A Literary History of Ireland
_From Earliest Times to the Present Day_
_By_
Douglas Hyde, LL.D., M.R.I.A.
[An Craoibhín Aoibhinn]
[1899]
[Frontispiece: CASE OF MOLAISE'S GOSPELS]
DEDICATION.
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE GAELIC LEAGUE, THE ONLY BODY IN IRELAND WHICH
APPEARS TO REALISE THE FACT THAT IRELAND HAS A PAST, HAS A HISTORY, HAS
A LITERATURE, AND THE ONLY BODY IN IRELAND WHICH SEEKS TO RENDER THE
PRESENT A RATIONAL CONTINUATION OF THE PAST,
I DEDICATE
THIS ATTEMPT AT A REVIEW OF THAT LITERATURE WHICH DESPITE ITS PRESENT
NEGLECTED POSITION THEY FEEL AND KNOW TO BE A TRUE POSSESSION OF
NATIONAL IMPORTANCE.
_DO CHONNRADH NA GAELDHEILGE._
_A Chonnradh chaoin, a Chonnradh chóir_,
_Rinn obair mhór gan ór gan cabhair_,
_Glacaidh an cíos a dlighim daoibh_,
_Guidhim, glacaidh go caoimh mo leabhar._
_A cháirde cléibh is iomdha lá_
_D'oibrigheamar go breágh le chéile_,
_Gan clampar, agus fós gan éad_,
_'S dá mhéad ár dteas', gan puinn di-chéille._
_Chuireabhar súil 'san bhfear bhi dall_,
_Thugabhar cluas don fhear bhi bodhar_,
_Glacaidh an cíos do bheirim daoibh_,
_----Guidhim, glacaidh go caoimh mo leabhar._
PREFACE
The present volume has been styled--in order to make it a companion
book to other of Mr. Unwin's publications--a "Literary History of
Ireland," but a "Literary History of Irish Ireland" would be a more
correct title, for I have abstained altogether from any analysis or
even mention of the works of Anglicised Irishmen of the last two
centuries. Their books, as those of Farquhar, of Swift, of Goldsmith,
of Burke, find, and have always found, their true and natural place in
every history of _English_ literature that has been written, whether by
Englishmen themselves or by foreigners.
My object in this volume has been to give a general view of the
literature produced by the Irish-speaking Irish, and to reproduce
by copious examples some of its more salient, or at least more
characteristic features.
In studying the literature itself, both that of the past and that
of the present, one of the things which has most forcibly struck me
is the marked absence of the purely personal note, the absence of
great predominating names, or of great predominating works; while
just as striking is the almost universal diffusion of a traditional
literary taste and a love of literature in the abstract amongst all
classes of the native Irish. The whole history of Irish literature
shows how warmly the efforts of all who assisted in its production
were appreciated. The greatest English bard of the Elizabethan age
was allowed by his countrymen to perish of poverty in the streets
of London, while the pettiest chief of the meanest clan would have
been proud to lay his hearth and home and a share of his wealth
at the disposal of any Irish "ollamh." The love for literature of
a traditional type, in song, in poem, in saga, was, I think, more
nearly universal in Ireland than in any country of western Europe,
and hence that which appears to me to be of most value in ancient
Irish literature is not that whose authorship is known, but rather
the mass of traditional matter which seems to have grown up almost
spontaneously, and slowly shaped itself into the literary possession of
an entire nation. An almost universal acquaintance with a traditional
literature was a leading trait amongst the Irish down to the last
century, when every barony and almost every townland still possessed
its poet and reciter, and song, recitation, music, and oratory were
the recognised amusements of nearly the whole population. That
population in consequence, so far as wit and readiness of language and
power of expression went, had almost all attained a remarkably high
level, without however producing any one of a commanding eminence. In
collecting the floating literature of the present day also, the unknown
traditional poems and the Ossianic ballads and the stories of unknown
authorship are of greater value than the pieces of bards who are known
and named. In both cases, that of the ancient and that of the modern
Irish, all that is of most value as literature, was the property and
in some sense the product of the people at large, and it exercised
upon them a most striking and potent influence. And this influence may
be traced amongst the Irish-speaking population even at the present
day, who have, I may almost say, one and all, a remarkable command of
language and a large store of traditional literature learned by heart,
which strongly differentiates them from the Anglicised products of the
"National Schools" to the bulk of whom poetry is an unknown term, and
amongst whom there exists little or no trace of traditional Irish
feelings, or indeed seldom of any feelings save those prompted by (when
they read it) a weekly newspaper.
The exact extent of the Irish literature still remaining in manuscript
has never been adequately determined. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has
noted 133 still existing manuscripts, all copied before the year 1600,
and the whole number which he has found existing chiefly in public
libraries on the Continent and in the British Isles amounts to 1,009.
But many others have since been discovered, and great numbers must be
scattered throughout the country in private libraries, and numbers more
are perishing or have recently perished of neglect since the "National
Schools" were established. Jubainville quotes a German as estimating
that the literature produced by the Irish before the seventeenth
century, and still existing, would fill a thousand octavo volumes. It
is hard to say, however, how much of this could be called literature
in a true sense of the word, since law, medicine, and science were
probably included in the calculation. O'Curry, O'Longan, and O'Beirne
Crowe catalogued something more than half the manuscripts in the Royal
Irish Academy, and the catalogue of contents filled thirteen volumes
containing 3,448 pages. To these an alphabetic index of the pieces
contained was made in three volumes, and an index of the principal
names, etc., in thirteen volumes more. From a rough calculation, based
on an examination of these, I should place the number of different
pieces catalogued by them at about ten thousand, ranging from single
quatrains or even single sentences to long poems and epic sagas. But
in the Academy alone, there are nearly as many more manuscripts which
still remain uncatalogued.
It is probably owing to the extreme difficulty of arriving at any
certain conclusions as to the real extent of Irish literature that no
attempt at a consecutive history of it has ever previously been made.
Despite this difficulty, there is no doubt that such a work would long
ago have been attempted had it not been for the complete breakdown and
destruction of Irish Ireland which followed the Great Famine, and the
unexpected turn given to Anglo-Irish literature by the efforts of the
Young Ireland School to compete with the English in their own style,
their own language, and their own models.
* * * * *
For the many sins of omission and commission in this volume I must
claim the reader's kind indulgence; nobody can be better aware of
its shortcomings than I myself, and the only excuse that I can plead
is that over so much of the ground I have had to be my own pioneer.
I confidently hope, however, that in the renewed interest now being
taken in our native civilisation and native literature some scholar far
more fully equipped for his task than I, may soon render this volume
superfluous by an ampler, juster, and more artistic treatment of what
is really a subject of great national importance.
National or important, however, it does not appear to be considered in
these islands, where outside of the University of Oxford--which has
given noble assistance to the cause of Celtic studies--sympathisers
are both few and far between. Indeed, I fancy that anybody who has
applied himself to the subject of Celtic literature would have a good
deal to tell about the condescending contempt with which his studies
have been regarded by his fellows. "I shall not easily forget," said
Dr. Petrie, addressing a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy upon that
celebrated example of early Celtic workmanship the Tara Brooch, "that
when in reference to the existence of a similar remain of ancient Irish
art, I had first the honour to address myself to a meeting of this
high institution, I had to encounter the incredulous astonishment of
the illustrious Dr. Brinkley" [of Trinity College, President of the
Academy] "which was implied in the following remark, 'Surely, sir, you
do not mean to tell us that there exists the slightest evidence to
prove that the Irish had any acquaintance with the arts of civilised
life anterior to the arrival in Ireland of the English?' nor shall I
forget that in the scepticism which this remark implied nearly all
the members present very obviously participated." Exactly the same
feeling which Dr. Petrie encountered was prevalent in my own _alma
mater_ in the eighties, where one of our most justly popular lecturers
said--in gross ignorance but perfect good faith--that the sooner the
Irish recognised that before the arrival of Cromwell they were utter
savages, the better it would be for everybody concerned! Indeed, it was
only the other day that one of our ablest and best known professors
protested publicly in the _Contemporary Review_ against the enormity
of an Irish bishop signing so moderate, and I am sure so reasonable
a document, as a petition asking to have Irish children who knew no
English, taught through the medium of the language which they spoke.
Last year, too, another most learned professor of Dublin University
went out of his way to declare that "the mass of material preserved
[in the Irish manuscripts] is out of all proportion to its value as
'literature,'" and to insist that "in the enormous mass of Irish MSS.
preserved, there is absolutely nothing that in the faintest degree
rivals the splendours of the vernacular literatures of the Middle
Ages," that "their value as literature is but small," and that "for
educational purposes save in this limited sense [of linguistic study]
they are wholly unsuited," winding up with the extraordinary assertion
that "there is no solid ground for supposing that the tales current at
the time of our earliest MSS. were much more numerous than the tales of
which fragments have come down to us." As to the civilisation of the
early Irish upon which Petrie insisted, there is no longer room for the
very shadow of a doubt; but whether the literature which they produced
is so utterly valueless as this, and so utterly devoid of all interest
as "literature," the reader of this volume must judge for himself.
I should be glad also if he were to institute a comparison between
"the splendours of the vernacular literatures" of Germany, England,
Spain, and even Italy and France, prior to the year 1000, and that of
the Irish, for I am very much mistaken if in their early development
of rhyme, alone, in their masterly treatment of sound, and in their
absolutely unique and marvellous system of verse-forms, the Irish will
not be found to have created for themselves a place alone and apart in
the history of European literatures.
I hardly know a sharper contrast in the history of human thought than
the true traditional literary instinct which four years ago prompted
fifty thousand poor hard-working Irishmen in the United States to
contribute each a dollar towards the foundation of a Celtic chair in
the Catholic University of Washington in the land of their adoption,
choosing out a fit man and sending him to study under the great
Celticists of Germany, in the hope that his scholarship might one day
reflect credit upon the far-off country of their birth; while in that
very country, by far the richest college in the British Isles, one of
the wealthiest universities in the world, allows its so-called "Irish
professorship" to be an adjunct of its Divinity School, founded _and
paid_ by a society for--the conversion of Irish Roman Catholics through
the medium of their own language!
This is the more to be regretted because had the unique manuscript
treasures now shut up in cases in the underground room of Trinity
College Library, been deposited in any other seat of learning in
Europe, in Paris, Rome, Vienna, or Berlin, there would long ago
have been trained up scholars to read them, a catalogue of them
would have been published, and funds would have been found to edit
them. At present the Celticists of Europe are placed under the great
disadvantage of having to come over to Dublin University to do the work
that it is not doing for itself.
It is fortunate however that the spread of education within the last
few years (due perhaps partly to the establishment of the Royal
University, partly to the effects of Intermediate Education, and partly
to the numerous literary societies which working upon more or less
national lines have spontaneously sprung up amongst the Irish people
themselves) has, by taking the prestige of literary monopoly out of
the hands of Dublin University, to a great extent undone the damage
which had so long been caused to native scholarship by its attitude.
It was the more necessary to do this, because the very fact that it
had never taken the trouble to publish even a printed catalogue of its
Irish manuscripts--as the British Museum authorities have done--was by
many people interpreted, I believe, as a sort of declaration of their
worthlessness.
* * * * *
In dealing with Irish proper names I have experienced the same
difficulty as every one else who undertakes to treat of Irish history.
Some native names, especially those with "mortified" or aspirated
letters, look so unpronounceable as to prove highly disconcerting to
an English reader. The system I have followed is to leave the Irish
orthography untouched, but in cases where the true pronunciation
differed appreciably from the sound which an English reader would
give the letters, I have added a phonetic rendering of the Irish form
in brackets, as "Muighmheadhon [Mwee-va-on], Lughaidh [Lewy]." There
are a few names such as Ossian, Mève, Donough, Murrough and others,
which have been almost adopted into English, and these forms I have
generally retained--perhaps wrongly--but my desire has been to throw
no unnecessary impediments in the way of an English reader; I have
always given the true Irish form at least once. Where the word "mac"
is not part of a proper name, but really means "son of" as in Finn
mac Cúmhail, I have printed it with a small "m"; and in such names as
"Cormac mac Art" I have usually not inflected the last word, but have
written "Art" not "Airt," so as to avoid as far as possible confusing
the English reader.
I very much regret that I have found it impossible, owing to the brief
space of time between printing and publication, to submit the following
chapters to any of my friends for their advice and criticism. I beg,
however, to here express my best thanks to my friend Father Edmund
Hogan, S.J., for the numerous memoranda which he was kind enough to
give me towards the last chapter of this book, that on the history of
Irish as a spoken language, and also to express my regret that the
valuable critical edition of the Book of Hymns by Dr. Atkinson and Dr.
Bernard, M. Bertrand's "Religion Gauloise," and Miss Hull's interesting
volume on "Cuchullin Saga," which should be read in connection with my
chapters on the Red Branch cycle, appeared too late for me to make use
of.
RÁTH-TREAGH, OIDHCHE SAMHNA
MDCCCXCIX.
CONTENTS
I. WHO WERE THE CELTS?
II. EARLIEST ALLUSIONS TO IRELAND FROM FOREIGN SOURCES
III. EARLY HISTORY DRAWN FROM NATIVE SOURCES
IV. HOW FAR CAN NATIVE SOURCES BE RELIED ON?
V. THE PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND EARLY PANTHEON
VI. EVIDENCE OF TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY
VII. DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
VIII. CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN
IX. DRUIDISM
X. THE IRISH ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH
XI. EARLY USE OF LETTERS, OGAM AND ROMAN
XII. EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION
XIII. ST. PATRICK AND THE EARLY MISSIONARIES
XIV. ST. BRIGIT
XV. COLUMCILLE
XVI. THE FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND
XVII. THEIR FAME AND TEACHING
XVIII. CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER
XIX. THE BARDIC SCHOOLS
XX. THE SUGGESTIVELY PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITERATURE
XXI. THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS
XXII. EARLY SAGA AND ROMANCE
XXIII. THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE
XXIV. THE HEROIC OR RED BRANCH CYCLE--CUCHULAIN
XXV. DÉIRDRE
XXVI. THE TÁIN BO CHUAILGNE
XXVII. THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN
XXVIII. OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH
XXIX. THE FENIAN CYCLE
XXX. MISCELLANEOUS ROMANCE
XXXI. PRE-DANISH POETS
XXXII. THE DANISH PERIOD
XXXIII. FROM CLONTARF TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST
XXXIV. SUDDEN ARREST OF IRISH DEVELOPMENT
XXXV. FOUR CENTURIES OF DECAY
XXXVI. DEVELOPMENT OF IRISH POETRY
XXXVII. THE OSSIANIC POEMS
XXXVIII. THE LAST OF THE CLASSIC POETS
XXXIX. RISE OF A NEW SCHOOL
XL. PROSE WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
XLI. THE IRISH ANNALS
XLII. THE BREHON LAWS
XLIII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
XLIV. THE HISTORY OF IRISH AS A SPOKEN LANGUAGE
INDEX
Literary History of Ireland
CHAPTER I
WHO WERE THE CELTS?
Who were those Celts, of whose race the Irish are to-day perhaps
the most striking representatives, and upon whose past the ancient
literature of Ireland can best throw light?
Like the Greeks, like the Romans, like the English, this great people,
which once ruled over a fourth of Europe, sprang from a small beginning
and from narrow confines. The earliest home of the race from which
they spread their conquering arms may be said, roughly speaking, to
have lain along both banks of the upper Danube, and in that portion of
Europe comprised to-day in the kingdoms of Bavaria and Würtemberg and
the Grand Duchy of Baden, with the country drained by the river Maine
to the east of the Rhine basin. In other words, the Celtic race and the
Celtic language sprang from the heart of what is to-day modern Germany,
and issuing thence established for over two centuries a vast empire
held together by the ties of political unity and a common language over
all North-west and Central Europe.
The vast extent of the territory conquered and colonised by the Celts,
and the unity of their speech, may be conjectured from an examination
of the place-names of Celtic origin which either still exist or figure
as having existed in European history.[1]
The Celts seem to have been first known to Greek--that is, to European
history--under the semi-mythological name of the Hyperboreans,[2]
an appellation which remained in force from the sixth to the fourth
century before Christ. The name Celt or Kelt[3] first makes its
appearance towards the year 500 B.C., in the geography of Hecatæus of
Miletum, and is thereafter used successively by Herodotus, Xenophon,
Plato, and Aristotle, and from that time forward it seems to have been
employed by the Greek scholars and historians as a generic term whereby
to designate the Celts of the Continent.
Soon afterwards the word Galatian came also into use,[4] and was
used as a synonym for Celt. In the first century B.C., however,
the discovery was made that the Germans and the Celts, who had
been hitherto confounded in the popular estimation, were really
two different peoples, a fact which Julius Cæsar was almost the
first to point out. Diodorus Siculus, accordingly, struck by this
discovery, translates Cæsar's _Gallus_ or Gaul by the word Celt, and
his _Germanus_ or German by the word Galatian, while the other Greek
historian, Dion Cassius, does the exact opposite, calling the Celts
"Galatians," and the Germans "Celts"! The examples thus set, however,
were the result of ignorance and were never followed. Plutarch treats
the two words as identical, as do Strabo, Pausanias and all other Greek
writers.
The word Celt itself is probably of very ancient origin, and was,
no doubt, in use 800 or 1,000 years before Christ.[5] It cannot,
however, be proved that it is a generic Celtic name for the Celtic
race, and none of the present Celtic-speaking races have preserved it
in their dialects. Jubainville derives it, very doubtfully I should
think, from a Celtic root found in the old Irish verb "ar-CHELL-aim"
("I plunder") and the old substantive to-CHELL ("victory"); while he
derives Galatian from a Celtic substantive now represented by the Irish
_gal_[6] ("bravery"). This latter word "Galatian" is one which the
German peoples never adopted, and it appears to have only come into use
subsequently to their revolt against their Celtic masters. After the
break-up of the Celtic Empire it was employed to designate the eastern
portion of the race, while the inhabitants of Gaul were called Celtæ
and those of Spain Celtici or Celtiberi, but the Greeks called all
indifferently by the common name of Galatians.
The Romans termed the Celts Galli, or Gauls, but they used the
geographical term Gallia, or Gaul, in a restricted sense, first for
the country inhabited by the Celts in North Italy upon their own side
of the Alps, and after that for the Celtic territory conquered by Rome
upon the other side of the Alps.
The Germans appear to have called the Celts Wolah, a name derived from
the Celtic tribe the Volcæ, who were so long their neighbours, out of
which appellation came the Anglo-Saxon Wealh and the modern English
"Welsh."
There is one curious characteristic distinguishing, from its very
earliest appearance, the Celtic language from its Indo-European
sisters: this is the loss of the letter _p_ both at the beginning of a
word and when it is placed between two vowels.[7] This dropping of the
letter _p_ had already given to the Celtic language a special character
of its own, at the time when breaking forth from their earliest home
the Celts crossed the Rhine and proceeded, perhaps a thousand years
before Christ, to establish themselves in the British Isles. The Celts
who first colonised Ireland said, for instance, _atir_ for _pater_,
but they had not yet experienced, nor did they ever experience, that
curious linguistic change which at a later time is assumed to have come
over the Celts of the Continent and caused them to not only recover
their faculty of pronouncing _p_, but to actually _change into a p_ the
Indo-European guttural _q_. Their descendants, the modern Irish, to
this very day retain the primitive word-forms which had their origin
a thousand years before Christ. So much so is this the case that the
Welsh antiquary Lhuyd, writing in the last century, asserted, and with
truth, that there were "scarce any words in the Irish besides what are
borrowed from the Latin or some other language that begin with _p_,
insomuch that in an ancient alphabetical vocabulary I have by me, that
letter is omitted."[8] Even with the introduction of Christianity and
the knowledge of Latin the ancient Irish persisted in their repugnance
to this letter, and made of the Latin _Pasch-a_ (Easter) the word
_Cásg_, and of the Latin _purpur-a_ the Irish _curcur_.
But meantime the Continental Celts had either--as Jubainville seems to
think--recovered their faculty for pronouncing _p_, or else--as Rhys
believes--been overrun by other semi-Celts who, owing to some strong
non-Aryan intermixture, found _q_ repugnant to them, and changed it
into _p_. This appears to have taken place prior to the year 500 B.C.,
for it was at about this time that they, having established themselves
round the Seine and Loire and north of the Garonne, overran Spain,
carrying everywhere with them this comparatively newly adopted _p_,
as we can see by their tribal and place-names. They appeared in Italy
sometime about 400 B.C.,[9] founded their colony in Galatia about 279
B.C., and afterwards sent another swarm into Great Britain, and to all
these places they bore with them this obtrusive letter in place of the
primitive _q_, the Irish alone resisting it, for the Irish represented
a first off-shoot from the cradle of the race, an off-shoot which had
left it at a time when _q_ represented _p_, and not _p q_. Hence it
is that Welsh is so full of the _p_ sound which the primitive Irish
would never adopt, as a glance at some of the commonest words in both
languages will show.
English: Son tree head person worm feather everyone.
Welsh: Ma_p_ _p_renn _p_en ne_p_ _p_ryv _p_luv _p_au_p_.
Irish: Ma_c_ _c_rann _c_enn ne_ch_ _c_ruiv _c_luv[10] _c_á_ch_.
So that even the Irish St. Ciaran becomes Piaran in Wales.[11]
The Celts invaded Italy about the year 400 B.C., and stormed Rome a few
years later. They were at this time at the height of their power. From
about the year 500 to 300 B.C. they appear to have possessed a very
high degree of political unity, to have been led by a single king,[12]
and to have followed with signal success a wise and consistent external
policy. The most important events in their history during this period
were the three successful wars which they waged--first against the
Carthaginians, out of whose hands they wrested the peninsula of Spain;
secondly in Italy against the Etruscans, which ended in their making
themselves masters of the north of that country; and thirdly against
the Illyrians along the Danube. All of these wars were followed by
large accessions of territory. One of the most striking features of
their external policy during this period was their close alliance with
the Greeks, whose commercial rivalry with the Phœnicians naturally
brought them into relations with the Celtic enemies of Carthaginian
power in Spain, relations from which they reaped much advantage, since
the necessity of making head against the Celtic invaders of Spain must
have seriously crippled the Carthaginian power, at the very time when,
as ally of the Persians, she attacked the Greeks in Sicily, and lost
the battle of Himera on the same day that the Persians lost that of
Salamis. Greek writers of the fourth century speak of the Celts as
practising justice, of having nearly the same manners and customs as
the Greeks, and they notice their hospitality to Grecian strangers.[13]
Their war with the Etruscans in North Italy completed the ruin of an
hereditary enemy of the Greeks,[14] and their war with the Illyrians
no doubt largely strengthened the hands of Philip, the father of
Alexander the Great, and enabled him to throw off the tribute which the
Illyrians had imposed upon Macedonia. Nor did Alexander himself embark
upon his expedition into Asia without having first assured himself
of the friendship of the Celts. He received their ambassadors with
cordiality, called them his friends, and received from them a promise
of alliance. "If we fulfil not our engagement," said they, "may the sky
falling upon us crush us, may the earth opening swallow us up, may the
sea overflowing its borders drown us," and we may well believe that
these were the very words used by the Celtic chieftains when we find in
an Irish saga committed to writing about the seventh century[15] the
Ulster heroes swearing to their king when he wished to leave his wing
of the battle to repel the attacks of a rival, and saying, "heaven is
over us and earth is under us and sea is round about us, and unless
the firmament fall with its star-showers upon the face of the earth,
or unless the earth be destroyed by earthquake, or unless the ridgy,
blue-bordered sea come over the expanse (?) of life, we shall not give
one inch of ground."
While the ambassadors were drinking the young king asked them what
was the thing they most feared, thinking, says the historian, that
they would say himself, but their answer was quite different. "We
fear no one," they said; "there is only one thing that we fear, which
is, that the heavens may fall upon us; but the friendship of such a
man as you we value more than everything," whereat the king, no doubt
considerably astonished, remarked in a low voice to his courtiers what
a vainglorious people these Celts were.[16]
All through the life of Alexander the Celts and Macedonians continued
on good terms, and amongst the many envoys who came to Babylon to
salute the youthful conqueror of Persia, appeared their representatives
also. Some forty years later, however, this good understanding came to
an end, and the Celts overthrew and slew in battle the Macedonian ruler
Ptolemy Keraunos about 280 B.C.
With the Romans, as with the Greeks, the relations of the Celts were,
during the fifth and fourth century B.C., upon the whole friendly, and
their hostility to the Etruscans must have tended naturally to render
them and the Romans mutual allies. The battle of Allia, fought on the
18th of July, 390 B.C., and the storming of Rome three days later, were
a punishment inflicted on the Romans by the Celts in their exasperation
at seeing the Roman ambassadors, contrary to the right of nations,
assisting their enemies the Etruscans under the walls of Clusium, but
these events appear to have been followed by a long peace.[17]
It is only in the third century B.C. that the hitherto victorious
and widely-colonising Celts appear to have laid aside their internal
political unity and to have lost their hitherto victorious tactics. The
Germans, over whom they had for centuries domineered and whom they had
deprived of their independence, rise against them about 300 B.C., and
drive out their former conquerors from between the Rhine and the Black
Sea, from between the Elbe and the Maine. The Celts fall out with the
Romans and are beaten at Sentinum in 295 B.C.; they ally themselves
with their former enemies the Etruscans, and are again beaten in 283
B.C. and lose territory. They cease their alliance with the Greeks, and
are guilty of the shameful folly of pillaging the temple of Delphi,
an act of brigandage from which no good results could come, and from
which no acquisition of territory resulted. They established a colony
in Asia Minor in 278 B.C., successfully indeed, but absolutely cut
off from the rest of the Celtic Empire, and such as in any federation
of the Celtic tribes could only be a source of weakness. Again, about
the same time, we see Celts driving out and supplanting Celts in the
districts between the Rhine, the Seine, and the Marne. In 262 B.C. we
find a body of three or four thousand Celts assisting their former foes
the Carthaginians at the siege of Agrigentum, where they perish. Many
of the Celts now took foreign service. It was at their instigation that
the war of mercenaries broke out, which at one time brought Carthage to
the very verge of destruction.
Only two centuries and a half, as Jubainville remarks, had elapsed
since the Celts had conquered Spain from the Phœnicians, and only
a hundred and thirty years since they had taken Rome, but their
victorious political unity had already begun to break up and crumble,
and now Rome and Carthage commenced that deadly duel in which the
victor was destined to impose his sway upon the ruins of the Celtic
Empire as well as on that of Alexander--impose it, in fact, upon all
the world then known to the Greeks, except only the extreme east.
One of the circumstances which must have helped most materially to
break up the Celtic Empire was the successful revolt of the Germans
against their former masters. The relation of the German to the Celtic
tribes is very obscure and puzzling. The ancient Greek historians of
the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries B.C., who tell us so much about
the Celts, know absolutely nothing of the Germans. As early as the
year 500 B.C. Hecatæus of Miletum is able to name three peoples and
two cities of India. But of the Germans, who were so much nearer to
Marseilles than the nearest point of India is to the most eastern Greek
colony, he says not a word. Ephorus, in the fourth century, knows of
only one people to the extreme west, and they are the Celts, and their
immediate neighbours are the Scythians. He knows of no intermediate
state or nation. Where, then, were the Germans?
The explanation lies, according to Jubainville, in this, that even
before this period the German had been conquered by the Celt and become
subordinated to him. The Greek historians knew of no independent state
bordering upon the Scythians except the Celtic Empire alone, because
none such existed. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and perhaps
as early as the seventh and sixth, the Germans had been subdued and
had lost their independence. How and when this took place we can only
conjecture, but we have philological reasons for believing that the two
races had come into mutual contact at a very early date, probably as
early as the eleventh century B.C. The early German name for the Rhine,
for instance, _Rīno-s_, comes directly from the primitive Indo-European
form _Reino-s_ and not from the Celtic _Rēno-s_, which shows that the
Germans had reached that river at a time when the Celts who lived along
it still called it Reinos, not Rēnos. The Celts afterwards changed the
primitive _ei_ into _ē_, and from their carrying the form _réin_[18]
with them into Ireland, they had probably done this as early as the
ninth or tenth century B.C., for, as we have shown, the Celts who
inhabited Ireland have preserved the very oldest forms of the Celtic
speech.
On the other hand the Celts always called that Germanic tribe who
accompanied the Cimbri by the name of Teutoni, thus showing that they
first came in contact with them at a date anterior to the phonetic law
which introduced the so-called explosive consonants into German, and
which caused the root Teutono (preserved intact by the Celts) to be
turned into Theudono. From this it follows that the German and Celtic
peoples were in touch with one another at a very remote period.
The long subordination of the German to the Celt has left its marks
deeply behind it, for his "language had remained uncultivated during
ages of slavery, had been reduced to the condition of a patois, and had
forced the explosive consonants to submit to modifications of sound,
the analogues of which appear in the Latin and Celtic languages during
their decadence many centuries after those modifications of sound had
deformed the language of the Germans."[19]
"In fine the Germanic has created for itself a place apart, amongst
the other Indo-European languages, though the excessive poverty of
its conjugation, which only knows three tenses--the present tense and
two past tenses--and which has lost in particular the imperfect or
secondary present, the future, and the sigmatic aorist, and which has
not had strength to regain those losses by the aid of new composite
tenses, with the exception of its dental preterite. The Celtic has
preserved the three tenses which the Germanic has lost."[20]
The Celtic language is in a manner allied to that of Italy, as is
shown by its _grammar_, and out of all the circle of Indo-European
languages the Latin comes nearest to it, and it and the Latin possess
certain grammatical characteristics in common which are absent from
the others.[21] To account for these we may assume what may be called
an Italo-Celtic period, prior, probably, to the establishment of the
Italian races in Italy, perhaps some twelve hundred years before Christ.
On the other hand such mutual influence as Celtic and German have
exercised upon each other is restricted merely to the _vocabularies_ of
the languages, for when these races came in contact with each other the
two tongues had been already completely formed, and the grammar of the
one could no longer be affected by that of the other.
That there existed a kind of Celto-Germanic civilisation is easily
proved by the number of words common to each language which are not
found in the other Indo-European tongues, or which if they occur in
them, are found bearing a different meaning. The two peoples, the
dominant Celts and the subject Germans, obeyed the same chiefs and
fought in the same armies, and naturally a certain number of words
became common to both. It is noticeable, however, that none of the
terms relating to either gods or priests or religious ceremonies bear
in either language the slightest resemblance to one another. It was
probably this difference of religion which preserved the conquered
people from being assimilated, and which was ultimately the cause of
the successful uprising of the servile tribes.
The words which are common to the Germanic and the Celtic languages
belong either to the art of government, political institutions, and
law, or else to the art of war. These d'Arbois de Jubainville divides
into two classes--those which can be phonetically proved to be of
Celtic origin, and those which, though almost certainly of Celtic
origin, yet cannot be proved to be so to actual demonstration. Such
important German words[22] as _Reich_ and _Amt_ are beyond all doubt
Celtic loan-words, as are probably such familiar vocables as _Bann,
frei, Eid, Geisel, leihen, Erbe, Werth,_[23] all terms relating to
law and government, imposed on or borrowed by the conquered Germans.
From the Celts come also all such words concerning war and fighting as
are common to both nations, such as _Held, Heer, Sieg, Beute_. From
the Celts too come names of domiciles, as _Burg, Dorf, Zaun,_ also
of localities as _Land, Flur, Furt,_ and the English _wood_, and of
domestic aids as _Pferd, Beil,_ and the Anglo-Saxon _Vîr_ (a torque).
They too seem to have been the first in Northern Europe to have
practised the art of medicine, for from the Celtic comes the Gothic
_lēkeis_--English _leech_.[24] Certain other domestic words, such as
_Eisen, Loth,_ and _Leder_, both races have in common.
Despite the long subjection of the Germans they never lost their
language, nor were they assimilated by the conquering race, a fate from
which they were probably preserved, as we have said, by the complete
difference of their sacred customs. There is hardly one name in all
the Teutonic theogony which even faintly resembles a Celtic one.[25]
Their funeral rites were different, the Germans burning, but the
Celts burying their dead. Their systems of priesthood were absolutely
different, that of the Celts being always an institution distinct from
the kingship, while that of the Germans was for centuries vested in the
head of the tribe or family. The priests of the Germans, even after the
functions of priesthood had been severed from those of kingship, still
exercised criminal jurisdiction, and even in the army a soldier could
not be punished without their sanction. On the other hand the milder
druids of the Celts appear to have never taken part in the judgment of
delinquents against the State. Cæsar makes no mention of their ever
acting as judges in criminal cases. The culprit guilty or treason was
not put to death by them but by the citizens--_ab civitate_.[26]
It was about the year 300 B.C. that the German tribes, so long
incorporated with the Celts, at last rose against their masters and
broke their yoke from off their necks. They succeeded in dislodging
the Celts from the country which lies between the Rhine and the North
Sea, between the Elbe and the basin of the Maine. It was in consequence
of this blow that the Celtic Belgæ were obliged to withdraw from the
right bank of the Rhine to the left, and to occupy the country between
it, the Seine, and the Marne, whilst other tribes settled themselves
along the Rhine, and others again marched upon Asia Minor and founded
their famous colony of Galatia in the extreme east of Europe, to whom,
over three centuries later, St. Paul addressed his epistle, and whose
descendants were found by St. Jerome in the fourth century still
speaking Celtic.[27]
It is no longer necessary to follow the fortunes of the Continental
Celts, to trace the history of their Galatian colony, to tell how they
lost Spain, to recount the exploits of Marius and Sylla, the wars of
Cæsar, the heroic struggle of Vercingetorix, the division of Gaul by
Octavius, the oppression of the Romans, and finally the inroads of the
barbaric hordes of Visigoths, Burgundians, and Francs. It is sufficient
to say that already in the third century of our era Gaul had lost every
trace of its ancient Celtic organisation, and in its laws, habits, and
civil administration had become purely Roman. The upper classes had,
like the Irish upper classes of this and of the last century, thrown
aside every vestige of Gaulish nationality, and piqued themselves upon
the perfection with which they had Romanised themselves, as the Irish
upper classes do upon the thoroughness with which they have become
Anglicised. They threw aside their Gaulish names to adopt others more
consonant to Latin ears, as the Irish are doing at this moment. Above
all they prided themselves upon speaking only the language of their
conquerors, and like so many of the Irish of to-day they derided their
ancient language as _lingua rustica_. It, however, banished from the
mouths of the nobles and officials, lived on in the villages and rural
parts of Gaul, as it has to this day done in Ireland, until the sixth
century, when it finally gave ground and retired into the mountains and
wastes of Armorica, where it coalesced with the Welsh which the large
colony of British brought in with them when flying from the Saxon, and
where it, in the Cymraeg form of it, is still spoken by a couple of
million people.[28]
[1] Take, for instance, the Celtic word _dúno-n_, Latinised _dunum_,
which is the Irish _dún_ "castle" or "fortress," so common in Irish
topography, as in Dunmore, Dunsink, Shandun, &c. There are over a dozen
instances of this word in France, nearly as many in Great Britain, more
than half a dozen in Spain, eight or nine in Germany, three in Austria,
a couple in the Balkan States, three more in Switzerland, one at least
(Lug-dun, now Leyden) in the Low Countries, one in Portugal, one in
Piedmont, one in South Russia.
Celtic was once spoken from Ireland to the Black Sea, although the
population who can now speak Celtic dialects is not more than three or
four millions. As for Celtic archæological remains "on les trouve tant
dans nos musées nationaux (en particulier au Musée de Saint Germain)
que dans les collections publiques de la Hongrie, de l'Autriche, de la
Hesse, de la Bohême, du Würtemburg, du pays de Bade, de la Suisse, de
l'Italie." (Bertrand and Reinach, p. 3).
[2] ϒπερβορείος.
[3] Κελτός. The Greeks, the Latins, and the Celts themselves pronounced
Kelt, as do the modern Germans. It is against the genius of the French
language to pronounce the _c_ hard, but not against that of the
English, who consequently had better say Kelt.
[4] Γαλατης.
[5] As is proved, according to Jubainville, by its having made its way
into German before the so-called Laut-verschiebung took place, to the
laws of which it submitted, for out of Celtis, the feminine form of it,
they have made Childis, as in the Frank-Merovingian Bruni-Childis or
Brunhild, and the old Scandinavian Hildr, the war-goddess.
[6] This was actually a living word as recently as ten years ago. I
knew an old man who often used it in the sense of "spirit," "fire,"
"energy": he used to say _cuir gal ann_, meaning do it bravely,
energetically. This was in the county Roscommon. I cannot say that I
have heard the word elsewhere.
[7] Thus the Greek ὑπέρ, Latin s-uper, German über is _ver_ in ancient
Celtic (_for_ in Old Irish, _ar_ in the modern language), platanus
becomes litano-s (Irish leathan), παρά becomes _are_, and so on.
[8] Lhuyd's "Comparative Etymology," title i. p. 21. Out of over 700
pages in O'Reilly's Irish dictionary only twelve are occupied with the
letter _p_.
[9] Probably for the second time. MM. Bertrand and Reinach seem to
have proved that the Cisalpine peoples of North Italy who were under
the dominion of the Etruscans were Celtic in manners and costume, and
probably in language also. _See_ "Les Celtes dans les vallées du Pô et
du Danube." Chapter on La Gaule Cisalpine.
[10] Rather "cruimh" and "clumh," the _mh_ being pronounced _v_.
[11] In this matter of labialism Greek stands to some small extent with
regard to Latin, as Welsh to Irish. Nor is Latin itself exempt from it;
compare the labialised Latin _sept-em_ with the more primitive Irish
_secht_.
[12] See Livy's account of Ambicatus, who seems to have been a kind
of Celtic Charlemagne, or more probably the equivalent of the Irish
_ard-righ_. Livy probably exaggerates his importance.
[13] Cf. the remarkable verses quoted by d'Arbois de Jubainville of
Scymnus of Chio, following Ephorus:
"Χρῶνται δὲ Κελτοὶ τοῖς ἔθεσιν ῾Ελληνικοῖς
ἔχοντες οἰκειότατα πρὸς τὴν ῾Ελλάδα
διὰ τὰς ὑποδοχὰς τῶν ἐπιξενουμένων."
[14] By this war the newly-arrived bands drove out the Etruscan
aristocracy and took its place, ruling over a population of what were
really their Celtic kinsmen.
[15] The Táin Bo Chuailgne.
[16] [Κελτοὺς] ἀπέπεμψε, τοσοῦτον ὑπειπὠν ὅτι ἀλαζόνεσ Κελτοί (Arrian,
bk. i. chap. iv.).
[17] _See_ Livy, book v. chap, xxxvi.: "Ibi, jam urgentibus Romanam
urbem fatis, legati contra jus gentium arma capiunt, nec id clam esse
potuit, quum ante signa Etruscorum tres nobilissimi fortissimi-que
Romanæ juventutis pugnarent. Tantum eminebat peregrina virtus. Quin
etiam Q. Fabius erectus extra aciem equo, ducem Gallorum, ferociter in
ipsa signa Etruscorum incursantem, per latus transfixum hastâ, occidit:
spolia-que ejus legentem Galli agnovere, perque totem aciem Romanum
legatum esse signum datum est. Omissâ inde in Clusinos irâ, receptui
canunt minantes Romanis." It was the refusal of the Romans to give
satisfaction for this outrage that first brought the Gauls upon them.
Jubainville rejects as fabulous the self-contradicting accounts of Livy
about Roman wars with the Celts during the next forty years after the
storming of Rome.
[18] _Réin_=a primitive _rēni_. It occurs in the Amra Colum-cilli,
meaning "of the sea."
[19] D'Arbois de Jubainville's "Premiers Habitants de l'Europe," book
iii. chap. iii. §15.
[20] D'Arbois de Jubainville, _ibid._
[21] "Some of the oldest and deepest morphological changes in Aryan
speech are those which affect the Celto-Italic language. Such are the
formation of a new passive, a new future, and a new perfect. Hence it
is believed that the Celto-Italic languages may have separated from the
rest while the other Aryan languages remained united." Taylor's "Origin
of the Aryans," p. 257. Mr. Taylor is here alluding to the passive in
_r_ and the future in _bo_, but my friend, M. Georges Dottin, in his
laborious and ample volume published last year, "Les désinences en R,"
has shown that the _r_-passives, at least, are, in Italic and Celtic,
independent creations.
[22] These loan-words "can hardly be later than the time of the Gaulish
Empire founded by Ambicatus in the sixth century B.C. We gather from
them that at this or some earlier period the culture and political
organisation of the Teutons was inferior to that of the Celts, and that
the Teutons must have been subjected to Celtic rule. It would seem from
the linguistic evidence that the Teutons got from their Celtic and
Lithuanian neighbours their first knowledge of agriculture and metals,
of many weapons and articles of food and clothing, as well as the most
elementary social, religious, and political conceptions, the words for
nation, people, king, and magistrate being, for instance, loan-words
from Celtic or Lithuanian."--Taylor's "Origin of the Aryans," p. 234.
[23] Also the Gothic word _magus_ ("a slave"), old Irish _mug_, or
_mogh, liugan_ ("to swear"), Irish _luigh, dulgs_ (a debt), Irish
_dualgus_, &c.
[24] Irish _liaig_. The Finns again borrowed this word from the
Germans. It is the root of the name Lee, in most Irish families of that
surname, indicating that their ancestors practised leech-craft.
[25] Rhys indeed compares the great Teutonic sky-god Woden with the
Welsh Gwydion and Thor with the Celtic Taranucus or Thunder-God, and
is of opinion that a good deal of Teutonic mythology was drawn from
Celtic sources--a theory which, when we consider how much the Germans
are indebted to the Celts for their culture-terms, may well be true
with regard to _later_ mythological conceptions and mythological saga.
However, it is now generally acknowledged that while all the nations of
Aryan origin possess a common inheritance of language, any inheritance
of a common mythology, if such exist at all, must be reduced to very
small proportions. The complete difference between the names of the
Indian, Hellenic, Italic, Teutonic, and Celtic gods is very striking.
[26] "De Bello Gallico," book vii. chap. iv.
[27] Which he speaks of as a mark of folly, in just the same tone
as an Anglicised Hibernian does of the Irish-speaking of the native
Celts. His words are worth quoting:--"Antiquæ stultitiæ usque hodie
manent vestigia. Unum est quod inferimus, et promissum in exordio
reddimus, Galatas excepto sermone Græco quo omnis Oriens loquitur
propriam linguam eamdem pene habere quam Treviros, nec referre si
aliqua exinde corrumperint, cum et Aphri Phœnicum linguam nonnullâ ex
parte mutaverint, et ipsa Latinitas et regionibus quotidie mutetur et
tempore." His insinuation that they spoke their own language badly
is also thoroughly Anglo-Hibernian, reminding one very much of Sir
William Petty and others. _See_ Jerome's preface to his "Commentary
on the Epistle to the Galatians," book vii. p. 429. Migne's edition.
In another passage he is more complimentary, and calls them the
Conquerors of the East and West--"Gallo-græcia [_i.e._, Galatia] in qua
consederunt Orientis Occidentisque victores." _See_ his "Epistle to
Rusticus," book i. p. 935. Migne.
[28] Although Celtic has so long disappeared out of France with the
exception of Armorica, it has left its traces deeply behind it upon the
French language. This is also true even of linguistic sounds. "Tous les
sons simples du français se retrouvent dans le breton, et tous ceux
du breton à l'exception d'un seul (le _ch_ ou le _χ_) sont aussi dans
notre langue: l'_u_ et l'_e_ très-ouvert, l'_e_ muet si rare partout
ailleurs, le _j_ pur inconnu à toute l'Europe, les deux sons mouillés
du _n_ et du _l_ (comme dans les mots bataille et dignité) sont communs
à la langue française et aux idiomes celtiques," says Demogeot. Even
in French customary law there are "distinct and numerous traces" of
old Gaulish habits and legislation, as Laferrière has pointed out in
his history of the civil law of Rome and France. Nor is this to be
in the least wondered at, when we remember that nineteen-twentieths
of the modern French blood is computed to be that of the aboriginal
races--Aquitanians, Celts, and Belgæ; whilst out of the remaining
twentieth "the descendants of the Teutonic invaders--Franks,
Burgundians, Goths, and Normans doubtless contributed a more numerous
element to the population than the Romans, who, though fewer in number
than any of the others, imposed their language on the whole country"
(_see_ Taylor's "Origin of the Aryans," p. 204). The bulk of the French
nation is probably pre-Celtic. The modern Frenchman does not at all
resemble the Gallic type as described by the Greek and Roman writers.