We commence the study of this early race with the first rude stone
implement with which a savage man killed an animal scarcely more
savage. Then, simple designs of ornamentation are discernible—the first
twilight dawning of soul through matter. The rude stone implement
becomes decorated, more symmetrical in form, more adapted to its
uses. There is evidence of a growing sense of beauty, and heightened
reasoning powers. After the introduction of metals, we trace the
original stone forms reproduced first in simple unalloyed copper,
afterwards in that perfect and beautiful bronze of a ruddy yellow,
like gold, which no modern bronze has ever equalled. There is no
violent disruption of ideas, as if the new incoming race had entirely
vanquished and crushed the earlier and elder; but on the contrary, a
gradual and continuous development of the original ideas of this elder
race itself, always co-working with whatever new influences may have
come to it from without.
Many writers have held the belief that the first colonists of Ireland
were a highly-civilized people, clothed with Tyrian silk, fine linen
of Egypt, and adorned with costly ornaments of gold. But stern facts
refute this theory. The same primitive race who used only stone weapons
were unacquainted with the art of weaving, and knew of no other garment
than the untanned skin of the animal they killed for food. Theorists
might still, however, argue, doubt, and disbelieve, if one of the
ancient race had not himself risen, as it were, from the grave, after
a sleep of thousands of years, to give his testimony concerning his
people. In 1821 this primitive Irishman, clad completely in skins laced
with thongs, was found in a peat bog, ten feet below the surface. The
teeth, long dark hair and beard, were perfect. Portions of this dress
have been preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. The
material used in sewing was fine gut, and the regularity and closeness
of the stitching are most remarkable. Specimens of the antique skin
mocassins and skin caps have been also found at various times in the
peat bogs, and secured for the Museum, so that we have the dress of the
ancient Irishman complete.
Long after this period of barbarism, but still at a time so distant
that it is anterior to all historic record, we find that the Irish
had attained some knowledge of metals and the art of weaving. The
Museum contains numerous highly-finished illustrations of the
beautifully-formed, slender, leaf-shaped swords and daggers of bronze,
which began gradually to supersede the use of the primitive celt.
Many of these swords are of the pure Grecian type, formed apparently
on the model of the leaf of the aloe or the agave. One sword found
on an ancient battle-field is curved like a Turkish yataghan; and in
“The Book of Rights” “curved swords of battle” are frequently referred
to. But the specimens of the broad scythe-shaped sword, “which is
especially and peculiarly Irish,” are the most numerous, as many as
forty-one of these heavy, thick, round-pointed battle-axe swords being
in the Museum.
The same progress of artistic development is observable in the ancient
swords as was noticed in the primitive celt—as the art advanced, the
manufacturer began to exercise his artistic faculties in fanciful and
costly decoration. The blade was adorned with either cast or engraved
ornamentation, and the hilt inlaid or studded with gold. Thus, Brian
Boroimhe is described as carrying a gold-hilted sword in his right hand
at the battle of Clontarf.
It is very remarkable that, throughout the whole series, from the
rudest to the most highly finished, a peculiar idea is traceable in
the ornamentation, by which they can at once be recognized as Irish;
and this idea seems to have travelled from Irish Paganism to Irish
Christianism. The ornamentation on the sepulchral stones of New Grange
is repeated on the stone celts; it is carried on into the age of
Bronze; it decorated the swords and spears of the kings, as well as
their costly diadems and ornaments of gold, and still continued to be
traced, with a kind of loving fidelity to the ancient symbols, upon the
manuscripts illuminated by priestly hands, so late as the tenth and
eleventh centuries.
For the illustration of the costume of the early Irish, after it passed
from primitive helpless barbarism to comparative civilization, by the
aid of the knowledge of metals and the art of weaving, fortunately
we are not left to mere theories; for, by a singular chance, the
representative of the advanced period, like him of the barbaric age,
arises also from the grave of the Past to bear witness for himself.
In 1824, a male body, completely clad in woollen antique garments, was
found in a bog near Sligo, six feet below the surface; and so perfect
was the body when first discovered, that a magistrate was called upon
to hold an inquest on it. The garments also were in such complete
preservation, that a photograph was made of a person clad in this
antique suit, with the exception of the shoes, which were too small
for an adult of our day, and a drawing from this photograph is one of
the best and most beautifully executed illustrations of the Museum
catalogue. The costume of this ancient Irish gentleman is exceedingly
picturesque, consisting of trews of a plaid pattern, made wide above,
like Turkish trousers, but fitting close to the leg and ankle; over
them was a tunic of soft cloth, most elaborately gored and gussetted,
showing high perfection in the tailoring art. The skirt of the tunic,
which extends to the knee, is set on full, and measures eight feet in
circumference at the bottom. The sleeves are tight, and open to the
elbow, like an Albanian jacket; and over all was thrown the immemorial
Irish mantle, so invariably worn, so indispensable a portion of Irish
costume that it passed into a proverb among our neighbours, the Welsh,
“like an Irishman for the cloak.”
This graceful garment, as found upon the hero of the bog, and now
visible in our Museum, is composed of brown, soft cloth, made straight
on the upper edge, which is nine feet long, but cut nearly into the
segment of a circle on the lower. The form resembles closely that worn
by the Calabrian peasant at this day. These cloaks were often of great
value; kings were paid tribute of them. They were made of various
colours, each colour being a symbol to denote the rank of the wearer.
The number of colours also in a dress had a significant value, and was
regulated by law. Thus, one colour only was allowed to slaves; two for
soldiers; three for goodly heroes, or young lords; six for the learned
men; five for a poetess; and seven was the regal number for kings and
queens.
In the “Book of Rights,” the earliest accessible authority on the
subject of costume prior to the Norman Invasion, we read of cloaks of
various colours presented in tribute to the kings—cloaks of purple,
red cloaks, green, white, black; in fact, cloaks of all colours. Some
are mentioned as bordered with gold. The tunic is also described
frequently, “with golden borders—with gold ornaments—with golden hems.”
Another form of cloak was fashioned with a hood like the Arab bornous,
and was bordered with a deep fringe of goat’s hairs.
Irish costume seems, in fact, to have been half-Oriental,
half-Northern, like the compound race that peopled the island. The
trews were the same as the Germanic _braccœ_; while the tunic was
Albanian, and the mantle Eastern; as well as the high, conical
head-dress, which is identical in form with the Persian cap of the
present day. On this subject Sir William Wilde remarks—
“Every day’s observation and research bring to light new affinities
with early Irish costume. In the great French work, ‘Herculaneum et
Pompeii,’ there is a battle scene, copied from a mosaic at Pompeii, in
which the arms and dress of the combatants are almost identical with
those of ancient Ireland. The vanquished wear tight-fitting trousers,
close tunics, several of which are plaided, and cloaks with the hood
coming over the head precisely like the Irish cochall. The chief
figures wear torques round the neck, and bracelets on the wrists, and
the hood is retained in its place by a narrow frontlet, apparently
of gold. The colours of the garments are also peculiarly Irish. In
some, the cloak is yellow; the mantle, dark red; and the tunic, purple
bordered with white; the latter spangled with triple stars of gold,
precisely after the fashion figured in the ‘Book of Kells.’ The chariot
in which the principal figure stands resembles some figured on our
ancient crosses, and the charioteer wears a pointed cap, green tunic,
and tartan vest. All the vanquished wear beards, and their hoods
envelop their chins.”
The study of ancient costume has especial interest for the historian,
as the culture, civilization, and commercial relations of a people
can be readily deduced from it; and in the numerous and curious
illustrations of the catalogue, taken from ancient records, illuminated
manuscripts, and the ancient crosses and sepulchral monuments of the
country, everything has been brought together that could throw light on
this obscure subject. One most remarkable illustration is a full-length
portrait of Dermot M’Morrough, king of Leinster, taken from an
illuminated copy of Giraldus Cambrensis in the possession of Sir Thomas
Philips, which portrait was very probably drawn from the life.
From all that is known on the subject, it would appear that linen and
cloth of every degree of fineness, according to the rank of the wearer,
were the principal materials used in ancient Irish dress. No remains
of silk garments have been discovered; nor do the historical records,
as far as we are aware, make any mention of silk being employed in
personal wear. It is remarkable also, that while a traditional belief
exists that linen has been known from time immemorial to Ireland,
yet the Academy does not possess a single specimen of ancient linen.
The linen shirts worn at the time of the Norman Invasion are said to
have been of immense size, and dyed a saffron colour. But there is
undeniable proof, that the tartan, or cloth of divers colours, which we
are accustomed to associate only with Scotland, was worn universally
in Ireland in ancient times. Portions of tartans are preserved in
the Museum, and probably each grade of rank and clan possessed a
characteristic plaid as well as a special dress. A love of variegated
and glowing colours, and a tendency to gorgeous decoration, seem to
have been always instinctive to the Irish nature.
The female dress of Ireland at a period subsequent to the barbaric age
is also illustrated not from conjecture, but from actual observation;
for in 1843 a complete female antique dress was discovered many
feet below the surface in a bog (these museums of Nature, where she
stores up and preserves her specimens of antique life with a care and
perfection that no mortal curator can ever hope to equal), and is now
to be seen in the Academy’s museum.
It consists of a boddice with a long waist, open in front, and attached
to a full plaited skirt; which, like the Albanian fustanell, consists
of several narrow gored breadths, gathered into small plaits at top,
and spreading into a broad quilling at the bottom; each plait being
stitched on the inside to preserve the form.
The bottom of the skirt measures twenty-two and a half feet in
circumference, and there are ninety-two plaits, most elaborately
arranged, so that the joining of each of the narrow breadths should
fall within a plait. The material is of a brown woollen cloth.
No pictorial representations exist of female costume earlier than the
fourteenth or fifteenth centuries but from the sculptured effigies
on tombs, we find it consisted of either a flowing robe and veil, or
of the plaited skirt and tight boddice already described, while the
head-dress varied according to the fashion of the day.
The subject of personal decoration is perfectly illustrated in
the Museum; the Academy possessing one of the largest collections
in Europe, beginning at the first rude effort at adornment of the
barbaric age, up to the rich golden ornaments of a later, though still
pre-historic period.
It is not pleasant to national pride, after feeding on the gorgeous
fables of our earliest annalists, to contemplate the primitive Irishman
fastening his mantle of untanned deerskin with a fish-bone or a thorn,
as we know the Germans did in the time of Tacitus; yet, unhappily,
antiquarian research will not allow us to doubt the fact of the simple
savageness of the first colonists. But when the intellect of the rude
man stirred within him, he began to carve the bones of the animals he
killed into articles of ornament and use. Thus the slender bones of
fowls were fashioned into cloak pins, especially the leg bone, where
the natural enlargement at one end suggested the form, and afforded
surface for artistic display. From this first rude essay of the
child-man can be traced the continuous development of his ideas in
decorative art, from the carving of bones to the casting of metal, up
to the most elaborate working in enamel, gold, and precious stones.
Our Museum is rich in these objects, containing more than five hundred
specimens. Pins, fibulæ,[10] and brooches having been discovered
in Ireland in immense quantities and variety, some of which are
unsurpassed for beauty of design and workmanship.
[10] This word “fibulæ” is a heathenish and imported term, quite
foreign to the Irish tongue. There is no other word known in the Irish
language to designate a brooch, be it of bone or be it of gold, than
_Dealg_, which signifies a thorn.
“In these articles,” Sir William remarks, “the process of development
is displayed in a most remarkable manner; for, from the simple
unadorned pin or spike of copper, bronze or brass (the metallic
representation of the thorn), to the most elaborately wrought
ring-brooch of precious metal, the patterns of which are now used by
our modern jewellers—every stage of art, both in form and handicraft,
is clearly defined, not one single link is wanting. In the first stage
all the artist’s powers were lavished on the decoration of the pin
itself, or in the development of the head, which was enlarged and
decorated into every possible shape and conceivable pattern. When it
was almost impossible to improve the head, a ring or loop was added,
passed through a hole in the neck. In the next stage, the ring was
doubled, or many rings added. Finally, the ring was enlarged, flattened
out, decorated, enamelled, covered with filigree, and jewelled, until,
in those magnificent specimens of silver and gold found in Ireland of
late years, it reached a degree of perfection which modern art can with
difficulty imitate.”
The forms of many of the Irish brooches, pins, and fibulæ, are
identical with numbers found in Scandinavia, but the peculiar
ornamentation—a curiously involved spiral or serpent coil, which
can be traced back through all ages of Irish art to the most remote
antiquity—is met nowhere else; neither in Etruscan nor Teutonic art,
though some assert its origin can be traced to Assyria and Egypt.
However, this _Opus Hibernicum_, as it was termed by the learned
Kemble, is one of the tests by which an antiquary can distinguish
national from imported work. It is also remarkable that the ornaments
of like form found so copiously in Scandinavia are all of bronze, while
the Irish are of gold, a metal which, there is every reason to believe,
existed in Ireland abundantly in former times, and is still found in
small quantities. That it was used for ornament, even coeval with the
stone celt, is also probable, as the rudest savage can make the ductile
metal assume any form by simply flattening it between two stones.
Many centuries before the Christian era, according to the annals, gold
was smelted in Wicklow, to the east of the Liffey. Goblets and brooches
were covered with it, and the artificer’s name was Ucadan; but no
further mention of native gold occurs throughout our ancient histories.
However, two thousand years after, the story of the old annalist was
singularly confirmed; for, in the year 1796, in the same part of
Wicklow, perhaps on the very site of the furnace of Ucadan, upwards
of £10,000 worth of native gold was obtained in about two months, and
small quantities have been gathered there from time to time ever since.
The subject of the gold antiquities is one full of interest, and even
of mystery. The quantity of antique manufactured gold ornaments dug
up in Ireland, even in recent times, has been estimated as exceeding
half a million of money. As much more may be lying beneath our feet,
for, every year, as new cuttings are made for railroads, or bogs are
drained, deposits of gold ornaments come to light. Two or three years
ago a deposit of massive gold bracelets, in value nearly £5,000, as
bright and beautiful as if just finished, was dug up in Carlow; and,
still more recently, several antique golden frontlets were found by a
labourer while working in a field, who, utterly unconscious of their
value, threw them to his children, and the author of the Catalogue
actually discovered, one day, the son of the man cutting them up into
nose-rings for his pigs. They were happily rescued, and are now in the
Academy. The form is beautiful and classic; it is a half-moon diadem,
resembling accurately some seen in Etruscan sculpture.
What inestimable treasures may have been thus lost! not merely from
ignorance, but also from cupidity; for numbers of gold articles have
disappeared in the smelting-pot of the jewellers, who bought them
from the country people at perhaps a fractional part of their value.
The very small annual sum allowed to the Academy by Government is
another cause why the work of destruction still goes on. Valuable
gold ornaments are frequently offered there for sale—too valuable,
unhappily, for the Academy to purchase, and with an indignant regret
that is almost like a sense of shame, the members are obliged to leave
them to their fate. Of course legislation could remedy all this, as it
has done in Denmark, where the State has secured the possession of all
antiquities found in the country for the National Museum, without any
wrong being done to the finder, who is paid the full value of all he
brings. But in Denmark there is a strong national pride in the subject,
and the peasant, who is early taught by the local authorities the value
of such things, would as soon think of destroying an antiquity as of
burning his Bible.
It is still a question among the learned whether this enormous amount
of manufactured gold, far exceeding all yet discovered in England and
Scandinavia, was altogether native, or to some extent imported. An
analysis of some of the gold has been made, to test the identity of its
constituents with the gold of Wicklow, and in the instance selected
the gold was found similar. This fact and the ornamentation are proofs
to uphold the native theory: while opponents state that they came in
the way of commerce from the Carthaginians who traded here. Ornaments
identical with the Irish in form—the twisted torques, the bracelets,
the diadems, and frontlets, having been found in the interior of
Africa, and along the Gold Coast; in India, Barbary, Spain, and the
islands of the Mediterranean.
Several ancient Irish musical instruments, the chief of which were the
harp and trumpet, and numerous fragments of harps have been found also
in the oldest crannoges, proving how ancient was the knowledge and the
practice of music in Ireland—a fact confirmed by the Welsh Annals,
which state that the Irish surpassed all nations in their proficiency
on the harp.
The Museum possesses sixteen antique bronze trumpets, one of which—the
finest specimen yet found in Europe—measures about eight feet in
length, and the joining is curiously riveted with metal studs, a
fact proving its antiquity, as it must have been formed in an age
unacquainted with the art of soldering. With regard to coins, Sir
William Wilde utterly denies that bronze ring-money was ever used in
Ireland, as stated by Sir William Betham, who borrowed his idea from
Vallancy: for all the articles hitherto described as ring-money, are
now proved undeniably to belong to chain-dress or armour. The ancient
medium of barter seems to have been so many head of cattle, or so
many ounces of gold. A native coinage was utterly unknown. The amount
of bronze discovered in Ireland is enormous, and proves the long
duration of a period when it was in general use, before iron was known.
Specimens of every object necessary to a people’s life have been found
fabricated of it—weapons, tools, armour, swords, and spears; culinary
vessels, caldrons, spoons, and other minor requisites; hair-pins for
the flowing locks of the women; brooches for the graceful mantles of
the chiefs, but not of the dark, dingy, modern compound that bears
the name. Irish antique bronze was a metal of bright, glowing, golden
beauty, and the effect of an army marching with spears of this metal in
the flashing sunlight, we can imagine to have been truly magnificent.
The people of this remote age must have attained considerable skill
in the manufacturing arts—must have had laws, religion, and social
culture—yet how little would have been known of them if these mute
witnesses of a past humanity had not been interpreted by science.
Archæology and philology are the only solvents of the past; and no
theory can henceforth be tolerated that will not stand the test of
being assayed by them. The philologist traces the origin and affinities
of our people in the roots of the Irish language; while their habits,
modes of life, their position in the scale of civilization throughout
the long duration of the unwritten age, can only be read in the letters
of stone, bronze, and gold upon the walls of our Academy.
Irish manuscripts, though the oldest in North-western Europe, date
back scarcely further than the fifth or sixth century. Beyond that
period we enter a region of darkness, through which no literature
or letters radiate their light; yet, unassisted by either, the
archæologist can reconstruct the primitive world and the primitive
man with greater truth and certainty than if he possessed both; for
the facts of a museum are changeless and enduring, and can suffer no
mutation from prejudice or ignorance, yet we must remember that it
is science alone that gives value to these facts. Without its aid a
museum would be only an aggregate of curious lumber. The archæologist
must combine, in a synthetic and comprehensive view—must arrange in
their proper sequence—must elucidate by a world-wide learning, these
sibyline fragments of the past; or this writing on the wall, though
it express the most irrefragable truths of history, will remain an
undeciphered hieroglyphic, as useless and unprofitable to the student
as the alphabet of an unknown language, which he is unable to form
into intelligible words. All this Sir William Wilde accomplished for
the Museum of the Academy, and in his clear and well-arranged volumes
we can read the stone pages of our history by the light of all the
learning and antiquarian research of the past and present age gathered
to one focus.
The conclusion to be drawn from the facts laid before us is, that in
an age of remote antiquity (M. Boucher de Perthes, the well-known
French author and antiquarian, has written a book to prove that it
was prior to the Deluge) the entire face of the earth was covered
by a nomad people, speaking the one language, and living after the
same rude fashion, with no other weapons than sharpened stone. This
race passed away, and no research has ever yet discovered their name,
their language, their religion, or the era of their existence. Not an
inscription, not a word, not a letter graven on any stone have they
left to allay the torturing curiosity of the inquirer. Yet traces of
them have been found from Mexico to Japan; from the steppes of Tartary
to the Pampas; round the shores of every European sea, and along the
coasts of the two oceans. Wherever man’s foot has trodden within
historic times, they trod before all history. Even in this outlying
isle of ours vestiges of this people are strewn so thickly that the
very soil seems made of their remains. Then another race swept across
Europe—a comparatively cultured race, bearing with them the chief
element of civilization—a knowledge of metals. They spread over both
sides of the Danube; left their footprints in Italy and on the shores
of the Baltic; overran Switzerland, France, and Belgium, giving names
to the rivers they passed, the mountains they crossed, and the towns
they founded, which names cling to them even to this day. From Belgium
they spread to Britain, and from thence, or by the seacoast of Spain,
they reached Ireland, where they founded the existing Irish race,
and brought with them the knowledge of metals, the art of music and
poetry, and the still existing Irish language. Historians name these
people the Celts. On the Continent they were gradually crushed down
beneath the Roman and Gothic races, and in Britain also by successive
conquests. But Ireland suffered no conquest. Here the old Celtic race
lived and flourished, and here alone their language, which everywhere
else melted into a compound with the Gothic and Latin, maintained
its distinct existence. The English language is the gradually formed
product and result of the successive conquests of England. But
no invading people ever gained sufficient strength in Ireland to
influence the original language. It exists still amongst us, living
and spoken the same as when thousands of years ago the Celtic people
first crossed the Danube and gave it the name it now bears. For this
reason all the archæologists of Europe turn their eyes to our sacred
isle, as to the one great museum of the Celtic race. Thus, Professor
Keller, of Zurich, anxiously studies the formation of Irish crannoges,
to compare them with the Swiss; and the learned Pictet, of Geneva,
demands the long-deferred completion of the Irish Dictionary, with an
ardour that puts to shame our own apathy, as without it comparative
philology wants its chief corner-stone. The great facts of our Museum,
illustrated, described, and laid before the learned of Europe in a
comprehensive form, will go far to correct the crude, imperfect notions
of Continental writers concerning Irish antiquities. For instance,
Professor Lindenschmidt, of Mayence, asserted in one of his earlier
published works, that all the ancient bronze articles found on this
side of the Alps were imported from Etruria, as a people so barbarous
as the Irish could never have produced them. The fact being, that the
largest, most varied, most highly decorated collection of bronze celts
existing is to be found in our Museum, along with numerous specimens
of the moulds in which they were cast, discovered on the very spot
where the ancient workman had lit his furnace. This universal interest
and demand for information are enough to stimulate our learned men to
exertion, seeing that they are, in a measure, answerable to Europe for
the proper preservation of our antiquities, the very rudest of which
can tell some tale of the past, as the mere furrows along the streets
of the dead Pompeii show that life once passed there.