That there was a time—after “the Spirit of God moved on the face
of the waters, and separated the dry land from the sea”—when the
present British Isles formed a continuous and integral portion of the
European Continent is the received opinion of the scientific. With
that continuity of surface (whether before or after the glacial period
matters not in the present inquiry) there was, we know, a uniform
dispersion of vegetable and animal life over this portion of the globe;
and so long as this country enjoyed the temperature and climate it now
possesses, it must have been an emerald land—humid, green, and fertile,
affording pasturage and provender for the largest herbivoræ—the
mammoth, elephant, and musk ox, the reindeer, the wild boar, and
perhaps even the woolly rhinoceros. The primitive races of horned
cattle, possibly the red deer, and undoubtedly the largest and noblest
of cervine creatures, the gigantic Irish deer, or _Cervus megaceros_,
besides the wild pig, and smaller mammals, as well as birds and fishes
innumerable, must then have existed here.
[20] Extracts from the Address to the Anthropological Section of
the British Association. Belfast, 1874. By Sir WILLIAM WILDE, M.D.,
M.R.I.A., Chevalier of the Swedish Order of the North Star.
How long that condition of the land known now as Ireland existed,
what geological revolutions occurred, or what time elapsed during its
continuance, is but matter of speculation; but a “repeal of the union”
took place, and Great Britain and Ireland became as they now are, and
as they are likely to remain, geographically separated, although united
in interest as well as government. In all probability the great pine
forests, with some of the yews, the oaks, and the birch, had at this
time been submerged beneath the lowest strata of our bogs.
It was after this epoch, I believe, that man first set foot upon the
shores of Erin—a country well wooded, abundantly stocked with animals,
and abounding in all nature’s blessings suited to the well-being of
the human race; with fowls in its woods and on its shores; fish in its
seas, lakes and rivers; deer and other game in its forest glades, oxen
on its pastures, fuel in its bogs; and a climate, although moist and
variable, on the whole mild and temperate.
Let us now go back for a moment and take a glance at the map of
the world. The sacred writings tell us, and the investigations of
historians, antiquarians, and philologists confirm the statement, that
the cradle of mankind was somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the
great River Euphrates. Without entering too minutely into the subject,
I may state briefly that the human family separated in process of
time into three great divisions—the African, the Asiatic, and the
Indo-European. With the latter only we have to deal. As population
increased, it threw off its outshoots; and emigration, the great
safeguard of society, and the ordained means of peopling as well as
cultivating and civilizing the earth, began to impel the races and
tribes still farther and farther from the birthplace of humanity. But
in those days the process was somewhat slower and more gradual than
that which now sends an Irish family across 3,500 miles of ocean in a
week.
With but the rudest means of transit, hordes of the primitive races
passed up the banks of the great rivers, the Euphrates, the Nile, the
Volga, the Danube, and the Rhone; while other tribes, in all likelihood
more advanced and cultivated, wandered along the coasts, peopling as
they went the northern shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
That an early and uncultivated people passed up the Danube in their
immigration, and settled for centuries on its banks, when Europe was
a tangled wilderness, inhabited by the auroch and the gigantic deer,
there can be no manner of doubt; for they have left memorials of their
existence in the unerring and enduring remains of their sepulchres,
their tools, and weapons, from the Black Sea to Switzerland and Savoy.
In Switzerland this primitive people rested for a considerable period,
perhaps for many centuries, forming for themselves those peculiar piled
lacustrine habitations on the shores of its picturesque inland waters,
known as “Pfaulbauten”—the analogues, and in all probability the types,
of the crannoges recently discovered in Ireland and Scotland, to which
countries the scattered fragments of that race finally carried this
special form of domestic architecture. The lowest strata of implements
were deposited beneath the sites of these pfaulbauten; and in some of
the more ancient ones the only remains are those of stone, flint, and
pottery—the former resembling in a remarkable manner the stone tools
and weapons of the primitive Irish.
What the language of this early Helvetian people was, we have no
means of ascertaining; but that their exodus was one of haste and
compulsion, and probably the result of invasion by a superior and more
cultivated race, is almost certain. Driven from their mountain homes,
they passed down the banks of the Rhine and the Elbe, and helped to
people North-western Europe, forming with those who arrived coastwise
the great nation of the Gauls and Belgæ. It is not unlikely that this
littoral wave of population carried with them the metallurgic arts; for
we find in their tombs and barrows on the coasts of Spain, France, and
Brittany, bronze celts identical in shape with some of those discovered
in our own country.
Still passing westwards towards the setting sun, some members of
this early people stood at length face to face with the white cliffs
of Kent. Impelled by curiosity and the thirst for knowledge, man’s
undeviating enterprise soon sent these hardy people across the narrow
strait that divides Britain from the continent of Europe, centuries
before the ships of Tarshish voyaged from Tyre and Sidon to trade with
Britain for the tin of Cornwall, to alloy, harden, and beautify into
bronze the copper with which Solomon decorated the temple of Jerusalem.
To the restless Celt the breadth of this new possession was but a
slight impediment to his western progress, and once more he looked upon
the blue waters of the salt sea, and beyond them, to the green hills of
Erin. A plank—a single-piece canoe—formed out of an oak-tree by fire
and a sharp stone, or a wicker curragh covered with hides, would soon
waft him from Portpatrick to Donaghadee, or even from Anglesea to Howth.
Here, then, the story of our race begins, and the immediate object of
this inquiry commences. That man, as he first stood on this island,
was in a rude, uncultivated state, without a knowledge of letters or
manufactures—skilled in those arts only by which, as a nomad hunter and
fisher, he supported life and ministered to his simple wants—there can
be no manner of doubt. Clad in the skins of animals he slew, which were
sewn together with their sinews or intestines—his weapons and tools
formed of flint, stone, bone, wood or horn—his personal decoration,
shells, amber, attractive pebbles collected on the beach, or the
teeth of animals strung together in a rude necklace, or bound round
the wrists and arms; and his religion, if any, Pagan, Sun-worship, or
Druidism, man first stood, in all probability, on the north-eastern
shores of Erin. It may be unpalatable to our national vanity to
learn that the early colonists of Ireland did not come here clad in
purple and gold direct from Phœnicia, in brazen-prowed triremes, with
the mariner’s compass and the quadrant; or stood for the first time
upon the shores of Hibernia armed _cap-à-pied_ in glittering armour,
as Minerva sprang from the front of Jove; but it is, nevertheless,
indisputably true, that the first people were such as I have described
them.
No date can be assigned to the period of the first inhabitation, but
as evidence of the primitive condition of the race it is sufficient
to state that human bodies clad in deer-skin have been discovered in
our bogs; that flint weapons in abundance have been found all over
Ireland, but especially in the North, where that peculiar lithological
condition chiefly exists; and that stone tools have been dug up in
thousands all over the country, but more particularly from the beds of
our rivers, marking the sites of contested fords, which were the scenes
of sanguinary conflicts, as on the Shannon and the Bann; and that all
these are referrible to a period when the Irish had no knowledge of
metals, and could neither spin nor weave.
To Northern archæologists belongs the credit of that theory which
divides the ages of man according to the material evidences of the arts
of bygone times, as into those of stone, of copper, gold, and bronze,
and of iron and silver. While I have no doubt that, generally speaking,
such was the usual progress of development in those particulars, I
deny that this division can, as a rule, be applied to Ireland, where
undoubtedly each period overlapped the succeeding, so as to mix the
one class of implement with another, even as I myself have seen on the
great cultivated plain of Tyre harrow-pins formed of flints and sharp
stones stuck into the under surface of a broad board; and on that
battle field—
“Where Persia’s victim hordes
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hella’s sword,”
I have picked up flint and obsidian arrow-heads, although we know that
the Athenians, whose remains still lie beneath the tumulus of Marathon,
gave way before the long-handled metallic spears of Asia; and the stone
missile, in one of its most formidable shapes, is not yet abandoned in
this country.
I hold it as susceptible of demonstration, that man in similar stages
of his career all over the world acts alike, so far as is compatible
with climate, his wants, and the materials that offer to his hand,
even from the banks of the Niger or Zambesi to the islands of the
South Sea, or the regions inhabited by the Laps and Esquimaux. Thus,
whenever man acquires or discovers a new art, he first applies it to
continue the fashion of its predecessor, until accident, necessity, or
ingenuity induces him to modify the reproduction. The first arrow-head
and spear is almost the same all over the world, and is the type of
that in metal; and the stone celt or hatchet formed, as I have proved
elsewhere, the model for the copper or bronze implement for a like use
in both ancient Etruria and ancient Ireland.
Discussions may arise as to whether our knowledge of metals was a
separate, independent discovery of our own, or was acquired by
intercourse with other nations more advanced than ourselves. In answer
thereto I can only say that we have no evidence or authority for the
latter supposition; and that, as we possessed abundant materials on
the one hand, and had sufficient native ingenuity on the other, it is
most likely that our discovery of metals—at least of gold, copper, and
tin—was independent of extrinsic influence. So far removed from the
centres of civilization, unconquered by the Roman legion, uninfluenced
by Saxon or Frankish art, and with undoubted evidences of development
and styles of art peculiar to ourselves, both in form and decoration,
it is but fair, until some stronger arguments have been brought
against it, to believe that we were the discoverers and smelters of
our minerals, and the fabricators of our metallic weapons, tools,
and ornaments. That some Grecian influence pervaded the early Irish
metallurgic art, as exhibited by some of our leaf-shaped sword blades,
is true; but it is an exceptional instance, and the form is common to
almost all countries in which bronze sword blades have been found.
With regard to the dwellings of the early race we are not left to
mere conjecture, for not long ago a log hut was discovered fourteen
feet below the surface of a bog in the county of Donegal. This very
antique dwelling was twelve feet square, and nine high; and consisted
of an upper and lower chamber, which were probably mere sleeping
apartments. The oaken logs of which it was constructed are believed
to have been hewn with stone hatchets, some of which were found on
the premises, thus identifying it with the pre-metallic period of our
history. Man soon becomes gregarious, and passes from the hunter and
the fisher to the shepherd, and thence to the agriculturist. The land
is cleared of wood; the wild animals either die out, or are rendered
subservient to his will. The domestication of animals in most instances
precedes, and always accompanies, the pastoral state of existence; and
to that condition the patriarchal stage ensues, and afterwards that
of the monarchical. To such phases of development, from the age of
escape from the rudest barbarism, to the most cultivated condition in
government, polite literature, art and science, Ireland was, I believe,
no exception. Of the shepherd state we still possess the most abundant
proofs, in the numerous earthen raths, lisses, and forts scattered
all over the country, and from which so many of our townlands and
other localities take their names; but especially marking the sites
of the primitive inhabitation on our goodly pastures, although now
mere grassy, annular elevations, varying in area from a few perches to
several acres, and in many instances alone preserved by the hallowed
traditions or popular superstitions of the people.
Such of those landmarks of the past as still remain, out of thousands
that have been obliterated, show us that in those parts of Ireland, at
least, where they exist, there was once a dense population, even during
the shepherd stage of its inhabitation. And if in the progress of
events, uncontrolled by human agency, and brought about by influences
that we have so recently mourned over and still deplore, but could
not prevent, we are now again becoming a pastoral people, we are
only returning to that state of existence for which this country is
peculiarly adapted, and was, I believe, originally intended—that of
being the greatest grass and green-crop soil and climate in the world.
The pastoral was undoubtedly the normal, one of the oldest, and beyond
all question, the longest continued state in Ireland; and, although
changed by internal dissensions, invasion, confiscation, and foreign
rule, is still remembered by the people among whom its influence,
slumbering, but not dead, now and then crops out in questions of
“tenant right.” Years ago I showed, from the animal remains found in
our forts, bogs, and crannoges, that centuries upon centuries before
short-horned improved breeds of cattle and sheep commanded at our
agricultural shows the admiration of Europe, we had here breeds of oxen
which are not now surpassed by the best races of Holland and Great
Britain; and which are unequalled in the present day even by those on
the fertile plains of Meath, Limerick, or Roscommon, or throughout the
golden vale of Tipperary. We were then a cattle-rearing, flesh-eating
people; our wealth was our cattle; our wars were for our cattle; the
ransom of our chieftains was in cattle; our taxes were paid in cattle;
the price paid for our most valuable manuscripts was so many cows.
Even in comparatively modern times our battle cloaks were made of
leather; our traffic and barter were the Pecuaniæ of our country; and
the “Tain-bo-Cuailne,” the most famous metrical romance of Europe,
after the “Niebelungenlied,” is but the recital of a cattle raid from
Connaught into Louth during the reign of Mave, Queen of Connaught—a
personage transmitted to us by Shakspeare, as the Queen Mab of the
“Midsummer Night’s Dream.” And, although the Anglo-Norman invasion is
usually attributed to the love of an old, one-eyed, hoarse-voiced King
of Leinster, sixty years of age, for Dervorgil (attractive, we must
presume, though but little his junior in years), and who became the
Helen of the Irish Iliad, when “the valley lay smiling before her,” she
was but an insignificant item in the stock abduction from the plains of
Breffny along the boggy slopes of Shemore.
The Boromean, or cattle tribute, which the King of Tara demanded from
the Leinstermen, was perhaps the cause of the greatest intestinal feud
which ever convulsed so small a space of European ground for so great
a length of time. This triennial cattle tax, besides 5,000 ounces of
silver, 5,000 cloaks, and 5,000 brazen vessels, consisted of 15,000
head of cattle of different descriptions, the value of which, at the
present price of stock, would amount to about £130,000. The cattle
tribute also paid to the Prince or petty King of Cashel upwards of a
thousand years ago was 6,500 cows, 4,500 oxen, 4,500 swine, and 1,200
sheep; in all, 16,700, or, at the present value of stock, between
£80,000 and £100,000. In addition to which we read of horses and
valuables of various descriptions.
Brian O’Kennedy, who drove the Norsemen from the shores of Clontarf,
derived his cognomen of Borrome from his reimposition of this cattle
tax. And in the _Leabhar-na-Garth_, or ancient Book of Rights and
Privileges of the Kings of Erin, the cattle statistics, as they are
there set forth, show that the Irish were solely a pastoral people; and
the whole text and tenor of the Irish annals and histories, and the
notices of the wars of the Desmonds and of O’Neil, confirm this view.
The great raths of Ireland, where the people enclosed their cattle
by night, have been erroneously termed “Danish forts,” but when the
shannaghees are pressed for further information as to the date of their
erection they say, “They were made by them ould Danes that came over
with Julius Cæsar.” If, however, inquiry be made of the old illiterate
Irish-speaking population, they will tell you that they were made
by “the good people,” and are inhabited by the fairies. Hence the
veneration that has in a great measure tended to their preservation;
and I have no doubt that the ancient indigenous and venerated thorns
that still decorate their slopes or summits are the veritable
descendants of the quickset hedges that helped to form the breastworks,
or staked defences, on their summits.
These forts are almost invariably to be found in the fattest pastures;
so that if any of my friends were in the present day to ask me
where they could best invest in land, I would fearlessly answer,
“Wherever you find most ancient raths remaining;” and I know that
many of our cattle prizes have been carried off by sheep and oxen fed
upon the grass lands cleared and fertilized by the early Celts more
than a thousand years ago, and a sod of which has not been turned
for centuries. They were not originally the gentle slopes that now
diversify the surface, but consisted in steep ramparts or earthworks,
with an external ditch, on which a stout paling was erected against
man or beast, a form of structure still seen in the kraal of the New
Zealander. The Irish rath-maker was an artificer of skill, and held
in high esteem, and occupied a dignified position at the great feasts
of Tara—second only to the ollamh and the physician. That the soil of
which they were constructed had been not only originally rich, but had
been subjected to man’s industry, is proved by the fact that it is
now frequently turned out upon the neighbouring sward as one of the
best of manures. Within these raths, some of which had double, and
even treble entrenchments, were erected the dwellings of the people
and their chiefs, the latter of whom were often interred within the
mounds, or beneath the cromlechs that still exist in their interior,
as, for example, in the “Giant’s Ring,” near Belfast. In some instances
they also contained in their sides and centres stone caves, that were
probably used as store-houses, granaries, or places of security.
The earliest historic race of Ireland was a pastoral people called
Firbolgs, said to be of Greek or Eastern origin; probably a branch of
that great Celtic race which, having passed through Europe and round
its shores, found a resting-place at last in Ireland. Of the Fomorians,
Nemedians, and other minor invaders, we need not speak, as they have
left nothing by which to track their footsteps. The old annalists
bring them direct from the Ark, and in a straight line from Japhet.
The coming of Pharaoh’s daughter from Egypt with her ships may be also
considered apocryphal. But the Firbolgs begin our authentic history.
They had laws and social institutions, and established a monarchical
government at the far-famed Hill of Tara, about which our early centres
of civilization sprung, and where we have now most of those great
pasturelands—those plains of Meath that can beat the world for their
fattening qualities, and which supply neighbouring countries with their
most admired meats.
I cannot say that the Firbolg was a cultivated man, but I think he was
a shepherd and an agriculturist. I doubt if he knew anything, certainly
not much, of metallurgy; but it does not follow that he was a mere
savage, no more than the Maories of New Zealand were when we first came
in contact with them.
The Firbolgs were a small, straight-haired, swarthy race, who have
left a portion of their descendants with us to this very day. A
genealogist (their own countryman resident in Galway about two hundred
years ago) described them as dark-haired, talkative, guileful,
strolling, unsteady, “disturbers of every Council and Assembly,” and
“promoters of discord.” I believe they, together with the next two
races about to be described, formed the bulk of our so-called Celtic
population—combative, nomadic on opportunity, enduring, litigious,
but feudal and faithful to their chiefs; hard-working for a spurt (as
in their annual English emigration); not thrifty, but, when their
immediate wants are supplied, lazy, especially during the winter.
To these physical and mental characters described by MacFirbis let me
add those of the unusual combination of blue or blue-grey eyes and
dark eyelashes with a swarthy complexion. This peculiarity I have
only remarked elsewhere in Greece; the mouth and upper gum is not
good, but the nose is usually straight. In many of this and the next
following race there was a peculiarity that has not been alluded to by
writers—the larynx, or, as it used to be called, the _pomum Adami_,
was remarkably prominent, and became more apparent from the uncovered
state of the neck. The sediment of this early people still exists in
Ireland, along with the fair-complexioned Dananns, and forms the bulk
of the farm-labourers, called in popular phraseology _Spalpeens_, that
yearly emigrate to England. In Connaught they now chiefly occupy a
circle which includes the junction of the counties of Mayo, Galway,
Roscommon, and Sligo. They, with their fair-faced brothers (at present
the most numerous), are also to be found in Kerry and Donegal; and they
nearly all speak Irish.
By statistics procured from our Great Midland Western Railway alone
I learn that on an average 30,000 of these people, chiefly the
descendants of the dark Firbolgs and the fair Dananns, emigrate
annually to England for harvest work, to the great advantage of the
English farmer and the Irish landlord. The acreage of arable land for
these people runs from two to six acres.
Connecting this race with the remains of the past, I am of opinion
that they were the first rath or earthen-mound and enclosure makers;
that they mostly buried their dead without cremation, and, in cases of
distinguished personages, beneath the cromlech or the tumulus. Their
heads were oval or long in the anteroposterior diameter, and rather
flattened at the sides: examples of these I have given and descanted
upon when I first published my Ethnological Researches, which have
been fully confirmed by the late Andreas Retzius. It is, however,
unnecessary, even if space or advisability permitted, for me to allude
to such matters, as that great work the “Crania Britannica” has
lithographed typical specimens of this long-headed race.
The next immigration we hear of in the “Annals” is that of the
_Tuatha-de-Dananns_, a large, fair-complexioned, and very remarkable
race; warlike, energetic, progressive, skilled in metal work, musical,
poetical, acquainted with the healing art, skilled in Druidism, and
believed to be adepts in necromancy and magic, no doubt the result of
the popular idea respecting their superior knowledge, especially in
smelting and in the fabrication of tools, weapons, and ornaments. From
these two races sprang the Fairy Mythology of Ireland.
It is strange that, considering the amount of annals and legends
transmitted to us, we have so little knowledge of Druidism or Paganism
in ancient Ireland. However, it may be accounted for in this wise:
That those who took down the legends from the mouths of the bards and
annalists, or those who subsequently transcribed them, were Christian
missionaries whose object was to obliterate every vestige of the
ancient forms of faith.
The Dananns spoke the same language as their predecessors, the
Firbolgs. They met and fought for the sovereignty. The “man of metal”
conquered and drove a great part of the others into the islands on
the coast, where it is said the Firbolg race took their last stand.
Eventually, however, under the influence of a power hostile to them
both, these two people coalesced, and have to a large extent done so
up to the present day. They are the true old Irish peasant and small
farming class.
The Firbolg was a bagman, so called, according to Irish authorities,
because he had to carry up clay in earthen bags to those terraces
in Greece now vine-clad. As regards the other race there is more
difficulty in the name. Tuath or Tuatha means a tribe or tribe-district
in Irish. Danann certainly sounds very Grecian; and if we consider
their remains, we find the long, bronze, leaf-shaped sword, so abundant
in Ireland, identical with weapons of the same class found in Attica
and other parts of Greece.
Then, on the other hand, their physiognomy, their fair or reddish hair,
their size, and other circumstances, incline one to believe that they
came down from Scandinavian regions after they had passed up as far
as they thought advisable into North-western Europe. If the word Dane
was known at the time of their arrival here, it would account for the
designation of many of our Irish monuments as applied by Molyneux and
others. Undoubtedly the Danann tribes presented Scandinavian features,
but did not bring anything but Grecian art. After the “Stone period,”
so called, of which Denmark and the south of Sweden offer such rich
remains, I look upon the great bulk of the metal work of the North,
especially in the swords in the Copenhagen and Stockholm Museums, as
Asiatic; while Ireland possesses not only the largest native collection
of metal weapon-tools, usually denominated “celts,” of any country in
the world, but the second largest amount of swords and battle-axes. And
moreover these, and all our other metal articles, show a well-defined
rise and development from the simplest and rudest form in size and use
to that of the most elaborately constructed and the most beautifully
adorned.
I believe that these Tuatha-de-Dananns, no matter from whence they
came, were, in addition to their other acquirements, great masons,
although not acquainted with the value of cementing materials. I think
they were the builders of the great stone Cahirs, Duns, Cashels, and
Caves in Ireland; while their predecessors constructed the earthen
works, the raths, circles, and forts that diversify the fields of Erin.
The Dananns anticipated Shakespeare’s grave-digger, for they certainly
made the most lasting sepulchral monuments that exist in Ireland, such,
for example, as New Grange, Douth, Knowth, and Slieve-na-Calleagh and
other great cemeteries. Within the interior and around these tombs were
carved, on unhewn stones, certain archaic markings, spires, volutes,
convolutes, lozenge-shaped devices, straight, zigzag, and curved
lines, and incised indentations, and a variety of other insignia,
which, although not expressing language, were symbolical, and had an
occult meaning known only to the initiated. These markings, as well as
those upon the urns, were copied in the decorations of the gold and
bronze work of a somewhat subsequent period. The Dananns conquered
the inferior tribes in two celebrated pitched battles, those of the
Northern and Southern Moytura. On these fields we still find the caves,
the stone circles, the monoliths, and dolmans or cromlechs that marked
particular events, and the immense cairns that were raised in honour of
the fallen chieftains.
Although many of the warriors of the Firbolgs fled to their island
fastnesses on the coasts of Galway and Donegal, no doubt a large
portion of them remained in the inland parts of the country, and in
that very locality to which I have adverted, which is almost midway
between the sites of the two battles, in a line stretching between Mayo
and Sligo, where in time the two races appear to have coalesced by that
natural law which brings the dark and the fair together.
Moreover it has been recorded that the conquering race sent their
small dark opponents into Connaught, while they themselves took
possession of the rich lands further east, and not only established
themselves at Tara but spread into the south. It is remarkable that
in time large numbers of the Dananns themselves were banished to the
West, and likewise that the last forcible deportation of the native
Irish race (so late as the seventeenth century) was when the people of
this province got the choice of going “to Connaught or Hell,” in the
former of which, possibly, they joined some of the original stock. The
natural beauty of the lakes and mountains of Connaught remains as it
was thousands of years ago; but no doubt if some of the legislators of
the period to which I have already referred could now behold its fat
pasture-plains, they might prefer them to the flax lands of Ulster.
These Dananns had a globular form of head, of which I have already
published examples. For the most part I believe they burned their dead
or sacrificed to their manes, and placed an urn with its incinerated
contents—human or animal—in the grave, where the hero was either
stretched at length or crouched in an attitude similar to that adopted
by the ancient Peruvians, as I have elsewhere explained. These Irish
urns, which are the earliest relics of our ceramic art that have come
down to the present time, are very graceful in form, and some of them
most beautifully decorated, as may be seen in our various museums.
Specimens of this Danann race still exist, but have gradually mixed
with their forerunners to the present day. Here is what old MacFirbis
wrote of them two hundred years ago: “Every one who is fair-haired,
vengeful, large, and every plunderer, professors of musical and
entertaining performances, who are adepts of Druidical and magical
arts, they are the descendants of the Tuatha-de-Dananns.” They were not
only fair but sandy in many instances, and consequently extensively
freckled.
It is affirmed that the Dananns ruled in Ireland for a long time, until
another inroad was made into the island by the Milesians—said to be
brave, chivalrous, skilled in war, good navigators, proud, boastful,
and much superior in outward adornment as well as mental culture,
but probably not better armed than their opponents. They deposed the
three last Danann kings and their wives, and rose to be, it is said,
the dominant race—assuming the sovereignty, becoming the aristocracy
and landed proprietors of the country, and giving origin to those
chieftains that afterwards rose to the title of petty kings, and from
whom some of the best families in the land with anything like Irish
names claim descent, and particularly those with the prefix of the “O”
or the “Mac.” When this race arrived in Ireland I cannot tell, but it
was some time prior to the Christian era. It is said they came from
the coast of Spain, where they had long remained after their Eastern
emigration.
Upon the site of what is believed to be the ancient Brigantium, now the
entrance to the united harbours of Corunna and Ferrol, stands the great
lighthouse known to all ships passing through the Bay of Biscay. Within
this modern structure still exists the celebrated “Pharos of Hercules,”
which I investigated and described many years ago. That tower, it
was said in metaphorical language, commanded a view of Ireland, and
as such became the theme of Irish poems and legends. Certain it is
that sailing north or north-westward from it the ships of the sons of
Milesius and their followers could have reached Ireland without much
coasting. If the story of Breogan’s Tower is true, then it must have
been erected in the time of lime-and-mortar building, and that is
during the Roman occupation of Iberia and Gaul. How many thousands,
rank and file, of these Spanish Milesians came here in their six or
eight galleys and tried the fortunes of war from “the summit of the
ninth wave from the shore” and conquered the entire Danann, Firbolg,
and Fomorian population, I am unable to give the slightest inkling of,
no more than I can of the so-called Phœnician intercourse with this
country. Perhaps without going into the fanciful descriptions of the
“Battle of Ventry Harbour,” or the southern conquest of Ireland by the
Iberian Milesians, we may find some more trustworthy illustrations
of Spanish dwellings in the architecture of the town of Galway, and
some picturesque representatives in the lithe upright figures and
raven-haired, but blue-eyed maidens of the City of the Tribes. Here is
what old MacFirbis, who, I suppose, claimed descent from the sons of
Milesius, wrote about them: “Every one who is white of skin, brown of
hair, bold, honourable, daring, prosperous, bountiful in the bestowal
of property, and who is not afraid of battle or combat, they are the
descendants of the sons of Milesius in Erin.”
This high panegyric is only equalled by the prose and verse
compositions of the ancient bards and rhymers and the modern
historians, who have recorded the deeds of the great warriors, Ith,
Heber, and Heremon, whose descendants boast to have been the rulers
of the land. Even Moore, although he wrote such beautiful lyrics
concerning this race in his early days, yet when he came to study
history, he felt the same difficulty I do now. I do not dispute their
origin or supremacy; but I fail to distinguish their early customs,
their remains, or race from those of the Firbolgs or Dananns whom they
conquered, and who left undoubted monuments peculiar to their time.
Now all these people—the piratical navigator along our coasts, the
mid-Europe primitive shepherd and cultivator, the Northern warrior, and
the Iberian ruler—were, according to my view, all derived from the one
Celtic stock. They spoke the same language, and their descendants do
so still. When they acquired a knowledge of letters they transmitted
their history through the Irish language. No doubt they fused; but
somehow a quick fusion of races has not been the general characteristic
of the people of this country. Unlike the Anglo-Norman in later times,
the Milesian was a long way from home; the rough sea of the Bay of
Biscay rolled between him and his previous habitat; and if he became
an absentee he was not likely to find much of his possessions on his
return. It is to be regretted that while we have here such a quantity
of poetical and traditional material respecting the Milesian invasion
of Ireland, the Spanish annals or traditions have given us but very
little information on that subject.
It would be most desirable if the Government or some Irish authority
would send a properly instructed commissioner to investigate the
Spanish annals, and see whether there is anything relating to the
Spanish migrations to Ireland remaining in that country.
Besides the sparse introduction of Latin by Christian missionaries in
the fifth century, some occasional Saxon words springing from peaceful
settlers along our coasts and in commercial emporiums, and whatever
Danish had crept into our tongue around those centres where the
Scandinavians chiefly located themselves, and which were principally
proper names of persons and places that became fixed in our vernacular,
we find but one language among the Irish people until the arrival of
the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century.
The linguistic or philological evidence on this subject is clearly
decisive. The residue of the early races already described spoke one
language, called Gaelic; so did the Scotch, the Welsh, and probably, in
early times, the Britons and the Bretons. It was not only the popular
conversational tongue used in the ordinary intercourse of life, but
it was also employed in genealogies, annals, and other records in a
special character, not quite peculiar to this country, but then common
in Europe. Much has been said about the necessity for a glossary of our
ancient MSS., such as those at Saint Gall, in Trinity College, in the
Royal Irish Academy, and in Belgian and English libraries; but there
are very few ancient languages that do not require to be glossed in the
present day, even as the words of Chaucer do.
The Government are now, under the auspices of our Master of the Rolls,
and the special direction and supervision of Mr. J. T. Gilbert, giving
coloured photographs of some of our ancient writings, and have promised
that some of our remaining manuscripts will be translated. I see no
occasion now for waiting for more elaborated philological dictionaries
or glossaries while there are still some few Irish scholars in this
country capable of giving a free but tolerably literal translation
of these records that do not require any great acumen in rendering
them into English. Is history to wait upon the final decision of
philologists respecting a word or two in a manuscript, and to decide as
to whether it may be of Sanscrit or any other origin?
No doubt some of my hearers may ask, What about the Oghams (or Ohams)?
do they not show a very early knowledge of an alphabet? As yet this
is a moot question. A rude pillar-stone, having upon it a tolerably
straight edge, was in early times notched along its angle which served
as a stem-line by nicks formed on it, and straight or oblique lines,
singly or in clusters, proceeding from the stem. The decipherers of
these inscriptions have, one and all, agreed upon the fact that these
lines represented letters, syllables, or words, and that the language
is either Irish or Latin. Therefore the persons who made them must have
been aware of alphabetic writing and grammar. These carved monoliths
are chiefly found in Kerry and Cork. Upon some of them Christian
emblems are figured. The incising of the stone has evidently been
performed by some rude instrument, either a flint or metallic pick;
and it is remarkable that these pillars present scarcely any amount of
dressing.
In Connaught, in my youth, the exception in remote districts was where
the person spoke _both_ English and Irish. In 1851, when we first took
a census of the Irish-speaking population, after the country had lost
three-quarters of a million of people, chiefly of the Irish race,
we had then (to speak in round numbers) one and a half millions of
Irish-speaking population. In 1861 they had fallen off by nearly half
a million; and upon the taking of the last census in 1871 the entire
Irish-speaking population was only 817,865. The percentages, according
to the total population in our different provinces, were these: in
Leinster 1.2, in Munster 27.7, in Ulster 4.6, and in Connaught 39.0;
for the total of Ireland 15.1. Kilkenny and Louth are the counties
of Leinster where the language is most spoken. In Munster they are
Kerry, Clare, and Waterford; in Ulster, Donegal, where 28 per cent. of
the population speak Irish; but in Connaught, to which I have already
alluded as containing the remnant of the early Irish races, we have no
less than 56 per cent. of Irish-speaking population in the counties of
Mayo and Galway respectively. Of my own knowledge I can attest that a
great many of these people cannot speak English. We thus see that of
the population of Ireland, which in the present day might be computed
at about five and a half millions, there were, at the time of taking
the census in April, 1871, only 817,865; and I think I may prophesy
that that is the very largest number that in future we will ever have
to record. On the causes of this decadence it is not my province to
descant. These Celts have been the great pioneers of civilization, and
are now a power in the world. Are they not now numerically the dominant
race in America? and have they not largely peopled Australia and New
Zealand?
We have now arrived at a period when you might naturally expect the
native annalist to make some allusion to conquest or colonization by
the then mistress of the world. Without offering any reason for it,
I have here only to remark that neither as warriors nor colonizers
did the Romans ever set foot in Ireland; and hence the paucity of any
admixture of Roman art amongst us.
To fill up a hiatus which might here occur in our migrations, I will
mention a remarkable circumstance. A Christian youth of Romano-Saxon
parentage, and probably of patrician origin, was carried off in a raid
of Irish marauders, and employed as a swineherd in this very Ulster,
the country of the Dalaradians, and lived here for several years,
learning our customs and speaking our language. He escaped, however,
to Munster, and thence to his native land of Britain or Normandy, from
whence he returned in A.D. 432 with friends, allies, and missionaries,
and passing in his galley into the mouth of the Boyne, walked up the
banks of that famed stream, raised the paschal fire at Slane, and
speedily introduced Christianity throughout Ireland.
In thus briefly alluding to the labours of St. Patrick, I wish to be
understood to say that about the time of his mission there was much
Saxon intercourse with this country, and the great missionary had not
only many friends but several relatives residing here, and some of
them on the very banks of the Boyne; and I believe that a considerable
amount of civilization and some knowledge of Christianity had been
introduced long previously; so that, although old King Laoghaire
or Loury and his Druids did not bow the knee to the Most High God,
nor accept the teaching of the beautiful hymn that Patrick and his
attendants chanted as they passed up the grassy slopes of Tara, still
there were many hundred people in Ireland ready to receive the glad
tidings of the gospel of salvation.
Having finished with the Milesians, we now come to the Danes
(so-called), the Scandinavians or Norsemen—the pagan Sea-Kings who
made inroads on our coasts, despoiled our churches and monasteries,
but at the same time, it must be confessed, helped to establish the
commercial prosperity of some of our cities and towns from 795 to the
time of the battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014, when the belligerent portion
of the Scandinavians were finally expelled the country. During the time
I have specified, Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford belonged to these
Northern people. They not only coasted round the island and never lost
an opportunity of pillage and plunder, but they passed through the
interior and carried their arms into the very centre of the land. The
Danes left us very little ornamental work beyond what they lavished
upon their swords and helmets; but, on the other hand, it should be
borne in mind that there are no Irish antiquities, either social,
warlike, or ecclesiastical, in the Scandinavian Museums.
Concerning their ethnological characters, I must again refer to the
“Crania Britannica.” In the records they were designated strangers,
foreigners, pagans, gentiles, and also white and black foreigners, so
that there were undoubtedly two races—the dark, and the fair or red,
like as in the case of the Firbolgs or Dananns. They were also styled
“Azure Danes,” probably on account of the shining hue of their armour.
I believe the fair section of that people to have been of Norwegian
origin, while the dark race came from Jutland and the coast of Sweden;
and both by the Orkneys, the coasts of Scotland, and the Isle of Man.
Their skulls were large and well formed; they had a thorough knowledge
of metal work, and especially iron; and, as I have shown elsewhere,
their swords and spears were of great size and power, the former
wielded as a slashing weapon, while those of their early opponents were
of bronze, weak, and intended for stabbing. In nowhere else in Europe
(that I am aware of) have these rounded, pointed, or bevelled heavy
iron swords been found except in Ireland and Norway.
Large quantities of Danish remains have been discovered in deep
sinkings made in Dublin; and several weapons, tools, and ornaments,
believed to be of Scandinavian origin, have been found within a
few inches of the surface on one of the battle-fields on the south
side of the Liffey, within the last few years. Upon most of these
I have already reported and given illustrations. I may mention one
circumstance connected with this race. I never examined a battle-field
of the Danes, nor a collection of Danish weapons or implements, that I
did not find the well-adjusted scales and weights which the Viking had
in his pocket for valuing the precious metals he procured either by
conquest or otherwise.
Although considered hostile, these Scandinavian Vikings must have
fraternized with the Irish. We know that they intermarried; for, among
many other instances that might be adduced, I may mention that during
the battle of Clontarf, when Sitric, the Danish king of Dublin, looked
on the fight from the walls of the city, he was accompanied by his
wife, the daughter of the aged king known as “Brian the Brave.”
When, however, the Irish chieftains were not fighting with one another,
they were often engaged in petty wars with the Scandinavians, who, in
turn, were attacked by their own countrymen, the “Black Gentiles,”
especially on the plain of Fingall, stretching from Dublin to the
Boyne, and which the white race chiefly occupied. It must not be
supposed that the battle of Clontarf ended the Danish occupation of
Ireland; they still held the cities of Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford
at least, and largely promoted the commercial prosperity in these
localities—a prosperity which has not quite yet departed. I should
like to present you with some remains of the Scandinavian language in
Ireland, but the materials are very scanty.
We are now coming to a later period. The Romans had occupied Britain,
the Saxons followed; the Danes had partial possession for a time; the
Heptarchy prevailed until Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, fell at
Hastings, and England bowed beneath that mixture of Norman, Gaulish,
Scandinavian, and general Celtic blood that William brought with him
from the shores of France. The Saxon dynasty was at an end, but the
Britons of the day accepted their fate; and not only the soldiers, but
the Norman barons fused with the people of that kingdom, and largely
contributed to make it what it now is. This fusion of races, this
assimilation of sentiments, this interchange of thought, this kindly
culture, the higher elevating the lower, among whom they permanently
reside, must always tend to great and good ends in raising a people to
a nobler intellectual state.
The Anglo-Normans came here in 1172, a very mixed race, but their
leaders were chiefly of French or Norman extraction. Why they came, or
what they did, it is not for me to expatiate upon. I wish, however,
to correct an assertion commonly made, to the effect that the Norman
barons of Henry II. _then_ conquered Ireland. They occupied some towns,
formed a “Pale,” levied taxes, sent in soldiery, distributed lands,
and introduced a new language; but the “King’s writ did not run;” the
subjugation of Ireland did not extend over the country at large, and
it remained till 1846 and the five or six following years to complete
the conquest of the Irish race, by the loss of a tuberous esculent
and the Governmental alteration in the value of a grain of corn. Then
there went to the workhouse or exile upwards of two millions of the
Irish race, besides those who died of pestilence. Having carefully
investigated and reported upon this last great European famine, I have
come to the conclusion just stated, without taking into consideration
its political, religious, or national aspects.
It appears to me that one of our great difficulties in Ireland has been
the want of fusion—not only of races, but of opinions and sentiments,
in what may be called a “give and take” system. As regards the
intermixture, I think there cannot be a better one than the Saxon with
the Celt. The Anglo-Normans, however, partially fused with the native
Irish; for Strongbow married Eva the daughter of King Dermot; and from
this marriage it has been clearly shown that Her Most Gracious Majesty
the present Queen of Ireland and Great Britain is lineally descended.
Several of the noble warriors who came over about that period have
established great and widespread names in Ireland, among whom I may
mention the Geraldines in Leinster, the De Burgos in Connaught, and the
Butlers in Munster; and they and their descendants became, according to
the old Latin adage, “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”
Look what the intermixture of races has done for us in Ireland; the
Firbolg brought us agriculture; the Danann the chemistry and mechanics
of metal work; the Milesians beauty and governing power; the Danes
commerce and navigation; the Anglo-Normans chivalry and organized
government; and, in later times, the French emigrants taught us an
improved art of weaving.
It would be more political than ethnological were I to enter upon the
discussion of that subsequent period which would conduct us to the days
of Cromwell or the Boyne, or, perhaps, to later periods, involving
questions not pertinent to the present subject.
But I must here say a word or two respecting Irish art. In
architecture, in decorative tone-work, from archaic markings that gave
a tone and character to all subsequent art, in our beauteous crosses,
in our early metal work, in gold and bronze, carried on from the pagan
to the Christian period, and in our gorgeously illuminated MS. books,
we have got a style of art that is specially and peculiarly Irish, and
that has no exact parallel elsewhere, and was only slightly modified by
Norman or Frankish design.
Time passed, and events accumulated; political affairs intermingle,
but the anthropologist should try and keep clear of them. At the end
of the reign of Elizabeth a considerable immigration of English took
place into the South of Ireland. Subsequently the historic episode
of the “Flight of the Earls,” O’Neil and O’Donnell, brought matters
to a climax; and the early part of the reign of the first James is
memorable for the “Plantation of Ulster,” when a number of Celtic
Scots with some Saxons returned to their brethren across the water;
and about the same time the London companies occupied large portions
of this fertile province, and the early Irish race were transplanted
by the Protector to the West, as I have already stated. It must not be
imagined that this was the first immigration. The Picts passed through
Ireland, and no doubt left a remnant behind them. And in consequence
of contiguity, the Scottish people must early have settled upon our
northern coasts. When the adventurous Edward Bruce made that marvellous
inroad into Ireland at the end of the fourteenth century and advanced
into the bowels of the land, he carried with him a Gaelic population
cognate with our own people, and in all probability left a residue in
Ulster, thus leavening the original Firbolgs, Tuatha-de-Danann, and
Milesians, with the exception of the county of Donegal, which still
holds a large Celtic population speaking the old Irish tongue, and
retaining the special characters of that people as I have already
described them. This Scotic race, as it now exists in Ulster, and
of which we have specimens before us, I would sum up with three
characteristics. That they were courageous is proved by their shutting
the gates and defending the walls of Derry; that they were independent
and lovers of justice has been shown by their establishment of tenant
right; and that they were industrious and energetic is manifest by the
manufacturers of Belfast. Do not, I entreat my brethren of Ulster,
allow these manufactures to be jeopardized, either by masters or men,
by any disagreements, which must lead to the decay of the fairest and
wealthiest province and one of the most beautiful cities in this our
native land.
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner _Frome and London_.