The earliest known mention of Ireland in literature appears to be
found in a passage of the Greek writer Poseidonios which is quoted by
Strabo. Poseidonios flourished about 150 B.C.
His information about Ireland is vague, and he says expressly and
candidly that his authorities are not trustworthy. Whereas later
writers erred in supposing that Ireland lay between Britain and Spain,
Poseidonios says that Ireland stretched farther northward than
Britain. We have nothing definite to tell about Ireland, he continues,
except that the inhabitants are fiercer than those of Britain, being
man-eaters and eaters of many kinds of food [we may understand perhaps
that he supposed them to eat various foods not eaten by the Greeks].
They think it worthy to devour their own fathers who have died. Their
marital customs are of the most unrestricted kind, disregarding even
the closest ties of kindred. "This, however, we state as having no
reliable testimony." For the custom of cannibalism, he says, is also
ascribed to the Scythians, and the Celts and Iberians and many others
are likewise said to practise it when reduced to great straits by a
siege.
The name of Ireland, as quoted from Poseidonios, is Ierne,
representing an old name Iverna. In Greek, as well as in the early
Celtic language of Ireland, the sound of _v_ or _w_ had a tendency to
disappear from words. I think, however, that the Greeks may have taken
the name Ierne, without the _v_, direct from a Celtic source, for the
dropping of the _v_ or _w_ sound in Greek took place earlier than the
writing of the oldest extant Greek prose, and if the name of Ireland
had been known to the Greeks at so early a time, we should expect to
find mention of Ireland in early prose writers like Herodotus.
The next known writer who mentions Ireland is Julius Cæsar. The island
Hibernia, he writes, is half the size of Britain, and as far distant
from Britain as Britain is from Gaul. He calls Ireland Hibernia.
Strabo, who wrote in Greek in the first years of the Christian era,
also thought that Ireland extended farther north than Britain, and
that Ireland had a colder climate than Britain. This notion, I have
already suggested, originated in the Latin name _Hibernus_, which as a
Latin word meant "wintry," and was substituted for the Celtic
adjective _Ivernos_. The people of Ireland, says Strabo, are quite
wild and have a poor way of living owing to the cold climate.
A somewhat later anonymous writer in Greek has more accurate
geographical information, perhaps based on the brief statement by
Cæsar, placing Ireland to the west of Britain.
Pomponius Mela, whose date is about A.D. 40, calls Ireland Iuverna, a
name also used about the same time by Juvenal. It is a nearer approach
to the Celtic form as used in Britain, which at the time was partly
occupied by the Romans. Mela says that Ireland is hardly equal in size
to Britain, but has an equal length of coastline opposite to Britain.
Apparently he supposed Ireland to be a long narrow island, about as
long as Britain from north to south, but less in breadth. The climate,
he says, is unfavourable to the ripening of seeds, but there is such
an abundance of excellent pasturage that cattle get enough food by
grazing for a short part of the day and, if they are not restrained,
they eat until they burst.
This is fairly accurate. The Irish climate is less favourable to the
ripening of certain seeds, such as wheat, than the climate of
neighbouring countries. It is not likely that any other seed but wheat
is referred to, and we may take the testimony of Mela as evidence that
wheat was known in his time to be grown in Ireland, but not so
successfully grown as in other countries.
Mela adds: The inhabitants of Ireland are uncivilised and beyond other
nations are ignorant of all the virtues, and extremely devoid of
natural affection.
A little later, in Pliny's time, the knowledge of Ireland among the
Romans was far from being exact. Pliny, on the authority of Agrippa,
gives the length of Ireland as 600 Roman miles, its breadth as 300. He
thus doubles each dimension and multiplies the size of the island by
four.
Tacitus writes that Agricola made special military dispositions on
that side of Britain which faces Ireland; and this he did more through
hope than through fear, that is to say, rather in view of conquest
than of protection. Ireland, he says, is situate between Britain and
Spain. It is of smaller area than Britain. In soil and climate and in
the character of its inhabitants it differs little from Britain. Its
inland parts are little known, its approaches and harbours are better
known through commerce and merchants. Agricola received one of its
petty kings who had been expelled in a revolt and kept him, under the
guise of friendship, against a suitable opportunity. From Agricola, I,
says Tacitus, have often heard that Ireland could be conquered and
held by a single legion with a moderate force of auxiliaries, and that
this would be of advantage as regards Britain, if the Roman military
power were established everywhere and freedom, as it were, were put
out of sight. Later he writes that Agricola had led his forces to a
point close to the Irish Sea when he was brought back by an outbreak
among the Brigantes and thought it better to solidify the conquests he
had already made than to undertake a new conquest.
The next writer in point of date is Ptolemy the Geographer, who
flourished in the middle of the second century. Ptolemy names sixteen
peoples, tribes or states, and gives their relative positions on the
Irish coast. He names no people or state away from the coast. About
half of the names can be authenticated from other sources. The others
have been the subject of much fruitless conjecture. It is noteworthy
that all the authenticated names belong to the eastern and southern
coasts and that the names on the northern and western coasts are still
names and nothing more. This shows that Ptolemy's information came
from sea-going traders. The northern and western coasts of Ireland are
among the most stormy in the world and must have been avoided in those
days by ocean-going craft. Ptolemy names several estuaries, and from
Irish writings we know that in early times estuaries were the
favourite havens. Ships could run in by the main channel and could be
grounded without injury on the sandy tidal banks. Several "cities" are
likewise named by Ptolemy. These, no doubt, were places of assembly or
royal towns--"oppida," like Tara and Emania. None of them can be
identified with any approach to certainty. Two bear the name _Regia
polis_, and this I think is taken from Latin, meaning "royal city."
On Ptolemy's description are based one or two learned fancies which
may almost be said to have become popular. One of these is that the
ancient name of Dublin is Eblana. Ptolemy places a people named Eblani
on the eastern side of Ireland and assigns them a city which he calls
by their name, _Eblana polis_. This cannot be Dublin, for no trace has
been found in Irish records or tradition of anything approaching in
character to a city on the site occupied by Dublin until the Norsemen
fortified themselves here in 841. We cannot give the name of either
record or tradition to a fabulous poem appended to the Book of
Rights, a poem which relates how St. Patrick visited and blessed the
Norsemen of Dublin. The poem has this value historically, that it
shows how far some of our medieval writers were ready to go in the
audacity of their invention.
The location which Ptolemy indicates for the Eblani and their city is
certainly farther north than Dublin, probably on the coast of Louth.
As Ptolemy's information was derived through traders, it is not
unlikely that some of the places which he calls cities were ancient
places of assembly. From the poem on the Fair or Assembly of Carman,
we know that these were places of resort for traders from the
Mediterranean who brought with them "gold and precious cloth" in
exchange for products of the country. No doubt they timed their visits
for the periodical assemblies, and from the same poem on the Fair of
Carman and from other documents we also know that during the time of
assembly the place of assembly bore the aspect of a city. In it at
those times there was a great concourse of people of all orders; there
was a royal court; a kind of parliament; many sorts of public
entertainment; and a general market. Somewhere about the middle of
County Louth one of these assemblies used to be held. It is called
Oenach Descirt Maige "the Assembly of the South of the Plain"--probably
the Plain of Muirtheimhne in the district of Dundalk. This place of
assembly may have been the city of the Eblani named by Ptolemy, but the
name itself has not been traced in Irish writings. Dublin lay almost
certainly in the territory of the Manapii or of the Cauci, the two
Germano-Belgic colonies about which I have spoken in the second of these
lectures.
Another place of note which has taken its modern name straight out
of Ptolemy's description is the sweet Vale of Ovoca. A few years
ago, a lively controversy about the name Ovoca was carried on by
correspondence in a Dublin newspaper. One of the disputants undertook
to show that the name consisted of two Gaelic words and meant "shadowy
river." The fact is that the river called Ovoca received the name in
quite modern times from some resident or proprietor who had a moderate
taste for the classics. He found the name in Ptolemy "Ὀβόκα ποταμου
ἐκβολαί [Greek transliteration: Oboka potamou ekbolai]," the mouth of
the river Oboca. It is one of the few river-mouths in Ireland named by
Ptolemy, and must have been known to traders as a haven. The modern
name Ovōca is Ptolemy's Obŏka mispronounced and does not belong to
Irish tradition.
Pliny names several islands between Ireland and Britain, one of which
he calls Andros. It seems to be the same place that Ptolemy calls
Adros. I venture the suggestion that the proper form is Antros or
Antron. At the mouth of the Garonne there was an island which bore the
name Antros in the time of Pomponius Mela. Its modern name has become
widely known as the name of its chief product, Médoc. In the river
Loire, there was also an island named Antron, which became the site of
a monastery and is now called Indre. Antros or Antron becomes Édar in
Irish, and Édar is the Irish name of the Howth peninsula. Our
forefathers use the terms for island as the names of peninsulas also,
for example, Inis Eoghain and Islandmagee, just as they applied the
term _loch_ indifferently to an inland lake and to an inlet of the
sea. In our ancient tales, Howth harbour is one of the most noted and
most frequented of Irish havens, and so it is not unlikely to have
received notice in Ptolemy's description.
Our next notice of Ireland is written by Solinus, about A.D. 200. He
begins by repeating in other words what was already said by Mela:
"Hibernia is barbarous in the manner of living of its inhabitants, but
is so rich in pasture that the cattle, if they be not kept now and
then from grazing, are put in danger from over-eating. There are no
snakes." So we see that Solinus, writing two centuries and a half
before St. Patrick's time, has robbed our national saint of one of his
traditional glories. He is not the only one to blame. One of the
Fenian lays tells how Fionn mac Cumhaill cleared the island of all
serpents. Even Fionn cannot be allowed the credit without question,
for it is evident there were no snakes in Ireland when the Fir Bolg
supplied the Eastern World with Irish earth to protect cities from
these venomous reptiles. Solinus goes on to say: "Birds are rare. The
nation is inhospitable and warlike. The victors in combat smear their
faces with the blood of their slain enemies. They make no difference
between things lawful and unlawful. There is not a bee anywhere, and
if anyone scatters dust or gravel from Ireland among beehives, the
swarms will desert their combs." Here we have another variety of the
snake-story. Possibly Solinus, in his reading, mistook the word
_aspis_, the name of a kind of snake, for _apis_, "a bee," and
adjusted the popular legend about the virtue of Irish earth to suit
his mistake. "The sea," he continues, "which flows between this island
and Britain is billowy and restless and throughout the whole year it
is navigable only during very few days." Here perhaps we have the
current explanation of Ireland's immunity from invasion by the Romans.
Ireland, at all events, was still a country about which the Latin
world was ready to accept travellers' tales from the untravelled.
The Irish appear in a new role, that of invaders of Britain, in a
panegyric of the emperor Constantius Chlorus, written in A.D. 297. The
same document and passage contains the earliest known mention of the
Picts by that name. "The Britons," says the panegyric, "even then an
uncivilised nation and accustomed to no enemies except the Picts and
the Irish [Hiberni], still half-naked, readily yielded to the Roman
arms and standards." In my last lecture, I have suggested that the
overthrow of the old Ulster kingdom is the explanation of the later
prominence of the Picts in eastern Ulster. The sudden emergence of the
Picts of Britain as a warlike and aggressive people at the close of
the third century is susceptible of a similar explanation. Under the
Ulster kingdom, the Picts were subject to the Ulaidh. As the Ulaidh
declined in power, the Picts became relatively prominent. So in
Britain, before the Roman conquests, the Picts, I suggest, were
subject to the Celts. The name Calédones or Calédonii, belonging to
the principal people of southern Scotland during the early times of
the Roman occupation of Britain, is a Celtic name. It is formed by
adding a very usual termination to the Celtic adjective _caledos_,
meaning "hard" or "hardy." Calédos was in fairly frequent use as a
Celtic personal name. Seven instances are quoted by Holder from
inscriptions. It is found in Irish, _e.g._, in the term _caladcholg_,
"a hard sword." It is the common Irish word for a landing-place from
boats, originally no doubt having been applied to firm ground, as
distinguished from swampy ground, on the banks of a river, and in this
sense it has passed into Anglo-Irish vocabulary in the form
"callow"--the "callows" of the Shannon. That the Calédonii did not
belong to the old dark-complexioned population is the testimony of
Tacitus, who says: "The reddish hair of the inhabitants of Caledonia
and their large limbs indicate a Germanic origin." That this Celtic
people at one time held sway in a region afterwards dominated by the
Picts is witnessed by the place-name Dunkeld in Perthshire. The older
Gaelic name is Dún Cailden, _i.e._, Dunon Caledonon, the stronghold of
the Calédones. The Celts, who naturally would have been strongest in
Lowland Scotland, were so weakened there, I suggest, by the Roman
power, that they could no longer maintain their predominance over the
Pictish population of the Highlands, and so, towards the close of the
third century, the Picts emerge as new and formidable adversaries of
Roman Britain on its northern frontier.
In the fourth century, the Irish are named by a new name in Latin
writings. The earliest known instance of this name, Scotti, Scots, is
found in a passage of the historian Ammianus with reference to the
events of the year 360. "In that year," he writes, "the raids of the
Scots and Picts, wild nations, had broken the agreed peace in the
British provinces and were devastating the places near the frontier;
terror was involving the provinces worn out by the accumulation of
past defeats; the emperor, passing the winter at Paris and harassed by
anxieties from one side and another, was afraid to go to the relief of
his subjects across the sea, lest he might leave Gaul without a ruler
a prey to the Alamanni, who were already stirred up to cruelty and
war." In this single passage a great deal is implied. We see the
Western Empire now beginning to totter, its ruler's conduct shaped no
longer by hope of conquest but by fear of disaster. We learn that on
the British northern frontier some sort of terms had previously been
made with the Picts and Scots, who were the aggressive party. We learn
the manner of their warfare, which is similar to that of the Norsemen
during the first half-century of their wars in Ireland. They make
plundering raids across the frontier, not in small parties but in
considerable force, defeating again and again the local defences, and
no doubt carrying off booty and captives. It was in one of these
raids, a few years after the date above referred to, that the boy
Patrick was carried off and sold into slavery in Ireland.
In the year 365, Ammianus further records that "the Picts and Saxons
and Scots and Atecotti harassed the Britons with continual
afflictions." In 368, "the Picts, divided into two nations,
Dicalydones and Verturiones, and also the Atecotti, a warlike nation
of men, and the Scots, roving here and there, did many devastations."
Later on, the writer of a panegyric on the emperor Theodosius asks,
"shall I tell of the Scot driven back to his swamps?" And the poet
Claudian, in a eulogy of the emperor Honorius, sings: "He has tamed
the active Moors and the Picts, whose name is no nick-name, and the
Scot with wandering dagger he has followed up, breaking the waves of
the far north with daring oars"; and again, "Ice-cold Ireland has
mourned the heaped-up corpses of her Scots." Praising the Roman
general Stilicho, Claudian says: "The Scot set all Ireland in motion";
and later, referring to Stilicho's muster against the Goths in the
year 416, he writes: "Came also the legion that protected the furthest
bounds of Britain, that bridled the cruel Scot and scanned the
lifeless face of the dying Pict tattooed with iron point."
In all these writings, from the first mention of the name Scots down
to the fall of the Western Empire in the fifth century, the Scots are
Irish raiders of Roman Britain. Whitley Stokes took the name Scottus
to be cognate with certain Slavonic and Germanic words and to mean
"master" or "possessor." But why should a people who until the fourth
century were named Iverni or Hiberni acquire in the fourth century a
new name meaning "masters" or "possessors"? It is not in the quality
of possessors that they appear in the records of the time, but rather
in the quality of dispossessors. Raiding, fighting, wandering,
wasting, these are the occupations of the Scots in that age; and if
they acquired a new name, it is to these occupations that we might
expect the new name to have reference. Therefore, though it may appear
audacious on my part, I venture on a different explanation.
A gloss on the name of St. Scoithín in the Festilogy of Oengus says
that he was named Scoithín _ar in scothad imdechta dognid.i. dul do
Ruain i n-oenlo ocus toidecht uathi i n-oenló aile_, "from the
_scothadh_ of travelling that he practised, namely, going [from
Ireland] to Rome in a single day and returning thence [to Ireland] in
another single day." The verb _scothaim_ or _scaithim_ has a group of
meanings all signifying a rapid cutting or striking movement.
Dictionaries give the meanings "I lop, prune, cut off, strip, destroy,
disperse, scutch [flax], beat a sheaf of corn to make it shed its
grain." _Scothbhualadh_ means a light threshing; _scoithneán_, a sieve
for winnowing grain. _Scottus_, then, in this view, was originally a
common noun meaning a raider or reaver, a depredator who worked by
rapid incursions and retirements. It was probably a Gaulish word, for
its earliest known use is in various inscriptions of Roman Gaul, in
which it is used as a personal name. For example, an inscription of
the year 224 records a votive offering by Marcus Quintius Florentinus
and others, the children of Caius Quintius Scottus. Here Scottus is
the distinctive byname of the father and is not found in the names of
his children.
The old story about promiscuous marriages, which in Cæsar's time was
told of the Britons, and later on, when Britain became better known to
the Romans, was told of the islands of western Scotland, continued
until the fifth century to be told of the Irish, who, like the
Hebrideans, dwelt beyond the bounds of the Empire. St. Jerome writes
that "the Scotti and Atecotti, in the manner of Plato's Republic, have
wives promiscuously and children in common"; and again, "the nation of
the Scotti do not marry wives of their own; as if they had read
Plato's Republic and adopted the example of Cato, no wife among them
belongs to a particular husband; but each according to his pleasure
they live without restraint, as cattle live." There is no mention of
these evil customs a half-century later when Saint Patrick tells how
he won over the Scots and their children from Paganism, and the oldest
traditions show that the pagan Irish followed the law of monogamy with
as much fidelity as did the ancient Greeks and Romans. St. Jerome
tells another story, this time on his own direct testimony: "In my
early youth in Gaul I have myself seen the Scots, a Britannic nation,
feeding on human flesh, and, when they might find herds of swine and
cattle through the forests, [I have known them] to be wont to cut off
the hips of shepherds and the breasts of women, and to regard these as
the only delicacies of their food." Instead of Scotti, some texts of
Saint Jerome have Atecotti in this place. It matters little, for all
agree in adding the words _gentem Britannicam_ "a Britannic nation."
We have seen that the Atecotti were associated with the Scotti in
raiding Roman Britain, and we must come later to the question, who
were the Atecotti. St. Jerome's testimony is valuable on the point
that these invaders of Roman Britain, whether Scotti or Atecotti, also
roved about Gaul. We may take it that there were bands of them in the
woods, in which he tells us they might have found swine and cattle to
provide them with food, had it not been for their barbarous preference
for special cuts of shepherd and shepherdess. He states that he was a
boy at the time (_adolescentulus_). He does not say that he saw the
barbarians in the act of catching and killing a shepherd or a
shepherdess, and we may be certain that he did not, otherwise he would
not have stayed on to see the preparation and consumption of the
tit-bits. It has been suggested that he was probably accompanied by a
very wise elderly woman who told him, as a precaution, the sort of
people these roving banditti were, and that his childish imagination
confirmed the tale. He may have seen the wandering islanders feasting
round their fire in the forest, but how did he contrive to identify
the viands? Once more, let it be said that tradition is old enough and
history reaches far enough back to assure us that cannibalism, like
promiscuous polygamy, was no custom of the inhabitants of Ireland or
of Britain in the fourth century of the Christian era.
We have seen that Latin writers of this period make mention of the
Atecotti, usually in conjunction with the Scotti. Some have assumed
that the Atecotti were a branch of the Picts. So far as positive
evidence goes, it is against this assumption. Ammianus speaks of the
Picts, subdivided into two nations, Dicalydones and Verturiones, and
then adds that "the Atecotti, a warlike nation," and the Scotti, were
engaged with these in the work of devastation. This implies that the
Atecotti, like the Scotti, were distinct from the Picts.
A verbal resemblance in the names led some Irish writers, from the
close of the eighteenth century down to O'Curry, to identify the
Atecotti with the Irish Aithech-thuatha, the ancient Rent-paying
communities referred to in my third lecture. I do not think that the
philologists will sanction the identification so far as it is based on
verbal resemblance. The name Atecotti has not been found in any form
in the native records of Ireland or Britain as the name of any nation
or sub-nation or in the topography of either island. Nevertheless
contemporary evidence during the second half of the fourth century
shows that not only on the frontier of Roman Britain but also on the
Continent there was a numerous and warlike collection of men known by
this name. As in the case of the name Scotti, the conclusion I would
draw is that Atecotti was a name for a general class of men not for a
particular nation, tribe, or political community. The name, in its
best authenticated form, is a Celtic word, consisting of the adjective
_cottos_ preceded by the prefix _ate_. _Cottos_ means "old," or
"ancient." The prefix _ate_, which becomes _aith_ or _ath_ in Irish of
the MS. period, means "back" or "again," like the Latin _re_, and like
this, too, it often has a strengthening or intensifying force. Thus,
Atecotti may be taken to mean the very ancient, the primitive, the
pristine folk; and so it is explained by Whitley Stokes. Who then were
these very ancient people who were associated with the Scotti and were
not identified with the Picts? We are reminded at once of the Irish
traditions of non-Gaelic and pre-Gaelic communities which formed the
main fighting strength of the kings of North Leinster and South
Leinster, and of the non-Gaelic origin ascribed to Cú Chulainn, Fear
Diadh, and to the kindred of Fionn mac Cumhaill and of Goll mac Morna.
Of course, on this point we are far from complete certainty, but the
probability, in my opinion, is that, when the Irish went to war in the
fourth century, they still adhered to the politico-social distinction
between the Gaelic ascendancy and the conquered plebeian race, and
that this was the distinction between the Scotti and the Atecotti. The
adjective _cottos_ does not appear to belong to the vocabulary of
Irish, but it is found in the various Brittanic dialects and was a
frequent element in Gaulish nomenclature. The Atecotti, therefore,
probably received their name not in Ireland but in Britain or Gaul.
The view I put forward reaches, but by a different path, a similar
conclusion to that adopted by the Irish writers who sought to identify
the Atecotti by name with the plebeian communities of ancient Ireland,
the Aitheach-thuatha.
Contact with the Roman military system reacted on the domestic
condition of Ireland. To this cause we may ascribe the origin of the
Fiana as a definite military organisation at a definite period. The
word _fian_ is collective, signifying a band of fighting men, not
merely a band of men called out upon occasion for military service,
but a permanent fighting force. From it is derived _feindid_,
_feinnidh_, a professional soldier. Normally, the ancient nations
depended in warfare on their citizen soldiers who in time of peace
were engaged in the works of peace. The great imperial states, for
their plans of conquest and dominion, or for the protection of their
artificial realms, relied on standing armies. In the stories of the
Ulster cycle, though, as we have seen, there are certain castes or
communities with a special tradition of warlike service and
efficiency, there does not seem to be any permanent military
organisation. The cycle of the Fiana, on the contrary, is concerned
with fighting men whose principal occupation is warfare. The two epic
traditions are quite distinct. Chariot-fighting is characteristic of
the Ulster tales. The Fiana fight on foot. The time to which the Fiana
belong is the time of the conquests made by the Connacht kings in
North Leinster, the time of Conn, Art, Cormac, and Cairbre
Lifeachar--roughly speaking, the third century of the Christian era.
During that century, the Britons were "accustomed to war with Irish
enemies," and the Irish therefore had opportunities of learning
something of the Roman manner of warfare and military organisation.
Again, to the third century and later belong those great earthen
frontier walls in Ireland spoken of in the foregoing lecture. The
erection of these walls, we may well believe, was inspired by
acquaintance with the Roman frontier fortifications in northern
Britain, constructed in the second century and in the early part of
the third century.
Accustomed to military life, numbers of the Scotti and Atecotti took
service under Roman commanders, especially under Stilicho, who
enlisted troops wherever he could raise them to defend the Empire
against the Goths. The time was during the last years of the fourth
century and the opening years of the fifth. A number of Latin
inscriptions on the Continent bear witness to the existence, in the
later days of the Western Empire, of a military force in the Imperial
service under the name of Primi Scotti--"the First Scots." The
majority of these inscriptions are found near the ancient frontier
between the Roman Empire and western Germany, showing that the Scots
or Irish were engaged to defend the line of the Rhine against the
Germans. A few of the inscriptions are found in the interior of Roman
Gaul.
About the same time, under the emperor Honorius and his general
Stilicho, a number of distinct bodies--cohorts or regiments--of the
Atecotti served in the Imperial armies. The military records known as
_Notitiae Dignitatum_ have mention of the following forces: Atecotti
seniores; Atecotti juniores; Atecotti Honoriani seniores; Atecotti
Honoriani juniores; and Atecotti Gallicani juniores; to which by
implication we must add Atecotti Gallicani seniores. All these were
serving in the Western Empire, and in addition to these there was a
body called simply Atecotti serving in the Eastern Empire. Those in
the west formed part of a force which included also Moors, Germans,
and others drawn from countries outside of the Empire. The general
name for these troops appears to have been Honoriani, from the emperor
Honorius in whose service they were enlisted. The chief military task
of the Roman armies under Honorius was to resist the Goths who were
threatening to overrun his dominions. The Spanish historian Orosius,
who lived in Spain at that time, calls the barbarian forces of
Honorius the Honoriaci, _i.e._, he substitutes a Celtic form for the
Latin Honoriani. (St. Patrick, a little later, uses a similar Celtic
form Hiberionaci, instead of the usual Latin name Hiberni, for the
Irish.) In 409, the year before the capture of Rome by the Goths under
Alaric, the German nations of the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans overran
southern Gaul as far as the Spanish borders. The passes of the
Pyrenees were held at this time by the Honoriani. Orosius says that,
on the approach of the Germans, the Honoriani in the Pyrenees made
common cause with them, and shared with them in the invasion of Spain
and the partition of the conquered territory. He adds that the
Honorians were more clement than the Germans towards the conquered
people, and extended some degree of protection and assistance to them.
This conquest was of short duration. A few years later the Goths in
turn invaded Spain and established a Gothic kingdom over it.
These events belong to a period for which Ireland has no contemporary
documents of history, but for which, as it borders on the more
strictly historical period, Irish traditions have their highest
validity in evidence. The testimony of native tradition, as we might
expect, is in accord with that of external history.
The third and fourth centuries of the Christian era were a time in
which nearly all the peoples of Europe outside of the Roman Empire
were, so to speak, on the march with arms in their hands. At the
beginning of the Christian era and before it, we have seen that this
state of unrest already pervaded the Celts and Germans of Mid-Europe.
A few centuries earlier still, the Celts almost alone are found in
this condition of warlike mobility; for the radiation of the Celtic
migratory movements in every direction--southward into Italy, westward
into Gaul, Spain, Britain, and Ireland, northward into the Baltic
basin, and eastward along the Danube valley and into Asia Minor--is
evidence that, unlike the movements which led to the break-up of the
Western Empire, the earlier Celtic migrations were not accompanied by
pressure from other moving populations on their borders.
I have ascribed the early expansion of the Celts to iron. The
possession of iron had a two-fold effect. The natural condition of the
greater part of Europe is forest. If man were absent or idle-handed,
nearly all Europe in a few generations would revert to the forest
state. To clear the land of woods, or even to prevent the fresh growth
of woods after clearance, the implements of the Stone Age, Early and
Late, cannot have been effective. Even let us suppose that large
clearances could have been made by burning, at once the thickets would
again spring up, and under their protection the forest trees. Nor can
the possession of bronze have sufficed to subdue the natural tendency
towards forest. Bronze, in the Bronze Age, was not the industrial
material of the many; it belonged to the privileged few who were not
hewers of wood. Iron, when it came, introduced an industrial
revolution relatively greater than that which has been introduced in
modern times by the steam-engine. Once people knew how to work it,
iron was abundant enough to be in the hands of every worker. Iron
became and has ever since remained the sole master of growing wood.
With the conquest of the forests came a great extension of tillage.
Iron not only cleared fertile tracts but tilled them more rapidly and
deeply than was possible with the wooden spade which, as the old Irish
copper mines have taught us, was the digging implement of the Bronze
Age. Thus food became abundant, and with it a density of population
which, before iron, was possible only in fertile and forestless
regions like the flood areas of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Road making,
too, progressed, and the use of vehicles. As iron furnished the many
with better implements of work, it furnished them also with better
implements of war. An overflowing population and warlike arms for
all--here we have the conditions for migratory conquest. On these
conditions the Celtic migrations were based. The spread of these
conditions to the Germans led to the later Germanic expansion, and
their further spread brought about the Slavonic and Turanian
migrations which drove the Germans down upon the subject peoples of
Rome, peoples whose power of resistance and will to defend themselves
had been already broken by that Roman policy so frankly described by
Tacitus.
Just as the universal subjection of science and invention to the
purposes of warfare has reduced Europe to its present condition, so
the universal possession of iron made Europe in the third and fourth
centuries a scene of universal war. Though Ireland was fortunately
untouched by the great migratory movements of the Continent in that
age, these movements reacted on Ireland by weakening the neighbouring
provinces of the Empire.
The raids on Britain and Gaul for booty and captives--raids from
which, as I have argued, the Irish got their new name of Scots--were
followed by Irish settlements on various points of the British coast.
The conquest of eastern Meath or Bregia by the kings of Connacht and
Uisneach forced a part of the population to migrate, and one body of
the migrants settled in Demetia, in the south of Wales. We can safely
place the conquest of Bregia in the second half of the third century,
but it does not follow that the settlement in Wales was made at the
same time, for the story of the Déisi migration makes it appear that
the expelled population remained for many years in Leinster before the
settlement in Munster. There may have been a similar delay before
their kindred crossed over to Wales.
In south-western Britain, there was also an Irish colony, apparently
from Munster and headed by princes of the Eoghanacht dynasty which
displaced the earlier line of the Iverni. Cormac's Glossary mentions
in the Cornish region a stronghold named Dinn Map Lethan. This name, a
mixture of Cymric and Gaelic, means the fortress of the Sons of
Lethan. The Ui Liatháin, or descendants of Liathán, were one of the
principal septs of the Eoghanachta, and their territory adjoined the
Munster coast in the district immediately to the west of the Déisi.
The most noted and most permanent of the Irish settlements in Britain
was that of Argyleshire and the adjoining islands. The kings of Dál
Riada, according to the Annals of Tigernach, did not take up their
abode in that region until far on in the fifth century, A.D. 470.
This, however, does not imply that the Irish migration to Scotland
began at that time. It rather means that the Irish colonies of
Argyleshire and the islands became subject at that time to the kings
of the nearest territory in Ireland. There is no record known to me of
the Irish migration to Galloway, the south-western angle of the
Scottish mainland, a region formerly occupied by the Picts. Though the
Norsemen settled in Galloway in a later age, a glance at the map will
show that the place-names of Galloway are almost as purely Gaelic as
those of any part of Ireland. Gaelic was the prevalent language of
Galloway in the sixteenth century and continued to be spoken there in
the eighteenth century.
These Gaelic settlements on the western seaboard of Britain appeared
to Sir John Rhys to be the remnants of a Gaelic population which, he
thought, preceded the British or Brythonic conquest.
There are stories of the Fiana and even of the heroes of the earlier
Ulster cycle that reflect in tradition those raids on Britain which
are recorded in Latin writings. As we approach the borderland of
documentary history, the evidences are still more definite. The death
of Niall of the Nine Hostages, king of Ireland, is assigned to the
year 404. At the time of his death, he was at the head of an
expedition in the English Channel, and he was slain on board ship by a
Leinster prince. He was succeeded by his brother's son Nath-Í,
commonly called Dathi in later writings. Nath-Í in turn met his death
at the head of an oversea expedition in the year 429. He is said to
have been killed by lightning in the Alps. At this time, the Roman
Empire was making its final struggle in Gaul under Aetius "the last of
the Romans," against the Visigoths who held all the southern parts
from Italy to the Bay of Biscay, and the Franks and Burgundians who
had occupied the parts along the Rhine. It does not seem likely that
an Irish raid, in these circumstances, could reach the Alps, nor can
we well imagine what it could expect to gain by such an inroad. The
Alps are probably a circumstantial ornament to the story, and we may
content ourselves with the main point that this Irish king, three
years before St. Patrick's mission began, led a raiding expedition to
Gaul and met his death there. The story contains an additional proof
that the kings of Ireland, who reigned in Tara in those days,
represented the ancient dynasty of Connacht. The remains of Nath-Í
were brought back to Ireland and laid to rest in the ancient pagan
cemetery of Cruachain, beside the royal burg of the Connacht kings. It
was the old line of the kings of Cruachain that had now become kings
of Ireland seated in Tara. There is another interesting piece of
evidence on this point which did not escape the notice of the late
Father Hogan. Loeguire, son of Niall, succeeded his cousin Nath-Í as
king of Ireland, and was reigning at Tara when St. Patrick began his
missionary work. But it was at Cruachain and not at Tara that St.
Patrick met and baptised the daughters of Loeguire. Tara, in fact, was
the official seat of the monarchy, but Cruachain in Connacht was still
the real home of the kings of Tara.
The condition of Europe at this time, the first half of the fifth
century, is terrible to contemplate, and many must have thought that
the ancient civilisation was at an end. The Roman legions had
abandoned Britain a prey to the Picts, the Scots, and the
north-western Germans. Gaul and Spain were in the hands of the Franks,
Burgundians, Visigoths, Alans, Suevi, and Vandals. Genseric, king of
the Vandals, had overrun the opulent Roman province of Africa, which
never afterwards recovered its ancient prosperity, and the greatest
intellect of the time, St. Augustine, passed away in his episcopal
city while the Vandals were besieging it. Rome itself was twice
captured and sacked, first by the Goths and afterwards by the
Vandals. Attila, the Scourge of God, led immense armies from one end
of Europe to the other, and boasted that where his horse had trodden
the grass grew no more. St. Patrick, in his Confession, relates that
after his escape from captivity in Ireland he and his companions
travelled for thirty days on the Continent through an unpeopled
wilderness. It seems a miracle that hope and courage could have
survived in any mind. Yet the spirit of peace and gentleness and mercy
was stronger than all the violence and blood-thirst of all the
nations. Some have complained that St. Patrick, in his simple
narrative, tells little but his own heart, but his Confession is one
of the great documents of history, and explains to us better than all
the historians how barbarism was tamed and civilisation saved. Imagine
a young lad of tender years, son of a Roman citizen, torn away by
fierce raiders from his parents and people, no doubt amid scenes of
bloodshed and ruin, and sold into slavery among strangers; kept for
years, the despised chattel of a petty chieftain, herding flocks in a
bleak land of bog and forest. Think that the ruling sentiment that
grew out of this pitiful experience was one of boundless love and
devotion towards the people that had done him such terrible wrongs, so
that when he had regained his freedom by flight, in nightly visions he
heard their voices calling him back to them and freely and eagerly
made up his mind to spend himself altogether in their service. It was
this spirit that subdued the ferocity of fierce plundering rulers and
warlike peoples. The Irish ceased from that time to be a predatory
nation. Two centuries later, the king of the Northumbrian Angles
invaded and devastated a part of eastern Ireland. His own subject, the
Venerable Bede, denounces this violence done to "a harmless people who
have never injured the English," and finds a just retribution in the
misfortunes that afterwards befell the king and the Northumbrian
power.
In St. Patrick's time, the headship of Tara was not yet firmly fixed
in the national tradition. He founded various churches in the
neighbourhood of Tara. Tirechan names eight of them. To none of these
he attached the primacy, but to the church he founded close by the
ancient capital of Ulster. The story of this foundation illustrates
another trait of Patrick's character besides his wonderful charity.
The nobleman, Dáire, from whom he asked the land for his church,
refused the site that Patrick wished and gave another instead. He
afterwards presented Patrick with a fine vessel of bronze. Patrick
said simply "Gratias agimus." This curtness displeased the magnate, so
that he sent again and took away the gift. Patrick again said,
"Gratias agimus." Hearing this, Dáire came in person and restored the
vessel to Patrick and said: "Thou must have thy vessel of bronze, for
thou art a steadfast and unchangeable man. And moreover that piece of
land for which thou once didst ask me, I give to thee with all my
rights in it, and dwell thou in it." And that, says the ancient life,
is the city which now is named Armagh.