existence of the Picts in Ulster; they are completely dominated by the Ulaidh. But when Ireland emerges into the full light of written history, we find the Picts a very powerful people in east Ulster, Cuailnge itself, the home of the Brown Bull, and the neighbouring plain of Muirtheimhne, Cú Chulainn's patrimony, being now Pictish territory. This may well have been the consequence of some such revolution as the story indicates.

The next stage is the occupation of Tara, the old capital of North Leinster, by Cormac, who is fourth in descent from Tuathal, and who should therefore have flourished in the period A.D. 275-300, a time corresponding closely enough with that to which the regnal lists assign him. The fact of the annexation of Tara and the surrounding region, the territory of Brega, is always glossed over by our old historians. This tacit treatment may perhaps be explained. In their histories generally, the monarchy goes back to the Gaelic invasion, and Tara is the seat of the monarchs in remote antiquity, as it actually was in the early Christian period. This location of the monarchy in Tara from time immemorial, like the assumed existence of such a monarchy, exemplifies a very common tendency, the tendency to project the known present into the unknown past.

The fact of the annexation of Tara and eastern Meath underlies the story of the Battle of Crinna. The cause of this battle, as stated, was the continued hostility of the Ulstermen to king Cormac's line. One king after another of this line, which, be it remembered, was the Connacht dynasty and still ruled over Connacht, had fallen in fight with the Ulster enemy. Cormac had forced Ulster to give him hostages. Such hostages were by custom honourably entertained according to their rank. The Ulster hostages sat at Cormac's own table. So unsubdued was their spirit that on one occasion they did the king the gross affront of setting fire to his beard. After this, Ulster again took up arms and drove Cormac out of Meath, forcing him to take refuge in his native realm of Connacht. There he gathered his forces and took a Munster prince, Tadhg, son of Cian, into alliance. This Tadhg figures in the genealogies as being the ancestor of a group of dynastic families which in later times ruled over certain states of Connacht, Meath and Ulster, the Luighni, Gaileanga, Cianachta, etc. These states, when we trace them back as far as possible, are native to Connacht; their branches in Meath and Ulster are frontier colonies planted to guard the conquests of the Connacht kings. Tadhg macCéin, in the story, is the personification of these colonies.

Before going into battle, Tadhg made a compact with Cormac the king. They agreed that, if Tadhg came off victorious, Cormac would grant him as much territory as he could ride around in his chariot on the day of victory.

In the battle of Crinna, Tadhg engaged the Ulstermen and completely defeated them. He himself was sorely wounded. He mounted his chariot and set out to ride around the territory he desired to win for himself and his descendants, and he commanded the charioteer to take such a course as to bring Tara within the circuit. Then, overcome with loss of blood from his many wounds, he fell into a swoon and lay unconscious in the chariot.

King Cormac had foreseen that Tadhg would try to get possession of Tara. He desired Tara for himself, and he bribed the charioteer to leave Tara out of the circuit of the ride. At intervals during the ride, Tadhg awoke from his swoon and on each occasion he asked the charioteer "Have we brought in Tara?" and the charioteer answered "Not yet." At nightfall, Tadhg came to his senses and saw that they had reached the banks of the Liffey near Dublin. "Have we brought in Tara?" he asked again. The charioteer could not answer yes. Tadhg saw that he had been cheated, and he slew the charioteer.

Now the territory that fell to Tadhg's share in the story extended along the coast from Ardee to Dublin and inland along the northern frontier of Meath to Loch Ramor—and these territories in later times were occupied by the Connacht colonies whose rulers claimed descent from Tadhg. Roughly speaking the whole stretch of country forms an L inverted and in the angle of this L stands Tara the ancient capital of North Leinster, but henceforth the capital of Cormac's kingdom.

Except this story of the Battle of Crinna, there is no other story or even title of a story known to me which explains how Tara ceased to be the seat of the North Leinster kings and passed into the possession of the kings of Connacht and Uisneach. There is no other account which explains why or how the Leinster frontier, which formerly lay along the Boyne and the Blackwater, was afterwards pushed back to the Liffey and the Rye. The territory which fell to Tadhg was partly Ulster territory and partly Leinster territory. Yet in the story itself, there is no mention of Leinster and Cormac's only enemies were the Ulstermen. The story, which in its extant form belongs to a very late period, is evidently defective. It is written in conformity with the theory that the Monarchy existed before the Pentarchy and that Tara was the seat of the Monarchy from time immemorial. Consequently it ignores what we may call the Leinster aspect of the matter, and the conflict seems to be altogether between Cormac and Ulster. Ulster lost land on the north side of the Boyne, and this conquered territory, under the compact, fell to the share of Tadhg. The underlying notion, in this episode of the chariot-ride, is obviously that the victor is to be rewarded with a share of the spoils. If, then, the conquered part of Ulster formed part of his reward, and if in the same bargain he gained part of Leinster between the Boyne and the Liffey, and if he expected to gain Tara, we must, I think, infer that this part of Leinster and Tara likewise were no less conquered territory than the piece of Ulster that fell to Tadhg.

Therefore, there should have been an earlier version of the story, now lost, which showed that not Ulster alone but North Leinster also resisted Cormac and suffered defeat from him and his ally. Such an account would explain, what remains a complete blank, so far as I know, in this traditional history, how the dynasty of North Leinster came to an end and how Tara and Bregia, south as well as north of the Boyne, passed into the possession of the kings of Connacht and Uisneach.

The reign of Cormac is regarded in our earliest histories as an epoch in Irish history. This, I think, was because it marked the end of the Pentarchy and the rise of the Monarchy seated at Tara.

The next stage in the growth of the Connacht power brings us to the overthrow of the Ulster kingdom and the conquest of the greater part of Ulster. In the century after Cormac, his descendant Muiredach Tireach becomes king of Tara. Muiredach, we are told, in his youth took command for his father, Fiacha Sroibhtine, king of Tara, and was successful in establishing his father's authority in southern Ireland. His uncles, the three Collas, became jealous of his success. The young prince, they said, will be chosen king when his father dies, and we shall be shut out from the succession. They then conspired to overthrow their brother and win the kingship for one of themselves while Muiredach was still absent in the South. They raised an army against the king. Fiacha consulted his druid. The druid answered: You have two alternatives. You can be victorious. If you are, the kingship will pass from your son and your descendants. But if you are defeated and slain, your son and your posterity will rule Ireland. It is the symbol in Irish story of the Triumph of Failure. The king said, Then I choose defeat and death. The three Collas were victorious, the king fell in the fight. Then all Ireland arose against the victors. Muiredach was chosen king, and the Collas were banished over the sea. They dwelt in exile for some years in Britain, but the guilt of their brother's blood oppressed their souls, and at last they said, We can bear it no longer, we shall go back to Ireland and lay down our lives for our crime. The young king forgave them and took them to his favour. After this, they spoke to him one day and said: Though thou and we are at peace, our sons will grow up and contend with thy sons for the kingship. Give us a kingdom for ourselves and our posterity. It shall be so, said the king. What part of Ireland will you give us? said they. The Ulstermen, said the king, have ever been hostile towards me and towards our fathers. Go and conquer their kingdom, and it shall be yours.

The Collas then went to Connacht, which was still the homeland of the new Tara dynasty, raised an army there, invaded Ulster, were victorious, and captured the Ulster capital. The conquered territory comprised the present counties of Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, and the greater part of Fermanagh and Derry.

I wish to dwell on the fact that the conquerors were princes of the Connacht dynasty, then ruling also in Tara. Their army was drawn from Connacht. In fact, all this chain of events is the direct sequel of the old rivalry between Connacht and Ulster that forms the basis of Táin Bó Cuailnge and the Ulster cycle in general. The inhabitants of the conquered parts of Ulster got the significant name of Airgialla, Oirghialla, "the eastern subjects." In relation to Meath and Tara, they were northern not eastern subjects. The name Airgialla then is based on the fact that the conquering power at the time when the name came into use was still regarded as the western power, its home was Connacht.

Thus ended the Fifth of Ulster. Let us see what was happening meanwhile in southern Ireland. In Munster, under the Pentarchy, the kings of the Érainn or Iverni held rule. In St. Patrick's time, these no longer ruled in Munster. The kings of Munster belonged to a distinct line, called the Eoghanachta. Their capital was no longer in the west. It was Cashel, not far from the eastern border of their kingdom and in territory formerly part of Leinster. To the original extent of the Munster Fifth had been added in the meantime the counties of Clare and Tipperary, a small part of Limerick, and the larger part of Waterford, making the bounds of Munster almost but not exactly what they are at present.

In face of the growing power of the kings of Connacht, how it came about that Clare was detached from Connacht and added to Munster, I cannot explain to my own satisfaction, beyond saying that, within a smaller scope, the Eoghanacht kings of Munster became even more powerful than the kings of Connacht and ruled over a more firmly consolidated realm. During the early Christian centuries, before the Norse invasions, Munster appears to have enjoyed greater tranquillity than any other realm in Western Europe. The genealogies show that there was an early Eoghanacht settlement in the Clare area, called Eoghanacht Ninuis, and another, still called Eoghanacht, in the island of Arainn Mhór, to the north of Clare.

There were at least two accounts in ancient story of the transfer of Clare to Munster. The time of this event differs by centuries in the two stories, and I shall not endeavour to reconcile them or to choose between them. There are three distinct accounts of the eastern annexation from South Leinster. The only one of these that is full and explanatory, and that fits with the known later stage of things, is the account connected with the Migration of the Déisi.

Let it be noted that Cashel, the seat of the Munster kings in Christian times, stands outside of ancient Munster. Keating relates an ancient story telling how Cashel was "discovered" in the time of Corc, king of Munster, i.e., about A.D. 400, and got a new name. This new name was a Latin one, for Caiseal is the Irish representative of the Latin word castellum, "fortress." These things show how late was the use of Cashel as the seat of Munster sovereignty.

What and whence was this new ruling power in Munster, the Eoghanachta? Their genealogies show that at one time they were worshippers of a god named Segomo—one of their ancestors is named Nia Segomon, "Segomo's champion." This god Segomo is unknown to Irish tradition, in which his name is never found outside of the Eoghanacht genealogy. He was known, however, and worshipped in Gaul, where he is commemorated in several inscriptions of the Roman period. He was a war-god and is equated, according to the fashion of Roman Gaul, with the Latin god Mars—"Deus Mars Segomo." The descendants of Segomo's Champion are named in three Ogham inscriptions, all found in the district of Dungarvan and Ardmore, on the southern seaboard. The indications therefore are that the Eoghanachta represent a relatively late Gaulish settlement in that part of Ireland. The story of the Déisi Migration mentions several bodies of Gaulish settlers.

The Migration of the Déisi is an evident sequel of the conquest of Tara and eastern Meath under Cormac. Déisi means "vassal communities." These particular vassal communities dwelt around Tara, and were possibly identical with the Luaighni, who formed the chief fighting force of North Leinster in Cú Chulainn's time. They quarrelled with Cormac, we are told, and he drove them, or a large part of them, out of Meath. They migrated in two bodies. One body crossed the sea and settled in southern Wales where the descendants of their princes still held sway in the eighth century. The other body settled for a time in Leinster.

Later on this Leinster section entered into an alliance with the Eoghanacht king, Oengus, whose queen was the daughter of their chief. By their aid, Oengus conquered what is now the south-eastern part of Munster, and he settled the Déisi as frontier colonists on the conquered territory. Oengus flourished in St. Patrick's time, the second and third quarter of the fifth century.

The loss of the large territories about the Boyne and the Suir reduced Leinster to much smaller dimensions. What remained of the two ancient Fifths was now united in one kingdom, ruled over by the line of the ancient kings of South Leinster. This reduction and unification means the final passing away of the Pentarchy described in the Ulster tales. The seat of the Leinster kings is no longer either Tara or Dinn Riogh, but Ailinn, which lies between them, on the southern side of the Curragh of Kildare.

The Connacht kings continued, however, to extend their conquests and their power. A grandson of Muiredach Tirech was king of Tara at the beginning of the fifth century (c. A.D. 400), Niall of the Nine Hostages. His brother, Brión (or Brian) took possession of a south-western section of Ulster, comprising a large part of the counties of Leitrim and Cavan, afterwards called Brian's Land—Tír Briúin. Three sons of Niall took possession of what remained of western Ulster, now comprised in the county of Donegal. Their names were Eoghan, Conall, and 'Enda, and the territories occupied by them were called Eoghan's Land, Conall's Land, and 'Enda's land.

Another son of Niall, named Coirbre, obtained a piece of Leinster, now the barony of Carbury in Co. Kildare.

The Connacht dynasty and its branches now ruled over the northern half of Ireland, with the exception of the eastern seaboard region from Ardee to the Giant's Causeway. It ruled in Tara, and its chief kings were recognised also as Monarchs of Ireland.

The Connacht power, after the time of Niall, was regarded as comprising three chief divisions—the kingdom of Connacht, the Airgialla, and the territory of the descendants of Niall (Uí Néill). All Leinster was laid under tribute to them, and a note in the Book of Leinster says that this Leinster tribute was divided equally among the three sections. This subdivision of the Connacht power, in my opinion, was what gave rise to the ancient term Teora Connachta, "the Three Connachts"—a term which seems to have caused some trouble for its explanation to writers of a later age.

An unpublished tract in the Book of Lecan, also found in the introductory part of the Book of Genealogies by MacFir Bhisigh, tells us that during this period, the succession to the Monarchy was regulated in this way: On the death of the Ardri, the king of Connacht took his place as king of Tara. A new king of the same family was elected in Connacht, and this process went on during several generations. Niall was king of Connacht first, of Tara afterwards. And so, in like manner, the high kingship was filled from Connacht until the death of Ailill Molt in A.D. 483 or thereabouts.

The two facts, then, that explain the transformation of the Pentarchy at the beginning of the Christian Era into the Monarchy and seven principal kingdoms of St. Patrick's time, are these: In the northern half of Ireland, the gradual conquest achieved by the Connacht dynasty; in southern Ireland, the rise of a new power, that of the Eoghanacht kings, centred in Cashel. Along with the direct control of northern Ireland, the Connacht dynasty obtained predominance over the country in general, and this predominance found its natural expression in the high kingship.

Between the establishment of the Connacht dynasty in East Meath and in Tara, the ancient seat of the North Leinster kings, and the overthrow of the Ulster kingdom, there is a period of more than half a century, during which the Ulster power stood at bay. Of this state of things we have a very remarkable record, not written on paper, but graven on the face of the country. The Ulster kings endeavoured to defend themselves against further aggression by fortifying their entire frontier except where it was already protected by strong natural obstacles such as lakes, forests or broad rivers. Linking these natural barriers they raised a massive earthern rampart which, with these barriers, formed a continuous line of defences from the Irish Sea on the east to Donegal Bay on the west. Details of the extant remains of this Great Wall of Ulster and of the popular traditions connected with it will be found in Mr. Kane's paper on the Black Pig's Dyke in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. These details I am able to supplement with others, but it would be out of place to go into particulars in such a historical sketch as the present. What I wish to bring under special notice is this—that the Ulster frontier was fortified alike against Meath and Connacht—a further illustration of the fact that during that period Meath and Connacht were politically united under one dynastic power.

V. GREEK AND LATIN WRITERS ON PRE-CHRISTIAN IRELAND

The earliest known mention of Ireland in literature appears to be found in a passage of the Greek writer Poseidonios which is quoted by Strabo. Poseidonios flourished about 150 B.C.

His information about Ireland is vague, and he says expressly and candidly that his authorities are not trustworthy. Whereas later writers erred in supposing that Ireland lay between Britain and Spain, Poseidonios says that Ireland stretched farther northward than Britain. We have nothing definite to tell about Ireland, he continues, except that the inhabitants are fiercer than those of Britain, being man-eaters and eaters of many kinds of food [we may understand perhaps that he supposed them to eat various foods not eaten by the Greeks]. They think it worthy to devour their own fathers who have died. Their marital customs are of the most unrestricted kind, disregarding even the closest ties of kindred. "This, however, we state as having no reliable testimony." For the custom of cannibalism, he says, is also ascribed to the Scythians, and the Celts and Iberians and many others are likewise said to practise it when reduced to great straits by a siege.

The name of Ireland, as quoted from Poseidonios, is Ierne, representing an old name Iverna. In Greek, as well as in the early Celtic language of Ireland, the sound of v or w had a tendency to disappear from words. I think, however, that the Greeks may have taken the name Ierne, without the v, direct from a Celtic source, for the dropping of the v or w sound in Greek took place earlier than the writing of the oldest extant Greek prose, and if the name of Ireland had been known to the Greeks at so early a time, we should expect to find mention of Ireland in early prose writers like Herodotus.

The next known writer who mentions Ireland is Julius Cæsar. The island Hibernia, he writes, is half the size of Britain, and as far distant from Britain as Britain is from Gaul. He calls Ireland Hibernia.

Strabo, who wrote in Greek in the first years of the Christian era, also thought that Ireland extended farther north than Britain, and that Ireland had a colder climate than Britain. This notion, I have already suggested, originated in the Latin name Hibernus, which as a Latin word meant "wintry," and was substituted for the Celtic adjective Ivernos. The people of Ireland, says Strabo, are quite wild and have a poor way of living owing to the cold climate.

A somewhat later anonymous writer in Greek has more accurate geographical information, perhaps based on the brief statement by Cæsar, placing Ireland to the west of Britain.

Pomponius Mela, whose date is about A.D. 40, calls Ireland Iuverna, a name also used about the same time by Juvenal. It is a nearer approach to the Celtic form as used in Britain, which at the time was partly occupied by the Romans. Mela says that Ireland is hardly equal in size to Britain, but has an equal length of coastline opposite to Britain. Apparently he supposed Ireland to be a long narrow island, about as long as Britain from north to south, but less in breadth. The climate, he says, is unfavourable to the ripening of seeds, but there is such an abundance of excellent pasturage that cattle get enough food by grazing for a short part of the day and, if they are not restrained, they eat until they burst.

This is fairly accurate. The Irish climate is less favourable to the ripening of certain seeds, such as wheat, than the climate of neighbouring countries. It is not likely that any other seed but wheat is referred to, and we may take the testimony of Mela as evidence that wheat was known in his time to be grown in Ireland, but not so successfully grown as in other countries.

Mela adds: The inhabitants of Ireland are uncivilised and beyond other nations are ignorant of all the virtues, and extremely devoid of natural affection.

A little later, in Pliny's time, the knowledge of Ireland among the Romans was far from being exact. Pliny, on the authority of Agrippa, gives the length of Ireland as 600 Roman miles, its breadth as 300. He thus doubles each dimension and multiplies the size of the island by four.

Tacitus writes that Agricola made special military dispositions on that side of Britain which faces Ireland; and this he did more through hope than through fear, that is to say, rather in view of conquest than of protection. Ireland, he says, is situate between Britain and Spain. It is of smaller area than Britain. In soil and climate and in the character of its inhabitants it differs little from Britain. Its inland parts are little known, its approaches and harbours are better known through commerce and merchants. Agricola received one of its petty kings who had been expelled in a revolt and kept him, under the guise of friendship, against a suitable opportunity. From Agricola, I, says Tacitus, have often heard that Ireland could be conquered and held by a single legion with a moderate force of auxiliaries, and that this would be of advantage as regards Britain, if the Roman military power were established everywhere and freedom, as it were, were put out of sight. Later he writes that Agricola had led his forces to a point close to the Irish Sea when he was brought back by an outbreak among the Brigantes and thought it better to solidify the conquests he had already made than to undertake a new conquest.

The next writer in point of date is Ptolemy the Geographer, who flourished in the middle of the second century. Ptolemy names sixteen peoples, tribes or states, and gives their relative positions on the Irish coast. He names no people or state away from the coast. About half of the names can be authenticated from other sources. The others have been the subject of much fruitless conjecture. It is noteworthy that all the authenticated names belong to the eastern and southern coasts and that the names on the northern and western coasts are still names and nothing more. This shows that Ptolemy's information came from sea-going traders. The northern and western coasts of Ireland are among the most stormy in the world and must have been avoided in those days by ocean-going craft. Ptolemy names several estuaries, and from Irish writings we know that in early times estuaries were the favourite havens. Ships could run in by the main channel and could be grounded without injury on the sandy tidal banks. Several "cities" are likewise named by Ptolemy. These, no doubt, were places of assembly or royal towns—"oppida," like Tara and Emania. None of them can be identified with any approach to certainty. Two bear the name Regia polis, and this I think is taken from Latin, meaning "royal city."

On Ptolemy's description are based one or two learned fancies which may almost be said to have become popular. One of these is that the ancient name of Dublin is Eblana. Ptolemy places a people named Eblani on the eastern side of Ireland and assigns them a city which he calls by their name, Eblana polis. This cannot be Dublin, for no trace has been found in Irish records or tradition of anything approaching in character to a city on the site occupied by Dublin until the Norsemen fortified themselves here in 841. We cannot give the name of either record or tradition to a fabulous poem appended to the Book of Rights, a poem which relates how St. Patrick visited and blessed the Norsemen of Dublin. The poem has this value historically, that it shows how far some of our medieval writers were ready to go in the audacity of their invention.

The location which Ptolemy indicates for the Eblani and their city is certainly farther north than Dublin, probably on the coast of Louth. As Ptolemy's information was derived through traders, it is not unlikely that some of the places which he calls cities were ancient places of assembly. From the poem on the Fair or Assembly of Carman, we know that these were places of resort for traders from the Mediterranean who brought with them "gold and precious cloth" in exchange for products of the country. No doubt they timed their visits for the periodical assemblies, and from the same poem on the Fair of Carman and from other documents we also know that during the time of assembly the place of assembly bore the aspect of a city. In it at those times there was a great concourse of people of all orders; there was a royal court; a kind of parliament; many sorts of public entertainment; and a general market. Somewhere about the middle of County Louth one of these assemblies used to be held. It is called Oenach Descirt Maige "the Assembly of the South of the Plain"—probably the Plain of Muirtheimhne in the district of Dundalk. This place of assembly may have been the city of the Eblani named by Ptolemy, but the name itself has not been traced in Irish writings. Dublin lay almost certainly in the territory of the Manapii or of the Cauci, the two Germano-Belgic colonies about which I have spoken in the second of these lectures.

Another place of note which has taken its modern name straight out of Ptolemy's description is the sweet Vale of Ovoca. A few years ago, a lively controversy about the name Ovoca was carried on by correspondence in a Dublin newspaper. One of the disputants undertook to show that the name consisted of two Gaelic words and meant "shadowy river." The fact is that the river called Ovoca received the name in quite modern times from some resident or proprietor who had a moderate taste for the classics. He found the name in Ptolemy "Ὀβόκα ποταμου ἐκβολαί," the mouth of the river Oboca. It is one of the few river-mouths in Ireland named by Ptolemy, and must have been known to traders as a haven. The modern name Ovōca is Ptolemy's Obŏka mispronounced and does not belong to Irish tradition.

Pliny names several islands between Ireland and Britain, one of which he calls Andros. It seems to be the same place that Ptolemy calls Adros. I venture the suggestion that the proper form is Antros or Antron. At the mouth of the Garonne there was an island which bore the name Antros in the time of Pomponius Mela. Its modern name has become widely known as the name of its chief product, Médoc. In the river Loire, there was also an island named Antron, which became the site of a monastery and is now called Indre. Antros or Antron becomes Édar in Irish, and Édar is the Irish name of the Howth peninsula. Our forefathers use the terms for island as the names of peninsulas also, for example, Inis Eoghain and Islandmagee, just as they applied the term loch indifferently to an inland lake and to an inlet of the sea. In our ancient tales, Howth harbour is one of the most noted and most frequented of Irish havens, and so it is not unlikely to have received notice in Ptolemy's description.

Our next notice of Ireland is written by Solinus, about A.D. 200. He begins by repeating in other words what was already said by Mela: "Hibernia is barbarous in the manner of living of its inhabitants, but is so rich in pasture that the cattle, if they be not kept now and then from grazing, are put in danger from over-eating. There are no snakes." So we see that Solinus, writing two centuries and a half before St. Patrick's time, has robbed our national saint of one of his traditional glories. He is not the only one to blame. One of the Fenian lays tells how Fionn mac Cumhaill cleared the island of all serpents. Even Fionn cannot be allowed the credit without question, for it is evident there were no snakes in Ireland when the Fir Bolg supplied the Eastern World with Irish earth to protect cities from these venomous reptiles. Solinus goes on to say: "Birds are rare. The nation is inhospitable and warlike. The victors in combat smear their faces with the blood of their slain enemies. They make no difference between things lawful and unlawful. There is not a bee anywhere, and if anyone scatters dust or gravel from Ireland among beehives, the swarms will desert their combs." Here we have another variety of the snake-story. Possibly Solinus, in his reading, mistook the word aspis, the name of a kind of snake, for apis, "a bee," and adjusted the popular legend about the virtue of Irish earth to suit his mistake. "The sea," he continues, "which flows between this island and Britain is billowy and restless and throughout the whole year it is navigable only during very few days." Here perhaps we have the current explanation of Ireland's immunity from invasion by the Romans. Ireland, at all events, was still a country about which the Latin world was ready to accept travellers' tales from the untravelled.

The Irish appear in a new role, that of invaders of Britain, in a panegyric of the emperor Constantius Chlorus, written in A.D. 297. The same document and passage contains the earliest known mention of the Picts by that name. "The Britons," says the panegyric, "even then an uncivilised nation and accustomed to no enemies except the Picts and the Irish [Hiberni], still half-naked, readily yielded to the Roman arms and standards." In my last lecture, I have suggested that the overthrow of the old Ulster kingdom is the explanation of the later prominence of the Picts in eastern Ulster. The sudden emergence of the Picts of Britain as a warlike and aggressive people at the close of the third century is susceptible of a similar explanation. Under the Ulster kingdom, the Picts were subject to the Ulaidh. As the Ulaidh declined in power, the Picts became relatively prominent. So in Britain, before the Roman conquests, the Picts, I suggest, were subject to the Celts. The name Calédones or Calédonii, belonging to the principal people of southern Scotland during the early times of the Roman occupation of Britain, is a Celtic name. It is formed by adding a very usual termination to the Celtic adjective caledos, meaning "hard" or "hardy." Calédos was in fairly frequent use as a Celtic personal name. Seven instances are quoted by Holder from inscriptions. It is found in Irish, e.g., in the term caladcholg, "a hard sword." It is the common Irish word for a landing-place from boats, originally no doubt having been applied to firm ground, as distinguished from swampy ground, on the banks of a river, and in this sense it has passed into Anglo-Irish vocabulary in the form "callow"—the "callows" of the Shannon. That the Calédonii did not belong to the old dark-complexioned population is the testimony of Tacitus, who says: "The reddish hair of the inhabitants of Caledonia and their large limbs indicate a Germanic origin." That this Celtic people at one time held sway in a region afterwards dominated by the Picts is witnessed by the place-name Dunkeld in Perthshire. The older Gaelic name is Dún Cailden, i.e., Dunon Caledonon, the stronghold of the Calédones. The Celts, who naturally would have been strongest in Lowland Scotland, were so weakened there, I suggest, by the Roman power, that they could no longer maintain their predominance over the Pictish population of the Highlands, and so, towards the close of the third century, the Picts emerge as new and formidable adversaries of Roman Britain on its northern frontier.

In the fourth century, the Irish are named by a new name in Latin writings. The earliest known instance of this name, Scotti, Scots, is found in a passage of the historian Ammianus with reference to the events of the year 360. "In that year," he writes, "the raids of the Scots and Picts, wild nations, had broken the agreed peace in the British provinces and were devastating the places near the frontier; terror was involving the provinces worn out by the accumulation of past defeats; the emperor, passing the winter at Paris and harassed by anxieties from one side and another, was afraid to go to the relief of his subjects across the sea, lest he might leave Gaul without a ruler a prey to the Alamanni, who were already stirred up to cruelty and war." In this single passage a great deal is implied. We see the Western Empire now beginning to totter, its ruler's conduct shaped no longer by hope of conquest but by fear of disaster. We learn that on the British northern frontier some sort of terms had previously been made with the Picts and Scots, who were the aggressive party. We learn the manner of their warfare, which is similar to that of the Norsemen during the first half-century of their wars in Ireland. They make plundering raids across the frontier, not in small parties but in considerable force, defeating again and again the local defences, and no doubt carrying off booty and captives. It was in one of these raids, a few years after the date above referred to, that the boy Patrick was carried off and sold into slavery in Ireland.

In the year 365, Ammianus further records that "the Picts and Saxons and Scots and Atecotti harassed the Britons with continual afflictions." In 368, "the Picts, divided into two nations, Dicalydones and Verturiones, and also the Atecotti, a warlike nation of men, and the Scots, roving here and there, did many devastations." Later on, the writer of a panegyric on the emperor Theodosius asks, "shall I tell of the Scot driven back to his swamps?" And the poet Claudian, in a eulogy of the emperor Honorius, sings: "He has tamed the active Moors and the Picts, whose name is no nick-name, and the Scot with wandering dagger he has followed up, breaking the waves of the far north with daring oars"; and again, "Ice-cold Ireland has mourned the heaped-up corpses of her Scots." Praising the Roman general Stilicho, Claudian says: "The Scot set all Ireland in motion"; and later, referring to Stilicho's muster against the Goths in the year 416, he writes: "Came also the legion that protected the furthest bounds of Britain, that bridled the cruel Scot and scanned the lifeless face of the dying Pict tattooed with iron point."

In all these writings, from the first mention of the name Scots down to the fall of the Western Empire in the fifth century, the Scots are Irish raiders of Roman Britain. Whitley Stokes took the name Scottus to be cognate with certain Slavonic and Germanic words and to mean "master" or "possessor." But why should a people who until the fourth century were named Iverni or Hiberni acquire in the fourth century a new name meaning "masters" or "possessors"? It is not in the quality of possessors that they appear in the records of the time, but rather in the quality of dispossessors. Raiding, fighting, wandering, wasting, these are the occupations of the Scots in that age; and if they acquired a new name, it is to these occupations that we might expect the new name to have reference. Therefore, though it may appear audacious on my part, I venture on a different explanation.

A gloss on the name of St. Scoithín in the Festilogy of Oengus says that he was named Scoithín ar in scothad imdechta dognid.i. dul do Ruain i n-oenlo ocus toidecht uathi i n-oenló aile, "from the scothadh of travelling that he practised, namely, going [from Ireland] to Rome in a single day and returning thence [to Ireland] in another single day." The verb scothaim or scaithim has a group of meanings all signifying a rapid cutting or striking movement. Dictionaries give the meanings "I lop, prune, cut off, strip, destroy, disperse, scutch [flax], beat a sheaf of corn to make it shed its grain." Scothbhualadh means a light threshing; scoithneán, a sieve for winnowing grain. Scottus, then, in this view, was originally a common noun meaning a raider or reaver, a depredator who worked by rapid incursions and retirements. It was probably a Gaulish word, for its earliest known use is in various inscriptions of Roman Gaul, in which it is used as a personal name. For example, an inscription of the year 224 records a votive offering by Marcus Quintius Florentinus and others, the children of Caius Quintius Scottus. Here Scottus is the distinctive byname of the father and is not found in the names of his children.

The old story about promiscuous marriages, which in Cæsar's time was told of the Britons, and later on, when Britain became better known to the Romans, was told of the islands of western Scotland, continued until the fifth century to be told of the Irish, who, like the Hebrideans, dwelt beyond the bounds of the Empire. St. Jerome writes that "the Scotti and Atecotti, in the manner of Plato's Republic, have wives promiscuously and children in common"; and again, "the nation of the Scotti do not marry wives of their own; as if they had read Plato's Republic and adopted the example of Cato, no wife among them belongs to a particular husband; but each according to his pleasure they live without restraint, as cattle live." There is no mention of these evil customs a half-century later when Saint Patrick tells how he won over the Scots and their children from Paganism, and the oldest traditions show that the pagan Irish followed the law of monogamy with as much fidelity as did the ancient Greeks and Romans. St. Jerome tells another story, this time on his own direct testimony: "In my early youth in Gaul I have myself seen the Scots, a Britannic nation, feeding on human flesh, and, when they might find herds of swine and cattle through the forests, [I have known them] to be wont to cut off the hips of shepherds and the breasts of women, and to regard these as the only delicacies of their food." Instead of Scotti, some texts of Saint Jerome have Atecotti in this place. It matters little, for all agree in adding the words gentem Britannicam "a Britannic nation." We have seen that the Atecotti were associated with the Scotti in raiding Roman Britain, and we must come later to the question, who were the Atecotti. St. Jerome's testimony is valuable on the point that these invaders of Roman Britain, whether Scotti or Atecotti, also roved about Gaul. We may take it that there were bands of them in the woods, in which he tells us they might have found swine and cattle to provide them with food, had it not been for their barbarous preference for special cuts of shepherd and shepherdess. He states that he was a boy at the time (adolescentulus). He does not say that he saw the barbarians in the act of catching and killing a shepherd or a shepherdess, and we may be certain that he did not, otherwise he would not have stayed on to see the preparation and consumption of the tit-bits. It has been suggested that he was probably accompanied by a very wise elderly woman who told him, as a precaution, the sort of people these roving banditti were, and that his childish imagination confirmed the tale. He may have seen the wandering islanders feasting round their fire in the forest, but how did he contrive to identify the viands? Once more, let it be said that tradition is old enough and history reaches far enough back to assure us that cannibalism, like promiscuous polygamy, was no custom of the inhabitants of Ireland or of Britain in the fourth century of the Christian era.

We have seen that Latin writers of this period make mention of the Atecotti, usually in conjunction with the Scotti. Some have assumed that the Atecotti were a branch of the Picts. So far as positive evidence goes, it is against this assumption. Ammianus speaks of the Picts, subdivided into two nations, Dicalydones and Verturiones, and then adds that "the Atecotti, a warlike nation," and the Scotti, were engaged with these in the work of devastation. This implies that the Atecotti, like the Scotti, were distinct from the Picts.