Part 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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