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.
In our early literature there are many traces of an abiding tradition that already before St. Patrick's mission there were Christians and small Christian communities here and there in Ireland. Some of the statements, especially as to the founders of certain sees, have been discredited, being imputed to a desire to make out that these sees, alleged to have been founded before St. Patrick's time, were therefore independent of the jurisdiction and claims of Armagh, especially of the temporal claims for revenue. It was claimed in particular for St. Ailbhe and St. Iubhar, of the see of Emly, St. Declan of Ardmore, and St. Ciarán of Saighir that they were already bishops in St. Patrick's time. These things are stated in documents in which other things are said that cannot be reconciled with historical fact. The date of St. Iubhar's death, according to the Annals of Ulster, was 500, 501, or 504; of St. Ailbhe's, 534, or 542; and SS. Ciarán and Declan are both said to have lived into the sixth century. Saint Iubhar appears to have been the earliest of them and there is evidence that he received episcopal consecration at the hands of St. Patrick. The case, however, does not rest wholly or mainly on such unstable premises.
The genealogists of Corcu Loegdae, or Dáirine, claim that the people of that state were the first in Ireland to receive Christianity; and the claim at all events cannot be dismissed on the ground of improbability. The diocese of Ross appears to represent the extent of this little state in the twelfth century, but in earlier times its territory covered a much larger area. Dwelling around several good havens, which were most favourably situated in relation to the old Atlantic trade route, the people were always a sea-going people. We read of an O'Driscoll at the head of his fleet attacking the English of Waterford. One of their chiefs takes his distinctive byname from Gascony, another from Bordeaux. Thomas Davis's spirited ballad on the Sack of Baltimore brings home to our minds how direct hostile relations could exist between this region and the Mediterranean; and where such hostile relations were possible, trade relations may be taken as normal. It is by no means unlikely, then, that where the Crescent could come on pirate galleys from Algiers, the Cross might well have come in some early merchant ship from the Loire or the Garonne.
St. Patrick himself, in his Confession, seems to testify by implication to the existence not merely of individual Christians but of Christian communities with their clergy in and before his time in Ireland. "For your sake," he writes, "I have faced many dangers, going even to the limits of the land where no one was before me, and whither no one had yet come to baptise or ordain clergy or confirm the faithful." This surely implies that there were places in Ireland, not in the remoter parts, places where some had come before Patrick and had performed the purely episcopal functions of ordination and confirmation.
More definite still is the evidence of Prosper's Chronicle—direct testimony, for the chronicler was in Rome at the time. Under the year 431, the chronicle has this entry: "To the Scots believing in Christ, having been ordained by Pope Celestine, Palladius is sent as first bishop." The natural interpretation of this statement, I think, is that some Irish Christians sent a request to Rome to have a bishop sent to them. The mission was considered an important one, for Palladius, before his consecration as bishop, held a high ecclesiastical office at Rome. He had also interested himself in the religious concerns of Britain, having induced Pope Celestine two years earlier to send a special mission to Britain to counteract the teachings of a Pelagian bishop. In another work, St. Prosper refers to these two missions together. Pope Celestine, he writes, "while he laboured to keep the Roman island (i.e. Britain) Catholic, also, by ordaining a bishop for the Scots, made the barbarous island Christian"—barbarous meaning external to the Roman Empire. Even this does not necessarily imply that before Palladius there were no bishops in Ireland, but it does imply that these particular "Irish believing in Christ," to whom Palladius was sent, had no bishop in communion with Rome.
Pelagius, the author of the Pelagian heresy, was, according to St. Jerome, a man "of the Irish nation, from the vicinity of the Britons," and St. Jerome again, in his vigorous style, speaks of Pelagius as one "swelled out with the porridge of the Irish." Other contemporary witnesses say that Pelagius was a Briton. This leaves us in doubt, for, on the one hand, these may have applied the term Briton to anyone from any part of the Pretanic islands, and on the other hand, St. Jerome's language about Pelagius is the language of rhetorical depreciation, and from what I have quoted from him in the foregoing lecture, we may perhaps judge that by calling Pelagius a Scot, he thought the more effectually to discredit him. The known career of Pelagius lies between the years 398 and 418. One thing comes out clearly enough from the contemptuous phrase—the Irish were known abroad in St. Jerome's time as eaters of porridge.
The late Professor Zimmer, finding a somewhat obscure early reference to the flight of learned people from Gaul during the Gothic and Frankish invasions and to their finding a place of refuge in another country, founded on this an interesting theory regarding the early stages of Christianity and letters in Ireland. It was in Ireland, he contends, that the refugees found a home, for Ireland was the only land in Western Europe that escaped the Germanic invasions. To Ireland they brought with them a certain devotion to the ancient literatures of Greece and Rome. The limits of date for this learned migration, according to Zimmer, are the years 419 and 507, and he holds that it actually took place about midway between those dates, i.e., about the middle of the fifth century.
To make this theory of a learned migration from Western Gaul to Ireland more easily accepted, Zimmer gives a valuable collection of facts in historical evidence, showing that there was a regular course of trade between the two countries at this time and for centuries before and after it.
Zimmer applies his theory to the explanation of certain remarkable facts. In the first place, he explains by it the pre-eminence in the knowledge of Latin and Greek that belonged in the following age to Irishmen and the pupils of Irishmen. Secondly, he explains by it the reference made by St. Patrick in his Confession to certain critics who despised his rusticity, i.e., his want of a classical grounding in Latin. St. Patrick calls these critics "rhetoricians," a term which certainly seems to imply that they belonged to a professional academic set. Zimmer thinks that these "rhetoricians" were some of the learned refugees from Western Gaul. A third fact which Zimmer explains by his migration theory is the fondness of the early Irish poets and grammarians for certain artificial super-refinements of language and grammar, and in particular for the production of a learned jargon in Irish by making deliberate changes in the form of words, substituting one letter for another, and adding, transforming or removing letters or syllables. This trait, he argues, was adopted from a certain learned school of Aquitaine, who played similar tricks with Latin, and produced by such means not one but a dozen Latin jargons; and Zimmer goes so far as to insist that the supposed Irish poet-grammarian who is named "Fercertne the Poet" was actually and personally identical with one of the chief exponents of this artificial Latinity, Virgilius Grammaticus.
The difficulties I find in accepting this theory of Zimmer are chiefly two. The first is that Zimmer, when he set out to establish a novel theory, was quite as ingenious in weaving an argument as Virgilius Grammaticus could be in concocting a Latin jargon. My second difficulty is that, if such a school of foreign Latinists existed in Ireland in St. Patrick's time, I cannot understand why neither the school itself nor any individual belonging to it is mentioned in any Irish document. St. Patrick does not say that his critics lived in Ireland.
On the other hand, in a passage which Zimmer has not noted, there is reference to a high degree of Christian learning in Ireland possibly as early as St. Patrick's time. It is in a letter on the Paschal controversy written by St. Columbanus of Bobbio within the years 595 to 600. It may be remarked that St. Columbanus writes in a remarkably pure Latin style, founded on good sound Latin teaching, and in no way reflecting the ingenuities and puerilities of the Aquitanian school. He is speaking expressly in this letter about the chronological system devised by Victorius of Aquitaine, who flourished in the middle of the fifth century. "Victorius," he writes, "was regarded with indulgence, not to say contempt, by our masters and by the ancient Irish philosophers." Here, in the last years of the sixth century, we find an Irishman placing a higher value on the Christian learning of "ancient Irish philosophers" than on that of a noted Aquitanian scholar.
I do not propose here to deal with the life and work of St. Patrick. Let me escape with the apology made by the writer of the Irish Nennius: "It would be carrying water to a lake, to relate the wonders of Patrick to the Men of Ireland."
Let the beginnings of letters and literature in Ireland now occupy our attention. Cæsar's testimony will be remembered in regard of the Celts in Gaul: "They make use of Greek letters in almost all their affairs, both public and private." This use of the Greek alphabet is corroborated by the fact that the oldest Celtic inscriptions in Gaul are in Greek characters. The accompanying sculptures also demonstrate Greek influence. This influence radiated, no doubt, from the early Greek colony of Massilia or Massalia (Marseille) and its daughter colonies along the Mediterranean coast. It extended as far as to the Helvetii in the modern Switzerland, among whose spoils Cæsar captured a census of the entire people written out in Greek characters. On the other hand, the Cisalpine Gauls in Northern Italy used the Etruscan alphabet, from which the Roman alphabet was also in part derived, and a number of their inscriptions in the Etruscan characters have been discovered.
We can trace no such early use of the alphabet in Britain or Ireland. The earliest known use of letters in Britain appears to be in the coinage of the sons of Commius.
Tacitus has told us that the states of Britain were governed, not by kings, but by nobles and factions—just as Rome was governed in the later centuries of the Republic. In Gaul also there were no kings. It is interesting to examine how, in the period between the temporary invasions of Britain by Julius Cæsar and the permanent Roman conquest of southern Britain about a century later, a people of the southern seaboard happen to have kings, and these kings happen to have a coinage inscribed after the Roman fashion.
One of the Belgic States that had an offshoot in Britain was that of the Atrebates close to the Straits of Dover. The town of Arras preserves their name. In Britain, they were settled in the valley of the Thames and their chief place was Calleva, now Silchester in the north of Hampshire. Cæsar took a special interest in the Atrebates, perhaps for the two reasons, that their territory was so near to Britain and that a part of their people were settled in Britain. In the early and insecure stages of his conquest of Gaul, he did not find it practicable to establish at once the Roman form of government. Instead he adopted a device which had already succeeded in the case of the Galatian republic in Asia. The Romans changed Galatia into a monarchy under a Galatian king Deiotaros, believing that they would secure their own authority more effectually by making one of the Galatians, so to speak, their chief policeman. A son and grandson of Deiotaros succeeded him as kings, and after these Augustus abolished this appearance of autonomy and made Galatia a Roman province under Roman governors. Cæsar, having overcome the resistance of the Atrebates on the Continent, appointed one of themselves, Commius, a noble of great influence, to be their king. Commius, he tells us, was a man both courageous and politic, and he considered him loyal. He afterwards used Commius as his intermediary in treating with the Britons, and through him received the submission of Cassivellaunus, whom the Britons had chosen to command their forces. After this service, Cæsar freed Commius from tribute, restored the rights and laws of his people and gave him sovereignty also over the Morini, a neighbouring state on the Belgic seaboard. In the sixth year of Cæsar's command, B.C. 53, a wide revolt of the Gallic states took place, and this time Commius took the side of his fellow-countrymen and was one of the four chiefs to whom they committed the principal charge of the war. In the suppression of the revolt, Commius was one of the last to hold out. He called in the help of the Germans, and when all failed, he took refuge among the Germans. Hirtius, the continuator of Cæsar's narrative, relates how Labienus, one of Cæsar's generals, considered that, in view of the disloyalty of Commius and his entering into conspiracy to revolt, it would be no perfidy to have him done away. Accordingly he sent one Volusenus to him in the guise of an envoy but with private instructions to have Commius murdered. The plot failed, and Commius declared that he would never again consent to speak to any Roman. He continued the war, and had the satisfaction of once meeting and wounding the treacherous envoy Volusenus in single combat. At last he was forced to submit upon terms and to give hostages, but even in his submission he made it a condition that he would not be required to hold direct intercourse with any Roman. He seems to have taken refuge finally in Britain.
Under the rule of Commius over the Atrebates, coins were struck bearing his name in its Celtic spelling Commios, but in Roman lettering, probably about the earliest examples of the use of the Roman alphabet in northern Gaul. Three of his sons appear to have reigned as kings in southern Britain, where, as already said, a colony of their people the Atrebates was settled. Their names, Tincius (or Tincommius), Eppillus, and Verica or Virica, are on numerous coins found in the south-east and middle south of England. One of these coins bears the name of Calleva, chief place of the Atrebates in Britain, now Silchester. The coins are inscribed with Roman letters, the name of Eppillus has already exchanged a Celtic for a Latin ending in the nominative, and the letters R and F, abbreviations for the Latin rex and filius, appear on most of the coins. In this way the Latin alphabet found a foothold in Britain about the beginning of the Christian era.
No use of letters nearly so early can be traced in Ireland. When Irish traditions began to be written, the Ogham alphabet was thought to be of remote antiquity, its invention being ascribed to the eponymous god Ogma. This god is apparently identical with the Gaulish Ogmios, a god of eloquence, about whom there is a remarkable passage in the Greek writer Lucian. In the story of Táin Bó Cuailngi, Cú Chulainn cuts a message in Ogham on a branch and sets it up in the middle of a ford for his approaching enemies to read. Nevertheless, I think that the use of Ogham characters cannot be quite as old as the Cú Chulainn period. I see two reasons for thinking so. The first is that the Ogham alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet. The second is that, if the Irish god Ogma mac Eladan ("son of science") is to be identified in any way with the Gaulish Ogmios, god of eloquence,—and it seems impossible to dissociate them—then the name of the god must have come into the Irish language at a very late date before the use of writing. Philologists tell us that, when g was followed by m in the early unrecorded stage of the Irish language, g disappeared, and the preceding vowel, if short, was lengthened "by compensation," as it is called. Accordingly, an ancient name Ogmios would be represented in early MS. Irish by Óme not Ogme, and in later Irish by Uama or Uaime not Oghma.
At first sight, it may appear too much to say that the Ogham alphabet was founded on the Latin alphabet. Why, let us ask, might it not have been a quite independent invention? A little reflection will convince us that it could not have been an independent invention. There is no limit, practically, to the possible varieties of alphabet, i.e., of graved or written symbols used to represent words. There are pictorial systems, and derived from these the so-called hieroglyphics, systems in which every word has a distinct syllable, systems in which each character stands for a symbol, systems in which no vowels are written, and systems which have distinct symbols for vowels and consonants. To the last class belong the Greek and Latin alphabets. There are systems in which the long and short vowels are distinguished, for example, in Pitman's shorthand alphabet; and this is partly the case in the Greek alphabet. The Ogham alphabet belongs to the class in which there are distinct symbols for vowels and consonants. All its consonants but one are found in the Latin alphabet. Except for this one, representing the sound of ng in song or sing, it is content with the Latin consonants, though each of them has to express two very distinct sounds in Irish, the mute or stop sound and the spirant or "aspirate" as it is popularly called. Lastly, it has the five Latin vowels, without distinction of long or short. Hence its Latin origin is hardly open to question. Until Cæsar's time, the Greek, not the Latin, alphabet was in use among the Gauls, the nearest people to Ireland by whom writing was then used. The Ogham alphabet and the Latin alphabet differ, generally speaking, in the same respects from the Greek alphabet. The latter therefore cannot have furnished the Irish model. The conclusion is that the Ogham alphabet, based on the Latin, was devised at some time later than the introduction of the Latin alphabet into neighbouring countries, that is to say, about the beginning of the Christian era or some what later. It was suitable only to the purposes for which it is known or related to have been used, i.e., for brief inscriptions or brief messages or statements. It was not suitable for the ordinary expression of written thought, for literature in the wide sense.
The range of the use of Ogham in inscriptions outside of Ireland corresponds to the range of Irish settlements and of Irish influence, at the time of the collapse of the Western Empire. In general the range is that of the Irish language at the time, but a number of Ogham inscriptions are also found in parts of Scotland which at that time were inhabited and ruled by the Picts. Apart from the Pictish instances, the farthest outlying Ogham that has been discovered is curiously enough found at Silchester, the ancient Calleva, the capital of the Atrebates in Britain, and the place in which the coins of the sons of Commius were struck, the coins that exhibit the earliest known use of the Roman alphabet or of any alphabet in Britain.
The dating of the extant Ogham inscriptions is a matter of very great difficulty, and the more closely I have attempted to examine them, the greater the difficulty has become. I shall only say that the latest forms of Irish names that they contain appear to be about identical in their stage of phonetic change with the earliest forms found in Irish writers, for example in the Life of St. Columba by Adamnanus who quotes from older documents—probably forms of the latter part of the sixth century. The weight of evidence, in my opinion, goes to show that the cult of the Ogham inscriptions was mainly associated with Paganism.
The manuscript literature of Irish does not come in a line of continuity from the Ogham writing. The system of spelling in the oldest specimens of MS. Irish has its basis in a British pronunciation of Latin—that is, in Latin modified and changed as a spoken language among the Britons during the centuries of the Roman occupation. One of the tasks incidental to the work of St. Patrick and his helpers in missionary work in Ireland was to give lessons in Latin to those who were to be the future clergy of the country. Thus we read again and again that St. Patrick wrote an alphabet for this and that convert—alphabet in this case meaning a primer or possibly a book of psalms—at all events a set of lessons in Latin. It is easy to show that a similar pronunciation of Latin prevailed in the early Christian schools of Ireland and in Britain at the same time; that this pronunciation differed systematically from the Italian pronunciation; that the differences represent changes which had taken place also in the British language, though not in Irish; and that the orthography of Old and Middle Welsh and also of Old and Middle Irish was moulded by this modified British pronunciation of Latin. The peculiarities of spelling produced in this way do not appear at all in the Ogham inscriptions; and on the other hand, there are peculiarities in the orthographic system of the Ogham inscriptions which leave no trace in Irish MS. writing. The oldest Irish grammarians speak of the Ogham method of writing as the Irish method and of the MS. method as the Latin method; and they report current sayings which show that among the early Irish Christians the use of the Irish method was regarded as profane and even tainted with impiety—meaning, beyond doubt, that it was closely associated in their minds with heathenism. On the other hand the earliest specimens of written Irish are distinctively Christian. The oldest known piece of Irish MS. writing is, or was until recently, preserved in Cambrai and is ascribed to the seventh century—but pieces as old or older exist in various transcripts.
In a paper on the Annals of Tigernach, I have shown that a chronicle of the world, written in continuation of the Chronicle of Eusebius, Jerome, and Prosper, and embodying a skeleton of Irish history, was brought to conclusion in Ireland in the year 609. From certain indications this chronicle would appear to have been commenced in the closing years of the sixth century—say between 590 and 600. Part of this chronicle is embodied in the Annals of Tigernach and in the Annals of Ulster, and extracts from it in the Annals of Innisfallen. What survives of it with relation to Ireland is the oldest known history of Ireland. From its manner of dealing with Irish affairs, I think we must conclude that even before its time, a certain body of Irish heroic literature existed in MS. and consequently that the writing of this literature had already begun in the course of the sixth century. There are other evidences that during the sixth century a blending of the old heathen lore and learned tradition with the new Christian learning was taking place—the native schools of poets, originally druids, becoming Christian and adopting the apparatus of Christian learning. St. Columba, we are told, had a poet named Gemmán for tutor, and we may be quite certain that the friendship which Columba is said to have shown to the poets as a body in the Assembly of Druim Ceata in 575 was not extended to a class which he associated with heathenism.
Nevertheless, a good deal of specifically heathen practice and teaching was preserved, more or less covertly, among the secular poets of Ireland for centuries after St. Columba's time.
In the seventh century, writing in Irish appears to become very common, but Adamnanus, about the beginning of the eighth century, writing from the standpoint of Latin and Christian learning, still speaks of his native tongue in depreciation. This sentiment did not extend to the Irish secular school of literati. An old grammar of Irish, dating in part from the seventh century, speaks of Irish as a "choice language," and proclaims its superiority over other languages. In the seventh century, too, new metrical forms in Irish poetry, based on Latin hymns, make their appearance, and afterwards develop into a varied and elaborate system of metric.
Let us now return to the political side of Irish history. I have endeavoured to trace the stages by which the Pentarchy of the old heroic tales became broken up and transformed into a quite different state of things when the early Christian period is reached. The chief agencies in this transformation were the extension of the power of the Connacht dynasty and its branches over northern Ireland, and the rise of the Eoghanacht dynasty in southern Ireland, with its seat at Cashel. The growth in power of the two ascendant dynasties, those of Tara and Cashel, is marked by a sort of colonising process. Offshoots from each dynasty are planted in authority over petty kingdoms, displacing or rather depressing the rulers previously in possession.
Something similar took place in later times under the Feudal system. In virtue of the supposed Donation of Constantine, now long recognised to have been fabulous, but accepted as genuine in the Middle Ages, the Popes claimed temporal dominion over all the islands of the ocean. In exercise of this temporal claim, Adrian IV conferred the lordship of Ireland on Henry of Anjou. But in virtue of the same supposed right, Adrian had already an immediate feudatory for Ireland in the person of the king of Ireland—Ruaidhri. Henry thus took the place of a "mean lord" or intermediate feudatory between the existing lord and the overlord. Henry himself repeated this process. He granted the lordship of Ireland to his son John, and this grant was confirmed by the Pope then reigning, Alexander III. Sir John Gilbert has pointed out that, had the issue of John's elder brothers survived, John would not have become king, and the lordship of Ireland would have been separate from and independent of the Crown of England, and subject only to the feudal overlordship of the Pope while it lasted. The result of granting the lordship of Ireland to Henry II was that the existing possessor was depressed in rank, not dispossessed—this apart from the cession of rights which Ruaidhri made to Henry by the short-lived Treaty of Windsor.
An almost identical process was a staple part of the policy of Irish kings from the beginning of the fourth century until the middle of the sixteenth. Such lordships can be shown to have been created either by Shane O'Neill or his father Conn, acting as king of Ulster. During the whole intervening period, we can trace the same process, the creation of mean lords, in every part of Ireland under Irish kings. In most cases the new lord was a member of the king's family, a brother, a son, or other near relative. A number of very clear and noteworthy instances of this exercise of royal dominion by Irish kings took place in consequence of the Norman conquest.
Events of this kind are not recorded in the Irish annals, except in a few instances when the exercise of power was somewhat abnormal. Since we have now reached a point at which the annals begin to figure as chief witnesses, some notice of the general character of the annals will be in place. At first sight, the pages of our native chronicles appear as a sort of trackless morass to the inquirer after Irish history. The reason is this—the chroniclers hardly ever tell us anything that an Irish reader of their times could be expected to know as a matter of course. They say almost nothing about institutions or about anything that is normal. Just as they record earthquakes, comets, eclipses, excessive frosts or floods or droughts, but say nothing about the normal course of the stars or the seasons, so, in regard of human affairs, they are silent about all that is regular or institutional, about matters of common knowledge in their time, and they are silent also, as a rule, about the institutional aspect, so to speak, of events which they relate. We are told, for example, that a certain king puts a prince of his own house to death—and that is all. From some subsidiary document we may learn that the act was a judicial act, done after trial and sentence. Or we are told that a certain king leads his forces against another king and how the battle went—but we have to consult some other source to find that the action was taken in consequence of the refusal to pay tribute according to ancient claim and precedent.
Among the subsidiary material which helps to explain the annals, and to give their events a place in historical sequence, the genealogies have the highest importance. In particular, they throw a great deal of light on the process above-mentioned, the extension of the power of dynastic families by the creation of lordships over the head of existing feudatories—to use a borrowed term.
An early instance of the process in question is found in an account quoted by O'Donovan from a MS. life of St. Greallán. Maine, he tells us, from whom the sept of Ui Maine took its name and descent, was settled in the territory of Ui Maine by a king of Connacht in the fifth century, dispossessing the "Firbolg" king of that district. (This instance, by the way, further exemplifies the unity still subsisting at that time between the different branches of the Connacht dynasty. Maine, to whom a kingdom in Connacht was thus granted by the king of Connacht, belonged to the Oriel branch of the royal house, a branch which had settled in Ulster early in the preceding century.) When O'Donovan, or the narrative which he quotes, says that the dispossessed king was of the Fir Bolg stock, he uses the term Fir Bolg in its late and wide application. The older possessors of the territory were Picts. Moreover, they were depressed rather than dispossessed, for the descendants of the ancient rulers continued to dwell as subordinate chiefs in their old territory. The family of Ó Mainnín, called Manning in English, is one of those descended from the ancient Pictish rulers of this district, which comprised the southern part of County Roscommon and the south-eastern part of County Galway. Still earlier appropriations of this kind can be traced to the time of Niall of the Nine Hostages, his brothers and sons. The old territory of the Fir Domhnann in northern Connacht became Tír Fiachrach, "Fiachra's Land," being appropriated to Fiachra, brother of Niall, and his descendants. Another branch of Fiachra's sept become possessors of the kingdom of Aidhne, lying between Galway Bay and the old Pictish territory before-mentioned. From Brión or Brian, another brother of Niall, is named Tír Briúin or Brión's Land, extending over parts of the counties Roscommon, Leitrim and Cavan. Brion's sept, the Ui Briúin also obtained a territory in the district of Tuam and another territory called Umhall, around Clew Bay. From a third brother of Niall named Ailill is named Tír Ailello, "Ailill's Land," represented by the barony of Tirerrill in Co. Sligo. In like manner, various territories were appropriated to sons of Niall of the Nine Hostages. The western part of Ulster, which was not brought under conquest by the settlement of the Airghialla, and which is now represented by Donegal county, was partitioned among three sons of Niall, Conall, Énda, and Eoghan, and bore afterwards their names Tír Conaill, "Conall's Land"; Tír Énda, "Enda's Land"; and Tír Eoghain, "Eoghan's Land." It should be noted that the original Tír Eoghain was the peninsula now called Inis Eoghain. The country now called Tyrone was then a part of Oriel. This settlement of the sons of Niall in western Ulster was, however, rather by way of conquest than of grant. No element of conquest enters into the settlements of the other sons of Niall or of the septs descended from them.
Cairbre, or his sept, for we have no record by which the grant can be dated, obtained that territory in the north-eastern corner of Connacht, bordering on Ulster, which still retains his name in that of the barony of Carbury in Co. Sligo. A second territory appropriated to Cairbre or his sept was around Granard in Co. Longford. A third was on the Leinster border, and it still preserves the name in that of the barony of Carbury in the north of Co. Kildare.
Loeguire, son of Niall, who became king of Ireland, obtained, or his near descendants obtained, a territory on the Connacht side of Loch Erne, another in Westmeath, another in East Meath or Bregia. Maine, son of Niall, obtained a territory on the east side of the Shannon; Fiachu, son of Niall, a territory in Westmeath; Ardgal, a grandson of Niall, a territory in East Meath.
It seems quite clear that no appropriations of this kind took place before the time of Niall, the close of the fourth century. Had there been earlier appropriations in Connacht or Meath, then there must have been royal septs, offshoots of the Connacht-Meath dynasty, in possession of the appropriated territories and claiming descent from earlier kings of Connacht or Meath. Nor was this claim of descent likely to be forgotten, for, as the Book of Rights shows, in each of the principal group-kingdoms, the kings whose kinship to the principal dynasty was acknowledged, were free of tribute to the principal king. The Book of Rights shows that, except the descendants of Niall and of his brothers, all the petty kingdoms of Connacht and Meath were tributary to the over-kings; and the genealogies show that the ruling families of the tributary kingdoms were as a rule of quite distinct lineage from that of the over-kings. The natural inference from these facts is that this process of superimposing new lords of the dominant dynastic blood over old rulers of a different lineage begins in the time of Niall of the Nine Hostages, about A.D. 400.
Some of the petty dynasties thus created were themselves in later times subjected to the same process and reduced to a lower degree. Thus when the O'Conor family, which was itself a branch of the sept of Brión above-mentioned, acquired exclusive succession to the kingdom of Connacht, one of its branches, bearing the distinctive name of O'Conchubhair Ruadh, obtained the lordship of Cairbre in north-eastern Connacht, over the heads of the ancient lords descended from Cairbre son of Niall. In like manner, Ailill's land, Tirerrill, after having been ruled for centuries by his descendants, passed under the lordship of the families of MacDonnchadha and MacDiarmada, descendants of his brother Brión, whose line held the kingship of all Connacht. The sept of Ailill, reduced in degree, gradually passes into obscurity. About the thirteenth century, even the genealogists cease to be interested in them; and in the seventeenth century, the last genealogist of the old school, Dubhaltach Mac Fir-Bhisigh, says that those who then remained of Ailill's race are no longer reckoned among the nobles of the territory. Let me repeat that, with the help of the genealogies, it is possible to trace this process at work in various parts of Ireland from the fifth century until the abolition of Irish law in the sixteenth century. I shall have to recur to these facts when I come to deal with the so-called "clan-system" or "tribal system," convenient terms with which some modern writers contrive to fill up the vacuum of their knowledge in regard to the general political condition of ancient and medieval Ireland.
Breifne, under the rule of Brión's sept, was regarded as permanently annexed to Connacht. In its early extent Breifne comprised about the northern half of Co. Leitrim and the western half of Co. Cavan; these territories having been annexed from the ancient Ulster. In later times, when the O'Ruairc and O'Raghallaigh chiefs extended their power, Breifne comprised the whole of the present counties of Leitrim and Cavan.
The territories of the sons of Niall were separated by Breifne and Oriel into two groups, a north-western group and a Meath group. The north-western group of Niall's descendants are called the Northern Ui Néill, the Meath group the Southern Ui Néill. One frequently meets with the error of supposing Ui Néill to mean the Ó'Néills—I find it in a paper of Zimmer's published after his death. It is true that Ui Néill, as a matter of grammar, is the plural of Ó'Néill, but it is not the plural of the surname Ó'Néill in Irish usage. The sept-names with Ui prefixed belong to an earlier age than surnames like O'Neill. The surname O'Neill belongs to the descendants of Niall Glúndubh, king of Ireland, who was reigning a thousand years ago. The sept-name Ui Néill includes all the descendants in the male line of Niall of the Nine Hostages who reigned 500 years earlier.
The chief king of the Northern Ui Néill was called king of Aileach, from the prehistoric stone fortress of Aileach near Derry, which was occupied by kings of that line as late as the tenth century. They are sometimes called kings of the Fochla, fochla being an old Irish word meaning the North. Their territory in the fifth century comprised the county of Donegal and possibly also Cairbre's country, the northern limb of Co. Sligo.
The eastern side of Ulster nominally constituted another chief kingdom, which was regarded as the remnant of the ancient Ulster, and so is sometimes called by chroniclers "the Fifth" or "Conchubhar's Fifth." It seems, however, to have consisted of four practically independent kingdoms, no one of which held any permanent authority over the others. These were Dál Riada in the North-East, on the Antrim seaboard; Ulaidh, on the Down seaboard—retaining the name of the ancient dominant people of Ulster; Dál Araidhe, at the head of a Pictish people, occupying the inland parts of Down and Antrim and also the Derry side of the Bann valley from Loch Neagh northward to the sea; and Conaille, likewise a Pictish kingdom, in the north of Co. Louth.
The remainder of Ulster, excluding Breifne, the kingdom of Aileach, and the eastern group, formed the kingdom of Airghialla or "Oriel." It should be borne in mind that this ancient Oriel of the fifth century extended northward to the mouth of Loch Foyle, and included the present Tyrone and most of Co. Derry, which were afterwards annexed to the kingdom of Aileach.
The territories of the Southern Ui Néill lay in the counties of Meath, Westmeath, Longford, King's County, and Kildare; they were not continuous, being merely appropriated portions of the kingdom of Tara.
Connacht extended eastward to the Erne and its lakes and to Loch Ramor in Co. Cavan.
Munster comprised its present extent and also the two southern baronies of King's County.
The northern boundary of Leinster ran by the Liffey, its tributary the Rye, south of the barony of Carbury in Co. Kildare, and included part of King's County bordering on Queen's County and Kildare.
There were then seven chief kingdoms in Ireland, each of them containing a number of minor kingdoms. The seven chief kingdoms were (1) the kingdom of Tara, the midlands east of the Shannon; (2) the kingdom of Leinster; (3) the kingdom of Cashel or of Munster; (4) the kingdom of Cruachain or of Connacht; (5) the kingdom of Aileach, the Fochla, or the Northern Ui Néill; (6) the kingdom of Ulaidh or the lesser Ulster; (7) the kingdom of Oriel.