ELAND
CELTIC IRELAND
JjpndcmKegoj-vT'ovX, Trench. & Co.
CELTIC IRELAND
BY
SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc.
AUTHOR OF "EDUCATIONAL ENDS '
'The only better is a Past that lives
On through an added Present—stretching still
111 hope unchecked "
GiiORCii C.
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., i, PATERNOSTER S^CARE
-1" ■ rights of translation and of; eprodaction are reserved.)
CONTENTS
Introduction. Sources of Evidence ...
Chatter I. Ethnology of Ireland
II. Erin and Alt,a ...
III. Erin and Europe
IV. Pagan Ireland at Home
V. Christianity in Ireland
VT. Social and Political Institutions
YH. The Arts in Erin ...
M A P S
(1) Celtic Ireland, .showing ihe Divisions of the Kingdom, the
important Pagan Centres, the Chief Monastic Schools, and
the Danish Settlements ... ... Frontispicr,
(2) K l'hnological M al' of europe at the dawn ok Ills'tor\,
showing the probable Lines of various Race-Migrations to
Ireland ... ... ... ... ... ... i
(3) Europe early in ihe Seventh Century, showing the
Range of Irish Missionary Influence in the Dark Ages
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ETHNOLOGY, Etc.
"'Origins of English History.'" Charles Elton. (I!. Quaritcl .)
" The Races of Britain."' John Beddoe. (Triibner and Co.)
" Rude Stone Monuments." J. Eergusson. (John Murray.)
"Celtic Scotland." \V. F. Skene. (Edmonston and Douglas.)
" Early Britain." J.Rhys. (S.P.C.K.)
" Pre-historic Times." Sir John Lubbock. (Williams and Nor-
gate.)
HISTORY, TRADITION, AND LITERATURE.
" History of Ireland, Critical and Philosophical." Standisli
< )'Grady. (Sampson Low and Co.)
"History of Ireland." Jeffry Reating. (E. O'Mahoney, New
York.)
" History of Ireland : Heroic Period." Standish O'Grady. (Samp¬
son Low and Co.)
" Early Bardic Literature of Ireland." Standisli O'Grady. (Samp¬
son Low and Co.)
" Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathen¬
dom." J. Rhys. Hibbert Lectures, 1887.
"Manuscript Materials of Irish History.'' Eugene O'Curry.
1 Williams and Norgate.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
"Ireland and the Celtic Church." G. T. Stokes. (Hodder ami
Stoughton.)
"St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland." J. II. Todd, D.D. (Hodges
and Figgis.)
"Writings of St. Patrick." G. T. Stokes and C. II. Wright.
(Ilodges and Figgis.)
"Tripartite Lile of St. Patrick and other Documents. ' Whitley
Stokes. (Eyre and Spottiswoode.)
" Celtic Romances." P. W. Joyce. (Ivegan Paul, Trench and Co.)
LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS.
" Manners anil Customs of the Ancient Irish." Eugene O'Curry.
with Introduction by W. Iv. Sullivan. (Williams and Norgate.)
" The Brehon Laws." Translated by O'Donovan and O'Curry.
(Longmans, Green and Co.)
"Early History of Institutions." Sir H. Maine. (John Murray.)
THE FINE ARTS.
•• Early Christian Art in Ireland." Margaret Stokes. (Chapman
and Hall.)
" Notes on Irish Architecture," with Photographs. Lord Dunraven.
(Bell and Sons.)
>" Ancient Music of Ireland." E. Bunting. (Ilodges and Figgis.)
" Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish," Introduction, pp.
4S4—and vol. iii. eh. x\x.-xxxviii.
INTRODUCTION.
sources of evidence.
The study of history, at its best, implies inquiry into
the means by which human character, in any of its
national varieties, has developed itself. In the study of
Irish history, more perhaps than in that of any other,
writers and readers are alike apt to lose sight of this.
Attention is concentrated, not unnaturally, on the
melancholy story of the Anglo-Irish quarrel, and gene¬
rally with a view to either excusing or accusing one or
other of the parties concerned. While the quarrel lasts,
it may, indeed, be unavoidable that its history should
be studied in the spirit of the partisan. Nevertheless,
it, as well as all else in Irish history, derives its highest
interest from the light it can shed on the inquiry,—
What manner of people were the ancient Irish, and
how have they, with the infusion of other races now
settled amongst them, developed into the modern
Irish nation ? And this, it may be said with truth, is
the fitting prelude to the further question,—What are
INTRO DUCT I OX.
the characteristic qualities of the Irish nation now,
and what are the circumstances necessary that it
should accomplish its destiny—should fulfil that
mission among the nations which is laid upon it by
its gifts? Englishmen are called upon to-day to
understand, in part, the answer to this question ;
and Irishmen, in all times, are called upon to feel
the answer to it, for they it is who will have to work
out that mission to its fulfilment.
In the spirit of such inquiry, I propose to deal with
that portion of Irish history which preceded the
Norman invasion—the Irish period of free develop¬
ment. Abundant ancient materials exist, out of
which have been constructed, by careful scholarly
minds, valid accounts of that history in all its
most interesting and important aspects, although a
single complete and critical history of early Ireland
has never yet been written. Nor is the reason for
delay in the production of such a history far to seek.
It were an easy task to write the story of a people
who had left a few annals and no great mass of
poetical literature; but the ancient Irish were not
such a people. The first glimpse we catch of them
shows us a society literary to the heart's core, and so
devoted to the memory of the national past that all
literature revolves round the doings of the national
heroes—who are represented sometimes as gods no
less than heroes—and concerns itself solely with the
real history of the " men of Erin." The bard is in the
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
XI
place of honour higher than the warrior, and he has
a definite duty to the society that supports and
honours him. His public duty it is to preserve in his
memory the historical talcs of the Irish race, to
enshrine in verse new events as they occur, and to
recite this bardic history, so composed and so pre¬
served, for the pleasure and instruction of the people.
In later times we find a division of labour among the
bards, and the emergence of two bardic or academic
classes—the class of historians, whose duty coincided
with that of the more ancient bards, but was probably
conducted in a more prosaic and critical spirit, and
the class of poets (or Filidecht), litterateurs proper, to
whom fell, perhaps, the larger share of the educational
work which formed such a conspicuous feature of
early Irish society. But, whether as poets or his¬
torians, it is quite clear that the definite duty of the
Irish bards was to know compose and teach, in its
various branches, the gradually accumulating literature
of the Gael ; and that literature had the one clear
conscious purpose, to give an account of the past of
Ireland and the Irish. In the Book of Leinstcr we
are told that the qualification required of a poet,
before he could obtain his bardic degree, was that
he should know by heart seven times fifty stories,
namely five times fifty prime stories and twice fifty
secondary stories. It is evident that this requirement,
or any such as this, was an effective guarantee against
the invention of bardic tales out of relation to the
xii
INTRODUCTION.
general current of historical tradition ; and in con¬
sequence we find, as we should expect, a remarkable
positive, as well as negative, consistency throughout
the bardic literature, so that each portion gives
evidence to a consciousness of the whole in the
narrator's mind.
Thus, by carefully trained memories, assisted by
the use of the metrical form of literary composition,
and checked by the presence in the country of a
considerable literary class, all bent on remembering
the same tales, and meeting periodically for the
exchange of bardic ideas and refreshment of bardic
memories—thus the history of the nation, steeped
in the forms and colours of imagination that were
native to the people the soil and the age, was handed
down from generation to generation. When it began
to be we do not know: when it began to be told we
do not know : nor do we know even when it began
to be written down, though there is good reason to
think that written books were in Ireland before the
coming of Patrick in the fifth century. The question
of dates is of little consequence, however ; for of one
fact—the one that does matter—we are quite sure.
The old bardic literature gives us the history of the
ancient Irish, as told spontaneously and believingly
by themselves in the pagan times before Europe had
begun at all to influence their ideas. It is Irish of
the Irish, more valuable for the imaginative element
in which it moves than even for the historical truth
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
XIII
which it certainly enshrines. It is the fount at which
the pagan Irish drank in their moral and religious
ideas—the source of their martial aspirations in the
heroic age—the well whence they drew the inspiration
of gentle and noble thoughts, of family affections, of
loyalty to friends, of social justice, of faith in treaties,
of fair play in war, of respect for the weak, of
reverence for the heroes and the immortal gods
of Erin. " Those heroes and heroines," says Mr.
Standish Grady, " were the ideals of our ancestors ;
their conduct and character were to them a religion ;
the bardic literature was their Bible. . . . Under its
nurture, the imagination and spiritual susceptibilities
of our ancestors were made capable of that tremen¬
dous outburst of religious fervour and exaltation
which characterized the centuries that succeeded the
fifth, and whose effect was felt throughout a great
portion of Europe. It was the Irish bards and that
heroic age of theirs which nourished the imagination,
intellect, and idealism of the country to such an
issue. Patrick did not create these qualities. They
may not be created, tie found them and directed
them into a new channel." And truly it is in the
reason of things that the best sequence of events for
the moral history of a nation should be that charac¬
teristic Irish sequence of an age of saints to an age
of heroes. When the longing for great deeds, the
contempt for ease, is at its height, no need is greater
that that of an object, a worthy cause for self-
XIV
INTRODUCTION.
devotion. A religion of self-devotion preached at
such a time is like seed sown on well-tilled land. It
strikes its roots deep and fast, and plants for all
time the ideal of self-dcvotedness in the hearts of the
people.
The ancient Irish emerge in history a mixed race,
predominantly Gaelic, and, as such, tall, fair-haired,
blue-eyed. They were gentle, as we shall see, in
peace, fierce in war, loving enterprise and the joy of
great deeds—the gathering together, doubtless, in that
remote island on the shores of the Western world, of
the most adventurous, the most high-spirited, the
minds most curious to see new lands and find the
limits of the world, the hearts most susceptible to
the tender influences of Nature and apt to be fasci¬
nated by the quest of that land which is nearest the
setting sun—the most imaginative and aspiring and
poetic spirits in all those communities that moved
slowly or rapidly westwards to find new worlds. So,
out of the foremost waves of the great human drift
that covered Europe, the Irish people was built up,
to issue forth presently in the same spirit of enter¬
prise that had brought them thither, speeding all
over Europe and as far north as Iceland, first as
warriors, and secondly as missionaries carrying scholar¬
ship in their train.
After the introduction of Christianity, the bardic
literature began to be committed to writing with
probable completeness. Then, too, the work of the
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
XV
annalists commenced—a much more conscious work
of historical record, and somewhat less valuable, there¬
fore, than that of the bards. Historical manuscripts
accumulated as time went on—stories and annals, as
well as law-books and other literature. These were
kept either in monasteries or in other houses of learned
communities ; but, during- the troubled times of the
Danish and Norman invasions, many of the manu¬
script collections were dispersed, and a large number
must certainly have been lost and destroyed. Allu¬
sions to books no longer forthcoming occur in the
books which we still have, and so enable us to form
an imperfect idea as to some part of our loss. A
considerable body of manuscript literature has, how¬
ever, come down to us, dating from 1100 onwards, and
dealing with a great variety of subjects. Most of
these manuscripts are copies, or embody copies from
older books, and internal evidence based on the
structure of the language shows that some parts of
them have been handed down from early times.
Thus we have, as a survival to our own time of the
old Irish intellectual activity, a quantity of litera¬
ture of well-ascertained antiquity, and certainly
known to reflect correctly, by means of verbal tradi¬
tion, the ideas and tastes of an older antiquity still.
This Irish literature is now to be found not only in
Ireland, but scattered through the great libraries of
Europe. Collections exist in the library of Trinity
College, Dublin, in the Royal Irish Academy, the
XVI
INTRODUCTION.
British Museum, the Bodleian Library, the National
Library at Paris, the Lou vain College, Belgium, and
the College of St. Isidor at Rome. The nature of all
this literature is very various. Besides the bardic
tales and the annals, Ireland produced many eccle¬
siastical books in Latin ; but she produced a larger
number in the native Gaelic, and Irish glosses on the
Latin text are numerous. Classical stories translated
into Irish are common ; and, as one example of other
subjects, I may mention a work on geography, extra¬
ordinary for its time, written by an Irish monk,
Dicuil, about 825, which was discovered in the French
National Library in the .year 1812.
But I have already said enough, and more than
enough, to show that the difficulty of the Irish
historian is not the lack of valuable materials. His
difficulty is the quantity of material, and the exist¬
ence in it of that very literary character which makes
it so valuable from a philosophic, as well as interest¬
ing from a literary, point of view. The bardic
literature is there, and the historian cannot neglect
it: it is too historical to be treated simply as romance,
and too romantic to be treated simply as history.
And so it is probable that early Irish history, as a
chronicle of events, will always be more or less
immersed in the atmosphere of speculation ; and
perhaps it will be, for that very reason, more true by
far to the facts of the case than the history of other
peoples who have had less to say about themselves.
SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
XY11
Certainly, it is for that reason likely to exercise a
much more powerful influence over the people whose
past record it registers.
It is not the object of the following pages, how¬
ever, to deal with details in the record of Irish events.
The main facts of that record are attested by the
unanimous voice of tradition, supported by collateral
evidence from the history and tradition of other
people, and finally confirmed by the testimony of
later investigation into the traces left among the Irish
people of a social and national life, the substance of
which had been destroyed. It is not with the record
of events, except in outline, that these pages will
deal, but with the salient features of this social and
national life—the laws, customs, and institutions of
the old Irish people. These are revealed to us, with
a completeness and evidence that leave little to be
desired, in the bardic stories and annals and, above
all, in the books that have descended to us containing
the Irish or Brehon law.
In any intelligible account of these we may see
the common characteristics of early institutions
among all the Aryan peoples. But we see more, and
it is not difficult to determine the line of distinction.
In Ireland these institutions had a longer life, and
therefore a more elaborate development, than else¬
where in the Western world ; because Ireland, pro¬
tected by her island isolation, and pcihaps also by
the reputed fierceness of her warriors, was never
XVIII
INTRODUCTION.
interfered with by the Roman power, nor ever came
under the influence of the Roman Imperial idea. So
far as it goes and generally, the Irish social organiza¬
tion represents what the free development of the
North-western Aryan tended to be ; though, no
doubt, it contains certain characteristics of its own
which do not appear elsewhere, and which, moreover,
can be traced as determining elements in the history
of the Irish nation throughout all times—elements
which enable us to understand the forms taken by the
Irish national movement in our own day, and to
understand, too, the secret of that extraordinary
assimilative force by which the idea of Irish
nationality has absorbed into itself, despite all efforts
to prevent it, the self-devotion of the motley groups
of strangers settled from time to time, as enemies,
within the borders of the land.
30 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
F. S .Well er, Hth .
Jjon/ion: Regan.IJauL, 'Drench, Co.
CELTIC IRELAND.
CHAPTER I.
* ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
WllO were the ancient Irish ? To Irishmen, at least,
this will always be an interesting question, and none
the less interesting because it does not admit of a
simply definite answer. Long before historic times
the Irish were in Ireland ; and early in history, if not
at its dawn, they appear to have had well-marked
traditions as to their origin. Later, the monastic
chroniclers improved on the tradition and, connect¬
ing Irish story with the Biblical narrative, completed
the history of the race backwards to the flood. This
idea of the monks makes it not hard to distinguish
the early from the late traditions. In estimating the
value of the traditions as we have them, the first step,
therefore, is to separate the mediaeval monks' addi¬
tions from the bardic story, by means of internal
evidence ; and, then, the historical value of the bardic
B
CELTIC IRELAND.
story must be estimated according to the most
reasonable tests. First, sift out the miraculous ele¬
ment which belongs to the atmosphere of the times,
and does not detract from, any more than it adds to,
the value of the residuum. Then, consider the prob¬
able motives unconsciously at work in the construction
of a tale intended to be true, and select that part of
the tale the most probable motive of which appears
to be its truth. More—much more of it—may be true,
but this much of it cannot at least be disregarded.
There are, however, other sources of evidence
besides Irish tradition. The physical characteristics
of the human remains found in ancient tombs give
a clue to a theory of race-connections among the
peoples who once inhabited the countries where these
remains are found ; and something can be made
of this evidence for our present subject, though it is
much obscured by the fact that cremation was prac¬
tised by many tribes in both Ireland and Britain. In
Ireland and in North Britain this practice prevailed
most extensively, and it is in South Britain, or Eng¬
land, therefore, that the observation of the prc-Celtic
types within these islands may best be made. We can
reason, then, by analogy to Ireland and Scotland where
the same types of tombs and monuments are to be
found. Comparing the evidence of pre-historic eth¬
nology and archaeology collected in these islands
with similar evidence in continental countries, it is
possible for ethnologists to construct the most prob-
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
able theory of the early race-history of either Ireland
or Britain. But the subject is complex and difficult,
and all the available evidence has by no means been
yet collected, while some of it has been destroyed in
the pursuit of archaeological, apart from ethnological,
studies.
The earliest class of tombs, in which stone imple¬
ments only arc found, fall into two sub-classes, dis¬
tinguished by the presence or absence of a stone-built
chamber inside. The huge " long barrows " of Salis¬
bury Plain are unchambcred mounds, and are prob¬
ably the graves of the earliest immigrants ; while
the long chambered cairns of Caithness exemplify a
more advanced order of ideas. In these tombs are
found the remains of a long-headed, short-statured,
lithe-limbed race, with brain capacity good, and fea¬
tures well formed. It has been thought that these
people were of the same race as the stout-hearted
Silures, who kept at bay for so long the Roman
power in South Wales, and as the Atticotti, another
hard-fighting foe beyond the southern wall. If so,
this race has left its mark on the features of a con¬
siderable portion of the population in both islands, and
to its admixture may be assigned, with probability,
most of the dark hair and dark eyes that arc found
amongst us. As we proceed, however, it will appear
that Silures and Atticotti, or at least the former,
represent a probably different and more distinctive
ethnological element, which can be traced through
4
CELTIC IRELAND.
south-western Europe by the track of the stone
monuments known as dolmens or cromlechs.
Later, came to Britain another and very different
race — broad-headed, large-limbed, powerful — who
built circular tombs for their dead, and buried bronze
implements with them. As metal-workers they were
comparatively skilled in the arts, and had thus
advantages for conquest. But they appear to have
settled down peaceably by the side of the older in¬
habitants, and with so much respect that the earlier
and later ancestor-revering peoples are found to have
buried their heroes in close proximity. The round
tombs of the bronze age men are built in numbers
on spots that were sacred to the elder race. Around
Stonehenge, long barrows abound, and there are indi¬
cations that Stonehenge was built by this tall, power¬
ful, and probably fair people.* It is not improbable
that the earlier settlers may have learnt to substitute
the chambered tumulus for the mound of earth, from the
example of their later-coming neighbours. If so, it
may be that they, and not the so-called Iberians, were
the original builders of those rude stone monuments
throughout Europe, part of Asia, and the North of
Africa, which seem to indicate the presence, or the
passage, of one people in the countries where they
are found. This theory would solve some difficulties,
though it leaves others.
* Elton's "Origins of English History," ch. vi. p. 146. See also
Greenwell's " British Barrows," for full account of both classes of tombs.
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
?
It appears, from the sepulchral remains, that this
tall race had established itself along the opposite
coasts from Sweden to Finisterre before they became
acquainted with the use of bronze, and, therefore,
before they came to Britain. From their physical cha¬
racteristics, it is inferred that they were "of the fair
Finnish type that still prevails so largely among the
modern inhabitants of Denmark and in the Wendish
and Slavonian countries." * A strong light is thrown
on the subject by the comparison of this inference
with the theory lately put forward by philologists,
that the probable home of the Aryan language was
in southern Scandinavia, and the speech of the Finns
its nearest relative. | The early Finnish or Ugrian
type, that wandered westwards from the north-east,
was likely to be amalgamated easily with the more
numerous Aryan tribes that followed, and may have
acted too as a medium of solution between them and
the ancient people that preceded both. Later immi¬
grations into England, Scotland and Ireland may
have included mixtures of a Ugrio-Iberian and after¬
wards of a Celto-Ugrio-Iberian stock, as well as
mixtures of the Ugrian with the Celt. Such a mix¬
ture as the latter may have been the tall, red-haired
Caledonians described by Tacitus,J and the Belgac of
* Elton's " Origins of English History," ch. vi. p. 144.
t British Association, 1S87, Inaugural Address to Anthropological
Section, by Professor Sayce ; and paper 011 the " Primitive Seat of the
Aryans," by Canon Isaac Taylor.
J These Caledonians were located in mid-Scotland, north and west
of the Tay basin, while we must look to the south-west of Scotland or
north-west of England for the Atticotti. ^ u
6
CELTIC IRELAND.
Gaul may have been distinguished from the Celts by
some duplex or triplex mixture of blood.
In Ireland and Scotland the pre-Celtic evidence
of the early tombs is much more obscure, though
it is certain that the dark short race was there. It
is, moreover, quite clear that, in semi-historic times,
builders of one class of Irish stone monuments, the
circles and the tumuli of circular form, spread over
these countries ; and their distribution points to the
conclusion that they came from the North, down the
west coast of Scotland to Ireland, where are found
the most remarkable examples of circular tumuli in
the historic cemetery of the Irish kings on the Boyne.*
Numerous stone circles mark the spots where Irish
tradition reports that two great battles were fought
between the Firbolgs and the later-coming Tuatha Dé
Danann, who arc said to have replaced them in the
domination of Ireland.f Tradition also assigns to the
Tuatha the honour of having introduced a knowledge
of metals and of the arts of life; and this fact
suggests some association with the bronze age men
of Britain.
The monuments known as cromlechs or dolmens
are also found in Ireland, the finest examples, built
with very large stones, being in the north, and the
smallest in the west. These are also found in North
and South Wales and in Cornwall, but scarcely at
* Fergusson's "Rude Stone Monuments," p. 199, el seq.
f Ibid., p. 175, tH seq.
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
1
all elsewhere in England. Hence it is clear that
these parts must have been the homes of the people
who built the dolmens, at the period when this
type of architecture grew up. The North Europe
dolmens arc found in Sweden and Denmark, along
the shores of the Baltic and North Sea, as far west
as the eastern parts of Holland and no further. The
second and greatest European group belongs to the
west of France and the coasts of Spain. In the
large tract of country between eastern Holland and
the line of the Rhone, Loire, and Seine there are no
dolmens ; and these were the parts peopled by the
Celts and Belgae in the time of the Romans. The
Celtic peoples thus are marked out clearly as not the
original dolmen-builders, though later they are found
abundantly in the dolmen districts.*
Considering the distribution of the dolmens, it
seems probable that their builders crossed over from
Brittany to Cornwall, where they are very abundant,
and were thence propagated to Wales and the south of
Ireland ; while the larger northern Irish dolmens may
have come into Ireland by a different route, as an in¬
stalment of the tumuli and circles. There is, however,
one piece of literary evidence connecting Spain with
Britain which should be noticed. D. O'Campo, the
compiler of an important Spanish chronicle in the
sixteenth century, records that, " Certain natives of
* Fergusson's " Rude Stone Monuments," ch. viii. p. 326, et scq.
See also map showing distribution of the dolmens.
8
CELTIC IRELAND.
Spain called Silores (the Siluri)), a Biscayan tribe,
joined with another, named Brigantes, migrated to
Britain about two hundred and sixty-one years before
our era, and obtained possession of a territory there
on which they settled." * According to this, there
were early migrations from Spain, as well as from
France, to Britain, and possibly to Ireland also. If
the dolmen builders did proceed direct from Spain to
Ireland, it ought to be possible to find evidence of
the fact in the nature and contents of these rude
structures in both countries. At present, we are still
very ignorant on the subject generally.
We are ignorant, too, as to the ethnology of these
dolmen builders, who have left traces in Asia and
along the African Mediterranean coast,f as well as by
the Baltic and the Bay of Biscay. More investiga¬
tion will solve some questions ; for the dolmens were
erected as tombs in honour of their heroes and kings
by a people who must have highly reverenced and
possibly worshipped their dead ; and the tombs
have not yet been asked consistently to yield up
their secrets. Probably, they are not all due to the
hands, or built in honour of the dead, of one race, but
do all mark the dominance, or at least influence, of
* See a paper on the Migration from Spain to Ireland, by Dr.
Madden, "Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy," vol. viii. p. 371, etc.
Dr. Madden has brought together a quantity of evidence showing that
the tradition of an emigration from Spain to Ireland is well marked in
the Spanish annals.
f Fergusson's " Rude Stone Monuments," ch. x. and xii.
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
9
some one great family of mankind, which wandered
forth to various parts and mixed its blood with,
while it imparted its ideas to, the other races that
either preceded and were controlled by it or followed
and controlled it.
The indications, so far, are that a people from the
south, through western Britain, and partly perhaps
direct from Spain or France, came to Ireland in early
times ; while another came from the north, round
Scotland and in part through it ; and that neither
of these people were Celtic, though both were pos¬
sibly mixed in blood, and both may have contained
a Celtic element. It is likely, indeed, that the northern
race may have had a large, even a predominant, dash
of Gaelic blood ; but this suggestion depends rather
on the direct literary evidence to which we shall come
presently.
The Celt and the other Aryan peoples throughout
Europe have not left in their path the same kind of
monumental evidence as those who preceded them.
Perhaps their tendencies to ancestor-worship were
always less, though we cannot doubt that they went
far in the direction of deifying their heroes. It may
have been a natural consequence of a more vivid and
poetic imagination that they deified Nature at least
as much, and worshipped rivers and grottoes, no
less than they performed religious ceremonies at
tombs. Be that as it may, it appears to be quite
certain that, though they often adopted, they never
10
CELTIC IRELAND.
invented the practice of erecting stone monuments
such as those which enable us to see dimly the track
of their predecessors. For the movements of the
Celtic and Teutonic nations in Europe we must look
mainly to history and tradition. To the Irish records,
and their evidence as to Irish ethnology, we shall come
presently. But first let us consider another source of
the same kind.
This source of evidence is one which Irish writers
might naturally be apt to neglect—the evidence of
old British history and tradition as preserved by
Wales, and of old Alban history and tradition as
found in the records of the ancient Pictland. Both
Wales and Scotland can shed some light on Irish
ethnology. In historic times, the Scots of Ireland
and the Picts of Alba were close allies. Together,
they harried the coasts of Roman Britain, and in
the Welsh chronicles we find their races so closely
identified that they are spoken of as the Gwyddel
and the Gwyddel Ffichti. The Pictish chronicle,
having been compiled in the tenth century, and
therefore long after the Scottish dynasty was estab¬
lished in Scotland, may perhaps be regarded as a
source tainted with the amiable desire to unite in
social sentiment the branches of one nation ; but it
is impossible to regard as quite worthless for evidence
the fact that it makes out Scots and Picts to be
different branches of the same race. The names too
that occur in the early part of the list of Pictish kings
E Til A O LOGY OF IRELAND.
are Gaelic, and such British elements as are found
in the names of the southern Picts are Cornish, not
Welsh, thus pointing to an affinity with some Celtic
race that preceded the settlement of the Britons, and
may have been mixed with non-Aryan stock. Again,
in the chronicle of the Picts and Scots, which was
compiled in the fourteenth century, an important
piece of traditional evidence is recorded. We arc
told that in very early times seven kings of the
Cruithnigh, or Picts, of Alba, reigned over Erin in
Tara ; and we find that the seven are mentioned in
the Irish annals as kings of the Firbolgs, the first of
them being the celebrated traditional character,
Ollamh Fodhla, to whom some legends refer the
foundation of Tara as the capital of Ireland. Thus
both traditions point to a time when the same race
was settled over considerable portions of the two
islands under different names, and so impressed
themselves on the imagination of their successors as
to appear to have been the dominant races for the
time in each.
Coming now to definitely historic times, we find
a colony of Picts settled in the north of Ireland under
the name of Cruithnigh, and the Irish annals contain
no hint that they spoke a different language from
the Irish proper, whom the Romans called Scots.
Either these Cruithnigh were a remnant of the old
settlement from Alba to which the Pictish record
points, and the Scots some new race, different though
I 2
CELTIC IRELAND.
kindred, now dominating the island, or the colony
was a new one, differentiated from the earlier settled
people of the same race by its mere newness. We
shall see reason presently for inclining to the former
alternative, so far at least as the divergence between
the two races is concerned. The identity of language
is, however, important, and there is much evidence to
show that historic Picts and Scots spoke the same
language, or languages differing only as dialects of
the same Gaelic speech. For example, in later times
the Picts of Galloway, who were surrounded by
Britons spoke, not Cymric, but the Gaelic tongue ;
and we know that St. Columba, in his mission to the
Picts, did not need an interpreter for his intercourse
with the king, but only when he or his comrades
went to outlying districts, where probably the lan¬
guage, as well as the race, of the early non-Celtic
settlers still held ground.
The whole evidence as to the racial character of
the Pict is carefully collated by Mr. Skene,* and goes
far to prove his conclusion that the Pict, as he stands
out in history, is a variety of Gael, whatever other
races may have been associated with him, or absorbed
by him, in the formation of that unconquered little
kingdom of Pictland. Professor Rhys's main con¬
clusion does not differ so much from Mr. Skene's as
appears at first sight. He finds the Picts to be a
non-Aryan people—the original Iberians—whose his-
* "Celtic Scotland," vol. i.
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
13
tory is mixed up, however, with that of the Cale¬
donians dwelling to the south of them, and whom he
considers to be undoubtedly Gaelic.* Mr. Elton,
again, finds the Ugrian element in the Pict,f and his
conclusion must be to some extent admitted if there
is anything in the conclusions to which we have
already come. The exact limitations of the Gaelic
element in the ethnology of Scotland does not,
however, affect the question of Irish ethnology very
greatly. If there was a large Gaelic and Gaelic-
speaking element within the area of Pictland, which
paved the way for its ultimate development into
Scotland, this was probably the element that co¬
operated with the Scots, who were certainly Gaels,
in their warlike expeditions, and was called Gwyddel
Ffichti by the Welsh. This was undoubtedly the
Pict to which the traditions of the Pictish chronicle
refer.
This Pict is naturally identified with the Cale¬
donian whom Tacitus describes as the most powerful
foe which the enemies of Rome met in North Britain.
The Gauls, he tells us, are somewhat like the Germans,
tall and fair-haired, and the Britons are not reported
to be different from the Gauls, while the Silures,
remnants of the older race, are dark and curly-haired,
like the Iberians of Spain. The Caledonians, on the
other hand, are larger-limbed than any of these, and
* Rhys's "Early Britain," ch. v.
t Elton's " Origins of English History," ch. vi.
14
CELTIC IRELAND.
with redder hair, more similar to the Germans than
are the Gauls. On account of their appearance,
Tacitus imagines that the Caledonians had a German
origin, but the evidence of language, and the fact that
the Germans were still east of the Rhine discredit
this idea. It seems, however, to be a probable
inference that the Celtic stock whence the Cale¬
donian sprang had a dash of some other race in it,
which tended to the production of larger limbs and
redder hair; and the men of the circular British tombs,
who also resemble those found in the stone-age tombs
of Denmark, rise inevitably to one's mind. And here
we are reminded of a tradition recorded, not only by
the Pictish chronicle, but by Bede, by the "Historia
Britonum," and by the Welsh triads, to the effect that
the Picts came from Scythia, and first acquired Ork¬
ney and Caithness, spreading thence over Scotland
from the north. In the Irish legends we also find one
of the Irish races—not the Scots—with physical cha¬
racteristics not unlike those of the Caledonians, or
Picts, as described by Tacitus, and with associations
pointing to an origin in the north-east.
But, probable as it is that the Scots and Picts
were ethnic brothers up to a certain point, with some
relationship, whatever it was, to the Briton, it is still
more certain that a great historical gulf must, at some
time, have yawned between them. The difference
between their social institutions sufficiently proves
this, showing a marked divergence in their past, and
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
15
in the influences of racial admixture which had acted
on them, by different survivals in the institutions
handed down from the past. It is pretty generally
known that the Pictish law of inheritance was in the
female line. A Pictish king based his right to the
throne, for instance, on the fact that he was his
mother's, rather than his father's, son. Not a man's
sons, but his sister's sons, were his natural heirs.
Such a law is a very clear reminiscence of a time
when, for some reason or other, the tribal idea took
a shape which prevented the formation of new families
by marriage—a time when the woman and her chil¬
dren belonged always to her tribe, the husband
attaching himself to her tribe rather than, as in the
ordinary case, she attaching herself to his. Now, the
Gaelic tradition of Ireland gives not a single trace of
any such idea. Either the race never had it, or had
had it so long ago that even the imaginative memory
of the Gael had lost all hold of it. This single fact
is, it would appear, enough to show that, if the
Gwyddcl and the Gwyddel Ffichti really were ethnic
brothers, they were brothers that had parted long
ago and made their way by different paths to the
sister lands in which history finds them.
Professor Rhys considers that this institution of
descent in the female line is one of the strongest
proofs that the Picts were essentially non-Aryan ;* and
it might, on the face of it, very well be that they
* Rhys's " Early Britain," pp. 166, 167.
i6
CELTIC IRELAND.
derived the institution from their non -Aryan side, the
primitive inhabitants with whom they amalgamated
more or less—perhaps more in days after those when
Tacitus described the tall, red-haired Caledonians.
The difficulty still remains, however, that we have no
particular reason to assign these institutions to the
earlier settlers any more than to the Aryan folk, and
it seems more reasonable on the whole to think that
they represent the survival of a custom based on a
long-vanished state of society, which custom survived
in this particular case, and not in others, because
circumstances did not arise to require or suggest its
abolition. On that supposition its existence on one
side of the channel and not on the other indicates a
separation of history very considerable between two
branches of the same race.
So much we might infer if the Irish ethnic tra¬
ditions were non-existent ; but they do exist, and are
the most light-giving of all the traditions that bear
on the history of the early peoples in both islands.
Let us see now what they say. Do they tell us any¬
thing of that long-headed, lithe-limbed race, whose
weapons were of flint and their graves oblong, who
are thought by some anthropologists to be of Iberian
stock, and to have contributed an element which can
be perceived in the British and Irish populations of
to-day? Do they tell us anything of the round-
headed man ? And is there any traditional evidence
that a Gaelic or semi-Gaelic race from the north,
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
similar to the Pict, preceded the Scot, or Gael proper,
in the settlement of Ireland ?
Throughout the whole of the early literature,
deeply imbedded in the Irish idea of Irish origin, we
find the tradition of three Celtic races who established
themselves successively as lords in the land. The
first of these is called the Firbolgs, the second the
Tuatha Dé Danann, and the third are the Milesians
from South Europe,* victors over all, traditional
depositaries of the vigour, enterprise, and chivalry
of the Irish race, and presumably of the literature,
since they are its prime heroes. To their immediate
predecessors, however, are more especially assigned
powers of magical skill and nature-knowledge;
but this may be connected with the fact, which
constitutes the main difficulty in interpreting the
legend, that these Tuatha Dé Danann appear in two
distinct characters, first as a real people preceding
the Milesians in the occupation of the country, and
secondly as that race of immortal beings to which the
soil of Ireland—not the race of Miledh—was sacred,
the mighty " Sidhe " of Irish mythology, who degene¬
rated later into the fairies of Irish folk-lore, dwelling
* The Spanish records agree with the Irish, as already noted, that
there was emigration from Spain to Ireland. Colmenar, in the
"Annals of Spain and Portugal" (1741), vol. ii. p. 55, sums up the
matter thus : " History informs us that two hundred years before Jesus
Christ the ISiscayans plied on the sea in vessels made of the trunks of
trees hollowed and covered with leather, and with a fleet thus con¬
structed they went to Hibernia, now called Ireland, and took possession
of it."
i8
CELTIC IRELAND.
in the lakes and hills and at the bottom of the sea.
This confusion may be partly due to a natural
rationalizing tendency in the monks who wrote out
so many of the stories—a tendency to minimize the
mythical element and represent the race of gods as a
race of men ; but it is likely enough to be as largely
due to the native genius for idealization, which alike
transformed the Milesian hero into a heroic god
and the Dc Danann magic-worker into the immortal
who controls in Ireland the power of earth and air
and sky.
Taking the Tuatha Dé Danann to be a real race
of men, they may have been the builders of circles
and circular tombs from the north, who came south
by the Orkneys and Caithness, and were identical
in part with the Picts of Scotland, though separated
in their later history. If so, the bronze-age men of
Britain cannot be wholly dissociated from them;
though, since these came probably by a different
route, from the Frisian coast to Yorkshire, quite
different mixtures may be represented by the two.
One contrast is remarkable. The Scotch and Irish
tombs of the same kind as those in England show that
cremation had been more generally adopted by the
races which buried in them. This indicates some quite
different dominant idea,* and points to the conclusion
* It is only a surmise of my own, but I suspect that this practice
implies a more spiritual conception of immortality in the races to which
it was indigenous, and indicates the presence of the Aryan intellect with
its wide grasp of imaginative reason.
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
19
that the Scotch and Irish tomb-builders of this class
were not in the main of the same race and period
as those in England. If they were the Tuatha Dé
Danann, they spoke Gaelic. Perhaps they came out
from their Scandinavian home after the dominance
of the Aryan had been long established there, the
Finnish clement having mainly migrated to other
parts. But, however that may be, this wave of immi¬
gration to Ireland was, without doubt, chiefly Gaelic,
if the evidence of tradition counts for anything at all.
The Irish legends, however, have something to
say about earlier settlers than the three races already
mentioned, and the Fomorian sea-rovers, who, accord¬
ing to the story, settled and fought in the north-west
of Ireland before the coming of the Celts, may have
been a tribe of pure Ugrian extraction coming round
the north of Scotland from Denmark or Scandinavia.
If this Ugrian race settled, however sparsely, in Scot¬
land, and the Tuatha Dé Danann came to Ireland
from that country, it is easy to imagine one way in
which the modification of Gael by Ugrian might have
come to pass in them. It is Mr. Skene's opinion,—
and the description of physical characteristics in Irish
legend tends to bear it out,—that the Tuatha Dé
Danann correspond to Tacitus's large-limbed, red-
haired Caledonians, and the brown-haired Scot to a
purer Celtic type, or a type which, if mixed, was
a different mixture.'*
* " Celtic Scotland," p. 179.
20
CELTIC IRELAND.
It seems so natural to identify the Firbolg of Irish
tradition with the so-called Iberian or dark-haired
stock, that writers not familiar with the Irish litera¬
ture often do so unhesitatingly. The evidence of the
literature is, however, a stumbling-block to this iden¬
tification. The Iberians were small; the Firbolgs, we
arc sometimes told, were of great stature-—taller than
the Milesians, though less beautiful. The Iberians
were dark-haired, but the Firbolg Ferdiad in the
greatest of the Irish heroic tales has golden hair and
blue eyes, as well as noble stature. Cuculain, his
Milesian foster-brother, who has been compelled to
slay him in single fight, mourns over him with these
words—
"Dear to me was thy beautiful ruddiness,
Dear to me thy eomely perfect form,
Dear to me thy clear gray-blue eye,
Dear to me thy wisdom and eloquence." *
Of this kind of evidence there is abundance, and it
is impossible to reconcile it with the idea that the
Firbolgs were simply of Iberian race. If they were
they must surely have left a different tradition behind
them, even supposing that they were very early fused
in the rest of the peoples. Hence Irish scholars see
in the Firbolg, not the Iberian, but the first wave of
the Aryan immigration—of Celtic extraction like the
other two, though it may be mixed with non-Aryan
* Introduction to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish," p. lxxii.
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
21
elements before it arrived in Ireland, and further
adulterated in the same way afterwards.
The more the Irish tradition is studied, with the
other evidence and the antecedent probabilities, the
more probable it seems that it reflects an exact fact,
a really threefold Celtic immigration. The Firbolg
came, as some scholars think with good general reason,
from the Belgic coasts, across South Britain and
Wales-—an impure Gaelic type absorbing still further
the earlier British races before it reached the Irish
shores. Next came the Tuatha Dé Danann from the
North through Caledonia. Last came the warlike
Milesian from Spain or South France.
Nevertheless, the Iberian is there even now in the
land. Once he may have been the ruler there ; and
it may be that Irish legend has faintly reflected the
memory of that time in its story of the Partholanians,
who preceded, not only the Gaels, but the Fomorians
also. However that may be, it is certain that in
Ireland, as in Britain, the Iberian has left his stamp
on the physique of the people. " There are," writes
Dr. Sullivan,* " a few broad facts regarding the
ethnology of ancient Ireland which may be con¬
sidered as fairly established. In the first place, there
were two distinct types of people—one a high-
staturcd, golden-coloured or red-haired, fair-skinned,
and blue or grey-blue eyed race ; the other a dark-
* Introduction to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish," p. lxxii.
O 9
CELTIC IRELAND.
haired, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, small or medium-
statured, lithe-limbed race. The two types may still
be traced in the country, and are curiously contrasted in
their blushes ; the fair-haired type has a pinkish tinge,
the other a full red, with scarcely a trace of pink, in
their blush. The same, or an analogous type, form the
basis of the Welsh population, and to a varying but
often inconsiderable extent of that part of England
west and north-west of a line from Dorsetshire to the
Tecs. ... So far as the early ancient tales, such as
the Tain Bo Chuailgne, the Tochmarc Eimire, and
the Bruidin Daderga enable us to judge, the Fir-
bolgs, Tuatha Dé Danaan, and Milesians belonged
alike to the first type." As regards the second and
earlier type, Dr. Sullivan argues that it probably
now exists in a much smaller proportion in Ireland
than in the west of Britain, since the people belong¬
ing to it, having been dispossessed of the land at a
very early period, were the poorest, and must, there¬
fore, have fallen victims, in a larger proportion than
other races, to that plague of famine and war which
has fallen upon Ireland so much more often and
more bitterly than upon Britain. Against this fact
must be set another important fact with an opposite
tendency, namely the just and sympathetic govern¬
ment, under which all races in Ireland at an early
date lived, which showed itself in the institution of
customs and laws for the protection of the poor and
weak against the rich and strong, and in the opening
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
up to talent and industry of the path that leads to
honour and wealth.* Dr. Sullivan's argument goes,
however, to prove that only the descendants of the
"fittest" among the Iberian race in Ireland are very
likely to be there now—only the able and industrious
families who had used the advantages of the Irish
law to win a social vantage-ground for themselves, or
those endowed with such a vitality of physical con¬
stitution as enabled them, poor as they were, to live
through the horrible periods of privation and physical
suffering so familiar to students of later Irish history.
The Irish legends, however, throw little or no
light on this subject of the aboriginal Iberian settle¬
ment. Evidently there was early a bardic fiction
that all the " men of Erin " were of the same race.
Hence it is that, despite evidence to the contrary, it
is so tempting to identify him, in part at least, with
the Firbolg. Perhaps the most satisfactory hypo¬
thesis would be that the Firbolg represents the result
of a Celtic wave of immigration, which had partly
absorbed the aboriginal element on its way, and con¬
tinued still further to absorb it after the Milesian
conquest had brought the preceding colonists into
subjection. The rent-paying tribes of the second
century would, then, consist mainly of this mixed
Firbolgic element, with a Milesian infusion of those
who, by the action of natural causes, had fallen in the
social scale till the servile ranks were reached.
* See Chapter VI.
24
CELTIC IRELAND.
The most definite account of the distinctions
between the three Irish races that I have been able
to find is given in Mac Firbis's book of the gene¬
alogies, compiled in the years 1650 to 1666, and said
by him to be " taken from an old book" as " the
distinction which the profound historians draw
between the different races which are in Erin."
" Every one who is white (of skin), brown (of hair),
bold, honourable, daring, prosperous, bountiful in the
bestowal of property, wealth, and rings, and who is
not afraid of battle or combat ; they are the de¬
scendants of the sons of Milesius in Erin.
" Every one who is fair-haired, vengeful, large;
and every plunderer; every musical person ; the
professors of musical and entertaining performances;
who are adepts in all Druidical and magical arts ; they
are the descendents of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Erin.
" Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler,
guileful, tale-telling, noisy, contemptible ; every
wretched, mean, strolling, unsteady, harsh, and in¬
hospitable person; every slave, every mean thief,
every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music
and entertainment, the disturbers of every council and
every assembly, and the promoters of discord among
people ; these are the descendants of the Firbolgs, of
the Gailiuns of Liogarné, and of the Fir Domhnaans
in Erinn. But, however, the descendants of the Fir¬
bolgs are the most numerous of all these." *
* O'Curry's "Lectures on MS. Materials," p. 223.
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
The description is clearly Milesian in sentiment,
and breathes somewhat strongly the spirit of ascend¬
ency ; but, passing that, it brings out very clearly the
idea of two dominant races well contrasted, and a
subject-race containing miscellaneous materials. The
black hair of this race is an unmistakable indication
of Iberian affinities ; and if all the rest of Irish
tradition were consistent with this passage, from a
writer whose date is unknown, there would be
nothing to prevent our acceptance of the hypothesis
that the Irish Firbolgs were mainly Iberian. As it
is we cannot accept it.
It is certain, however, that at the dawn of Irish
tradition all the peoples of Erin spoke one language,
and were settling down together side by side under
one set of social ideas and institutions, with an
obvious tendency to obliterate race-distinctions, and
to make such natural paths of communication between
the aristocracy and the democracy that the social rise
of families, on the one hand, and their fall, on the
other, should be very possible. Doubtless, it was the
pressure of this social tendency to national unity of
thought and feeling that, acting on the bardic mind,
produced the beautiful legend of Nemidh and his sons,
in which the three peoples of Ireland are exhibited
as having sprung from a common Irish ancestor in
Ireland. Thence they parted in different directions,
and, after many wanderings, returned one by one to
the old home, meeting each other as foes, but soon to
2 6
CELTIC IRELAND.
be reconciled and to rejoice in the recognition of the
old common language which all had kept. The
children of Nemidh, so runs the story,* were scattered
over Europe in three bands. The band first to return,
after wanderings in Northern Europe, was that of the
Firbolgs. The second band went to Scythia, and,
returning thence, met their brethren in Ireland and
fought a mighty battle for the possession of the country.
The story tells us how when the two ambassadors
from the rival hosts met, each was surprised to hear
the other speak in his own language, and delighted to
discover the common lineage of their tribes. But
when they examined each other's weapons, these were
found to be different : the Firbolg was armed with
two heavy, thick, pointless spears, rounded at the
ends, while the Dé Danann carried two beautifully
shaped, thin, slender, long, sharp-pointed spears.
The third band went forth to Southern Europe, and,
after many years had passed, set sail from Spain for
Ireland, where they set up their royal dynasties, and
played the principal part in moulding the fortunes
and character of that nation in which distinctions of
race were perhaps as easily lost in those times as
they have always inevitably tended to lose themselves
since—that people whose most familiar title was " the
men of Erin," who never suffered a mere race-name
to be given to their island.f I have told this legend
* O'Curry's "Lectures on MS. Materials," p. 245.
f For etymology of the name Ireland, from the Gaelic Eriu (old
ETHNOLOGY OF IRELAND.
2/
not because I believe it to have any probable bearing
on the actual history of events, but because it shadows
forth an ideal truth which is much more important.
In terms of ethnic legend it expresses the fact, so
potent in its effects on later Irish history, that no
race once planted on Irish shores can escape absorp¬
tion into the substance of the Irish people.
Some may think it improbable that a band of
immigrants should come to Ireland direct from the
Continent without naturally landing in Britain first;
but, as a matter of fact, the idea that the way from
the world to Ireland lies across Britain is one of quite
modern origin. In the historic period of the early
Christian centuries, Ireland was in constant direct
communication with France and continental Europe
generally, and we have it on the authority of Tacitus
that the ports of Ireland were well known to merchants
in his time. Indeed, it is sufficient to look at the
map of Europe, and realize the conditions of travelling
before the growth of the Roman empire, to see that
nothing could be more natural than the descent from
the South of the Milesian Gael on the south-west
coast of Ireland, which is the traditional place of his
landing. Nor could anything be more improbable
than that a southern tribe should reach Ireland
through Britain, as northern and eastern tribes prob-
Irish Iveriu), see nole by Mr. Whitley Stokes in Professor Max
Mailer's "Lectures on the Science of Language," vol. i. p. 284. He
thinks it is probably connected with the Sanskrit avara, meaning
" western " or " posterior."
28
CELTIC IRELAND.
ably would. Acid to these considerations the fact
that the early historic Irish were much given to
travelling,—having explored the northern seas in
Christian times as far as Iceland at least,—and the
improbability of the Milesian story entirely vanishes.
Indeed, we may go a step further, and see that the
general, though vague, Irish tradition that the island
was in more distant periods a home for various
settlers from the south and east is probable enough,
though it lacks sufficient positive evidence.
In the making of the Irish people, as we first find
them, the last band of Gaelic-speaking immigrants
played, as the rulers of the country, a leading part.
What further evidence is there that they came direct
from Spain, without contact with Britain, as the legend
clearly tells; us ? We have already seen good reason
to associate the Irish Gael with his Alban brother the
Caledonian Pict, and yet to dissociate them also. The
theory of an immigration direct from the continent of
Europe does this, and the legend fills the gap uninten¬
tionally. Thus it has an independent antecedent
probability. It accounts, too, for the difference
between the fair-haired and the brown-haired Gael,
though this is not important. Again, the discovery
by Grimm of a Gaelic element in the language of
Aquitaine, in the fourth century,* affords substantial
support to the Irish tradition that the Milesians came
* Sullivan's Introduction to O'Curry's " Manners and Customs of
the Ancient Irish," pp. lix., ct scq.
ETHNOLOGY OF 1RELAXD.
29
from Spain (or at least thereabouts), since it shows us
that a Gaelic-speaking people were at some time
settled in the south of France, near to the place
whence the sons of Miledh are said to have come, in
search of new lands and with a spirit high for adven¬
ture, preferring the more distant Erin, we may infer,
to the less distant Alban coasts. Aquitaine, it may be
noticed, between the Garonne and the Pyrenees, is the
one piece of south-west France which yields no dol¬
mens;* and this, as we have seen, is a mark of the Celt.
Another link in the chain of evidence for the
Milesian story is suggested by the presence on the
west and south-west coast of pre-historic forts, very
large and strong, which are not to be found, with one
or two exceptions, in the rest of Ireland.f We shall
have occasion to refer to these again later. Here it
will suffice to remark that as defences they are incom¬
parably superior to the earthen forts, so-called, of the
ancient Briton and of the Irish in the eastern parts,
and that it is difficult to imagine why they should be
where they are, unless built by some race bent on
settlement, making good their position in the country.
That race could not have built them coming direct
from Britain, for that would imply a sudden archi¬
tectural inspiration of a fabulous sort. Moreover, such
a race would have been more likely to build them on
the side of the country where it first planted itself.
* Fergusson's " Rude Stone Monuments," p. 328.
t Dunraven's " Notes 011 Irish Architecture," with Photographs,
pt. i. sect. i.
3°
CELTIC IRELAND.
CHAPTER II.
erin and alba.
The first event in Irish history of which we can feel
any certainty that it happened, is the one marked out
as his point of departure by the great Irish historian
Tighernach, seven centuries ago. As the testimony
of scholars since goes on the whole to support his
selection, we cannot do better than follow his lead.
The chronicles compiled by the monks take us back
into far distant regions of time, thousands of years
before the birth of Christ. But the critical intellect
of Tighernach pronounced the accepted chronology
to be uncertain. So, while a protest should be entered
against the neglect of all this mass of tradition and
even the chronology inferred from it, the historical
line will probably best be drawn where Tighernach
draws it.
In 299 b.c., Kimbay Mac Fiontann, the chief of
the children of Iar, founded the royal palace and
entrenched seat of Emain Macha, and established in
Ulster a powerful confederacy. His wife is repre-
ERIN AND ALBA.
sented to be Macha, who appears in Irish story as the
war-goddess of the Ultonians, and he built the palace
on the heights of Macha, called Ard-Macha, in Gaelic,
-—the place which is now known as Armagh. Thus
the ancient capital of Ulster was that Armagh where
St. Patrick afterwards established the primacy of the
Irish Christian Church. The true capital of Ireland
was not, however, Armagh, but Tara, so soon as there
was a capital at all.
It is not the purpose of these pages to follow up
the record of Irish internal history from this starting
point. The fact with its date is rather set down here
as a landmark showing the antiquity of that history
apart from mere legend. Among the details associated
with it and with much later events there is plenty of
the mythical mingled with the history ; but leaving
aside such details, both of legend and event, let us
pass on to notice certain broad facts. History has
dawned ; and we find four powerful tribes contending
for the right to preside over the great national fes¬
tival, the triennial Feis of Tara. The king who had
that right was for the time the High King of Erin, with
such honours, rights, and privileges as might pertain
to his position. None but the four Milesian families
had a right to celebrate the festival. These were
known as the children of Heber, Heremon, Ith, and
Iar, descendants of the four sons of Miledh according
to the tradition ; and in this distinction of families
we may see the basis of the country's division into
CELTIC IRELAND.
four provinces. The struggle made by one strong
king or another, not only to hold Tara, but to gain
an admission of his right to hold it, either for his own
life or for his family, is at once the main source of
internecine conflict and a striving to attain by force
to national unity. Force of arms was not, however,
the legitimate means by which a king was raised to
the dignity of presiding at Tara. In theory, he was
elected by the four families, and probably the presence
in the country of many powerful non-Milesian septs
contributed to the prevention of frequent combats that
might otherwise have taken place. The main facts
to be noticed are, however, these, that the Irish people
had a custom of meeting triennially, for political,
social, commercial, and probably religious purposes,
at Tara on the plains of Mcath, that it was usual to
elect a king to convene the assembly and preside over
it, and that the king who held this post was the High
King of Erin. In later times, a fifth province was
established side by side with the original four, and
the king of this fifth province of Meath came to have
for a time the right to Tara and the supreme
monarchy.
About the middle of the first century after Christ,
the Aithech Tuatha, or rent-paying tribes of Erin, rose
up in rebellion against the great Milesian families, the
aristocracy of the land. They succeeded in accom¬
plishing a revolution which placed their own leader,
Cairbre Cinn Cait, on the throne of Tara. But, after
ERIN AND ALBA.
33
twenty-five years, Cairbre's successor was defeated
and slain by Tuathal Teachtmar, the chosen leader of
the royal tribes and son of the last legitimate monarch.
Tuathal, we are told, immediately set about the task
of reducing his enemies to obedience ; and probably
large numbers of them fled, or were driven out of the
country. The remnant of the Aithech Tuatha were
redistributed, so as to ensure better their continued
quiescence and eventual absorption by the dominant
races. And finally, Tuathal having reorganized the
nation on a basis that is reputed to have been just
as well as strong, received the allegiance of all his
subjects, and established his dynasty on the throne of
Tara.
It has been supposed that these Aithech Tuatha
were identical with the Atticotti of contemporary
history. The idea was founded on a fallacious
resemblance between the two names, but there is
essential truth in it nevertheless, for the word Atti¬
cotti is considered by authorities now to mean the
ancient people,* and thus points clearly to the abori¬
ginal inhabitants of Britain, the kindred of the Irish
displaced tribes. It may very well therefore have been
that the Atticotti in North Britain were strengthened
by the forcible displacement from Ireland of the
conquered tribes. Large bodies of them may also
have acted as mercenaries to the Irish monarchs on
their frequent warlike expeditions abroad. And in
* Rhys's " Early Britain," p. 275.
34
CELTIC IRELAND.
these ways they represent one element in the reflux
of people eastwards that took place from Ireland
during the first four centuries of the Christian era.
For at an early date the sons of Erin were known
in the neighbouring countries as men of war and
plunder. We hear of them in British history as the
Scots who, with the Picts, contributed to the general
discomfort of life on the British coasts. These
expeditions began, or increased, about the beginning
of the Christian era, and Irish tradition gives us some
glimpses of plunder and sovereignty in the isle of
Alba. Between 100 B.C. and A.D. 400, the Irish
appear to have shared in the general movement of
north-western peoples, by a reflux eastward, directed
principally towards the neighbouring larger island ;
and during these times they left their mark on the
ethnology and institutions of the British people in
the west.
The comparatively settled state of the country
which followed the completion of the Irish revolution
and counter-revolution in the first century, bore its
natural fruit in the result that the predatory excur¬
sions from Ireland to Britain assumed a more steady
purpose of conquest.* The mineral wealth of South
Britain had been largely developed under the Roman
rule, and thus South Britain was a suitable object of
prey to all the barbarian hosts from the north-west
* Introduction to O'Curry's " Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish," p. xxxiv., et seq.
ERIN AND ALBA.
35
and east, Picts Scots and Saxons alike. In their
common attack on Roman Briton, Gael and Saxon
first met, and met as friends in that not quite holy
alliance of plunder. It is curious to note that the
first mention of the Saxons as enemies occurs in the
seventh, and of the Danes in the eighth century, and
that the first rise of hostility between the races had
reference to the quarrel between the Irish and Roman
Churches. But in these earlier centuries the Irish
attack on Britain was simply a factor in the general
descent of the young northern races—the barbarians
—on the Roman empire. In one of Claudian's
poems, Briton, personified, is made to speak of Stilicho
the Roman general as protecting her from neighbour¬
ing nations, " when the Scots move all Ierne, and the
sea foams with hostile oars." Cormac Mac Art in
the third century, and Niall of the Nine Hostages
at the end of the fourth, are conspicuous as leaders
of the Irish forces in these incursions.
The relation of Ireland to West Britain was of a
more interesting and permanent character. Welsh
tradition and topography alike bear witness to the
occupation of Wales by the Irish, after the British
colonization, and before that determining event in
Welsh history, the settlement of Wales by the north¬
western Britons, or Cumbrians, under Cunedda, who
bound together in one nation, with a national litera¬
ture that has never ceased to grow, all the tribes
between the Clyde and the Severn, under the common
36
CELTIC IRELAND.
name of Cymry or fellow-countrymen. The Gael
retired, or was expelled from Wales, but he has left his
vestiges behind him There appear in fact to have been
two distinct settlements of Irish tribes in Britain,
one of Munster tribes in South Wales, Devonshire
and Cornwall, and the other of Erimonian Scots in
Anglesey and North Wales, these being practically
the same band as that which settled in the Isle of
Man. The Rev. W. Basil Jones, in his work on the
"Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynedd," (i.e. Wales),comes
to the conclusion that the Irish at one time occupied
the whole of Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Monmouthshire,
with a portion at least of Denbigh and Radnorshire.
This inference is founded largely on the Gaelic
topography of these parts, and on the presence of
unmistakably Gaelic memorial inscriptions, showing
that Gaelic was the language of the inhabitants in
early Christian times. Three possible theories may
be invented to account for these facts. The first is
that Gaelic was the language of the main body of
Britons once, and of these outlying branches so late
as the time of the inscriptions, which belong to the
fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. The improbability
of this theory is so evident, that no one seriously
entertains it ; the contrast between the districts of
Gaelic ogam memorial stones, in North and South
Wales, and the non-Gaelic district without ogams, or
old memorial stones generally, in Mid Wales, is too
remarkable to be accounted for, without the supposi-
ERIN AND ALBA.
37
tioa of some national distinction. The second theory,
favoured by Professor Rhys,* and other Welsh autho¬
rities, is that these traces of the Gael are due to an
ancient Gaelic occupation, anterior to the true British
settlement, which ultimately confined it within these
corners of the land. First, it should be noted that
there is no evidence of actual fact in favour of this
theory. In Roman times, it docs appear that the
tribes of Mid Wales, the Ordovices, were pressing
some earlier tribes into the corners, but there is no
reason to think that these were Gaelic, or contained
any dominant mixture of Gaelic with the aboriginal
element. On the contrary, not only the fact that the
Silures of South Wales were of the so-called Iberian
type, but the evidence of the distribution of the rude
stone structures, the cromlechs, throughout Europe,
and the fact that Cornwall and the two extremes of
Wales are conspicuously the cromlech districts of
South Britain, point to the conclusion that these
regions were dominated by the pre-Aryan race well
into the cromlech-building period. From the facts
collected by Mr. Ferguson, it is at least probable that
this period extended into post-Roman times.f The
evidence is slight, but it points in a direction opposite
to the theory.
The inherent difficulties of this hypothesis arc,
however, more serious objections than its lack of
* Rhys's " Early Britain," ch. vi. and vii.
t Fergusson's " Stone Monuments."
CELTIC IRELAXD.
evidence, which, indeed, would not be a positive
objection taken in itself. The hypothesis implies
that Gaelic inscriptions of the seventh and even later
centuries belong to early settlers of a Celtic race who,
during such long intervals of time, remained distinct,
though contiguous, and were not even amalgamated
with the British branch of the same race by the
pressure of foreign invasion and oppression. An
event more improbable in the history of Celtic races
it would not be easy to imagine. It is supposed that
the Gael, so far as language goes, had absorbed the
tenacious and unimpressionable non-Aryan, but that
two branches of the most quick-witted and impres¬
sionable of all the Aryan races lived side by side fot*
centuries in the presence of foreign foes, and did not
amalgamate to the extent of identifying two not very
long divergent dialects of the same Celtic speech.
The third theory supplies the solution of these
difficulties. North and South Wales were, in early
Roman times, the strongholds of the warlike, tena¬
cious, and probably unprogressive race, which pre¬
ceded the Britons in the settlement of Britain, and
have left their mark on Europe by the erection of
cromlechs and similar monuments in all those parts
that were not, at some undefined early period, domi¬
nated by the Celts or other Aryans. In the first
century of the Christian era, the Celt had become per¬
manently dominant in Ireland ; and afterwards, more
especially in the third and fourth centuries, he began
ERIN AND ALBA.
39
to be aggressive towards the sister isle. We have it
on the evidence of Cormac's " Glossary," written in
the ninth ecntury, that Irish kings collected tribute
in the south-west of Britain.* This is a clear indica¬
tion of dominion, established by aggression from Irish
head-quarters. We know, too, that Niall of the Nine
Hostages was slain in fight on the Muir n-Icht, the
channel between Britain and France (A.D. 405), so that
he must either have marched across Britain or sailed
round it with an armed fleet. The Roman legions
were withdrawn from Britain about the year 410, and
near this time the last great Irish invasion was led by
Niall's successor, Dathi, who was killed by lightning
as far south as the foot of the Alps.
Here, then, we have the clear existence of a cause
quite sufficient to account for the presence of the
Gael in Gwynedd, as a distinct racial entity marked
linguistically in later times. There was, in the fourth
century and earlier, an aggressive Ireland seeking and
establishing dominion in Britain. The Gaelic lan¬
guage for several succeeding centuries prevailed, and
we may presume, therefore, that the Gael had domi¬
nated, in those parts of Wales where the pre-Aryan
element was strong. It is improbable that this domi¬
nation was pre-Roman, for reasons already assigned.
It is highly probable that the aggressive Irish should,
* Introduction to O'Curry's " Manners and Customs," p. xxxix.
See also reference to "Romance of Tristan and Iseull," for further
evidence.
40
CELTIC IRELAND.
in the early centuries of the Christian era, settle in
West Britain and dominate the old inhabitants—thus
set between two fires—even if they did not, as is most
likely, go, in a fitful way, much further when the power
of the Romans declined. This then, it appears to me,
is the true explanation of the Gaelic traces in Wales.
These traces are the mark of a Gaelic migration cast-
wards to the southern parts of the larger island, under
the influence of which the old inhabitants adopted
the language and imbibed some of the ideas of the
Gael, while the latter was not slow to absorb any
element that might be useful in his civilization. It
may be that the black-haired, grey-eyed Celt, in both
islands, owes something better than the colour of his
hair to that Silurian persistence of idea and tenacity
of will which are so aptly complementary to the docile
intellect and rapid impressionability of the Celt.
But this is the least interesting aspect of the early
connection between the Welsh and Irish nations, for
Ireland owes to that West Britain, which Wales
represents, a debt of the kind that is sure to be a
bond of national sympathy. About the middle of
the fifth century, the Bishop Germanus, of Auxerre
in Gaul, was summoned to their help by the bishops
of the British Church, who were suffering much from
the incursions of Scots Saxons and Picts, and the
interference with study and religion these occasioned,
Germanus organized the Britons, and defeated the
combined forces in a battle near Mold in Flintshire,
ERIN AND ALBA.
41
which is known in history as the Hallelujah Victory.
These events drew the attention of Germanus to Ire¬
land, still pagan, and therefore dangerous to the
British Church. But about the same time it hap¬
pened that a certain pious Briton, by name Patrick,
was greatly moved to undertake, the conversion of
the Irish race. It is probable that Germanus fell in
with this Patrick, and consecrated him for the mission.
It is certain that Patrick went, and the story of his
labours shall be presently told. What concerns us
now is his origin only. Several places have disputed
for the honour of being his birthplace ; but the evi¬
dence of his own and other early writings makes it
probable that he came from a place called Alcluith,
which is identified with Dumbarton. This is now
within the Scotch border, but was then in the region
of the Strathclyde Britons, and bordered on the
narrow part of the sea between the two islands. At
the age of sixteen, Patrick was carried into slavery
by the Scots from the opposite shore, and seven
years of slavery were passed in an Antrim glen
which can be identified to-day. At twenty-three he
escaped and returned to his own people. But hence¬
forth his heart was set on Ireland ; to win the Scots
to Christianity became the ambition of his life. The
fulfilment of that hope is the first instalment of the
debt which Ireland owes to the race now represented
by Wales.
Most persons know that in the Dark Ages learning
42
CELTIC IRELAND.
of all kinds found its most natural and safest home
in Ireland, the then famous School of the West. But
before classical and theological learning had a home
in Ireland, it had a less well-known home in Britain.
St. Patrick brought the Christian religion from
Britain to Ireland, but it would not be correct to
say that he brought the scholarship of the British
church also. St. Patrick was something much greater,
but he was not a fine scholar, like the Irish saints of
the succeeding century: the gulf between his Latin
style and that of St. Columbanus is wide indeed.
Nevertheless, in the wake of Christian knowledge,
he brought with him the idea of new learning, and
the keen-witted Irish people, prizing knowledge and
literature with an ardour due to natural disposition
and the national bardic education, needed no more
than the suggestion of such an idea. So we find that,
in the first half of the sixth century, the celebrated
Irish St. Finnian, who founded the monastic school
of Clonard—probably the first of the great schools
in Ireland—-went to Wales to complete his educa¬
tion, and was there the disciple of three eminent
Welsh saints, David, Gildas, and Cadoc. Under St.
Finnian, the school of Clonard became great and
famous, and many were the scholars that issued from
it ; so that, as the Four Masters tell us this St.
Finnian was called " foster-father of the saints of
Ireland." Twelve of the most eminent saints—the
twelve apostles of Ireland—were among his disciples.
ERIN AND ALBA.
43
Many were the torches of learning lit from the torch
of Clonard: but the torch of Clonard was lit in
Wales. And this is the second instalment of that
spiritual debt which Ireland owes to the kindred
genius of the gentle Cymric nation.
Not less important was the history that followed
the settlement in Northern Alba of the Scots from
Dalriada, or Antrim, who colonized the Airer Goidel
{i.e. region of the Gael), now called Argylc. The
close proximity of Scotland to Antrim is a fact
which must strike every one who has spent even a
day on the Antrim coasts. Looking out from the
deck of the steamer, near the entrance to Belfast
Lough, it is easy to mistake the Scotch coast for
some part of the coast on the opposite side. The
two islands lean towards one another at this point,
and the geographical fact has probably influenced in
several ways the history of each. On the seas
between was made that alliance, already mentioned
more than once, of Scot and Pict, in the Roman days ;
and the Roman generals showed their sense of the
danger that threatened so constantly from the
Dalriadic coasts, by the erection, in the second
century, of a strong fort directly opposite, at Barhill
near Kilpatrick on the Clyde. In the earliest times,
as already stated, a settlement of Alban Picts was
found established in a region called Dalaradia,
which corresponds roughly to the present County
Down, and arc referred to in Irish history as Cruith-
44
CELTIC IRELAND.
nigh. On the other hand, the Irish Scots migrated
indefinitely to the opposite shores. The definite
settlement, however, of a Scottish kingdom in Argyle
dates strictly from the year 502, when the Christian
prince Fergus Mac Ere set up his kingdom there, an
outpost of Scottish Christendom on the borders of
the still pagan Picts. This settlement was a deter¬
mining factor in the after course of Scotch national
history ; and, although it is an anticipation to do so,
it will be convenient here to trace its effects. The
little Scottish community was in 110 safe place, the
old alliance between Scots and Picts being practically
dissolved, and a new alliance of defence between
Scottish and British Christianity having tacitly taken
its place. The danger, be it noted, lay in the pagan¬
ism of the Picts ; and the Picts were old friends, with
a special claim on their now more enlightened
brother-race for instruction in the Christian faith.
What worthier object could there be of the missionary
zeal, then taking possession of Irish imagination and
will, than the conversion to Christianity of these
pagan neighbours? There was statesmanship, as well
as self-devotion and charity, in the work which the
great Irish saint Columba planned, when he set up
his monastery in the Island of Iona off the Scotch
Highland coast, in the year 563, and prepared for
his mission in Pictland. Having wisely secured the
assistance of two Irish Picts, Comgall and Canice, he
commenced his spiritual campaign by an advance on
ERIN AND ALBA.
45
the capital at Inverness ; and in 565, he preached to
the Pictish king Brude himself, and converted him
to Christianity. This success opened the whole
country, as far north as the Orkneys, to his missionary
efforts ; for the king's favour secured a safe-conduct
everywhere. Monastic establishments, which fur¬
nished to the people the example of a peaceful,
industrious, and happy community, were established
gradually throughout the land ; and, after nine years
of missionary labour, the foundations of Pictish Chris¬
tianity were laid on a basis which was broad and sure.
A year later (575) St. Columba was in Ireland
again, pleading at a great national council, held at
Drumceatt near Limavady, the cause of " Home
Rule " for his brethren the Scots of Argyle, and, having
succeeded in his object, he reorganized the little
Scottish kingdom and placed Aidan, a descendant of
the great Irish king Niall of the Nine Hostages, upon
the throne. Nearly two centuries later, Pictland, or
her kings, had a relapse into pagan ways ; and, not
only were the Scots driven temporarily from Argyle,
but the Columban monasteries were expelled from
the realm. This was not the end, however, but far
from it. The Scots appear to have taken refuge in
Galloway, where they formed a settlement; and a
century later we find their king, Kenneth Mac Alpine,
laying claim to the Pictish throne by descent on his
mother's side—a claim which was sound under Pictish
law. The rival claimant, however, resisted, and Ken-
46
CELTIC IRELAND.
neth entering Pictland with his followers, reinforced
almost certainly by many of the Picts themselves,
established his dynasty in the year 842. That dynasty
was established permanently. It brought back with
it to Pictland the blessings of the Columban monas¬
teries, to the expulsion of which the Christian party
in the nation referred the troubles that had come
upon the Pictish dynasty. And, indeed, the prob¬
ability seems to be very great that Kenneth owed
his victory largely to the effects that had been
wrought by Columba nearly three centuries before,
and to the falling off of the Pictish kings from his
teaching while its influence was still potent in the
minds of the people. If so, the establishment of the
Scots as the supreme race in Alba was not effected
in any sense by force of arms, but was that much
better thing, a conquest of heart and mind with the
weapons of intellectual skill and moral self-devotion.
Not Kenneth, but Columba, founded the modern
kingdom of Scotland.
Under this name in time it came to be known.
The kingdom of Scone, as it was called in Pictish
times, became presently the kingdom of Alba, and
not till two centuries after Kenneth's accession,—that
is, in the tenth century,—was the name Scotia applied
to it generally. By that time all the Celtic elements,
Pict and Scot, and Strathclyde Britons, had become
firmly welded with the non-Aryan remnant into one
nation, having the common Saxon enemy on its
ERIN AND ALBA.
47
southern borders ; and this was Scotland.* In the
course of centuries, as every one knows, the Scottish
kings succeeded by inheritance to the throne ot
England, and thus the Queen of Great Britain and
Ireland to-day is, through Kenneth Mac Alpine and
Aidan of Columba's time, a lineal descendant of that
Irish King Niall who flourished about 400 A.I).
Aidan was consecrated on a certain sacred stone,
the Stone of Fate, which was presumably brought to
Scone by Kenneth, and is now in Westminster Abbey.
This stone is used very fitly as the coronation stone
of the monarchs of Great Britain and Ireland. There
it stands, a symbol of imperial unity, connecting by a
" thread of poetry" not quite insignificant, the
nationalities of three nations—the Irish Stone of Fate
sacred to the memory of Columba and the Irish line
of kings, brought, we may suppose, across the narrow
sea where the islands lean over to meet each other, f
But the message of peace which Columba brought
across the sea was not confined to the Celtic and
earlier tribes which were still pagan in the larger
island. Iona became the mother of many mission
settlements, not only in Scotland and the distant
islands of the north, but also in the as yet neglected
Saxon south. At the time of Columba's death
(a.D. 597), there were thirty-two mission stations
* See Skene's " Celtic Scotland," vol. i. for the history in full.
f The identity of the stone since the ninth century is quite certain,
but its earlier history rests on an estimate of probabilities. See li The
Stone of Scone," by W. F. Skene.
4S
CELTIC IRELAND.
among the Scots of Alba, and eighteen among the
Piets ; and under his third successor the conversion
of the Saxons began.
Oswald of Bernicia had in his youth taken refuge,
during certain troubled times, with the monks of Iona,
and from them he received a Christian education.
When, in later years, having overthrown Penda of
Mercia, he purposed to establish Christianity in North-
umbria, he turned naturally to his early teachers and
" sent to the seniors of the Scots" for assistance.
Bishop Aidan came from Iona to Northumbria in the
year 634, and a mission station of the usual Irish
type was set up at Lindisfarne, an island close to
the coast. " From that time," says Bcde, " many
from the region of the Scots came daily into Britain,
and with great devotion preached the word of faith
to those provinces of the Angles over which King
Oswald reigned." Lindisfarne, like Iona, though
in a minor degree, became the mother of many
monasteries. Thus good and lasting work was done
in England, although it happened that only thirty
years after the coming of Aidan, the Northumbrian
Church was separated from Iona by the king's
acceptance, at a council held in Whitby, of the Roman
rather than the Irish tradition.
Across the narrow sea came the Scots, with
messages of war to their kindred the Britons on
the other side ; and back they carried, at one time,
into slavery, Patrick, their future benefactor. Across
ERIN AND ALBA.
49
that narrow sea came, for the second time, the British
Patrick, longing to heap Christian coals of fire on his
former master's head. Across the sea came Finnian,
to learn of St. David in Wales, that he might sow in
Erin those seeds of learning which yielded later such
a plentiful crop. And presently the figure of St.
Columba, mightiest of all, is seen, standing as it were
on the Antrim cliffs, looking towards that Pictish
land whither none had dared to take the message
yet. So he took it and prevailed, planting the land
with Christian communities, and organizing on its
outskirts a kingdom confirmed in the faith, gentle
as well as brave, and free to work out its own
destinies. Across the narrow sea came one strand
in the ancestry of the royal dynasty which reigns
without rule over the four nations now, the fitting
symbol of an imperial unity which should be
founded on national sympathies and the convergence
of national ideas after the Celtic and Christian style,
not upheld by that weapon of blind and tactless force,
on which the Norman conquerors mainly relied, though
always in the end it breaks feebly in their hands.
The Normans, who conquered England and Wales,
settled in Ireland, and fought long for supremacy in
Scotland. Their faith was in force. Of Norse descent,
and having imbibed the Roman imperial idea, the)'
studied how to use force well. They had a military
organization which was possible to them, because
they worshipped force, and could, therefore, find it in
CELTIC IRELAND.
their hearts to subject all higher human interests to
the demand for national strength, as nations with a
heart set on other ideas could not. The Englishman
respected force, but the tenderest spot in his heart
was after all for freedom. So, though he was patient
when crushed by the Norman yoke, his instincts
were unchanged and, circumstances favouring him,
he, slowly and in his own doggedly instinctive
rather than consciously idealizing way, wrought out
the democratic England which is in these days
coming for the first time to full consciousness of
herself. The Briton of Wales believed not in force,
and cherished high above all else the right to his
own ideas. Violence done to the national ideas he
resented more than restraints on his personal liberty.
He knew the might of the strong arm, in the experi¬
ences of his hard history ; he was patient, therefore,
but had an indomitable nationality. He might have
forgiven the force, but he could not forgive the
Norman's blindness to this, his want of sympathy for
sentiment other than his own. And so Wales marks
herself off even now from that England where Norman
manners still control the national style, as a nationality
distinct and contrasted.
The Gael of Ireland believed so little in the Norman
god of conquest that he did not realize, perhaps
ever, what a terrible thing the rod of iron is. He
had had experience in his wars with the Danes, and,
though after much loss and suffering, had in his
ERIN AND ALBA.
51
own manner broken the Danish rod. So the Gael
let the Norman settle in his midst, as the Danes had
settled before, as well as after, their submission ; and
it probably did not seem unreasonable to him that
the king of England, being the greatest king in
those parts, should claim the over-lordship, especially
as his claim was recommended by the Pope. The
Normans settled in Ireland, and kept up their con¬
nection with the English king. But the Gael kept up
his own ways of thought and feeling, his love for
the land, his instinct for liberty, and his faith in
reason rather than force. By means of these he has
accomplished a twofold result: he has effaced the
idea of his own race, and has imprinted that of Irish
nationality on the stranger races settled in his borders.
He has by his ideas conquered the Norman force-
instinct which in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries overcame his race ; and now he is in the
van of the great democratic movement which agitates
the four nations of the United Kingdom.
To the Scots of Scotland belongs the honour of
having successfully resisted the Norman military
power from first to last. Their kingdom was not
founded merely on force, but they understood the
organization of force for purposes of resistance better
than the people of Erin or of Wales ; and Scotland
was in the military sense a national unity before the
Norman landed on English shores. But the Nor¬
man instinct of force—blind force, deaf and tactless
52
CELTIC IRELAND.
—which descended to the kings and oligarchy of
England after the genuine Norman period had
passed—that force-instinct kept up, through long
periods, a struggle with Scotland to destroy her in¬
dependence which bears fruit now, not in the con¬
solidation, but in the marked distinction of the two
nations. After such a war of independence as Edward
the First forced on the Scottish nation it was im¬
possible that Scotland should be absorbed into Eng¬
land. A union of crowns and even a union of
parliaments—these were possible, brought about as
they were in later times, by the accident of cir¬
cumstance and the consent of both nations; but
Scotch sentiment is as Scottish to-day—as averse
to the absorption of Scotland into England-—as
when Scots won the battle of Bannockburn. And
so it will be always ; the history made by Edward
the First can never be unwritten to the end of time.
Forcible consolidations have been effected among
other races than those which peopled Alba and Erin,
and by leading races more gifted with ideas and
sympathy than the Normans were ; but the attempt
which the Norman made to weld the four nations of
these islands into one has been defeated all alone
the line. To his instinct for dominance the English
opposed their instinct for political freedom, the Welsh
their racial, and the Scotch their composite national
idea; while in Ireland the Norman instinct has through
centuries been worsted in the spiritual struggle with
ERIN AND ALBA.
53
that most subtle of all national ideas, a people's
devotion to its mother-land. So the English arms
triumphed, but the Irish idea conquered ; the success¬
ful invaders, generation after generation, coming out
fresh from England when each war was done, became
presently " more Irish than the Irish themselves."
So the four nations arc intact in the islands still ;
and the political heirs of the Norman rule are still there
too, laying the heavy hand of force, though feebly,
on the nations' soul. Feebly—for political power has
gone over to the peoples, and faith in self-govern¬
ment is an ancient tradition common to them all.
Through faith in such a tradition, is made possible
a union of diverse elements stronger than any force-
made union can ever be—a union of self-govern¬
ing, self-developing, self-respecting nations, bound to
support each other by every tie of interest, honour,
and the new-made tradition of a confederate demo¬
cracy—each nation bound to assist the other three
against any infringement of popular rights on the
part of the classes deputed freely by each to rule.
Even now the four nations arc drawing together as
they never drew before, and the time, it would seem,
is not far off when that Irish Stone of Fate in West¬
minster Abbey will symbolize at last a real union,
based on those principles of justice and love in which
the great Columba, statesman and missionary, laid
the foundations of the Scottish kingdom.
54
CELTIC IRELAND.
CHAPTER III.
erin and europe.
The history of early Ireland, in its relation to the
sister isle, shows us external symptoms of a certain
national development which it will presently be our
business to study within the island itself. We have
seen pagan Ireland aggressive and even conquering
along the British coasts. Then comes the British
mission of Patrick, and presently all is changed.
Ireland abandons the role of the hero for that of the
saint, though invested still with the heroic temper and
its thirst for deeds. Her war-policy has ceased, and
the peace-policy of missionary labour takes its place.
Long after Columba's time, his followers carry on
their spiritual warfare, and extend their conquests
over Northern England and the Midlands. Monas¬
teries tracing their origin to Iona are planted
throughout Saxon Britain, and at one time it seems
likely that Irish rather than Roman Christianity is
likely to reign in the English land. Columbanus, who
was twenty-two years younger than Columba, goes
ERIN AND EURO TE.
55
with a mission band to Burgundy, Switzerland and
Northern Italy, to combat paganism and immorality
in places which then were very dark, by establishing,
after the Irish fashion, industrious and saintly com¬
munities, as examples and for instruction, in the
people's midst. The old passion for adventure and
enterprise which we may imagine to have possessed
the Milesians on their journey west, " moved by an
ancestral spirit urging them to great deeds "—that
spirit is found anew in the Irish missionaries. They
visit all the islands on the north-west British coast,
the)' go north and discover the Shetlands, they go
further north and make a settlement in Iceland. "In
A.D. 870, when the Norwegians came to Iceland, there
were Christians there who departed and left behind
them Irish books, bells, and other things, from whence
it may be inferred that these Christians were Irish.'
So says an old text which Zeuss quotes in his
" Grammatica Celtica." In all directions they go forth,
some in search of missionary labours, some moved
by a desire for world-knowledge and new fields of
learning. So the Irish monk travels to Egypt and
measures the pyramids. He goes cast studying the
customs and scholarship of the Syrian Church.
There is the clearest evidence that, after Christianity
was established in Ireland, there began to be a com¬
munication of the liveliest sort between the Eastern
and the extreme Western Churches. The icono¬
clastic policy of the Greek emperors in the eighth
56
CELTIC IRELAND.
century drove Eastern ecclesiastics west, bearing their
peculiar heritage of art and learning with them. This
they brought to Western Europe, and no other
country was so ready at that time as Ireland to
benefit by it. Celtic art was a reality long before
then, but it may well be that it found use for the
artistic ideas of the East, with which Irish travel had
already made it more or less acquainted.
Greek was certainly studied in the Irish monasteries,
or some of them, a century earlier. We find that a
certain monk, Aileran, displays a knowledge both of
this language and of Hebrew as early as about the
middle of the seventh century, for he died no later
than 665. But it is probable that the flight of
Greek scholars from Constantinople created fresh
opportunities for the development of Irish Hellenistic
studies. The fact that there were Greek ecclesiastics
in Ireland left its mark on the tenacious Celtic
memory till as late as the troubles of the seventeenth
century. Probably Greek became, in the eighth
century, a general subject of study in all the Irish
ecclesiastical schools, whereas it was exceptional
before that time. The conspicuous evidences which
have come clown to us of its existence belong to this
and the succeeding centuries. The Irish scholar,
Sedulius, lived in the eighth century, and wrote a
Greek Psalter, which survives now. Cormac Mac
Cullinan (831-903), king and bishop of Cashel, com¬
piled a glossary, which is clearly marked by a
ERhV AND EUROPE.
57
knowledge of Greek, since be occasionally derives,
absurdly enough, the names of places from Greek
roots, as Tara from the Greek OtMpuv, " to behold."
The Book of Armagh, too, bears witness to the same
fact of Greek study, as, for instance, by the writing
of the Lord's Prayer in Greek characters.*
But the man who most of all makes Irish scholar¬
ship stand out conspicuous in the European world
was Joannes Scotus, also called by his contempo¬
raries Erigena, or Eriu-gena, "Irish-born." John of
Ireland was summoned to France, to the court of
Charles the Bald, where he alone was able to trans¬
late the Greek works of the Pseudo-Dionysius. This
John, who appears to have been educated at the
School of Bangor in County Down, was the one
great philosopher of the Dark Ages, preceding by
two hundred years, and indeed in the width and
depth of his philosophy far surpassing, the scholastic
philosophers of the eleventh century. And, truly,
there is a strong flavour of his Gaelic origin in
Erigena's thought, an unmistakable dash of that
Gaelic love of enterprise, fearlessness of consequences,
and joy in conflict which can find a field in philosophy
and literature as well as in deeds of war and difficult
feats of self-devotion. As a thinker he follows with¬
out hesitation the lead of reason, not fearing that the
end of philosophy could be other than truth, though
* See Stokes's "Celtic Church in Ireland" for a more complete
account.
58
CELTIC IRELAND.
charges of heresy and the thunders of the Church
abound.* The qualities of the race which have made
many of its difficulties are yet the qualities which
make individual Irishmen, and which will yet make
the Irish nation great.
In the eighth century, European scholarship was
at low ebb, but it was about this time that Irish
scholarship reached its high-water mark, just before
the Danes embarked on their pagan crusade dealing
out destruction specially on churches and monasteries ;
for the Danish attack on Christian Europe was at the
outset a genuine crusade, a retaliation for Charle¬
magne's "Christian" mission to the Germans, whom
he attempted to convert by fire and sword. The
Danes first appeared off the Irish coast in 795, and,
though Irish scholarship produced its finest personal
result in Erigena (810-877) about half a century later,
it is manifest that the great struggle of the three
next centuries must have prevented much further
development at the outset, while it ended by bringing
very low the school of the West. The consequent
destruction of books was certainly great, since the
famous monasteries were burned down time after time.
But enough remains to give us some measure of the
hold which the idea of learning had taken on the
popular mind. There are books in Irish giving
accounts of various foreign events, and translations of
* In Erigena's case, the Church thunders abounded freely (see
Stokes's "Celtic Church in Ireland").
ERIN AND EUROPE.
59
classical stories into Irish. These and the Latin
texts with elaborate Irish glosses and the Irish, as
well as Latin, theological literature, show us that
classical and theological learning had taken a place
beside the genuine Irish literature in the curri¬
culum of an educated Irishman's studies. They
never, however, ousted that literature from its place.
Every bishop and priest in Ireland was a Gaelic
scholar down to the seventeenth century.*
On the Continent and in Great Britain this con¬
dition of scholarship made Ireland famous. Not only
were scholars found in foreign lands, but students
from abroad flocked to the Irish schools. In the
great school of Armagh alone, one third of the city
was, it is said, devoted to the use of foreign
students, and the schools of Lismore, Bangor, Clon-
macnoise, and Kildare rivalled it in importance.
Twenty-six of these schools, all on an ecclesiastical
foundation, are known to us by name.j These do
not represent, however, the whole of the provision
made for education in Ireland ; for a regular system
of national schools was established in connection with
the bardic classes in the year 590. But it was no
doubt to the ecclesiastical schools that the foreign
students came. On this subject we have the testi¬
mony of the Anglo-Saxon Bede, writing in the
* O'Curry's "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Iri^b," vol. ii.
p. 84.
f Ibid., vol. ii. p. 76.
6o
CELTIC IRELAND.
seventh century, who tells us how certain of the
nobles of Britain resorted to the Irish schools and
were provided with food and clothes, as well as learn¬
ing, without expense to themselves.
To understand rightly the significance of the
work which Irish missionary and scholarly enterprise
did for Western Europe in mediaeval times, we must
briefly consider the condition of the West, more
especially after the decline of the Roman empire.
By the middle of the second century, Christianity
had become an element in the Roman civilization, and
began to be carried, with the Gneco-Roman culture
generally, in the wake of the legions throughout the
empire. Before the close of this century it had
reached the Rhine and the British coasts, and by the
beginning of the fourth it was flourishing in Gaul
and Britain and along the rivers of the Rhine and
Danube. In the fifth century it reached Ireland, and
at the same time began to be destroyed in the
German and Romance countries, where the power of
the Romans, and their influence founded on power,
was fast going to ruin.
In the year 406 the Vandals from the Upper
Rhine overwhelmed Gaul, the Alemanni and Burgun-
dians settled on the Rhine. The Franks from the
Lower Rhine presently established themselves in
Northern Gaul, and the remains of the Roman power
vanished there (481-500). The Germanic tribes of
Angles and Saxons were conquering Britain, Attila
30 20 10 o 10 20 30 40 50 GO 70
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Lon/Lon,: Keg an, FcucL, 'French/ <£ Co,
F. S. Weller, VjK .
ERIN AND EUROPE.
61
and his Huns spread further desolation in Gaul and
Italy, and the last touch was put to the work of
destruction when the Lombards broke into the valley
of the Po (568) and established their seat of govern¬
ment at Pavia. Thus by the end of the sixth century
Germanic barbarism had overwhelmed Roman civili¬
zation like a flood, and Europe awaited a new and
more deep-based enlightenment.
About the year 594, when the historian Gregory
of Tours died, the Franks had become nominally, and
in part, Christians ; but the moral and intellectual
condition of the Frankish Merovingian kingdom is
described by this historian as truly deplorable. The
Merovingian records are indeed drawn up in such
barbarous Latin that one written more correctly is
suspected as belonging to a later date. And the
Christianity, we are told, was on a par with the
Latin. That culture had declined in the centre of
the Roman world itself we may gather from the fact
that Gregory the Great knew no Greek.
In Spain and Ireland only, had learning still a
home at the beginning of the seventh century. Of
these two, Ireland, being enthusiastically Christian,
was seized with the desire for missionary enterprise
in foreign lands. The wandering instincts of the
race were not without influence in prompting to this
work, nor was the eagerness of intellect which urges
to new fields of activity. Enterprise, as Avell as
religious enthusiasm, characterized the Irish preacher,
62
CELTIC IRELAND.
though lie was by no means a wandering missionary
only, but the settled founder of many famous monastic
establishments.
In 590 Columbanus and his twelve comrades
proceeded to the land of the Franks. They founded
first the monastery of Chåteau Annegray, and later,
as the number of converts increased, the second
establishment of Luxeuil. These became centres of
influence and the parents of other similar establish¬
ments. After about ten years' work, Columbanus,
having ventured to reprove the regent-queen Brun-
hilda, and refusing to conform to the Roman custom
of keeping Easter, was forced to leave the country.
Hostile winds prevented his return to Ireland, so, with
a band of companions, he betook himself to the Rhine
and, having rowed up the river, they settled at Lake
Constance. Here they lived mainly by fishing, and
preached to the people for some time. But in 613
Columbanus went to the Lombard princess Theo-
delinda, and founded at the foot of the Apennines the
famous monastery of Bobbio.
Another Irishman, Gallus, had shared the fortunes
of Columbanus up to this last stage, but was prevented
by illness from accompanying him into Lombardy.
So he remained on the north of the Alps, and
presently founded, in the wild Steinach valley, that
monastery of St. Gall, the Iona of Germany, which
became the most celebrated, as it was the most fre¬
quented by Irishmen later, of all the Irish monasteries.
ERIN AND EURO TE.
63
Numbers of Irishmen, like Columbanus and his
comrades, came into the Frankish kingdom in the
seventh century, and established mission stations.
Thence issued Franks and Germans as disciples, to
continue the work of their teachers. Of the details
we are ignorant, but of this much we are certain that
at the beginning of the eighth century a broad belt
of mission stations, founded either by Irishmen or by
their disciples, and after the Irish type, stretched
from the mouths of the Maas and Rhine to the Rhone
and the Alps. In monastic records, Irishmen, recog¬
nizable by their names, appear everywhere, as abbots
or distinguished brothers ; nor did their distinctive
influence decrease in many centres, and especially in
St. Gall, for a couple of centuries. In the ninth
century St. Gall became specially conspicuous for
art and learning under the abbotship of the Irish
Moengal.
The Irish mission work advanced beyond the
Rhine into the eastern settlements of the Franks and
into Bavaria. According to the testimony of Jonas
of Bobbio, missionaries from Luxeuil went out to
Bavaria about 620, and towards the end of that
century the Irish Kilian, with two companions,
suffered martyrdom at Wiirzberg, on the frontier
territory of Thiiringcn and the East Franks.
Nor is Ireland altogether unconcerned in the
efforts made late in the seventh century to convert
the Frisians and Saxons. The missionaries Victberct,
6 4
CELTIC IRELAND.
Wilibrord, and the two Hewalds were Englishmen,
but we have it 011 the authority of Bede that they
had received their theological education in Ireland.
Alcuin says of Wilibrord, the apostle of the Frisians,
that he had passed twelve years under celebrated
teachers in Ireland. Britain gave him birth, but
Ireland education. These missions, we may therefore
infer, were conducted on Irish principles, and after
the Irish manner.
That manner has been already described, and was
as different as possible from that of the emissaries
who about this time began to be sent out as organizers,
no less than missionaries, from the Roman see.
Apparently, neither the Irish missionaries nor their
Germanic disciples made any attempt to receive the
heathen masses into the Church by the mere external
rite of baptism. Their methods were slower, though
infinitely surer. But in 723 the Englishman Wini¬
fred, under the ecclesiastical name of Boniface, came
as Roman legate to the land of the Franks ; and the
Christian fruits of more than a century's Irish and
German work he organized and established under
Rome, not scrupling, moreover, to use the secular
arm for the more speedy addition of converts to the
Christian Church.
Not only in France, but elsewhere, the Celtic and
Roman ideas met, and the opposition between them
gradually developed itself. So early as the sixth
century, Columbanus, at Luxeuil, could see no suffi-
ERIN AND EUROPE.
cicnt reason why an Irishman should conform to
the customs of Rome, with respect to the time of
keeping- Easter, rather than follow the traditions and
customs of his own country ; and, though it does not
appear that this Paschal controversy greatly dis¬
turbed, at a later date, the relations between Rome
and the Irish abbots on the Continent, it certainly, as
well as the dispute on general questions of church
government, waxed very hot between the papal see
and the Irish British and Columban Churches. In
England the most definite trial of strength for the
Celtic idea abroad was made, and the Columban
monks were worsted in the famous conference at
Whitby, by the decision of the English king to follow
the counsels of the papal legate. The Irish and
Scottish Churches still held out at home, and the
Roman system of government was not accepted in
Ireland till the twelfth century. Probably this long
adherence to the native forms, and the national habits
which it created of relation between Church and
people and non-relation between Church and State,
may account for peculiarities in the Roman Catho¬
licism of Ireland now which puzzle English Protes¬
tants who happen to observe them.
During the eighth and ninth centuries the scholar¬
ship of the Irish schools continued to rise in repute ;
but from the middle of the seventh century the Irish
quarrel with Rome produced much confusion of
motives in the minds of those who esteemed at once
66
CELTIC IRELAND.
learning and orthodoxy, the latter being measured,
out of Ireland, by the Roman standard. There was
no confusion in the minds of some, and we get a
quaint piece of testimony to Irish scholarship from
the lips of Aldhelm, an earnest Roman adherent who
viewed with orthodox horror the practice of sending
young Anglo-Saxons for education to Ireland. In
a letter to Ealfrid, who has returned from that
country, he exclaims, "Why should Ireland pride
herself so highly that thither students from England
should stream in crowds, just as if Greek and Latin
teachers were not to be found upon England's fruitful
soil, able to solve the most serious religious problems
and to train scholars eager for knowledge? "
As the innovations of Rome and her claim for
ecclesiastical supremacy made Ireland seem hetero¬
dox to mechanical souls, so Irish influence in the
Christian mission to Europe declined. That work-
was taken up by other hands, and carried out
by other methods, of which the religious wars of
Charlemagne were one characteristic sign. But
another field for Gaelic enterprise was opened up, as
the taste for scholarship developed in foreign countries,
and a demand for Irish teachers as such sprang up.
Charles the Great and his successors, in the eighth
and ninth centuries, strove to make a home for
learning in France, and the learned " Scots " were re¬
ceived with open arms. So, just as we find Irish
missionaries everywhere in the Merovingian land of
ERIN AND EUROPE.
67
the Franks during the seventh century, so Irishmen
during the ninth century under the Carlovingian
empire are found in abundance, as teachers of all the
branches of knowledge then cultivated in the schools
of the court and the scholastic monasteries.
With the general spread of culture the pre-emi¬
nence of Ireland disappeared ; but this brief review
of the evidence, condensed and imperfect though it is,
will be sufficient to prove her claim as not only the
home, but the mission-home, of learning in the dark
interval that followed the collapse of the Roman
empire. Nor should it be forgotten that she pro¬
duced the most profound, as well as the earliest, of
all the mediaeval philosophers, and that he was a
layman, as none of the others were.*
* For readers of German, an excellent account of the Irish Christian
mission to Europe is given in an article "On the Significance of the
Irish Element in the Culture of the Middle Ages," in the Prussian Year¬
book, 1SS7.
68
CELTIC IRELAND.
CHAPTER IV
pagan ireland at home.
The age of Irish military enterprise abroad ended
about the middle of the fifth century, when Irish
paganism had received its deathblow at the hand of
Patrick ; and within a single century a new Ireland
was revealing itself to Europe. Let us now inquire
into the history of Ireland within her own borders
corresponding to these different glimpses we have
had of her from an external point of view ; and, first,
let us try to understand the main social and historical
features of pagan Ireland.
For a definite historical starting-point our purpose
will best be served by taking the time of Cormac
Mac Art, who reigned at Tara from a.d. 218 to 260.
The events of Irish history reach much further back
than this period, but in the time of Cormac we may
feel sure that the main features of Irish pagan society
had developed themselves into the characteristic form
which shall be presently described. Cormac was an
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
69
active warrior, and followed the war-policy then
customary to his nation. In the year 222, as the
Annals tell us, " the large fleet of Cormac Mac Art
went over the sea for the space of three years." It
went to ravage the British shores. But the domestic
labours of Cormac have a higher interest. He found
the nation with certain settled political and social
habits. He organized the customs of the tribes into
a social and political system. Thus he had the
Brehon law revised and, in a manner, codified, and
he secured his labours in this direction by settling the
national convention at Tara on a regular basis,
appointing a meeting every third year, for the popular
proclamation and acceptance of the law, and the
administration generally of public affairs.
Cormac did not invent the national parliament of
Tara, nor did he invent the Brehon law, but, like a
wise ruler, he did that work of reorganization and
confirmation which he deemed necessary at his time.
To him also, Dr. Petrie attributes all the monuments
now remaining at Tara,* the vestiges of which exactly
correspond to ancient descriptions. Tara is, hoivever,
older than Irish history. The bards tell us that the
assembly was instituted and the buildings erected by
the Firbolg king, Ollamh Fodhla, " who was first a
learned bard and then king of Ireland," and to whom
also they attribute the general organization of the
country. But this is a bardic tale : its hero may fitly
* Petrie's " History and Antiquities of Tara Hill."
7°
CELTIC IRELAND.
be taken to symbolize the Irish people, who uncon¬
sciously created their own habits and then invented a
definite maker of them.
The political purpose of the assembly is very
clearly summed up in the following lines written by
a poet of the year 984 :—■
" The Feis of Temur each third year,
To preserve laws and rules,
Was then convened firmly
"By the illustrious kings of Erin."
Tara was not the only place where such assemblies
were held. Two different lines of Ulster kings had
their royal hills of assembly at Aileach * near Deny
and at Emain Macha, now Armagh; and the assembly
at which St. Columba pleaded successfully the cause
of Scottish Home Rule in A.D. 590, was held at
Drumceatt, near Newtown Limavady. The fair of
Carman too, in Wexford, is almost as famous as the
fair of Tara itself. In fact, it would seem that such
assemblies were for every king, provincial or even
tribal only, the regular way in which the laws and
customs of the tribe were preserved and developed.
The kings, nobles, judges, poets and scholars met in
the national assembly to discuss national affairs ; and
new decisions were proclaimed afterwards to all the
" men of Erin " that might be assembled, at the same
* There still stands on the hill of Aileach a remarkable specimen of
the Irish stone fort, and the marks of the ramparts surrounding the
royal seat are evident to this day. Every visitor to Deny should see
Aileach.
FAG AN IRELAND AT HOME.
71
time, around the royal hill of Tara, pursuing their
national amusements of feasting, racing, athletic,
musical and literary contests, to say nothing of the
social intercourse which Irishmen have always
prized. So, likewise, the minor kings took council
with the corresponding fit persons within their
realms, and summoned the assembly of all the
people from time to time. Of the constitution of
the tribal assemblies, more will be said in a later
chapter.
Probably this habit of tribal assembly was the
earliest political habit the Irish tribes had, for their
whole social system shows that they could have had
no idea of a source of power other than the popular
will, though they were peculiarly susceptible to the
notion that the reason of the wise man should be the
determining motive to that popular will. Certainly
it was a habit that died hard, if it ever really died at
all. Edmund Spenser, in his " View of Ireland,"
written in Elizabeth's time, tells of the meetings of
the Irish on their ancient accustomed hills, where they
debated and settled matters between families and
townships, going in large numbers and armed. What
did die, and died early, was the habit of meeting as
one nation at Tara ; and so thoroughly republican
was the whole elemental structure of Irish society,
that all the reality of national unity began to fade
with the decadence that fell upon Tara in the sixth
century. This decadence seems to have been closely
CELTIC IRELAND.
connected with that decline of the bards which slowly
followed the rise of monastic scholarship.*
Cormac was zealous for discipline as well as
orderly legislation; so he organized a national army,
and established a school of military training. This
was the most important step that any king of Ireland,
as king, had hitherto taken. In early stages of social
development the army of the tribe, or nation, is iden¬
tical with its whole adult manhood, and indeed, in the
Irish case, womanhood too ; for the Irishwomen, like
those of Britain and Germany, were not slow to take
the battle-field. Armies of regular warriors come into
existence as differentiation of function in general
between the members of the society proceeds—as the
bulk of the people engaged in other pursuits find
military service an irksome interruption. The Irish
were pre-eminently a fighting race, and, for that very
reason, they were slow to form for themselves a strong
military organization, or to permit such a formation
by their kings. Hence it was that the Irish kings
seldom had any army other than their people ; and
hence two results. First, there never was an Irish
king who could establish his dynasty, or himself, as a
real ruler over the minor Irish kings ; and, secondly,
no Irish king, small or great, got a right of absolute
power over his people.
Still, there were professional warriors in Ireland
* See Sir Samuel Ferguson's poem, "Congall,'' for an interesting
view of the relation between these events.
FA G A ÄT IRELAND AT HOME.
from very early times ; they appear as the heroes of
Irish bardic history. There was a system of military
education, too, by which the student was brought up
as the foster-son of some eminent warrior. The
teachers of great champions arc frequently named ;
and from these references we learn that the principal
champions, whether kings or inferior chiefs, were
prone to preside over the physical education of the
more promising youth. We hear, too, of champions
who were foster-brothers in arms—fellow-students of
war—learning champion-feats together ; and, though
regular military colleges probably did not exist before
the time of Cormac, schools for the joint military and
literary education of the upper classes almost certainly
did.
The nearest approach to a regular army which we
find in earlier times, was the band of valiant Ulster
knights, the Red Branch of Emania, which flourished
in the time of Conor Mac Nessa, king of Ulster at the
beginning of the Christian era. The history of
Ireland was so far affected by the institution of the
Red Branch, that Ulster became at this time a great
power in Ireland, and a terror consequently to the
other provinces.
More than three centuries later, the High King,
Cormac, carried out a similar conception more com¬
pletely. The following note is quoted in the Book of
Ballymote from the Book of Navan, which is now lost,
and refers to Cormac. " The monarch of Erin ap-
74
CELTIC IRELAND.
pointed an army over the men of Erin ; and over it
he appointed three times fifty royal Fenian officers,
for the purpose of enforcing his laws and maintaining
his sovereign rule and preserving his game ; and he
gave the command of the whole and the high-
stewardship of Erin to Finn Ua Baiscné (that is, Finn
Mac Cumhal)." This was the famous Feni of Erin,
the Irish militia of the third century ; and its com¬
mander was the still more famous Finn, son of
Cumhal,* the father of Oisin and other celebrated
persons, the central figure of a most interesting cycle
of Irish bardic literature, in part of which the Feni
are projected back into distant ages and appear as
demi-gods and mythical heroes, rather than as the
really practical warriors and hunters that they were.
It is from them that the modern Fenians, the
"physical force" party of Irish nationality have
taken their name.
The Feni were quartered on the people from
November to May ; and from May to November they
lived by hunting. They acted as a force against
internal disorder as well as against foreign invasion,
and thus fulfilled at once the duties of police and
army. According to the accounts that have come
down to us, the rules of the force, when viewed in the
most prosaic light, partook in marked measure of that
* " Cumhal" is pronounced "Cool." Finn was the grandson or
descendant (i.e. " Ua," modem O') of Baiscné and the son (i.e. Mac) of
Cu mhal.
PA G AN IRELAND AT HOME.
75
moral strictness which should pertain to the idea of it
as guardian of the realm's internal peace. In a poetic
light, however, they read as rules of chivalry; and as
pagan knights of chivalry we must indeed regard
Finn and his Fcni in this early, but by no means
uncultivated, age. Finn, the typical Fenian, was a
poet as well as a warrior, learned in all the bardic
wisdom of the Gael, and gifted with the bards' keen
enjoyment of nature. Thus at least the bards de¬
scribe him.
" The music that Finn loved was that which filled
the heart with joy and gave light to the countenance,
the song of the black bird of Letter Lee, and the
melody of the Dord Fian, the sound of the wind in
Droum-dcrg, the thunders of Assaroe, the cry of the
hounds let loose through Glen Rah, with their faces
outward from the Suir, the Tonn Rury lashing the
shore, the wash of water against the sides of ships,
the cry of Braan at Knock-an-awr, the murmur of
streams at Slieve-Mish and oh, the blackbird of
Derry-Carn. I never heard, by my soul, sound sweeter
than thåt. Were I only beneath his nest! " *
Cormac, we are told, made another advance on
previous practice by founding three great colleges at
Tara for the instruction of the men of Erin ; and
one was a School of the Art of War. In it, we must
suppose, he intended to have carried out, under the
* See Standish O'Grady's "History of Ireland," vol. i. chap, xii,,
for this modern version of Oisin's description of Fenian delights.
76
CELTIC IRELAND.
control of the High King himself, a system of splendid
physical training, similar to the best that had been
adopted hitherto by scattered teachers up and down
the country. And it is well, perhaps, to remember
here that the spirit of mediaeval Christianity, elsewhere
certainly and probably in Ireland too, was not very
favourable to anything like that splendid physical
education in which our pagan forefathers delighted,
and which Cormac sought at this time to centralize
at Tara. That old joy in physical ability has now
revived in full force, and finds its fit expression in the
Gaelic Athletic Association, the democratic modern
equivalent of Cormac's school of championship.
But Cormac's attempt to organize the "strong
arm" of Ireland in relation to the high king's throne
went the way of all later attempts to solve the Irish
national problem by " physical force." There was
plenty of it in the country—perhaps too much ; every
corner had the spirit of fight so strong in it that it
could not be repressed for more than one generation.
The fighting force could not be organized unless every
fraction of the popular will zvas organized too. And
it was a will difficult to organize in some respects,
because each considerable unit was affected with a
marked individuality of its own—a strong self-will,
not uncommonly accompanied by a keen egoistic
sensitiveness, apt to resent a supposed insult more
than a substantial injury. Irish history bristles with
self-will, and is also marked at every stage with the
PAGAN ICELAND AT IFOME.
77
individual Irishman's fearlessness of the arm stronger
than his own. Force has consolidated many nations,
compromise has consolidated some ; but the only way
in which Ireland could ever be consolidated was by
the way of reason and sympathy. Nor has Nature
been slow to compensate this nation for the qualities
which have been her trouble. She prizes them rightly,
nevertheless, for they are a power. The Bard and the
Brehon understood Irish nature—or rather they were
it. The bards held up before the people the ideas
of Ireland, heroism, gentleness, and justice ; and,
travelling as they did constantly from one end of
the country to the other, they familiarized the inhabi¬
tants of every part with the heroes and associations
of every other, telling of the Red Branch champions
of Ulster in the South, and of Finn and his heroes
and the great King Cormac in the North. The bards
were a national brotherhood, with their hands on the
strings of the popular heart, their minds in close
touch with the popular imagination. Through their
unity of mind and heart Ireland was united while
their order prevailed. Tara was their great festival,
and Tara was the political link of the provinces.
And as for the Brehon, he set up his court of arbitra¬
tion in all quarrels that might occur among this self-
willed and fight-loving people, trusting in the might
of reason alone. And the disputants came to him,
keen of wit no less than rapid of imagination as they
were ; and in the might of reason he made the law
73
CELTIC IRELAND.
prevail. No fact strikes more forcibly a student of
the Irish social system than this, that, side by side
with careful provisions for the administration of an
elaborately developed law, there exists no visible
means for carrying it out, except, indeed, so far as the
physical force of the whole community might be
called upon to do so. A passage from Sir John
Davies, who wrote in the time of James I., throws,
however, a light which is quite sufficient on this point.
The Irish people at his time had been going through
terrible struggles, which must have roused to the full
all their fighting and non-rational instincts. Yet this
is what he, an observer of the opposite camp, tells us,
soon after the Ulster plantation—
" I dare affirm that for the space of five years
past there has not been found so many malefactors
worthy of death in all the six circuits of this realm
(thirty-two shires) as in one circuit of six shires,
namely, the western circuit, in England. For the
truth is, that in time of peace the Irish are more
fearful to offend the law than the English or any other
nation whatsoever. . . . There is no nation under the
sun that doth love equal or indifferent justice better
than the Irish ; or will rest better satisfied with the
execution thereof, although it be against themselves."
Hence it is evident that in Sir John Davies's time,
either the fact of the Brehon's constant reliance
on popular reason had developed popular reason, or
the fact that Irish popular reason was peculiarly
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
79
accessible, had enabled the Brehon to rely upon it.
And, indeed, it is a truth open to easy observation by
any one to-day, that the Irish peasant is peculiarly
ready to see any matter from the universal or rational
point of view. Now, as in olden times, he despises
force and loves his personal will, but reverences law,
respects other wills, and is capable of much self-
devotion.
Cormac's attempt to organize the army of the
hi gh king failed. Finn and the Feni quarrelled with
the king ; and the people, weary perhaps of having
the Feni quartered on them, put themselves behind
the king and defeated the army, enfeebled too, as it
was, by internal dissensions.* So one part of Cor¬
mac's ideal failed.
Of the other parts we are left to suppose that they
succeeded ; the element of success was in them. The
king, who was a scholar and judge as well as a
warrior, reorganized the learned classes, and estab¬
lished, besides the School of War, a School of Law
and another of Literature. A manuscript, now lost,
the Saltair of Tara, is ascribed to his authorship, as
well as a portion of the Book of Aicill, which is
part of one of the Brehon law tracts. With his nobles,
ollamhs, and kings around him at Tara, Cormac is
said to have ordered a new code of laws and regula¬
tions to be drawn up, to have revived obsolete tests
* One of the most beautiful of the Irish romances, i.e. the story of
Diarmait (Uermat) and Crania, is connected with the Fenian dissen¬
sions. See Joyce's "Celtic Romances."
So
CELTIC IRELAND.
and ordeals, and instituted new ones, thus making
the law of evidence as perfect as it could be in those
times. " The world," says an old manuscript, "was
full of all goodness in his time ; there were fruit and
fatness of the land, and abundant produce of the sea,
with peace and case and happiness in his time.
There were no killings nor plunderings in his time,
but every one occupied his lands in happiness."
It is clear that Cormac's reign made a deep im¬
pression on the national mind as the time in which
all the wise laws and customs of the nation flourished,
standing out specially from the reign of his prede¬
cessor. For this reason, I have taken it as a fixed
central point in Irish pagan history, to which we may
refer the flourishing existence of that social condition
to be presently described, or the elements in it that
are not clearly due to Christian influence and which
form the main portion. It is believed, indeed, that
Cormac was not himself a pagan, but had imbibed
some Christian ideas during his wars with Britain,
which found expression in a request, made at his
death, not to be buried with his fathers in the pagan
cemetery of the kings of Tara on the Boyne. But,
though Cormac may have been Christian, it is quite
certain that the institutions which he reorganized
were not.
Before proceeding to consider the nature of Irish
paganism as a religion, let us glance more particularly
at the organization of the learned classes. Of these
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME. 8 I
there were four, if we count the several varieties of
the mail of law as constituting one class. The ancient
Irishman had all the modern appliances of legal
advice when he went to law, besides judges of several
grades, from the ollamh or chief judge attached to
the king's court down to the common judges in the
inferior courts ; nor was Irish society quite without
magistrates of more kinds than one. He had his
attorney, moreover, as also had the Welsh, who called
him the " guider," and the Irish barrister was called
" the burnisher," who brightened up his client's case.
These varieties may however have been of later
development than the third century. But the Brehon
is probably as old as Miledh himself, or older.
The literary class had two branches—the poet
who represented more particularly the ancient bard,
and the historian whose was the practical duty of
acting as a book of reference on all points of genealogy
and of territorial rights as constituted by contract.
In the intcr-territorial courts, for example, the his¬
torian sat on the judicial bench. He, like the brehon,
indeed, was a professional person with definite duties
attached to the court, and had not the wide-spreading
influence of his wandering poetic brother.
For the poets wandered a good deal. They knew
every inch of Irish ground, and attached all their
stories to definite localities with the utmost precision.
Every event in bardic literature happens in a real
space, and thus the bards have covered the whole of
G
CELTIC IRELAND.
the land with a living mantle of Irish romance.* The
bard tells his tale, as the general plans his battle, with
the place of it visibly before his mind. The wander¬
ings of the poets had other uses : it brought them into
communication with one another, and, as they always
had an historical intention in their story-telling, this
contact with other minds was clearly important. To
them the national and provincial parliaments were of
great consequence. On such occasions they met one
another, and they also got good audiences for their
recitations.
When a poet travelled he took a band of pupils
with him, teaching them whenever he found it con¬
venient,—sometimes indoors, but oftener in the open
air. His rank as poet entitled him to be received
with a certain number of his company at a respectable
house, and when his company was too numerous the
neighbours were glad to entertain the excess. The
chief poet was generally accompanied by assistants of
various degrees, who had not yet attained the highest
rank.
In this aspect the poet appears as a schoolmaster,
occasionally travelling with his pupils from place to
place. But he had a well-understood duty to the
community which supported him and showed him
honour. He and his fellows entertained their hosts
with music, song and recitation. In wealthy houses
* See Standish O'Grady's "Early Bardic Literature, Ireland," p. 3,
c t scq.
FA G A.V IRELAND AT HOME. 83
it was the custom to give the bard some handsome
reward for his special services on such occasions,
generally a reward which he named himself. It is
said, indeed, that the poets were sometimes avari¬
cious, and once or twice, when they became very
numerous and exacting, the popular feeling rose
against them. Thus we hear that the vessel in which
they collected their fees was called the " Poets' Pot of
Avarice," and once a bard went so far as to demand
from the high king of Erin, in reward for his recita¬
tion, the golden brooch of Tara, an event which might
have led to the suppression of the bardic order had it
not been for the intervention of St. Columba. The
avarice of the poet was the more objectionable
because a refusal to satisfy it was followed, or
might be, by the poet's satire. This the sensitive
Irishman greatly dreaded : it seemed to his imagina¬
tion that the terrible satire must bring evil to pass by
the mere effective utterance of the idea of such evil.
The poet's satire was, indeed, a sort of literary curse
into which the poet threw all his force of language
and his dramatic instinct.
Like other academic classes, the bards of Ireland
had, no doubt, their faults, begotten of privilege and
the pride of intellect ; but they were, nevertheless, in
all probability, the truest benefactors that Ireland
ever had. Under their influence was developed in
the Irish people that vivid imagination, dramatic
taste, and literary capacity which distinguishes the
84
CELTIC IRELAND.
Irish peasant of our own time, and of the inborn
tendency to which the Irish bards are themselves the
result.
Side by side, and often identified with the literär}/
classes, was the Druid, " the man of science " as the
stories often call him. He it was who aspired to
know and have power over Nature,—the would-be man
of science, as we might truly call him, for his object
was exactly the same, and his logical methods not
quite different from those of scientific men in all ages.
He aimed at ruling Nature for the service of men, and
he experimented on Nature with his magical arts.
The difference is that he did not criticise his ideas,
nor did the people who reverenced him for his
power to work good or ill. So he conjured con¬
tentedly with his " druidical wand," and " druidical
mists" or "druidical storms " arose ; or, if they did
not, the explanation of another druid in opposition,
or the wrath of the Tuatha Dc Danann, the gods of
the country—these were manifestly satisfactory ex¬
planations.
It is probable that admission to the professions
was, from an early period, consequent on the attain¬
ment of a recognized quantity of learning and per¬
haps some original composition ; but whether the
graduation of a candidate was dependent on election
by several poets, or was by the decree of his teacher
only, we do not know. Probably both methods had
their time. It is certain, however, that for important
PAGAJV IRELAND AT HOME.
posts, such as that of chief poet in a king's court, the
candidates displayed their knowledge and skill in a
competitive contest, and the most successful was
chosen by general consent. The idea of a bardic
degree and the bardic competition is still preserved,
though somewhat faintly, among other good old Celtic
ideas, by the Welsh Gorsedd.
Perhaps there is no question more important in
the general inquiry as to the social ideas and con¬
dition of a people than that of the position assigned
to women. The stories are on this point quite as
useful as the histories and the laws ; and the stories,
as well as the laws, reveal a state of the national
mind and manners worthy in this respect of the
courteous modern Irish peasant's ancestors. If Irish¬
men have nothing else to be proud of, they might at
least be proud of this, that in all times Irish women
have been treated with the chivalry, not merely of
tenderness, but of genuine respect ; and Irish women
may, too, be proud that they have always been ready
to take a part in their brothers' work, and be real
comrades to their husbands. Most of us have heard
of the surprise experienced by the Romans on observ¬
ing the position of respect in which the women of the
German tribes were held, a surprise only equalled by
that which moved them on finding that these women
were accustomed occasionally to take the field of
battle with the men. Well, the Celtic tribes of
Ireland exhibit the same two phenomena from the
86
CELTIC IRELAND
earliest times. The ivill of the woman, be she wife
or daughter, is treated with respect, even though the
daughter may be very capricious about marrying
the suitable prince. And, on the other hand, while
there arc bardic championesses like the Ultonian
Macha, and that queen of the ragged isle who was
foster mother-in-arms to the champion Cuculain, and
while there are powerful queens like the celebrated
Meavc who led the three provinces of Ireland against
Ulster about nineteen hundred years ago, the fact
that Irish women later were not slow to fight in time
of war is plain, since a law restraining them from
military service was passed as late as the year 697,
by the influence of the Columban monk, Adamnan.
The warlike women were, however, manifesto-
exceptional. The point to be noticed is that they
were permitted and held in high regard. In ancient
Ireland women stayed for the most part in their own
" sphere " : there was more of that special sphere then
than there is now, and the general subordination of
individual to family life is specially effective in limit¬
ing the activity of women. Nevertheless, there were
exceptions, and in other fields more suitable, as
doubtless we should think, than that of war: the
traditional list of the Tuatha Dé Danann historians
contains the names of two women and four men ; and
the names of women occur not unseldom in the lists
of judges and expounders of the law. We also hear
of " learned women" as druidesses. All these
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
8/
eminent pagan women are precursors of the cele¬
brated St. Brigit, the contemporary of St. Patrick,
who seems to have been a decidedly strong-minded
person, abbess of the Kildarc monastery, with a bishop
under her, and in perfectly good-fellowship with her
comrades of the other sex in the work of learning and
the Church.* These instances, and others, do not
prove more, but they prove this, first that there was
a clear tradition, to which custom corresponded, in
favour of allowing women to come out of their
"sphere," if they wanted to come, and secondly that
Irishmen were not slow to award them the honours
they might reap in other fields.
It is also certain that they held by no means a
servile place in that sphere. This is proved by the
marriage laws on the one hand, and the woman's
property laws on the other.
At a woman's marriage her father, or her family
if he were dead, conferred on her a portion—in the
case of one daughter usually a third—of her father's
personal property. Her husband also gave her a
bridal gift, and these constituted her separate property
for her own use. As regards inheritance of the right
to use land, it is manifest that the Irish tribal custom
and tribal ownership of land would lead in the first
instance to the principle of inheritance in the male
line only. Indeed, if a woman married into another
* For references see O'Curry's " Manuscript Materials of Ancient
Irish History," p. 339, ct scq.
8S
CELTIC IRELAND.
tribe, it was evidently impossible that she should ever
in tribal times be allowed to share in the land of her
own tribe. Nevertheless, we find it stated, as a reform
of older law, that a father might give one third of his
lands to his daughter if there were no sons ; and
ultimately daughters could inherit all. This right of
daughters to inherit is said to have been completely
established by a legal decision in the case of a certain
Ulster woman, Brigit Ambui, known as Brigit of
the Judgments, who pleaded the cause of " women's
rights " in the time of the Ulster king Conor Mac
Nessa, at the beginning of the Christian era. It
would seem probable on the face of it, however, that
so long as tribal ownership prevailed in its purity,
this law could only have been quite effective for
women not married out of the tribe, though, later, it
would naturally apply to all.
The marriage laws show a singular ease of divorce,
which proves at once that they are not of Christian
origin. What concerns us here is, in the first place,
the careful manner in which the interests and dignity
of the woman are protected by the divorce laws.
For no less than seven different causes it was lawful
for her to separate from her husband, taking with her
the whole, or in certain cases part, of her marriage
portion and her husband's bridal gift, obtaining, more¬
over, compensation for the injury done her. It will
suffice to mention the three minor of these causes : (i ;
if a blemish ever so slight were inflicted on her, by
PAGAN IRELAND A 7 HOME.
89
beating or otherwise maltreating her; (2) if she were
rendered the subject of ridicule by her husband ; (3) if
full rights in domestic and other social matters were
not given her. " Every noble woman," says the law
tract, commenting 011 this last condition, "is entitled
to the exercise of her free will." Let us hope the
women of Erin did not abuse their privileges.
Another part of the marriage law is still more
suggestive. This deals with the respective rights of
the two contracting parties in three carefully dis¬
tinguished cases:—(1) the marriage of equal rank,
when the wealth and social position of the two
persons are such as to make them social equals ;
(2) the marriage of unequal rank, when the husband's
property is the support of the household ; (3) the
similar marriage, when the wealth belongs to the wife.
In the first case, the equal rights of the two
parties are plainly laid down. " What each gives the
other is equally forfeited "—her wealth to him no
more than his to her. And to carry out this principle
of equality, it is decreed that " a contract made by
either party is not a lawful contract without the
consent of the other, except in case of contracts
tending equally to the welfare of both." Again, we
are told—and I quote this as an index of the
Brehonic view on the subject—" The woman may
oppose the evidence of the man ... for it is a law
of headship that is between them, and though the
law cedes the headship to the man, because of his
90
CELTIC IRELAND.
manhood and nobility, he has not the greater power
of proof upon the woman on that account, for it is
only a contract that is between them."
In the marriage of unequal rank, the two parties
have—and this is consistent with the whole social
system—status and rights proportionate to their
property. The wealthier member has the greater
privilege ; and the law takes no account of sex. The
man supported by the woman's wealth is on the
same footing as the woman supported by the man's.
After describing minutely the regulations for the
latter case, the writer of the tract begins his treatment
of the former by the simple statement that in this
case " the man goes in the place of the woman and the
oman in the place of the man." *
Nor does it appear that this somewhat prosaic
equalization before the law was at all destructive of
the romantic tendency to idealize the typical man
and typical woman as different, however similar.
Even the law-writer betrays himself quaintly in the
derivation he gives of the Irish words, for women
" ben," and for man " fer." Thus they arc called, he
tells us, "from the kindliness of a woman and the
dignity of a man, and to reach these qualities they
exist
The law tract from which this and the other
quotations are taken was undoubtedly written in
Christian times ; but I have dealt with the subject
* See " Law of Social Connexions" in " Brehon Laws," vol. ii. p. 391.
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
91
in this place because it is evident from the whole
tenor of early Irish history, and the internal evidence
of the legal definition of rights here considered, that
the ideas reflected are those of Irish paganism. And,
indeed, it takes little knowledge of European history
to make manifest that the early Christianity of each
country assumed, with modifications, the ethical
character of the paganism which preceded it.
Having now some general conception of the main
social ideas and instincts of pagan Ireland, no inquiry
can be more interesting than one into the religious
ideas lying behind them. Few subjects of inquiry
are beset with greater difficulties. An adequate
treatment of it would require careful study, not only
of Irish bardic literature and the legendary lore still
lingering among the Irish peasantry, with a view to
discovery of the pagan customs as well as pagan
ideas which they imply, but also a similar study of
such similar materials as exist—much more scantily
in most cases—for other nations. To understand the
Irish non-Christian tradition and worship, we should
understand the corresponding tradition and worship,
and their history, for all the peoples that issued from
the same Aryan home, and grew to express them¬
selves by diverse modifications of their original habits
feelings ideas and languages, in accordance with the
diversity of the circumstances in which they lived
and grew.
Here, however, we must be content with a much
CELTIC IRELAND.
narrower range, and a very incomplete idea. Yet
a few facts may be stated showing the connec¬
tion of Irish with Aryan tradition generally, and
indicating also the tenacious hold which the Irish
imagination has of its past. The memory of four
great pagan festivals lingers on all soil that Aryan
races have trod, but it is most vivid and clear in
Ireland. The first is the feast of Beltine, on May
Day, when in ancient times the sacred fire was lit at
Tara, while no light was allowed to be visible that
night on all the surrounding plain : and, just as in
those times a lighted brand from that fire was used to
kindle all the fires around, so even now in remote
places, if the fire goes out in a peasant's house before
the morning of the first of May, a lighted sod from
the priest's house to kindle it is highly esteemed. The
second great festival is on Midsummer Eve, when the
bonfires are still lighted on the Irish hills, and it is
still "lucky" for the young people to jump over the
flames or for the cattle to pass between two fires ; at
least, the tradition lingers where the superstition is
practically extinct. It should be noted, however,
that of this and the Midwinter festival we read
comparatively little in the old literature. It is the
other two that stand out as having national import¬
ance, and there is not the faintest indication of any
druidical rites of sacrifice having ever been practised
in connection with the Midsummer fires during bardic
times. The third festival is that of Samhain, or
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
93
November Eve, with which occasion was associated
the great popular assembly and national council of
the kings at Tara, and which now, as then, connects
itself with the idea of mirth and sociability though
no longer politics. There is, however, a superstition
about November Eve, familiar to the Irish peasantry,
which may have an important bearing on the his¬
torical fact that Samhain was the time originally
associated with the national assembly. November
Eve is sacred to the spirits of the dead. In the
Western Isles the old superstitions are dying very
hard, and tradition is still well alive. It is " dangerous "
to be out on November Eve, because it is the one
night in the year when the dead come out of their
graves to dance with the fairies on the hills, and as
it is their night, they do not like to be disturbed.
Now, if Samhain were always sacred to the ancestral
dead, which is likely, then the choice of Samhain as
the time of a national assembly may have been due to
the fact that one primary purpose of the assembly
originally was to pay homage to the sacred dead of Erin.
The passionate love of kindred that still characterizes
the Celtic Irish makes it probable that homage to
the dead must have constituted a marked feature
in any system of national worship they may have
had, while it is certain, from the evidence of the
literature, that they did believe in the existence and
protecting power of their dead heroes. So it seems
very possible that the national significance of the
94
CELTIC IRELAND.
festival at Tara was bound up with the recognition of
the heroic dead who were sacred, not merely each to
his own tribe, but to the nation. The fourth festival
is that of Midwinter, the memory of which still
flourishes everywhere in the festivities of Christmas
Day, though the pagan meaning has been wholly
forgotten, the vitality of the custom being now
entirely due to its Christian associations.
These four festivals arc supposed to be connected
with the worship of the sun and moon,* and the
various practices associated with them, in Ireland
and elsewhere, to be significant of ideas relative to
that worship. We need not, however, dwell on this
subject, because, not only have the ideas themselves
now vanished from the Irish mind, but apparently
they had vanished in bardic times and left no trace
behind. A general reverence for Nature we find,
indeed, and plenty of it—a sense of sacredness in
fountains lakes and hills, in the winds of Ireland
and her encircling seas. Every aspect of Nature has
a personality—poetic, however, rather than super¬
stitious—lovable, sympathetic, as when the waves
of Ireland roar in sympathy with the shield of her
king which had been forged by fairy smiths beneath
the sea. And the only clear idea we can gather of
a druid's priestly function, which some imagine to
* This applies, no doubt, more especially to the Midsummer and
Midwinter festivals, and these are the two of which the bardic literature
tells us least.
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
95
have involved a definite ceremonial and sacrificial
rites, is that, by his magical arts — corresponding,
doubtless, sometimes to artistic and scientific skill
—die acquired influence over Nature and bent her
to his will. Of any such limitation to this vague
Nature-worship as the Persian sun-and-fire worship
implies, no trace whatever can be found except
the popular observance of the festivals and the
peasant's belief in the luckiness of fire. Indeed,
the picture of the Irish druid, as painted by the
bards, is altogether inconsistent with the notion that
he should limit his magical activity to dealings with
the sun, that least hopeful of all objects, or to the
one element of fire. The druid has a true dash of
scientific aspiration in him. He docs not want merely
to influence the popular mind, but to work an effect
—or imagine that he does—on Nature. Probably
the fact that the druidic profession was open to all
students, and that the country was full of the active
bardic intellect, contributed to make and keep this
aspiration purer than it could have been kept had
the druids become either a caste or the only learned
class in the country. The bardic influence, too—and
druids arc frequently bards themselves—must have
contributed directly to prevent any limitation of
Nature-reverence ; for to the poet there is as much
soul in the glistening of the dew on the grass, or the
moan of the sea on the shore, as in the journey of the
sun across the heavens day by day.
9 6
CELTIC IRELAND.
Let us note now this curious fact. There is more
trace of sun-and-fire worship in the peasant's super¬
stition lingering among us to-day than in the bardic
literature of the remote Irish past. The explanation
that suggests itself is on the surface. The druids
and bards of those far-reaching bardic times were
practically heretics with respect to the more ancient
forms of religious idea, which linger without meaning
in the Irish peasant's tenacious memory, or adhere
to his habits by the bare persistence of conservative
instinct. At some very early date, Irish religious
conceptions began to develop along a line quite
different from that of the solar myth, giving scope,
on the one hand, for the bardic imagination and the
druidic ambition for Nature-control, and, on the other
hand, for the people's moral and religious sentiments,
bound up as these were with the idea of kindred.
For the satisfaction of these something much
more catholic than sun-worship was necessary. All
objects of possible religious reverence come under
two great heads—the Idea of Nature and the Idea of
Humanity—and a moral religion is one which asso¬
ciates these objects of reverence with the idea of hinnan
activity in relation to them. Now, the most con¬
spicuous fact about the Irish intellect is its vivid¬
ness of imagination, and the closeness with which that
imagination works in relation to the external nature
familiar to it: Irish poetry and Irish poetic feeling are
" racy of the soil " in a way that is quite extraordinär)-.
97
Again, the most conspicuous fact about Irish moral
character is the warmth of its affections for kindred
and the Irish foster-kindred of friends and neighbours.
We might expect, therefore, beforehand, that pagan
religion, as developed by the Irish, would be marked
somewhat emphatically by the presence of the two
great ideas in an Irish form—for Nature, the spirits of
Ireland ; for Humanity, the Irish race.
And so it turns out. All the available evidence
points to the conclusion here expressed in somewhat
abstract form. Perhaps there is no object of worship
so natural as the memory of ancestral heroes, and
110 belief more real than that the great and good
live after death. We have no evidence to show that
the ancient Irish had any form of worship for their
dead kindred, but we know that funeral games were
held in their honour, that the cemeteries were deemed
to be sacred places, and that they believed it possible
for their dead heroes to help in battle or distress.
One example will suffice. Mac Ere is in tradition
the king of the Firbolgs, a hero ; but he appears as a
deity in the following lines, discovered by Professor
Sullivan :—
" Twice during the Treena of Taillten
Each day at sunrise I invoked Mac Ere
To remove from me the pestilence."
This is a case of prayer to a hero. The same hero's
wife affords us a good example of games and cere¬
monies held in her honour. A manuscript quoted by
II
98
CELTIC IRELAND.
Professor O'Curry,* gives an account of the sports,
games, ceremonies and lighting of fires at Taillten
(now Telltown, to the north of Tara), for which that
ancient place was celebrated, and which took place in
the beginning of August. These were said to have
been instituted more than a thousand years earlier
than the time of which the writer wrote (a.d. 405), by
Lug, the king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, in honour of
Taillte, the wife of Mac Ere. At her court he had
been fostered ; so he raised over her a mighty mound,
and instituted games in her honour. In this example,
it should be noticed as very characteristic that the
person honoured is reputed to be not of the same
race as those who honour her. The idea of a common
country has prevailed over the idea of common kindred,
but is related to it in some measure by the fact, or
presumed fact, of fosterage. The tomb of a Firbolg
queen is, according to the story, made a sacred place
by the Tuatha Dé Danann, and accepted as such
by the Milesians later. It docs not greatly matter
whether the story be true. The important point is
that it should be believed to be true by the Milesians.
It illustrates a tendency, which may very well have
taken effect throughout the whole island, to accept the
sacred places of the earlier races as sacred, and pay
honour to their heroes as national heroes.
It would appear, indeed, that the Tuatha Dé
Danann made a deep impression on the imagination
* " Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History," p. 2S7.
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
99
of their successors. Of the historical people them¬
selves we hear that they were noted for their skill in
magic and druidical arts. More important is it that
the heroes and heroines of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Lir,
Mananan, the Dagda Mor, Angus his beautiful son,
and the three fair sisters Eire and Fohla and Banba,
" from each of whom the island has a name "—these
and others appear in the literature as, if not the gods,
at least the immortal spirits who love, and sometimes
foster the children of Erin, Nor is this all ; in one
aspect of it, tradition assigns to the Tuatha generally
an immortal life in the midst of the hills and beneath
the seas. Thence they issue to mingle freely with the
mortal sons of men, practising those druidical arts in
which they were great of yore, when they won Erin
from the Firbolgs by " science," and when the
Milesians won Erin from them by valour. That
there really was a people whom the legend of the
Tuatha shadows forth is probable, but it is almost
certain that all the tales about them are poetical
myth. The idea of them, however, as a wise and
mighty race which preceded the Milesians in the
possession of the island, and who dwell there still,
in that invisible land, within the visible land, of ever¬
lasting youth, strong in the possession of a druidism
that could bend all nature to their will, the immortal
spirits to whom the soil of Erin is sacred, foster-
kindred oft to the sons of Miledh and intermarrying
with them—this idea is rooted firmly in the bardic
IOO CELTIC IRELAND.
imagination, and we must take it as a fair expression
of the ideas towards which the popular religious
sentiment tended in their time.
In the hymn written by St. Fiech in honour of
St. Patrick, we are plainly told that before the
coming of Patrick the Irish worshipped the Sidhe,*
and the bards identify the Sidhe with the Tuatha Dc
Danann, or rather with the palaces in which these
mighty beings dwelt. For instance, there is an
ancient poem in the Book of Ballymote on the
wonders of that Brugh-na-Boinne, which is familiar
in the literature as the hall of the great king of
the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Dagila Mor, and is asso¬
ciated also with Angus, who carried thither after
death one of the famous Fenian champions, Diarmid,
his foster-son.f This is the second stanza of the
poem.
" Behold the Sidhe before your eyes ;
It is manifest to you that it is a king's mansion,
Which was built by the firm Dag la.
It was a wonder, a court, an. admirable hill."
The same place is spoken of as the fairy mansion
of Brugh on the Boyne, in a tale relating how a
certain poetic lover, finding that the only condition
on which the lady of his affections would accept
his suit was the composition of a poem describing
her possessions, then unknown to him, goes to the
fairy mansion on the Boyne to see his nurse—evi-
* Pronounced "Shee." f Joyce's "Celtic Romances."
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME.
lOI
dently a fairy foster-mother—and with her aid makes
the required poem.
The identity of the Tuatha Dé Danann with the
degenerate fairy of Christian times appears plainly
in the fact that while the Sidhe are the halls of the
Tuatha, the fairies are the people of the Sidhe, and
sometimes called the Sidhe simply, just as St. Fiech
calls the Tuatha. In bardic times, however, the
people of the fairy mansions are frequently called by
a name indicating, as a primary characteristic, their
connection with the places reverenced as Sidhe. We
hear of the ben-sidhe and the fer-sidhe, literally the
woman and the man of the fairy mansions. The
ben-sidhe, pronounced banshee, has descended to our
times, as the guardian spirit of certain Irish families,
which manifests itself in some way when a death is at
hand. Here, again, is a curious fact : the ban-shee is
an immortal being mysteriously connected with the
destiny of a particular group of kindred, and asso¬
ciated in modern times solely with the idea of death.
The inference seems probable, to say the least, that
the Sidhe, whence these racial spirits were supposed
to come, were within those great sepulchral mounds,
which the ancient Irish raised above their honoured
dead. What more natural than that the ancestral dead
should be laid in those spots where the spirits of
the race's destiny dwelt immortal, and would care
for the heroes in the ghostly life after death ! What
more natural than that reverent hands should build
5 O 2
the mound broad and high and round, for the com¬
fort of the spirits that dwelt therein ! What more
natural, too, than that the spirit of the race as in
the modern superstition—the foster-parent of divine-
race as in some of the bardic tales—should draw
nigh at the time of death, and bear the immortal
soul to its fairy home !
The similar ideas that the fairies carry off the
young men and women who die, and that the dead
come forth on November Eve to dance with the
fairies on the hill—these linger in the minds of the
Irish peasantry now, and represent the common
people's share in that idea of a relationship after
death to the invisible Irish nation whose home is in
the centre of the hills, which yields, for the aristocratic
folk, a family ban-shee, dwelling once—but this is now
forgotten—in the sacred family mounds. Whether
fairyland was first in the hills and reflected itself in
the sidhe and ben-sidhe of the tombs, or was first
ancestral in the tombs, where the Milesians found
and honoured it, and then reflected itself into the
nature-spirits that populate the hidden districts of the
land, it would not be easy to say, Probably, how¬
ever, the latter supposition is nearer the truth, for
the fairy myth would have required a certain de¬
velopment of imagination such as no race, and cer¬
tainly not a race with strong family affections, would
be likely to attain, without having previously imagined
the continued existence of its heroes after death. It
PA G AN IRELAND AT HOME. IO.}
may be that the choice of the ancestral sacred places
of their predecessors as their cemeteries by the
Milesians, and the double tribute of respect hence¬
forward paid to them, occasioned the peculiar form of
the Irish fairy myth. The Milesian tombs were the
abode of the aristocratic Tuatha, but their common
people were gradually connected with the underground
world of the island generally. So all Nature came
to have a sacred meaning, instinct with the feeling of
kindred through the idea of fairy fosterage on Irish
soil,—fosterage by the elder race to which the soil of
Eire, sweet daughter of the Dagda,* is sacred. And
thus it is easy to see how, as developed and refined
by bardic influence, Irish religious sentiment contri¬
buted to that effect of merging the feeling of kindred
in the feeling of Ireland, without in the least detract¬
ing from its force, which so characterized the early
Irish people that they have infected all other races
since settled among them with the same tendency.
To every settler in Ireland, sooner or later, the sacred
places of Ireland become sacred ; and every place in
Ireland has a poetic sacredness.
Respect for the dead, and reverence for the
Tuatha of Erin, observance of the great feasts, the
periodical celebration of games in the sacred places
(of which Tara must certainly have been one), and
such superstitions as we still find dying out among
the peasantry—these arc the chief positive elements
* This is the bardic derivation of the country's name.
I04 CELTIC IRELAND.
that can be discovered of Irish paganism. Of
sacrificial rites or any elaborate ceremonial not a
trace in bardic times is to be found. Whatever they
may have been elsewhere, or in times of which even
Irish memory holds no hinted record, Ireland of the
bards knew its druids simply as men skilled in all
magical arts, having no marked relation either to a
system of mythology or to a scheme of ceremonial
practice. The head of the kindred would have more
to do with the sidhe than' he, and the king it was
who presided over the periodical festivals. Hence,
perhaps, their natural association with politics.
It was not, therefore, to a land of obstinate
idolatrous paganism that Patrick came, nor to a land
where superstition was organized definitely in relation
to a priestly caste. Celtic imagination could well
dispense with idols,* and Celtic freedom was averse
both to hard and fast ceremonial and to precise
definition of doctrines to be believed. Moreover, the
land was full of active intellects, in want of more
thought-material on which to spend themselves, of
eager souls touched by a tender sympathy for the
poetic beauty of a noble life, and of vivid imaginations
* The " Tripartite Life of St. Patrick " makes mention of a group of
idols which stood in the plain of Magh Slecht, and were there destroyed
by the saint. The "Tripartite life," however, is very medieval, and,
as there is no hint anywhere of a systematic worship connected with
these, the suspicion arises that they may have been, if they existed at all,
mere memorial stones, raised to the dignity of idols by the iconoclastic
imagination of the mediceval Christians. The earlier lives of St. Patrick
do not mention them.
PAGAN IRELAND AT HOME. I05
ready to be stirred. Before Patrick, the sacred bard
had been in the land ; superstition had paled before
poetry ; the noble deeds of self-devoted heroes had
been sung and heard ; the gentle, ever-open nature
of the Gael was ready to take a higher flight. Thu
Isle of Song was soon to become the Isle of Saints,
( io 6 )
CHAPTER V.
christianity in ireland.
St. Patrick's Christian mission to Ireland was not
the first, but it was the first to produce any important
results. For the facts connected with it we have a
vast mass of later information that cannot be relied
on, and a few sources of knowledge that cannot
reasonably be doubted. The most important of
these arc two acknowledged works of St. Patrick
himself, his " Confession," and his epistle to a British
prince Coroticus. There are also two early histories
of his life in the Book of Armagh, both of them
belonging to the latter half of the seventh century,
about two hundred years after St. Patrick's time.
From these sources the account given in Dr. Stokes's
" History of the Celtic Church in Ireland" is de¬
rived, and they are also the staple material relied
on by Dr. Todd in his older and more elaborate
history of the great Irish saint. They are quite
sufficient to enable us to form a clear idea of St.
Patrick's character, the nature of his missionary-
method and its effects.
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
lO-
St. Patrick was probably a native of Strathclyde,
in Britain, born at Alcluith which is now Dumbarton,
but it would seem that his family was derived
originally from Armoric Brittany. The interesting
point to notice about his origin is that it was con¬
nected with British Christianity, and that, therefore,
Armoric Brittany being Celtic also, it was a Celtic
form of Christian thought and organization that he-
brought to Ireland. At the early age of sixteen he
was taken prisoner, and became slave to an Irish
chief Milchu in North Dalaradia, in County Antrim.
The scene of his slavery has been carefully identified.
It is in the valley of Braid, near Broughshane, five
miles from Bally mena. There, near the hill of Slemish,
Patrick spent six years tending his master's cattle,
and there, as he tells us himself, his mind awakened to
a genuine realization of the Christian doctrine he had
learned as a child. At the end of that time, he made
his escape, the means having been, as he believed,
revealed to him in a dream. Thus he returned to
his family, then probably in Brittany, having gained
the threefold requirement needed for his after-work,
lie had developed the missionary temperament, its
spiritual aspirations and its human tenderness ; he
had learned to love the Irish people, and be at one
with them ; and he knew their language, their
customs and their character. And so, ere long, he
felt himself greatly moved towards this people lying
in spiritual darkness; his sleep was troubled with
io8
visions, and he heard voices calling to him from
Ireland for help.
The question has been much discussed as to who
it was that sent Patrick on his mission to the Irish,
and especially whether he was sent by the Pope or
not. All that he himself tells us is that he was
moved to go by the visions he had and the constraint
which he felt to be laid upon him ; and these he took
to be a direct call to his work from God. As neither
lie nor the ancient lives mention a mission from
Rome, such a mission is extremely improbable ; but
since it would be necessary that Patrick should be
consecrated by some bishop for the work, and since
we know that the events connected with the mission
of Germanus of Auxerre to Britain had drawn his
attention to Ireland about this time, it is antecedently
probable that this Germanus was the person techni¬
cally responsible for that Irish mission of which
Patrick himself was the real originator.
About the year 432, or, according to Dr. Todd,* a
little later, Patrick landed for the second time in
Ireland at the spot where the town of Wicklow now
stands. He did not remain here, however, but sailed
north towards Dalaradia, on which his heart was set,
landing as he passed at Inis Patrick off the Skerries,
and at the mouth of the Boyne. Finally he halted at
Strangford Lough, and proceeded into the country
from that point, speedily to make a convert of a
* " Life of St. Patrick," p. 391, et scq.
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND. IO<J
certain chieftain, Dichu, who was " the first of the
Scots to confess the faith under Patrick's ministry."
Dichu made a grant of land, on which Patrick
established the first Irish church, at a place called
Saul, where he afterwards died. Thence, he continued
his way towards the scene of his servitude, bent on
the conversion of his old master Milchu ; but legend
relates that Milchu, hearing of the approach of Patrick
and the triumphs that attended his progress, feared
lest the magical powers of his fugitive slave should
reduce him in his turn to servitude, so he set fire to
his house and perished in the flames, to avert the
possibility of such a result. And Patrick, grieved,
returned to his new friend and convert Dichu.
Soon, however, he determined to take the decisive
step of making a Christian attack on the centre of
Irish paganism and Irish nationality—Tara itself.
Like a good general, he saw that success to his mission
at Tara would mean, in the first place, a great moral
victory which must powerfully affect the popular
imagination, and, in the second place, a political
achievement, which would open up the whole country
to his missionary efforts.
Accompanied by a party of followers, he landed
at the mouth of the Boyne, and, following the course of
the river, encamped at Slanc, close by the great pagan
cemetery, "the grave of the sons of Fcni," where the
kings of Tara were buried. Pie pitched his tent, we
arc told, on the hill of Slane, which is plainly visible
1 10
CELTIC IRELAND.
from Tara, where at that very time the festival of
Beltine was being celebrated. It was Easter Eve, and
Patrick lit the Easter fires on the hill, thus, wittingly
or unwittingly, contravening the immemorial custom,
which forbade that any fire should be lit that night
on all the plain till the royal beacon shone out from
Tara. Hence it came to pass that attention was
especially attracted to the hill of Slane, and the king
Laoghaire, with his principal druids and various
attendants, went in anger to sec and punish the man
bold enough to offend against the sacred customs of
the land. After various conflicts with the druids,
into the account of which the miraculous element
enters largely, the king yields, though rather through
fear of Patrick's power than for any higher motive.
Tolerance for Christianity is thus obtained, and a
safe-conduct through Ireland granted by the king.
Laoghaire, himself, however, remained to the end a
pagan at heart, and was buried after the manner of
his ancestors—upright, with his arms by his side and
his face towards Leinster, with the king of which the
kings of Tara had a constant feud.
But Patrick made converts at Laoghaire's court—
notably one Ere, a Brehon lawyer. Thence he made
a tour through Meath, founded churches at Trim,
and elsewhere, and made an important real convert
at Donagh Patrick, in Conall, the brother of Lao¬
ghaire, and the ancestor of St. Columba.
From Meath St. Patrick made his way to Con-
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
[ 1 I
naught, with which place he had specially connected
the visions that first drew his mind towards Ireland.
Pursuing his missionary labours as he went, and
appointing bishops where he established churches, he
passed along the great western road that led to
Connaught, and crossed the Shannon near Clonmac-
moise in the King's County. Thence he proceeded
into Connemara, and remained in Connaught for
the space altogether of seven years. The policy he
had pursued at Tara is typical of the policy he
pursued elsewhere : the first step was to win the
king or chief—to make him a real convert if possible,
and, if not, to gain at least his tolerance and approval
so far as obtaining a grant of land to build a church
upon and make the formation of a religious com¬
munity possible. The establishment of religious
communities, scattered in all sorts of places through¬
out the land, was in fact Patrick's way—as it was
afterwards that followed by the Irish missionaries
abroad—of converting the whole country to the Chris¬
tian faith. Sometimes, a converted chief would be
enthusiastic enough to hand over all his possessions
and tribal rights to the religious community estab¬
lished among his people ; and in such case it would
often happen that he himself became abbot of the
monastery thus endowed, with bishops under him
though ecclesiastically superior to him. Patrick's
object was to plant centres of Christian influence
throughout the land, and he used the tribal system
t 12
CELTIC IRELAND.
as he found it, to carry out this purpose by every
available means. As a stranger having no status in
the tribe, Patrick's only way of getting immediately a
material footing on the tribe lands was through the
chief or other powerful person who held demesne
lands of his own. These he could either plant with
stranger tenants or grant for purposes which he
thought desirable. A converted chief would deem
such a grant from him to the church as a pressing
duty ; and the religious centre once established, with
a staff of Irish Christians, generally new converts, to
manage it, the essential work of organization was,
according to Patrick's Celtic ideal, done. The centre
was expected to grow by its own vitality and to make
the Christian idea dominant in its vicinity.
Prom Connaught Patrick went to Ulster, where
he specially visited Donegal, Antrim, and Armagh.
And there in the old city of Ard-Macha, he estab¬
lished (445) the primatial see of Armagh, having, as
the story goes, induced the king, Daire, to grant him
the high ground on which the cathedral now stands,
by miraculous deeds which at last overcame his
reluctance to give so strong a position to a stranger.
The king of Leinster's palace was at Naas,
and thither Patrick next proceeded, to pursue his
labours in the eastern province. That he visited
Munster we are also told, but have no authentic
account of his doings there. Last of all, as old age
overtook him, he returned once more to the favoured
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
1 1 3
pr vince of Ulster, and to the scene of his earliest
labours at Saul. There, among the brothers of his
first church, he died.
After his death a contest arose between the
churches of Saul and Armagh for the honour of
interring his body. To settle the matter, it was
determined to yoke two untamed oxen to the cart
that bore his remains, and to leave them free to go
which way they would. So runs the story. The
oxen stopped at the spot where now stands the
church of Downpatrick, and there, accordingly, the
great saint was buried. This much, at least, is
certain, that since the year 700, it has been positively
believed that the bones of St. Patrick lie under the
site of the Downpatrick cathedral.
But before Patrick died, the church which he
had planted in Ireland had taken root. The soil
was good soil, well prepared for the seed, and the
seed was sown by a skilful hand. The bardic age
had developed to a high point the heroic spirit of
enterprise and self-devotion, and had developed also
that still characteristic feature in Irish character—its
accessibility to ideas and readiness to submit action
to the sway of thought. To a people of enthusiastic
temperament, vivid imagination and idealizing ten¬
dencies, Patrick preached a practical doctrine of
self-devotion. To a people affectionate towards
kindred, and, notwithstanding their warlike fierceness,
sympathetic towards all men, he preached a prac-
ii4
CELTIC IRELAND.
tical doctrine of love. To a people of awakened
intellect and quickened sense of the beautiful in
things and thought, he brought a theory of nature
and life fuller and more thought-satisfying, as well as
more sublime, than any they had been able to forge
for themselves. Irishmen had their faults, and
faults that were troublesome, especially to them¬
selves, but they were peculiarly susceptible then, as
they are now, to the influence of a noble ideal that
asks for self-devotion. And this is why Ireland was
then a land of song, and the spirit of song has never
died out in the hearts of her people.
The soil was well prepared ; and Patrick sowed
the seed with skilful hand. He sowed it in compact
plots throughout the length and breadth of the
land. When the chief of a sept was converted, he
would sometimes confer his house and lands on the
church, transferring also his right as chief; and thus
a religious sept would be formed, consisting of the
religious persons to whom the grant was made, and
of the vassals connected with the land besides. The
head was called the " comarba" or co-heir, inheritor of
both the spiritual and temporal rights of the founder,
and thus having the right of chieftaincy in relation to
the freemen of the tribe, as well as other larger rights
over the vassals settled on the monastic demesne
which had been the private demesne of the chief.
In other cases, the chief would simply grant a
piece of land for the establishment of a church and
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND. I I 5
religious community. Into that community would
come, as volunteers, the surrounding tribesmen and
others from a distance, and thus, on the type of the
corresponding secular institutions, a voluntary family
would be founded, with an abbot as head, and a
bishop usually attached for ecclesiastical conve¬
nience. Similar voluntary families were frequently
formed, not only by the professional classes for the
sake of learning, but also by the people in general for
agricultural and other industrial purposes ; and the
bruighfer of the agricultural community held much
the same relation to his community, and in the whole
tribe, as the abbot of the monastery held in the case
we are considering.
From the first, Patrick seems to have made his
ideal of church organization in keeping with the Irish
method of political organization. The nation began
by being tribal, and developed slowly towards a
national unity which, as a uniform, centralized, execu¬
tive administration, it never realized. The tribal
forms were prevalent in Patrick's time, so the Church
in Ireland naturally began by being tribal too, and
developed slowly, though not nearly so slowly as the
State, towards such a centralized unity as under the
Roman empire it assumed at the first start. Medieval
Rome was often shocked at this tribal character of
Irish Christianity, with its indefinite number of bishops
and its somewhat fiery spirit of local independence.
Yet it is evident enough that the extraordinary
CELTIC IRELAND.
vitality of Irish Christianity, and the vivid reality of
its influence on the national life, was largely bound up
with the peculiarity of its form. Christianity estab¬
lished itself in Ireland after the manner of a natural
growth in a way which is quite exceptional ; and the
fact suggests that missionary societies might perhaps
do well to study a little in detail the method of
Patrick and of the great Irish missionaries who, after
him, laboured in Great Britain and in Europe. A
religious family settled in the midst of a pagan
people, pursuing the ordinary labours of agriculture
and handicraft for its support, exhorting its neigh¬
bours on all useful occasions, but without bitterness,
to lead better lives, teaching its doctrine to those who
would listen, and constant in prayer for the welfare
of all—this is what Patrick aimed at establishing on
all sides ; and it is easy to imagine the effectiveness
of his method.
It is evident, too, that the tribal church organiza¬
tion, though it must surely have given occasion for
argument and even fighting, was highly favourable
to the growth of a tolerant spirit. With a felt sense
of unity underlying it all, Irish Christianity left room
for much diversity, and this implied necessarily an
education in tolerance. Moreover, the Church was
national just in proportion as it was not established,
and it never at anytime approximated to the position
of a State institution. Thus, not only was the sword
of the State never actually invoked to defend the
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
117
Church against pagan or heretic, but the machinery
for that sort of thing did not exist. When the Church
was centralized and brought at last to acknowledge
definitely the authority of Rome, no earlier than the
year 1152, Armagh was made the scat of the primacy,
the seat of political supremacy being not there but in
the south. This was done in accordance with Irish
tradition, which had always assigned the place of
honour to that see, as being sacred to St. Patrick him¬
self. Armagh had long been regarded as the chief
see and final court of appeal for the Irish churches.
Indeed, we have positive evidence from the Book of
Armagh that this view was held in the eighth century.
It was not till this year 1152 that, at the synod of
Kells, held in the month of March, the diocesan
system was established which has existed ever since,
the pope having despatched a supreme legate to Ire¬
land for the purpose, at the request of a synod held
four years earlier at Holmpatrick. Cashel, Tuam, and
Dublin were made archbishoprics, as well as Armagh ;
and the wise concession of the primatial dignity to
Armagh transformed that powerful see, which had
been hitherto the centre of opposition to Rome, into
a faithful subject. Not even thus, however, was the
spirit of Irish Church Home Rule destroyed. The
monastic schools still held on their own way. So
the primate Gelasius held a synod in 1162, at the
abbey of Clane, on the banks of the LilTey, when it
was decreed that no one should be admitted a reader
118
CELTIC IRELAND.
or professor of divinity who had not studied at
Armagh, or taken an ad cnudem degree in that col¬
lege. And thus it was intended to bring into sub¬
jection to Armagh, all the colleges, as well as all the
bishops—now no longer to be indefinite in number—
while Armagh itself held authority direct from Rome.
Thus after seven centuries the Irish Church, with
its fiery spirit of independence, consented on the
whole to fall into line with all other churches in
Europe ; though it is certain that the old spirit which
died so hard was not quite dead even after the
success of Gelasius, and probably there is a little of
it left even now. It is interesting, however, to note
that the process of centralization after the Roman
manner was brought about by the action of forces
within the Irish Church itself, and not, as some
persons imagine, by Henry II. and his Papal Bull.
The process had been a long struggle between two
sets of ideas, the one set national and tribal, the other
set cosmopolitan, and national too in a sense, since
the loss of idiosyncrasies was accompanied by the
gain of unity in organization. The struggle began
with the controversy about the proper time of keep¬
ing Easter, as to which the Irish Church held out for
its old customs with characteristic persistency, long
after the rest of the Christian world had been reduced
to uniformity. The cosmopolitan element in the
general struggle is well expressed by one of the Irish
controversialists in the eighth century, St. Cummian,
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND. I 19
of Durrow, who sums up a long argument in favour
of the Roman custom, addressed to the Abbot of
lona, in these words: "What can be thought worse
concerning the Church, our mother, than that we
should say, Rome errs, Jerusalem errs, Alexandria
errs, Antioch errs, the whole world errs ; the Scots
and Britons alone know what is right."
But we must return to the fifth century, and the
system of missionary centres which Patrick set 011
foot, and which soon became centres of learning as
well as of spiritual influence. It has already been
shown that we have reason to associate the monas¬
tic learning of Ireland in its inception with the
corresponding learning of Wales. The first name to
stand out as that of a learned monk, founder of a
monastic school, is the name of St. Finnian, who is
said to have studied first at Trim and afterwards at
Dair-inis in the Bay of Wexford, but to have speci¬
ally associated himself as pupil with the eminent
Welsh saints, David, Cathmael, and Gildas. After
that he returned to Ireland and became Abbot of
Clonard, the earliest of the monastic communities
known to develop into a college or school. St.
Finnian is called by the Four Masters the " foster-
father of the saints of Ireland," and we may infer
therefore that many other of the schools took their
rise from the inspiration of saints who had been
pupils at Clonard. The monastic communities were
there already, and so was the old Irish zeal for know-
I JO
ledge : a learned abbot was quite enough to turn a
community into a college. Clonmacmoise, Clonfert,
Glasnevin, besides Devenish, Cluain-inis and Inis-
mac-saint on Lough Erne, owed such a learned abbot
to Clonard. The great Columba of Iona was also a
pupil of the college there. Another of the earliest
schools was established by a different St. Finnian, at
Moville on the banks of Lough Foyle.
Since the first St. Finnian died in 549, at which
time Columba was a young man of twenty-eight, we
see that the scholarly movement was well under way
in the first half of the sixth century. This, as we
have already seen, was the age when Irish enterprise
took on the missionary form, and it is specially
associated with the name of St. Columba the apostle
of the Picts and Northern England, and of St.
Columbanus famous for labour in France, Switzer¬
land, and North Italy. These are the two con¬
spicuous men, but each of them was surrounded and
succeeded by a number of less well-known workers,
and their missions were the parents of many others.
But it is Ireland at home that occupies us now, and
the facilities which she then afforded for the training
of men like these.
St. Columba, a descendant of the great King Niall,
was born in 521, at Gartan in Donegal, and was
baptized at Temple Douglas, which is not far off.
After his education at Clonard, he made the round of
he leading Irish colleges, according to the later
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
1 2 I
fashion, of the schoolmen. Then commenced his
evangelistic work in Ireland, no less than the founda¬
tion of three hundred churches being attributed to
him, among which are Deny, Kells, Tory Island off
the Donegal coast, Drumcliffe in Sligo, Swords,
Raphoe, Lambay near Malahide, and Durrow.
St. Columba was a poet, as well as an artistic
scribe, a teacher, and a missionary. He had also
something left in him of the warlike nature of his
aristocratic ancestry, and so it fell out that he had a
quarrel with St. Finnian of Movillc, who claimed a
copy which Columba had made, without his consent,
of his Latin Psalter. When the quarrel was referred
to the king of Meath, he decided that, on the prin¬
ciples of the Brehon law, the copy properly belonged
to St. Finnian. Thereupon the Scot in Columba took
lire ; he summoned his tribesmen, and a great conflict
ensued, in which at last Columba and his Ulstermen
were triumphant and no less than three thousand, it
is said, of the Meathmen were slain. Then Columba,
repentant, retired to the monastery of Inismurray off
the coast of Sligo, to consult his friend Molassius who
was abbot there. Molassius advised submission, and
prescribed, as a penance and compensation for the
great evil he had done, that Columba should under¬
take that mission to Pictland with which his name is
so honourably associated.
After that, the story of Columba's life belongs
mainly to the history of Scotland and indirectly to
1 22
CELTIC IRELAND.
that of England. It has been already told in these
pages. Nevertheless, he does appear again on the
Irish scene, as an honoured guest and ambassador at
the national assembly of Drumceatt, in 590, which
settled other affairs besides those pertaining to the
Scottish colony in Alba. The poets of Ireland were
in danger. They had roused popular indignation
against them by their exactions, and now they were
threatened with expulsion. But Columba, though a
saint, was still a bard, and he came to Drumceatt to
plead their cause as well as that of the little colony
across the seas.
The memory of the great meeting at Drumceatt
lasted till the seventeenth century ; for Colgan, the
great writer of that age, tells us that the site of the
assembly was even then frequented by numerous
pilgrims. The Irish lords and clergy encamped under
arms during the entire session. This lasted fourteen
months, so we may infer that much arrears of legisla¬
tion were satisfactorily disposed of in that time. One
piece of legislation is strikingly curious, and we are
told that Columba was its principle promoter. It
was decreed that women should henceforth be ex¬
empted from military service, whence it may be
inferred that they still retained their military habits
to some extent. And, indeed, it was found desirable
by Adam-nan, Columba's successor, to secure the
exactment of a similar law a century later, at the
synod of Birr, in the year 697.
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
123
The most important domestic business of the
occasion, however, concerned the poets and the pro¬
fession of teaching. It was solemnly resolved that
the general system of education should be revised,
and the following scheme was adopted.
1. Each king, chief, and lord was to have a special
ollamh, or doctor, in literature attached to his court,
to whom free lands were to be assigned by his chief,
and a grant of inviolability to his person and sanctuary
to his lands by the monarch and men of Erin at
large.
2. Free common lands, or endowments, were
ordered to be given to the ollamh for the purposes of
education after the manner of a university, in which
free education should be given to such of the men of
Erin as desired knowledge.
Thus was established a system of free national
secular colleges quite distinct from the ecclesiastical
schools, and naturally founded on the older Irish
institution of a State-supported academic class, living
freely on the people and in general giving freely of
their mental store to the people. Abuses in the
working of the older institution, which had in its time
achieved much for popular education, led to reform ;
and the reform amounted to the establishment of the
same academic class as heads of schools with definite
endowment as well as definite privileges. After that
the days of the wandering poet, with his pupils around
him, began probably to be over.
124
CELTIC IRELAND.
That the material which used to breed poets was
gradually used up for breeding scholars in their stead
is likely; although we know that Irish literature
never was neglected in any of the Irish schools, and
it is to those schools that we owe the preservation of
the bardic traditions. The next great Irishman, how¬
ever, was not, so far as we know, an Irish poet, while
he was a remarkably elegant classical scholar, whose
writings are still extant to testify to his scholarship.
This was Columbanus, a native of Leinster, born
twenty-two years later than Columba, in the year
543. He was educated at one of the schools in the
islands of Lough Erne and afterwards at Bangor,
then becoming famous as a place where the greatest
attainments in learning as well as sanctity were
possible. After forty-two years of a quiet life, the
missionary zeal came upon Columbanus, and, in 585,
he, with a band of companions, including St. Gall,
turned their steps to France, then in a state of more
than pagan immorality. His labours there and else¬
where have been already mentioned, and space forbids
that we should dwell on them further. But in general
we may connect with the missionary band of which
he is the central figure, those remains of Irish art and
Irish literature which are still to be found scattered
here and there on the continent of Europe.
During the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries
the School of the West grew and flourished, and, as
we have already seen, it produced its highest result in
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
the philosopher Erigena so late as the ninth century.
But the eighth century was marked by an event
fraught with much evil for the Church and the
schools. This was the pagan crusade of the Danes.
In 795» the Danes were first seen cruising off the
coasts of Ireland, and when they descended it was on
churches and monasteries that their heavy hand fell
heaviest. The destruction to art-treasures and manu¬
scripts must have been great; but, fortunately, the
spirit of learning is hard to destroy, and, once
acquired, not hard to revive. The struggle lasted,
however, for more than two centuries on and off, and
so it is probable that the energies of learning were to
some extent paralyzed by the generally disordered
state of society.
At first the Danes came as plunderers, but about
the middle of the ninth century their movement
assumed the purpose of settlement ; for they were
then seeking to escape the tyranny of their princes
by finding homes in other lands. Later still, in other
parts of Europe, they commenced the work of political
conquest from which Ireland was saved, by the great
effort made under Brian Boru to bring the Danes into
subjection to the Irish crown. That effort, 1014,
was successful, and henceforth the Danes were settlers
in the land, living by their own customs in their own
towns, but destined soon to be absorbed, like later-
coming strangers, into the Irish nation.
The struggle with the Norsemen must have inter-
1 20
CELTIC IRELAND.
fered seriously with the work of Irish literary and
artistic production ; but it would be far from the truth
to suppose that anything like a collapse was the result.
Political society was probably much more seriously
shaken than the societies of learned and artistic
monks. As a matter of fact, the blossoming period
of Irish Christian art, to which most of the monu¬
ments now in our possession belong, was between
the tenth and twelfth centuries, after the Dane had
settled in the land. It seems likely that he did
destroy earlier treasures ; but by this time, having
become a settler, he had ceased to be a destroyer,
and, baffled in his purposes of conquest, was tending
towards his ultimate fate of absorption into the
individuality of the Irish nation. Cormac's chapel
on the Rock of Cashel belongs to the end of the
tenth century, during the interval between the first
and second attack of the Danes.
The ninth century was the period of Danish
plunder, and of settlement along the coasts and in
convenient places for purposes of plunder. Towards
the latter end of this century the Irish in Ireland,
like the English in England, succeeded in driving
out the enemy, and there was peace for forty years.
Then came the Danes again, but bent more
definitely than before on permanent settlement; and
their most notable work was the establishment of
the Danish kingdom of Dublin, with its centre at
one of their old haunts, Ath Cliath on the Lififey,
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND.
where the city of Dublin was built by them. The
establishment of this kingdom dates from the year
919, and its extent may be traced to-day as conter¬
minous with the diocese of Dublin, extending from
Holmpatrick and Skerries on the north, to Arklow
and Wicklow on the south, and inland no farther
than seven or eight miles to Leixlip. Until quite
recently this was also the district over which extended
the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of Dublin as
Admiral of the Port of Dublin. On College Green
used to be held the assembly of the freemen of the
kingdom of Dublin, while the chiefs took their seats
on the steep hill that once stood where St. Andrew's
Church now stands, opposite to "the old house on
College Green" which is so dear to the national
aspirations of the modern Irishmen. There the
Danes held their parliaments, agreeing on laws, con¬
senting to judgments and contracts, feasting and
making merry, just as the old Irish held their parlia¬
ments at Tara, Carman, Armagh, and elsewhere.
Nor was Dublin the only Danish city. Limerick,
Cork, Waterford, Wexford, all became the centres of
petty Danish kingdoms, active in commerce, skilful,
for those times, in domestic architecture, and with
political and legislative ideas identical in their
essence with those of the people among whom they
settled.
In the course of the tenth century the Danes
nominally became, for the most part, converts to
T 28
CELTIC IRELAND.
Christianity. But it appears that they derived their
Christianity mainly from English sources ; and when
they began to organize their Church, they did so
after the Roman manner, and in connection with the
see of Canterbury. It was not, however, till after
the wars of Brian Boru that Danish Christianity
became either very real or at all organized. The
forces arrayed against Brian at Clontarf represented
mainly a pagan confederacy, although the king of
Dublin was nominally a Christian.
The importance of Brian's work can hardly be
overrated. In his youth the Danes of the South
were a sore trouble to Munstcr, the province of which
Brian became king, after the murder, by their joint
enemies, of his brother Mahon ; and he was the chief
agent in achieving conquest over them. In his
middle life, he established himself as supreme king
over all Ireland. And in his old age he smote the
Danes of Dublin, destroyed the pagan confederacy,
and reduced that kingdom to a position of subordi¬
nation to the Irish High King.
This was in 1014, and the memory of the old
feuds lingered for a century or so. In 1038, for the
first time, Dublin had a bishop. Sitric, king of
Dublin, returned from a pilgrimage to Rome, much
impressed with the power, magnificence, and organi¬
zation, of the Roman Church ; and we find that the
earliest Peter's pence paid in Ireland, were those of
Sitric, the Danish king. Sitric determined to estab-
CHRISTIANITY I A7 IRELAND.
129
lish a see in strict communion with Rome, unlike the
ordinary Celtic ones; and the first bishop was called
Donatus, probably a Latinized form of the Irish
name Doonan. Sitric and Donatus have left their
mark on the city, by erecting the cathedral now
known as Christ Church, after the model of those
they had seen on the Continent.
Donatus died in 1074, and then Dublin attached
itself to Canterbury as the nearest ecclesiastical centre
of the Roman type. This was an important step,
but a perfectly natural one. Dublin was separated
from Armagh by the fact that Dublin had started
its ecclesiastical life after a different type from that
of which Armagh was the centre. The other Danish
communities followed the example of Dublin. Water-
ford did not get a bishop till 1096, when the king
wrote to Anselm at Canterbury asking that he would
consecrate to that office Malchus of Winchester.
Thus an ecclesiastical union of the Irish Danes with
England seemed to be setting in.
But the Irish tendency to local independence
seems to overtake, like a fate, Irishmen of all races.
So we find the fourth bishop of Dublin beginning to
assert himself against Canterbury, and to assume the
style and manners of an archbishop. And forces
were about this time also at work to remove the
difficulties that lay in the way of Irish Church unity
on the side of the Celtic Church.
In 1117, the Archbishop of Armagh was legally
13°
CELTIC IRELAND.
recognized at the synod of Usnagh as primate of all
Ireland except Dublin, and in 1121, the then bishop
of Dublin died. The primate, thinking the oppor¬
tunity favourable to strike a blow at English intrusion,
attempted to seize on the cathedral and see of Dublin.
But the burgesses rose to a man, drove him out, and
elected a layman, Gregory, one of themselves, to be
consecrated at Canterbury as their bishop. In their
wrath, they desired that even his lower orders should
be Norman, not Irish. Gregory's predecessors seem,
from their names, to have been Irishmen, but Gregory
was a Dane, and all round Ireland, in the Danish
cities, were bishops of the Roman and Canterbury
party.
Yet, during Gregory's episcopate, the yoke of
Canterbury was shaken off and the primacy of
Armagh acknowledged, Dublin being raised to the
dignity of an archbishopric, and the supremacy of
the pope acknowledged by all. Armagh had been
the centre of resistance to Rome ; Armagh became
the head of all the Irish churches.
This result was mainly brought about by the
labours of an Irishman, Malachy O'Morgair, whose
character recalls those of the missionary Irish saints
in earlier days. It was due to him that the synod at
Holmpatrick was held in 1148, when a petition was
sent to the pope asking for the archiepiscopal palls
for Cashel, Tuam, and Armagh. The synod of
Kclls in 1152 was a direct consequence of this, and
CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND. I 3 I
at it the diocesan system was established, in which all
the Danish sees were included, while Dublin was
made an archbishopric. Thus Celt and Dane were
reconciled, each making an approximation to the
ideal of the other; and the second archbishop of
Dublin was that very genuine and faithful Irishman,
Laurence O'Toole, who has left behind him a name
honoured for good service to the country in Norman
times. The danger of the Danish settlement was
completely passed, and the country seemed ready for
a fresh outburst, with renewed vigour, in political,
literary, and artistic development. Not many years
later the Norman was in the land.
132
CELTIC IRELAND.
CHAPTER VI.
social and political institutions.
Even this brief account of early Ireland would be
incomplete without more careful examination of the
social and political institutions under which the Irish
people lived a life the external manifestations of
which in history are so full of interest. In their
early stages of development there can be little doubt
that the Irish institutions were practically identical
with those of the other European peoples ; but the
isolated position of the country enabled the Irish
people to develop those institutions, apart from
external influences, in a way that was exceptional,
setting aside all question of the peculiar individual
genius of the nation itself regarded racially. Hence
it is that the record of Irish laws and social customs
has a special instructive significance, for all the
Northern European nations, while it sheds light on
many a sociological inquiry.
The Irish nation, like all nations in early days,
came to their country, not as individuals, but in
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. I 33
tribes; and the tribal organization continued after
they had settled down upon the land. Each tribe
had its chief or king, its wise men or druids, and
its custom of determining all doubtful matters by
reference to the common sense and will of the tribe
as expressed in the tribal assembly. In this tribal
assembly we see the common origin of parliaments
and courts of justice. The druid foreshadows the
judge and the legislator—persons with power to give
advice only, in the first instance, to the tribal
assembly, and depending for their power on the
popular wisdom they display. The king is the chief
of kindred, the political head, the leader in battle, the
convener of the assembly, but he derives his authority
from the will of the tribe expressed in the assembly.
The peculiarity of the Celtic tribal system was
probably in the large proportion of influence ascribed
to the druid or wise man as compared with the
king, and the very early intellectualization, at the
same time, of the general idea attached to druids.
This is shown in the development of several learned
classes dealing with different kinds of wisdom, and in
the consequent check given to the growth of anything
like a priestly caste-influence. These learned classes
were—besides the druids—the brehons and the bards,
with their several varieties.
Each tribe, as a whole, owned the land on which
it lived. At first, no question would arise as to the
quantity that each tribesman had a right to use,
134
CELTIC IRELAND.
because land was unlimited in proportion to the uses
for which it was required. But, as population in¬
creased, the theory developed that each tribesman
was, in general, entitled to use as much of the common
pasture land as he required for his stock, and to use
tillage land in proportion to his status in the tribe.
Originally, no individual tribesman owned any portion
of the land, but each head of a family was entitled to
claim the family's share. To the chief, as chief, a
certain portion was allotted, which he appears to have
held in addition to the share that fell to him as head
of his family.
The Irish law of succession in landed property
known as that of Irish gavelkind, was a logical con¬
sequence of the theory of tribal ownership. If a
member of the tribe died, his piece of land did not
descend by right to his eldest son, or even to all his
children equally. Originally, it reverted to its sole
absolute owner, the tribe, every member of which had
a right to its use proportionate to his tribal status.
This was undoubtedly the essential principle of
inheritance by gavelkind, and the logically complete
application of it would clearly require that at the
death of each tribesman the lands of the tribe should
be redivided among all the tribesmen. It is manifest,
however, that such a procedure would be highly
inconvenient, and never in fact likely to be carried
out. Various customs would be developed for apply¬
ing the principle to the various cases that might arise ;
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 135
and these customs, considered as laws of inheritance—
which strictly they were not—would present the idea
that a man's distant relations were equally with his
own children his natural heirs to property in land.
And as the custom of private ownership in land crept
in, the law of succession would still reflect the
principle that the land which a man held he owned
in usufruct only, and the reversion of this usufruct at
his death would therefore be to his family as a whole,
not to his merely personal heirs. It is easy to see
that such a law of succession would be sure to seem
very perplexing and anomalous, as indeed it did, to
the historical ignorance of the Elizabethan observers.*
In two ways, it was possible that private owner¬
ship should creep in. It would be convenient and
natural that families should continue to use the same
holding for generations ; and, thus, approach to the
custom of family, rather than tribal, ownership would
be made. And, again, powerful and crafty persons,
especially the chiefs, would be likely, unchecked and
gradually, to appropriate to their sole use portions of
the common waste land, as, being rich in flocks and
herds, they had uses to which these lands could con¬
veniently be put. Estates in severalty did gradually
become established, and in later centuries the chief is
found to have a private estate as well as the lands
pertaining to his chicftainry. Nevertheless, it is a
fact that at 110 time in old Irish history did the tribes-
* Sir Ilenry Maine's " Early History of Institutions," Lecture vii.
CELTIC IRELAND.
man lose his inherent right of free access to the tribal
land, or the chief acquire general rights of ownership
in it. He acquired a private demesne and no more,
till a decision of the English King's Bench, early in
the seventeenth century, made him the owner of his
people's land in the eye of the English law. Rents
had come into existence before that time, but not
as payment by the tribesman for the use of the
land.
The customs regulating inheritance cannot, how¬
ever, be properly understood without considering the
structure of the Irish family.* The primitive social
unit was undoubtedly the tribe. In very early
periods—beyond the reach of Irish, though not of all
European traditions—the simple group of kindred
was probably not divided into families at all. The
establishment of definite marriage relations, and the
rise of the family institution as we understand it,
with the father at its head exercising acknowledged
authority—these two events must have been contem¬
poraneous. The tribal group of kindred became a
group of families, and the families ramified, the indi¬
viduals within them standing in various degrees of
relationship to the head. In modern society, the
individual, after he is of age, stands in a direct
relation to the whole community, is responsible solely
* Sir Henry Maine's " Early History of Institutions," Lecture vii.,
p. 20S, et saq. ; Skene's "Celtic Scotland," vol. iii. chap. v. p. 176,
l,' .\c~z ; Sullivan's Introduction to O'Curry, pp. clxii.-clxviii.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. I 3/
for his own deeds, and is the owner solely of his own
property, all partnerships being matters of contract
and definition. In such a society as that of the early
Irish tribe, its constituents were families, not indi¬
viduals : the family was responsible to the State for
crime, the family owned property and especially held
land in use ; and, in the case of the Irish kings, it was
to the royal family, not to the royal person, that the
sentiment of reverence attached. Evidently, there¬
fore, it was very necessary to define quite clearly the
limits which separated the family proper from its
ramifications outside those limits. This was neces¬
sary, and was done in Ireland, because the idea of
family ownership and responsibility was preserved
and developed as the general characters of social life
became more complex, not allowed simply to decay
as it did in other countries.
The Irish family, as we find it represented in the
Brehon tracts, consisted, when complete, of seventeen
men, and was distributed into four sub-families, the
names of which may be translated as the hand family
(geilfine), the true, the after, and the end families.
The hand-family included the head or geilfine chief,
and four other members; and each of the other
divisions contained four also. The geilfine was at
once the primitive family from which the others
sprang, and consisted of the members latest born.
When any person was born into the geilfine after
its number of five was complete, its eldest member
CELTIC IRELAND.
was promoted into the true family, the eldest mem¬
ber of the true family passed into the after family,
the eldest of the after family passed into the end
family, and the eldest of the end family went out of
the organization altogether. Henceforth it appears
that he belonged to the kindred of that family only
—the sept which became afterwards the Highland
clan—and probably he became the geilfine chief of
a new and less dignified family.
It is exceedingly difficult to see how this system
of promotion out of the range of family duties and
rights worked in detail, but there appears to be no
doubt as to its general principle. Every change de¬
pended, not on the death of seniors, but on the birth
of juniors, who thus acquired the benefit of their
birthright at their birth. Again, it is the younger
children who are left with the father, to enjoy the
geilfine share of the family holding, and to be sub¬
servient to his authority. The elder members lose
their claim on that share by the birth of juniors,
but they also gain the advantages of independence.
These may have been very substantial at some early
time, while the abundance of tribal land would secure
to them an ample allowance in their new position. Sir
Henry Maine suggests that the organization is founded
originally on the idea of gradually emancipating the
seniors of the family from paternal control ; and that
after this idea had ceased to be very apparent in it,
the system continued to affect inheritance in a way
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 139
that seems to turn upside down our modern ideas
founded on primogeniture.*
At the time to which the Book of Aicill refers,
each division of the family appears to have held
separately a share of the land allotted to the family
as a whole of seventeen men. Inheritance to this
share proceeded within each division so long as there
were any members to represent it. If, however, any
of the divisions became extinct, its holding was
divided among the other groups, not equally, but
according to an elaborate system of distribution care¬
fully laid down. As for the persons who had been
promoted out of the complex group of seventeen,
they must have had recognized claims on the unused
lands of the tribe ; and so long as land was plentiful,
it seems clear that for purposes of land-tenure this
artificially limited family arrangement probably
worked very well, keeping up fairly, as it would, at
once fixity of tenure in the families and a fair dis¬
tribution of land according to members. It is easy
to see how the principle of Irish gavelkind would
have worked generally by its means without the con¬
stant redistribution of land which gavelkind seems
at first to imply.f
* Sir Henry Maine points out that in the practice of Borough
English by which the younger son inherits, we have probably a survival
of the same idea.
f While the holding remained fixed in the possession of the group
of seventeen, the outgoing members might be provided for by the
opening up of new lands, or in some way, for the finding of which the
tribe was responsible.
140
CELTIC IRELAND.
Joint ownership or tenure implies joint responsi¬
bility ; and we find accordingly that each division of
the family, and not the whole family in the first
instance, is held responsible for the misdeeds of its
members. The social convenience of this arrange¬
ment was probably very great, but there will be more
to say on this subject presently.
The geilfine chief was the head of the family, and
the rank of its members was higher or lower accord¬
ing as they stood more or less near to him in the
group. As a body of kindred grew up outside,
descended from those who had passed through the
whole process of emancipation, these probably formed
the outer and less dignified portion of the sept. And
thus we see how the very barbarous and primitive tribe,
having divided itself into families, became in course of
time a group of septs or real kindred, each of which
was a group of families, the tie of kinship in the tribe
having become by that time imaginary, though still
highly effective on the imagination as a social influence.
The law of succession to the chieftainship was
that known as tanistry ; the member of the royal
family chosen as most fit by the tribe succeeded to
the dignity. Originally, and in theory always, the
tribe consisted of kinsfolk only, and the tanist was
selected from the leading family, or family of tradi¬
tionally the purest blood,* to lead all his kin. When
* Probably this was originally the family supposed to be descended
direct through geilfmes from the original geilfine.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 14I
a chief died, an assembly of the tribe was convened,
apparently by the bruighfer, or borough magistrate,
since it was held in his house.* The new chief was
accepted by this assembly, and thus formally installed
in office, while, at the same time, the heir was elected
and known henceforth as the tanist. This mode of
succession and election was manifestly intended to
secure the political safety of the tribe by efficient
leadership, and to maintain the popular control of the
chieftainry, with the minimum risk of war between
rival claimants, by the choice of an heir-apparent at
the earliest possible moment. And it would appear
from the annals of Ireland, full of war-tales though
they be, that tanistry was at least as successful as
primogeniture in preventing wars of this kind.
Within the tribe there was developed at some
period an elaborate system of classes, founded partly
on distinctions of birth and partly on those of wealth.
This is described in the Book of Aicill, ascribed to
the time of Cormac Mac Art, in the third century,
and in part to the hand of that monarch himself. It
is possible that the writer may have been over-subtle
in his description ; but the general tenor of his evi¬
dence it is impossible to set aside, the more so as it
throws a singular light on the natural process by
which an aristocracy is differentiated from a demo¬
cracy in the primitive society.f
* Sullivan's Introduction, ccxxxiii.
t A good account of the system is to be found in Sullivan s Intro¬
duction, p. c., et seq.
142
CELTIC IRELAND.
Highest in rank are the noblemen or aires, the
heads of families that have a certain dignity of birth,
and that have possessed wealth appropriate to their
position for many generations. Of these the writer
mentions seven grades ; but the higher grades are
mainly distinguished by their official position in the
State, of which more hereafter. Next in social grade
we find the aire in actual process of manufacture,
as the bo-aire, or cow-nobleman, who is simply a
common tribesman rich in flocks and herds, the usual
form of wealth in those times. When the bo-aire's
family has acquired twice the wealth of an aire
desa, the common kind of nobleman, and has held it
for three generations, he becomes an aire desa.
Thus wealth is a cause of rank, and, as industry is
presumably the cause of wealth, this is very satis¬
factory. At any rate, it helps us to understand the
absolute obliteration in Irish society of those racial
distinctions in which aristocracies so often take their
rise. Each grade of aires is distinguished from the
others by the amount of wealth held on an average
by one of its members, his consequent claim on the
use of the tribal lands for his stock, his power of
making contracts with his tribe, which was limited
by law, the weight attached to his evidence in the
courts, and his honour-price and eric, the special
damages to be paid for insulting or injuring him.
The king had the highest honour-price and eric. His
testimony carried most weight, his power of making
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS.
143
contracts with his tribe was greatest. Thus he was
measurably, but not at all immeasurably, the most
privileged person of his tribe. Short of the kingship,
each aire family of lower rank could win for itself a
higher and more privileged status by the acquisition
of wealth and its retention through generations.
Next to the aires in dignity was the common
tribesman, the peasant head of a family enjoying
freely the use of the tribal land. The tribesman
might, if he could, acquire wealth to any extent, and
thus raise himself to the position of a bo-aire ; or, by
lack of wealth, he might fall into debt, make a con¬
tract with an aire or bo-aire, or the chief of his tribe,
by which he borrowed cattle for his use in agriculture
and undertook to pay interest in service and homage
and material goods. This is the origin of rent in
Ireland, and doubtless was the origin in all other
parts of Europe as well. To this origin we can trace
the inception of feudalism in the tribal organization.
The peculiarity of Ireland lies simply in the fact
that the Brehon land law was developed, parallel to
the development of the feudal tendency, to check and
regulate it at every turn.
The chief of the tribe, from his position as leader
in war, as well as for other reasons, became possessed
of large wealth in cattle or " stock." The peasant
required more stock than he had, and the chief
wanted to dispose of his stock for convenience and
with advantage. So the needy peasant had to "take
T 44 CELTIC IRELAND.
stock " from his chief, or some other rich man, and
thus became a tenant to a lord or flath. The tenant
or ceilé paid rent, rendered homage, and lost social
status in proportion to the amount of stock taken.
Thus there arose the class of ceilés and its subdivision
into daer, or free, and saer, or unfree.
At this point the law-loving intellect of the Celt
steps in, and makes the distinction which obtains to
this day between the Irish idea of land tenure and
the idea in all other European countries where land¬
lordism still exists. The Brchon law regulated with
the utmost exactness the rents which tenants were to
pay their lords. The idea of a judicial rent is as old
in Ireland as the institution of rent.
The saer stock tenant received a certain small
portion of stock from his lord, and retained his tribal
rights in their integrity. The normal period of his
tenancy was seven years, and at the end of that time
he became entitled to the cattle which had been in his
possession. Meanwhile, he employed them in tillage,
and paid rent to his lord by handing over to him
the " increase," i.e. the calves and the milk, rendering
to him also homage and service, such as aid in reaping
his harvest and building his castle or dun. The daer
stock tenant, on the other hand, having received a
large portion of stock from his lord, parted with some
of his tribal rights, and accepted a heavy duty in con¬
sequence. The stock was to be considered as divided
into two portions, one proportional to the rent in-
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 145
curred and the other to the tenant's loss of tribal
rank, the technical measure of which was his "honour-
price " and his value as witness or bail. After rent
and homage had been rendered for seven years, the
tenant became entitled to the stock if the chief died,
and, if the tenant died, his heirs were partially, though
not wholly, relieved from their obligation. Thus the
Brehon law aimed, not only at regulating the relations
between landlord and tenant, but at the prevention of
permanency in the servile relation. This tendency
to conserve the ancient tribal idea of a community of
freemen by limiting the power of the strong to make
contracts with the weak is very characteristic ; and it
is evident that herein lies the explanation of the fact
that Ireland never developed feudalism, as the rest of
Europe, starting from a similar basis, did. Never¬
theless, the shadow of feudalism came very close to
the Irish tribesman in this respect, that, while he
could refuse to "take stock" from any other man,
it was not lawful to refuse to " take stock " from his
king. The law, however, regulated the king's rents
as well as all others.
Free or unfree, the ceilé was still a tribesman in
the full sense of having a claim on the lands of the
tribe. Although a tenant, he was still a co-owner
in the tribe, and, as such, had absolute rights in the
land he cultivated. Outside the tribe proper, there
existed several other classes of inferior order, with
definite relations to the lord rather than to the tribe,
146
CELTIC IRELAND.
and having definite rights, relative to him and his
estate, already recognized by the laws and customs of
the land. We are told of the bothachs, both saer
and daer, who served the lord, either freely for reward,
or servilely as his permanent farm-labourers, and who
possessed tenements on his estate. And we hear, too,
of the senclciths, or poor adherents of the lord, a
lower class, who had no tribal status except that of a
right—no mean one, many Irish tenants would think
now—to shelter and to irremovability from the estate.
These persons were not tribesmen, but they had
rights : the duties which the lord owed them were
recognized by the law. They were not outcasts and
strangers in the land ; and it was possible for a sen-
cleith family, after a fixed term spent in service, to
become bothach, and for a bothach family likewise
to attain full tribal rights.
It would seem, indeed, that these classes represent
the transition stage of stranger families becoming
slowly adopted into the tribe by a process dependent
on their good behaviour and industry. Side by side
with them, and much more prominently, we find the
true stranger and outcast class, the waifs and strays
from distant lands, runaways from other tribes,
prisoners of war, and broken men of all sorts who,
having lost hold on the tribal life, had to begin afresh
as individuals to build themselves once more into
the social structure somewhere and somehow. Out
of such materials, of which there would probably be
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 147
no lack, the class known in Ireland as that of fuidirs
was made up, with the two divisions into which it
naturally falls, of free fuidirs and base fuidirs or
slaves.
The origin of the base or daer fuidir class was
probably very old, and its members, in the first
instance at least, were prisoners taken in war. This
class, the lowest in the society, had neither the
liabilities nor rights of the ordinary tribesman.
Nevertheless, in the times to which the law-tracts
refer, the lord to whom a base fuidir was attached
was bound to protect his life and to avenge insult on
the women of his family ; and for the ill deeds of
his fuidir, the lord was responsible, just as the family
was in general for the ill deeds of its members.
The origin of the saer fuidir is no less evi¬
dent, and in him we find the type of the genuine
feudal tenant, the type into which the European
tribesmen generally were absorbed, as the tribal idea
stagnated and decayed. The chief had no doubt, in
very early times, access to the waste or spare lands
of the tribe ; and in course of time these lands were
largely absorbed into private estates by him and
other wealthy nobles, lords probably, though not
landlords, so far as their own tribesmen were con¬
cerned. Here was one factor of genuine landlordism,
control over land, vague but unquestioned. The other
factor was the stranger, tribcless and homeless, need¬
ing not only land to settle upon and, perhaps, a little
148
CELTIC IRELAND.
help to start, but also needing the protection of a
claim on some society. The tribe was not open to
him, unless he were a person of such skill, learning or
other advantages that the tribe would be disposed to
adopt him by public proclamation, as the tribes some¬
times did. For a common man, the only refuge open
was the manor of the lord. He might enter into a
free contract with a lord, by which he obtained leave
to settle on the land, and was secured in the protec¬
tion of the lord, who thenceforth stood to him in the
relation of family, i.e. was bail and witness for him in
the tribal courts. On the other hand, he would agree
to pay the lord a rent, and the law left him and the
lord perfectly free to agree on that rent as best they
might. The lord might accept the fuidir tenant's
offer or let him go ; the tenant was free to pay or go.
It is noticeable that the rent of a fuidir is definitely
distinguished in the Senchus ]\Ior from the fair rent
paid by one of the tribe, as a " rack-rent from a
person of stranger tribe." So, from this point of view,
it is clear that to be a tribesman was to have the pro¬
tection of the land-law, and to be a fuidir was to be
left to the lord's goodwill, the natural laws of demand
and supply, and public opinion. Thus, looking on to
later times, we see that the effect of English law in
Ireland was exactly the same as that of turning the
Irish people under the Brchon law into strangers in
their own land. It only fell short of turning them
into prisoners of war as daer fuidirs ; and, by destroy-
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 149
ing at one blow the whole class of peasants with rights
in the soil, it took away the wholesome check of their
public opinion on the Irish landlords of olden times,
and the ideal of peasantry towards which the whole
system of the old Irish land-law tended.
For the fuidir was markedly better off than the
modern Irish tenant in this respect, that his position
was probationary under the law. In time, every
fuidir family might be adopted into the tribe ; and
here we see one source of the Irish tenant's fixed
idea that continuance in a holding for several genera¬
tions constitutes rights. After two generations, the
unfree fuidir family became free, after one more,
a bothach, and after another, a sencleith. In the
ninth generation, the stranger family was admitted to
full tribal rights. Thus it was provided that every
stranger family, however alien in race or even dis¬
creditable in origin, should be gradually adopted into
the tribe, and this although the idea of the tribe
centred with such intensity in the sentiment of kin¬
ship. The way in which this sentiment of kinship
was supplemented by the related sentiment of foster-
kinship is a subject on which there will be more to
say hereafter. Both must be realized together before
one can understand the extraordinary fusion of races
in Ireland into one nation with a common racial senti¬
ment, a deep and abiding sense of a common racial
character between persons who are not of the same
race.
CELTIC IRELAND.
It is not to be supposed that this elaborate pro¬
vision for the slow absorption of alien elements
existed just as it has been detailed from very early
times ; but no supposition could be more improbable
than that it either came into existence suddenly or
was a pure invention of the law-tract writers. It
must have tended to exist from the very first occasion
for its existence, and been gradually developed as the
occasion for its use developed ; and the law-writer
cannot be reasonably suspected of more than a ten¬
dency to make explicit, and perhaps idealize, the
notions of the customary law. It might, for instance,
have been only his judgment that allotted the exact
number of nine generations as the most reasonable
and usual time for the process of absorption to last.
But the matter of real importance is the nature of the
absorption, not the time required ; and, above all, the
notable fact is that the Brehon law, by the provisions
considered, aimed at making feudal tenure a mere
temporary stage in the history of each family and
therefore of the nation. The fuidir tenants of the
chief and other lords represented the tribal means of
growth from the outside, and their absorption into
the tribe implied the resumption by the tribe of those
lands which had been alienated as the manorial
estate.
As a matter of fact, the poverty of the poor tribes¬
men and the wealth of the nobles must always have
been operative to convert the former into tenants of
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. I 5 I
the latter in the limited tribal sense. So, although
the law provided for the termination of every tenancy,
fuidir or ccilé, it is probable that the poorer tenants,
by reason of their poverty, were forced to renew their
tenancies again and again, and thus they may have
become practically permanent in many cases. The
Danish wars, and the consequent displacement of
tribes in some parts of the country, probably increased
the class of fuidirs, and thus perpetuated feudal tenure.
After the Norman invasion, the causes tending to pro¬
duce homeless wandering men, in need of shelter and
protection, greatly increased. The Irish internal wars
did not break up tribes and scatter them, but with the
coming of the Normans the process of pulverization
began; and every broken tribe meant a batch of
feudal tenants for the Irish lords, to whom came
those displaced from their ancient lands. So, despite
the Brehon law and the tribal idea of rights in land
for all, the relations between landlord and tenant,
and those between chief and tribesmen, had inevitably
degenerated when they came under the observation of
the Elizabethan statesmen, even before the last blow
had been dealt to the Brehon ideal in the reign of
James I. by converting the chief into the lord of the
tribesmen's lands (1605).
The whole structure of this tribal society, with its
careful provision for promotion from rank to rank,
cannot but strike us as likely to be very stable in
its hold on the minds of the people. Intensely aris-
CELTIC IRELAND.
tocratic as it is, in its unqualified recognition of the
claims of birth and rank, it is peculiarly democratic
too, in so zealously guarding the interests and liberties
of each rank. Directed as it is against the unlimited
concentration of wealth and power in the hands of
any class, it is clearly conducive in a high degree to
the production of national wealth by all. In fact, as
natural causes tended to evolve the great social ine¬
qualities of feudalism and capitalism, the ideas of
humanity as expressed in Irish law continually stepped
in to give other developments to these natural causes.
The lord and the fuidir in contact bring feudal tenure
into existence. The law makes it a means by which
the stranger can slowly and safely be incorporated in
the tribe, and the manorial lands appropriated by the
tribe.
By this counteraction of the feudal tendency, the
Irish nation lost, no doubt, the political advantage
which, in conflict with other nations, comes from con¬
centration of strength in the hands of the few strong
men. The cause of her early weakness in this respect
may be, however, the sign of her high final destiny.
She did not part with her social ideas for the sake of
political strength. It remains for her to show how a
power greater than the strength of armies can be
attained by a nation that will labour faithfully for the
perfect development of her social ideas. This, how¬
ever, it is for the future to bring forth.
So far we have considered the order of ranks in
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. I 53
the tribal society as it developed directly on the lines
of the great agrarian industry. The next point to
interest us is the method by which the special
enterprise, skill, learning and energy of individuals
asserted itself within this apparently almost cast-iron
order, and created the varied display of industry and
talent which was so marked a feature of the national
life. The tribe was originally a sum of natural
families, each with common rights and responsibilities
represented by its head. Arts, industries and litera¬
ture were, no doubt, first created by individuals within
the family ; and these, being appreciated by the tribe,
were honoured by treatment as separate units with
personal duties and rights pertaining to their per¬
sonality. The treatment awarded to the poet as
such is the familiar case in point. He seems to have
been treated always as a privileged servant of the
State ; and there is abundant evidence to show that
the skilled metal-workers were dealt with in a similar
spirit. Humbler workers, however, while probably
able to drive a good enough trade in their personal
capacity, would come to feel that their individual
insignificance in the tribe was a source of incon¬
venience. And the humbler tribesmen, too, measuring
their strength against that of the aires, would natu¬
rally be struck with the idea that numerical strength
in their ranks ought to have its equivalent in social
advantage. A family of high rank had definite social
and political privileges. Might not half a dozen
154
CELTIC IRELAND.
families of low rank associate and acquire tribal privi¬
leges for the joint body equal to the sum of those
pertaining to its constituents ?
And we find that this is just what the craftsmen
and the peasants did, the latter more particularly, so
far as Ireland is concerned.* The voluntary associa¬
tion was regarded, in the eye of the law, as an artificial
group of kindred, with rights and responsibilities equal
to the sum of its constituents and centred in an elected
head. An artisan sept was exactly the same thing
as a mediaeval crafts-guild, and the agricultural sept,
or Bruigh, is identical with the Saxon village, the
germ of city guilds, and every other form of town com¬
munities. The Irish Bruigh plays no small part in
Irish story. It had its own by-laws, the Bruigh-
rechta ; and its head, the Bruighfer, acted as magis¬
trate, administering the law. The head of a guild,
having rights in the tribe corresponding to the joint
rank and wealth of the whole guild, was practically an
elected aire. The weight of his bail and witness,
and the amount of his honour-price, became by cumu¬
lation equal to those pertaining to noble rank. These
rights he exercised on behalf of his fellows, whose
rights were literally the constituents of his. He was
their pledge and witness in the tribal courts, and their
representative in the tribal councils, just as the noble
heads of septs were for the septs, and the flath, or
* Introduction to O'Curry's " Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish," p. clviii., it scq.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. I 55
lord, for his vassals and dependents. Thus, while on
the one side of the tribal organization there grew up
the feudal manor, with the Ftath, as distinguished
from the tribal Aire, at its head, on the other hand
there grew up, in Ireland as elsewhere—a rival to the
Aire as well as to the Flath—the Bruigh, or voluntary
association of freemen, some of whom probably saved
themselves from the fate of ceilé tenants by this
means. The Bruigh, with its Bruighfer and Bruigh-
rechta, presents us with the elements of a local
magistracy and borough government ; and in the
law's recognition of the Bruighfer's cumulative tribal
rights we see unmistakably the germs of a directly
elective parliamentary system, in addition to the
indirectly representative system by which the noble
heads of septs met in the tribal assemblies to settle
the affairs of the tribe.* As time went on, the Bruigh¬
fer seems to have become an important official person,
since we find that the election of the tanist and instal¬
lation of the chief appear to have taken place in the
house of the Bruighfer of the royal Bruigh, which
makes it seem probable, though we have no certain
information, that the Bruighfer may have been the
proper convener of the assembly on this occasion.
The whole body of nobles, including probably the
bo-aires, and more probably the elective aires, chose
the chief or king of the tribe, who, as already stated,
* Introduction to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish," p. exevii., et scq., for development of this idea.
CELTIC JR EL A.VD.
was a strictly limited monarch, with rights, privileges,
and duties accurately defined by law, and differing
from those of other nobles only in degree. The
tribal king held in the confederacy of tribes a some¬
what similar position to that which the aires held
within the tribe. We hear of the Rig Mor Tuatha,
the king of the great tribe or confederacy of tribes ;
and all such kings were partially subject to the Rig
Ruradh, or king of the province to which the tribes
belonged. Of these there were five, including the
central province of Meath, which was founded about
A.D. 400 by the great Niall, who sought to connect
permanently with the provincial kingdom of Meath
the Ard-Rigship of Ireland. The decline of Tara,
however, in the sixth century, was a sign, and partly
a cause, of the failure of this attempt. The Ard-Rig¬
ship remained, on the whole, what it was originally—
a royal office nominally elective, to which the high
kings not infrequently made good their claim by the
sword. During the eleventh century, the O'Briens'of
Munster prevailed. They were successful in welding
the Danes into the national unity, and that not only
by the great Brian's victories over them in the field.
Jn the twelfth century, the O'Conors of Connaught
came to the head ; but they did not succeed in driving
the Normans out.
Particulars respecting the executive government
of the country must be sought in the constitution of
the tribes thus federated together, and may be
SOCIAL AND ro Line AL INSTITUTIONS. I 57
understood to repeat themselves in the constitution
of the federation. It has already been stated that
the Irish law tracts distinguish seven grades of Aires,
but the three highest appear to be simply distin¬
guished as officials of State. The Aire Forgaill was
the king's chancellor, who held the king's court, had
jurisdiction over the common lands of the tribe, and
determined the rights of each family therein. The
Aire Tuisi seems to have been the official commander
of the levy of the tribe. And, lastly, there is the
Aire Ard, or high noble, of whom Dr. Sullivan con¬
jectures that the Lord High Steward of Scotland is
the logical descendant. It was his business to levy
the tolls and dues of the king, and to hold the high
court in which cases coming under statute law had to
be tried, while the lower courts tried cases coming
under customary law only.
These officials were the king's ministers. The
Aire Cosraing, on the other hand, was elected by
the families of the tribe, and probably corresponds
to the modern Sheriff, who is descended from the
similar popular official of the Teutonic tribes. It was
his business to carry out the decisions of the king's
courts about tolls, dues, tributes, etc., with which the
Aire Forgaill and the Aire Ard had to do, and thus
to act practically as their executive officer. He also
had to distribute honour-prices and injury-prices to
the families to which these were due.
Each family was of course responsible for the
CELTIC IRELAND.
maintenance of its own poor, and appear to have had
a special officer charged with this duty. Each family-
was also responsible for the good behaviour of its
members. If an offender failed to atone for his
offence before the law, by restitution in some equiva¬
lent to the injured person, then the family must
atone. It was for the family, therefore, to see to it
that its criminals were forthcoming and submissive to
their punishment. Hence, it is not surprising to find
that the coercive power of the law was mainly
represented by the presence in each family of an
officer called the Dae, whose business it was to carry
out judicial decisions against resisting members. Each
family had, in fact, its own policeman.
If the family resisted, the physical force of the
whole tribe appears to have been the remedy ; and
probably this is the reason why the Irish tribes, as
Edmund Spenser describes them in a time when
their organization must have fallen much into decay,
assembled on their accustomed hills to give and
receive judgment, always with arms in their hands.
It may be that the duty of leading the military
force of the tribe to carry out the decrees of the
courts was the special duty of the official called the
Aire Echtai, as distinguished from the Aire Tuisi,
who was military commander in war.
The next subject to concern us is the means that
existed for the administration of the law. Mention
has more than once been made of the tribal assembly,
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 1 59
and originally there can be no doubt that, in Ireland
as elsewhere, this body was at once the parliament
and the court of justice. With time comes the
development of distinct bodies having the separate
functions of legislation and administration, the or¬
ganization of the latter being naturally the more
complex of the two. In the Irish system of courts
the idea expressed is very similar to that which at a
later date was elaborated in England. The com¬
parison is fully discussed by Dr. Sullivan, keeping
the corresponding institutions of the Germanic tribes
in view.*
The high persons of the tribe would naturally be
regarded as those whose duty and privilege it was to
preside over a court of justice, and this idea is aptly
embodied in the Irish name Airecht for a court. The
lowest kind of court was the Airecht Foleith (similar
to the Court Leet), presided over by an aire, in which
minor cases under common law could be tried. Next
to this was the Airecht Urnaidi, or Court of Pleas, in
which cases concerning property and others involving
technical law were tried. These were presided over
by a special magistrate, the Neimid, and cases were
heard in them by the lowest order of brehons, or
Irish judges. The Court of King's Bench was repre¬
sented by the Airecht Fodeisin or chief court of the
king, in which justice was administered by his ollamh
brehon or chief judge. The Rig Mor Tuatha held the
* Introduction to O'Curry, p. cclxiii., ct seq.
CELTIC IRELAND.
Tacb Airecht, a court for dealing with cases arising
between different territories ; and, since this court,
dealt with matters of fact as to traditional boundaries
and tribal contracts, the king was supported in it by
seanchies or historians, whose business it was to know
facts, rather than by judges whose business it was to
know law. Above all inferior courts, was the Cul
Airecht (rear-court) or High Court of Appeal, one for
each province, including the Cul Airecht of the High
King of Erin, that used to be held in Tara while
Tara was the centre of the nation's life. In these
courts the judgments of the king and ollamh brehons
were supported by the bishops and the state officials,
and cases were stated by professional pleaders, called
in Irish generally "arguers" and sometimes, more
quaintly, " polishers," in reference to their duty of
polishing up and brightening their clients' cases.
For the Irishman who had a cause against another
there was, then, no lack of courts to award him his
rights ; and by Irish law every wrong done was a
wrong done to some person who ought, in right and
reason, to be compensated for the injury, by the
offender. The business of the court was to decree,
according to law, what the compensation should be ;
and it was the business of the state officers of the
tribe to enforce the decree against the offender's
family if he were in default. If the family defied the
law, then the tribe was called to arms by the execu¬
tive to enforce the decree against the family.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. l6l
The following passage from Chief Baron Gilbert
on the state of Britain before murder became punish¬
able by death under the later law of Canute, is quoted
by the writer of the article on Brehon Law in the " En¬
cyclopaedia Britannica " as illustrative of the Irish as
well as the English system of family responsibility.
" If any offence was committed in any of the
Decennaries (tythings), if the party was brought to
answer, he was obliged to pay his fine for his offence,
or he was imprisoned for ever ; and if he fled, the
Decenna was answerable for his offence to the king.
So that by this discipline men were put under a
necessity of being innocent, or paying a grievous
fine, or being totally deprived of the conversation of
mankind. And the laying of this fine on the tything,
in case the offender fled, made it the interest of every
man to bring the offender to light, and made it
exceedingly difficult to conceal a theft or a murder."
The general character of the Irish criminal law
cannot be better described than in the following
passage from the same article.
"The law of torts regarded all offences, with the
nominal exception of murder, as condonable by fines
until the offender and those liable for him could pay
no more, when the defaulter lost his status and fell
into the servile class. For some of the offences of
the individual the family were responsible, for others
particular sureties. . . . The scale of mulcts for the
several sorts of homicides, wounds, and personal
M
CELTIC IRELAND.
hurts is in outline the same with those of the other
Western European nations ; but in addition to their
definite fine of so much for such a lesion or bruise,
it provides by rateable deductions for excusatory cir¬
cumstances of intention, knowledge, contributory neg¬
ligence, accident, and necessity, all of which are con¬
siderable refinements on the contemporaneous systems of
the continent
In its essence the principle of trial by jury was
present in the Irish method of administering justice.
If twelve good men and true could be found to come
forward and declare their belief in the innocence of
the accused, they were admitted as his compurgators
in the eye of the law and his innocence allowed,
while they were held responsible if it should turn out
that their witness for him had been contrary to the
truth. In form, compurgation was a witness to
innocence and a surety for good behaviour ; but its
effects were so precisely those of the modern trial by
jury that we must regard it as a primitive form of the
institution. The fact that its practice was common
to Britain and Ireland illustrates in an interesting
way the truth of the remark made by the writer above
quoted that " whencesoever derived, the common law
may to so great an extent be recognized as substan¬
tially a common inheritance of all the populations
now organized into the United Kingdom."
Passing from the law of criminal to that of civil
offences, the most striking point in the Irish system
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 163
is the very elaborate development of the law of dis¬
tress. The court is ready to judge between debtor
and creditor ; the problem for the debtor is how to
get the creditor into court. The general means are
first by summons, and, if this fails, eventually by dis¬
traint 011 his goods. The peculiarity of Ireland lay in
the greater complexity of the whole process.* We find,
too, curious evidence of the link between the extreme
Eastern and the extreme Western Aryan in the prac¬
tice, common to India and to ancient Ireland, of fasting
for a certain time at the door of a creditor belonging
to the privileged classes, before proceeding against
him by way of distress. Fines, awarded by the courts,
were also exacted by process of distraint.
Coming now to consider the question, Who made
new laws in ancient Ireland ? it strikes us as at once
evident that some kind of popular legislature is im¬
plied in the whole structure of the society so far as
we have already considered it. We are not, however,
left to theorize, by lack of evidence. The assembly
of the people f is a frequent event, occurring in various
ways : whatever has to be done is done by calling a
meeting of those concerned. The habit of jointly
taking action in assembly is of the very essence of
self-government. Add to it, what indeed it already
in part implies, the vigorous self-will of a freedom-
loving people, the intellectual capacity for complex
* Sir Henry Maine's " Early History of Institutions," p. 279, et j\v/.
t " Introduction to O'Curry," p. cclii., et scq.
164
CELTIC IRELAND.
organization, and the moral capacity for self-control,
and the self-governing nation begins to develop from
the mass of self-governing tribes.
If the lord wanted anything done by his tenants—
some special work or provision for an extraordinary
levy, he called a Mithal Flatha, or meeting of his
tenants, and they agreed to do it. This was con¬
venient, but it was also wholesome for him and for
them; tyranny never begins while the people are
dealt with in masses, unless, indeed, there is an armed
force behind the tyrant. Similarly, if the head of the
tribe had any purpose to serve, he naturally called a
meeting of the free householders of the tribe, the
Mithal Tuatha, to set his requirements before them or
to take counsel with them.
These assemblies, however, had no special signifi¬
cance as germs of a definite political constitution in
course of development. Much more important was
the Mathluagh, the assembly of all the householders
of a sept, which was summoned by the chief of
kindred, the Aire-Fine, to consider matters in which
the kindred were interested. These might be acts of
the king, decisions of the courts, measures of defence,
and so on. Here we have an assembly of a very
significant kind, capable of becoming, in proportion
to the size and strength of the group, an organ of
resistance to arbitrary power or to the popular will
outside the sept. The Mathluagh was convened by
its own natural head, the representative of the kindred
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 165
in the tribal or national councils, and was in fact the
meeting of his constituents, summoned for informa¬
tion, for counsel, and for support. If the institution
of the Mathluagh were used to any considerable
extent, it must have made contravention of popular
rights by the kings and tribal chiefs very difficult ;
and, by its decentralizing tendencies, it may have
added to the difficulties of such concentration of
power in kingly hands as was required for the ulti¬
mate safety of the national life.
The Mathluagh corresponds most nearly to the
modern public meeting of the constituents of a parlia¬
mentary division. It had no definite functions, no
recognized powers to act, even as a local authority,
in affairs of state. The germs of local government
are to be found, not in the tribal Mathluagh, but in
the analogous institution of the Bruigh, with its
Bruighfer and Bruigh-rechta. This was analogous
because instituted as a group of voluntary kindred—
an artificial sept; but its outcome was very different,
just because of that voluntary principle, and the con¬
sequent institution of elected officials and deliberately
adopted laws instead of the customary tribal rules.
We must look, however, beyond the Bruigh, as well
as beyond the Mathluagh for the parliament of the
nation in its original form.
Such a parliament was the Dal, the assembly of
.ill the Aires—-heads of kindred, including probably
the elected heads—of the tribe, who met in the Dal
166
CELTIC IRELAND.
to assess fines, levy taxes, and carry on the fiscal
business of the tribe generally. The meeting of the
heads of kindred was no doubt an institution as old
as the existence of the tribe, and its functions as
multifarious as the needs of the tribe, including cer¬
tainly the administration of laws as well as legisla¬
tive decisions. But it seems probable that when the
division of functions came about, one of the first
kinds of business to fall definitely into the hands of
the full assembly of tribal Aires was that of the Dal,
the transaction of all that is concerned with the
power of the purse. Indeed, the practical necessity of
having full tribal assent in matters of taxation is
sufficiently evident; and the passing of money-bills
in all primitive parliaments was probably an earlier
event than the passing of bills to enlarge or control or
amend the common customary law, which naturally
has as much tendency to develop from precedent to
precedent by the decisions of wise men or judges as
by definite legislative enactment.
We find, however, that necessities for definite
legislation did arise in ancient Ireland, and that, as
we should expect, the same persons who in a Dal
controlled the purse, formed also a true legislative
assembly by which all new laws must be solemnly
adopted. This assembly was called the Tocomrach, the
distinction of the two parliamentary functions being
thus emphasized by the use of different names for the
same body as discharging them. No law was valid
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 16J
till it had received the assent of the Tocomrach, which
body also elected the king; and, since it met in the
house of the Bruighfer for that election, it is not
improbable that the Bruighfer of the royal Bruigh,
rather than the king himself, was its convener.*
Before a law could be adopted, it had to be drafted
and proposed. This was the work of the Sabaid
Cuirimtigi—council of the alehouse—which consisted
of the chief men in the tribe, province, or nation, as
the case might be, and was in fact the king's privy
council. At this council measures were discussed
and decisions on them taken, skilled lawyers being
employed in the actual drafting ; and thus they were
prepared for the Tocomrach, much as measures are
prepared for Parliament by the Cabinet in our own
time.
It has been already said that the Mathluagh had
no actual power, but it is clear that it had means of
influence, however much or little used. The Aire-
Fine, or head of the sept, was a true representative of
his sept traditionally, and might well report the result
of discussions in his Mathluagh to the Dal or Tocom¬
rach, and, on the other hand, might report the decisions
of the latter to the former, with the result probably of
gaining for them a voluntary adhesion. It is indeed
true that, being an hereditary, not elected, representa¬
tive, he might very easily neglect this duty ; but the
* Introduction to O'Curry's " Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish," p. cclvii.
CELTIC IRELAND.
solidarity of his kindred or constituents being, it is
clear, a matter of practical as well as sentimental
concern to him, motives for promoting it by use of
the customary means were not lacking ; and the
extraordinary vitality of the sentiment binding kith
and kin of all classes into solid local political entities
is itself a sign that heads of kindred generally were
prone to observe, in the spirit if not in the letter, such
national institutions as tended to promote, by the
maintenance of mutual confidence between head and
trunk, the solidarity of the kindred.
There were, however, other means by which it
was secured that popular consent to the decisions of
the privileged classes should not be lacking. The
Aenach, or Fair, which was the general assembly of
all the people, is a much more conspicuous fact in
the Irish annals and stories than any of these later
developments of the primitive folk-meeting which we
have been considering, though without them its func¬
tions in later times would not be very intelligible.
The Aenach took place periodically, and was sum¬
moned by the king himself, generally, so far as we
know, at certain places such as Tara and Tel town in
Meath, Carman in Wexford, Aileach and Ard-macha
in Ulster, which were probably sacred at some time
to the memory of ancient heroic and religiously
venerated persons. All new laws were promulgated
at the fair in the hearing of the people, while also
old laws were rehearsed, proclamations made, and
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 169
genealogies recited, the people being thus kept
acquainted with the institutions and traditions under
which they lived. This was the political side of the
Aenach ; but it was also an occasion of literary, artistic,
and social enjoyment, and an opportunity for the
selling and buying of wares. Recitation of poetry,
music, dancing, feats at arms, horse-racing, athletic
sports—all these took place; and prizes were awarded
by the king, who had charge of the fair, to the best
competitor in each accomplishment. The bards came
to the Aenach, and used it, not only as a literary
stimulus, but also as an occasion for the interchange
and comparison of ideas, thus helping to keep the
historic traditions pure by the test of agreement.
The smiths and skilful artificers, the weavers of
woollen goods and others, came to show their wares
and sell. The young people came to see and hear,
and to enjoy one another's society ; it was a time for
marrying and giving in marriage. The serious came
to hear the latest politics. All came to enjoy the
music and poetry, the sports and the competitions.
And so important a feature in the national life was
the Aenach, that it was regulated by the strictest bye-
laws, the breach of some of which was even punish¬
able by death.
The only fragment of the Aenach left is in the
selling and buying of wares and the social enjoyment
of an Irish fair ; but, with the exception, curiously
enough, of this fragment, the whole non-political part
I/O
CELTIC IRELAND.
of the institution is preserved in its main idea as the
National Eisteddfod of Wales. That the custom was
a general Celtic custom, and indeed not unknown to
the Germanic peoples is certain. But there is, never¬
theless, evidence to show that its revival in Wales in
1180, by Griffith ap Conan, was directly due to his
observation of the practice in the neighbouring
country of Ireland, and thus that the Eisteddfod of
Wales is historically continuous with the Irish Fair.
Each kind of assembly might be held for the
transaction of tribal, provincial, or national business.
The celebrated Feast of Tara was the meeting of the
council of the High King of Erin, followed by the
Tocomrach, which was its natural sequel, and ac¬
companied no doubt by the popular fair of which
we have accounts reaching back to a very early
period in Irish history. The Fair of Tara, occurring
triennially, represented indeed, as has already been
pointed out, the traditional unity of the Irish nation,
and the High King was High King because he was
chosen to convene and preside over that National Fair.
To the Feast of Tara came the kings and the ollamhs
of Ireland, and to the Fair came the people from all
quarters.
It is not unlikely that the fall of Tara in the
sixth and seventh centuries had an evil effect on the
development of Irish political unity, since it left
the country henceforth without a fixed political
centre ; and that fall itself may have been due to the
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS, l/l
change that had come over the religious traditions
and associations of the people after the conversion to
Christianity.
This account of early Irish institutions would be
incomplete without further remark on the widespread
custom of fosterage, and its development as literary
fosterage into an educational system. Fosterage
pure and simple, the giving and taking of children for
nurture, existed in all the early Aryan communities ;
but in Ireland the practice became extraordinarily
prevalent, and was carefully regulated by the law.
It was quite usual, till very late times, that children
of noble birth should be fostered by • the lowlier
dependents of their families, and this custom has no
doubt contributed to intensify the sentiment of affec¬
tion between the different ranks of the sept or clan.
It has supplied the idea of foster-kindred when that
of kindred was obscure. But it is with the use of the
fosterage idea in spiritual, intellectual, and industrial
relationships that we are more specially concerned.
In a society organized under the idea of kindred, it is
natural that every relationship should be assimilated
to the family relationship. So we find in Ireland the
family of the saint and spiritual fosterage or gossipred,
the fraternity of the craftsmen and industrial foster¬
age, the family of the teacher, whether bard or brehon,
and literary fosterage, besides the military foster-
children of the great warriors. It is about literary
fosterage that we read most in the Brehon law tracts,
1/2
CELTIC IRELAND.
which give under this title the law of the relation
between teacher and pupil. An entire subtract in the
Senchus Mor is devoted to the subject of fosterage,
and sets out with the utmost minuteness the rights
and duties attaching to all parties concerned. And
it is plain that the brehon's conception of the relation
between foster-child and foster-family is a slight
variation of that which regulates the relation between
the child and its natural family, the child owing
certain duties to the family, and the family bearing
certain responsibilities for the child.
Out of this conception of fosterage grew the law
regulating the relation of pupil to teacher—the
literary foster-father. " However it may surprise us,"
says Sir Henry Maine, " that the connection between
pupil and teacher was regarded as peculiarly sacred
by the ancient Irish, and as closely resembling natural
fatherhood, the Brehon tracts leave no room for doubt
on the point. It is expressly laid down that it created
the same Patriot. Potestas as actual paternity ; and the
literary foster-father, though he teaches gratuitously,
has a claim through life upon portions of the property
of the literary foster-son. Thus the brehon, with his
pupils constituted not a school in our sense, but a true
family. While the ordinary foster-father was bound
by the law to give education of some kind to his
foster-children—to the sons of chiefs instruction in
riding, shooting with the bow, swimming, and chess-
playing, and instruction to their daughters in sewing,
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 173
cutting out, and embroidery—the brehon trained his
foster-sons in learning of the highest dignity, the lore
of the chief literary profession. He took payment,
but it was the law which settled it for him. It was
part of his status, and not the result of a bargain." *
Remembering that the natural family was in a
measure responsible for the ill-deeds of its members,
we look for some definition of the tutor's more limited
responsibility for his pupils. The following passage
from the laws makes this point clear, and gives us, at
the same time, a pleasant picture of the educational
system at work.
" The poet (or tutor) commands his pupils. The
man from whom education is received is free from
the crimes of his pupils if they be the children of
natives, even though he feeds and clothes them and
that they pay him for their learning. He is free, even
though it be a stranger he instructs, feeds, and clothes,
provided it is not for pay but for God that he does it.
If he feeds and instructs a stranger for pay, it is then
he is accountable for his crimes." f
The dual play of ideas in this passage gives us a
sudden insight into the ideal life of the times. On
the one hand, there is the tribal idea of the citizen's
strict responsibility to the State for those he may
* Sir Henry Maine's " Early History of Institutions," Lecture viii.
p. 242.
t O'Curry's "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,"' vol. ii.
P- 79-
174
CELTIC IRELAND.
introduce into the community. On the other hand,
this idea is annulled by the permission to exercise free
hospitality without limit. We know, too, that it was
customary for the neighbours of the mediaeval schools
to exercise their hospitality for the support of the
strangers who flocked as students to the schools.
The "poor scholar," dependent on the charity of the
neighbours for his living, as on the kindness of the
teachers for his learning, was as familiar a feature of
Irish society as the bard and the brehon themselves.
The entertainment of strange students was in fact
regarded by the people and by the law as a duty of
national hospitality.
The children of the Irish upper classes paid for
their education in the ordinary way, and the sons of the
poorer classes who were educated at the same college
were provided for by an arrangement similar to that
of the modern though now old-fashioned sizarship.
They waited on the wealthier students, and received
educational benefits in return. The scholars who
belonged to the neighbourhood lived in their homes ;
and those who were pensioners lived in the humble-
looking group of dwellings called the college ; while
others coming from remote or foreign districts lived
in their own huts adjoining the college and were
supplied with provisions by the neighbours. The
living doubtless was plain indeed, but of high thinking
there was no lack.
The whole educational system was a spontaneous
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 1/5
growth over which the law threw its mantle of
authority as it grew, regulating it by careful definition
of those ideas of the right and desirable which were
already more than half expressed in the national
consciousness. Thus the aspiration after knowledge
and intellectual activity which is of the very essence
of Irish character, fulfilled itself at an early period
of political development by institutions which embody
the essential idea of Irish social life—the idea of
kinship natural and voluntary as the source of mutual
duties and joint responsibilities which it is the business
of the law to define rather than to enforce.
Since then, the Dark Ages have been in Ireland,
times when the education of all save a small ascen¬
dant class was made penal by law, followed by a
period during which it was subject to serious dis¬
couragement only. But ideas that have once had a
long and vigorous spell of practice seldom die, and so
the old habit of spontaneous educational activity was
never in the darkest times quite suspended in the
ancient Isle of Saints. So between the national
schoolmaster of to-clay and the bardic tutor of the
distant past, we see the gap partly filled by the quaint
pedagogue of the hedge school in the penal times,
who taught his scholars, though it was against the
law, and was paid by odd little miscellaneous offer¬
ings of potatoes, turf-sods, and occasional eggs. Now,
in these better days, the old impulse is fast restoring
itself to its full activity, and has made the Intermediate
i/6
CELTIC IRELAND.
Education Act and the Royal University such successes
as without it they could not possibly have been.
Learning grows up in remote out-of-the-way places
in Ireland without any appropriate educational appli¬
ances as it grows up nowhere else. And to the
modern Irish Catholic Church all honour should be
given, for the zeal and energy with which it has built
up its own system of higher schools and colleges,
without recognition—much less endowments—at first,
and without direct endowment even now.
( l77 )
CHAPTER VII.
the arts in erin.
Some last words are due to the subject of Irish Art.
The history of early Ireland, in all its aspects, presents
us with a picture of social development, under the
influence of noble instincts and high ideals, in a
people brave, affectionate, faithful, with a keen
logical wit, a quick artistic sense, and a tendency to
take the poetic view of Nature and of life. The
history of later Ireland shows us, as plainly as history
can show, the arrest of all this development; and, on
the whole, it leaves us little in the dark as to the
causes of this arrest. Ireland was highly organized,
after her own manner, when the Norman invasion
came ; but she was not at all organized to protect
herself from such an invasion. Nor could she, by
her temperament, submit to the result—as the Greeks
submitted to the Roman conquest—and afterwards
teach the lessons she had learned to her conquerors.
So the long conflict began that is not over yet; and,
between the evils of perpetual war—war very different
from that which used to be waged among the Irish
178
CELTIC IRELAND.
tribes—and the greater evil of English legislation,
Ireland came apparently to a social standstill. "V et
it still remains for the future to show what noble
lessons she has added to the lessons of olden times for
the development of the nation in the times that are to
come. There can be no real arrest of development
for a nation that keeps its vitality amid desolating
storms ; but the development is inward, not out¬
ward—a development of the human spirit, though
unexpressed, as the individual genius of that nation
determines it.
In nothing, however, is the arrest of outward
development more apparent than in the matter of
Irish art. Here the evidence is not in historical
records, but in the things themselves—the remains of
Irish art that have come down to us through the
centuries, the exquisite metal-work, the illuminated
manuscripts, the sculptured monuments, the architec¬
ture just achieving its development into the beautiful
Irish Romanesque style. Up to the middle of the
twelfth century there is development, resulting in
work of rare beauty. Soon afterwards, production
almost ceases; the land is no longer a place for
beautiful things to be made in it.
Metal Work.
The Irish bardic tales are full of allusions to the
" smiths of Erin," and to their work in ornaments of
silver and gold even more than to their work in
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
I 79
forging weapons of war. Some specimens of this
pagan metal-work remain, and it is evident that quan¬
tities of it must have been destroyed or lost in the
Danish, even more than in the Norman, wars. There
are some fragments of a pagan horned or radiated
crown in the Petrie Museum, which may be taken as
typical of this early work ; * and these are said by
experts to show in a very marked degree the two
important characteristics of (i) complete mastery over
the arts of tempering, stamping, and engraving, and
(2) exquisite skill in design and execution. The most
famous example, perhaps, of Irish metal-work is the
brooch known as the Tara brooch, which was picked
up on the seashore in the year 1850. We have no
means of ascertaining the date of this fine specimen,
but the nature of the patterns on it denote consider¬
able antiquity no less than extraordinary skill, and,
as we know that the royal brooch was an important
part of the High King's regalia, it may very well be
that this is really a Tara brooch, belonging to pagan
times. Some of the work is so fine that it cannot
be seen without a magnifying glass.
In Christian times, the art of the smith was em¬
ployed to make costly shrines for books and bells,
besides crosiers and chalices. In connection with
these shrines and crosiers, we find a characteristic
little bit of Irish sentiment. In other countries
* "Early Christian Art in Ireland," by Margaret Stokes, p. 53,
t! .svfor full description.
CELTIC IRELAND.
valuable books had costly bindings bestowed on
them as art developed. Shrines, too, for the rude bells
of the early missionaries are unknown out of Ireland,
with the exception of two in Scotland. But Irish sen¬
timent seemed to have regarded the book itself as
something too sacred to be re-bound, and so made
for it a shrine, adorned with gold, silver, enamel,
gems, and the finest work of the smith. So also it
enshrined the bell ; and it is an interesting fact that
the shrine of St. Patrick's bell, made in the year 1091,
has never been lost sight of since. It always had
a special keeper, and we know exactly where it has
been for these eight centuries. It is now in the Irish
Royal Academy. Again, when we turn to the crosiers,
we find that they are really shrines, containing the
old walking-stick, with its crooked handle, which has
been preserved in memory of some early saint. The
object of poetic value is the old stick which supported
the good man in his declining years ; all the lavish
material splendour of the shrine has its special spiritual
interest as an expression of the zeal with which the
relic is preserved.
"It would appear," says Dr. Petrie, "from the
number of references to shrines in the Irish annals,
that previously to the irruption of the Northmen in
the eighth and ninth centuries, there were few if any
of the distinguished churches in Ireland which had
not costly shrines." It is clear, however, that such
costly shrines would be the most appropriate prey
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
IS I
that Irish art could offer to the barbarian invader ;
and this reflection makes it easy to understand the
fact that, though the work of the smith was more
ancient in Ireland than that of the scribe, the ex¬
amples left to us of the smith's work in ecclesiastical
articles belong to a later date than that of the fine
illuminated manuscripts. The churches and monas¬
teries were special objects of the Danish attack; none
of any considerable importance escaped.
The first pagan attack came to an end about 875 ;
and the peace that ensued till 916 appears to have
been used as a time of architectural restoration, and
equipment to meet future troubles with greater powers
of defence. Round towers were built for belfries
to the monasteries, but they were made of such
dimensions and strength as fitted them to be used
as places of safety for the monks and their treasure
in case of attack. In the entries of the annalists
regarding the earliest Norse attacks, from 789 to 845,
it is recorded that the clergy fled to the woods for
safety; and it may be that on one of these occasions
the beautiful chalice of Ardagh was buried for safety
in the place where it was afterwards found, the place
having been missed by the monks who concealed it
there. From 950 on, however, we read of the " tower
of a bell" as being the special object of Danish attack,
and it is very easy to imagine the much greater
security for works of art brought about by the erec¬
tion of these solid monasterial keeps. The earliest
182
CELTIC 1RELAXD.
literary reference to a round tower states that the
bell-tower at Slane was burnt in the year 951.
It is impossible not to connect these events with
the fact that no fine specimen of Christian art in
metal-work has been found to which a date earlier
than the tenth century can be definitely assigned.
The earliest we have is the bell shrine of Maelbridge,
which may be referred to the year 954, applying the
usual and certain test of observing the names in¬
scribed on the shrine and noting the dates under
which any of the persons so named are mentioned in
the annals. On most of the Irish works of art we
find the name of the king, abbot, or bishop, by whom
the work was ordered, and also that of the artist who
carried it out ; while not unseldom the request of a
prayer for their souls is quaintly added. This practice
makes it possible to fix dates with precision in many
cases.
A much earlier dated example of fine metal-
work, in the easily identified Irish style, is the silver
chalice of Kremmunster in Lower Austria. The
date of this is as early as between 757 and 781.
It should be noticed, however, that in Ireland itself
the metal chalice appears to have been less essential
than the bell, crosier and book. Glass chalices were
very often used, the one famous example of the en¬
graved metallic chalice being the undated chalice of
Ardagh, which is one of the most exquisite of all our
memorials of early Irish art.
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
I he first book-shrine of which we hear is that of
the Book of Durrow, made between 877 and 916.
The earliest we have is that of Molaise's Gospels, the
date of which lies between 1001 and 1025, and falls
about the second period of cessation in the struggle
with the Danes, when the genius and valour of Brian
Boru had restored peace to Ireland, confirming it by
that last great struggle at Clontarf (1014). The
earliest dated crosier is that of Kells (967), which
falls within the second period of struggle when the
means of defence had decidedly improved.
On shrines and crosiers alike the work is of the
finest kind, and shows no less a delicate sense of
artistic fitness than perfect skill in design and execu¬
tion. The characteristic of Irish design in this, as in
all other departments of Irish art, lies in the conser¬
vatism with which the artist clings to the fundamental
forms of the old native patterns, and weaves in with
them, as if growing out of them, all new designs that
have been found elsewhere or that may have occurred
to native invention working out its primary ideas.
In art, as in politics and religion, Ireland seems to
have been a land where ideas, once planted, live and
grow on for ever, or, if they die, die hard. The fact
has, there can be little doubt, as much to do with
geography as it has with race.
One of the best known pieces of metal-work is the
cross of Cong, which was made in the twelfth century,
tor the purpose of enshrining a supposed portion of
184
CELTIC IRELAND.
the true cross. It is a processional cross, two feet
six inches high, and the inscription asks a prayer
for the king who caused it to be made, for the Bishop
of Tuam for whom it was made, and for the artist
who made it. There is no difficulty in assigning it,
by these names, to the year 1123, in the first quarter
of that fatal twelfth century after which Irish art-
production came suddenly to an end. The latest of
its products is the shrine of St. Manchan, dated the
year 1166, three years before the Norman first set
his foot on Irish shores.
Illumination.
Let us turn now to that later birth of art, the
illuminated manuscripts, of which we have earlier
examples in Christian art. These are judged to
belong to a period extending from 460 to 1390;*
but the earlier date is very uncertain, and the books
approaching the later date arc not to be compared
with those of earlier centuries as works of art. Manu¬
scripts are not so easy to date as metal-work,
sculpture and architecture ; but, by observing the
version of Scripture used, the orthography, the style
of writing, the nature of the vellum, and the kind of
ink, very close approximation to accuracy may be
made, and other tests occasionally present themselves.
For example, the Book of Durrow, which for beauty
* For discussion of these dates, see " Early Christian Art in
Ireland," chap. ii.
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
is only surpassed by the famous Book of Kells, is prob¬
ably earlier than 718, because the Roman tonsure in
the shape of a crown was then introduced, and the book
has an illustration of a priest with the Irish tonsure
across the top of the head from ear to ear, after the
manner of St. Patrick. The Book of Kells is referred
to an earlier date, between the years 650 and 690.
The art of illumination spread from Ireland to the
Irish foundations of Iona, Melrose, and Lindisfarne.
Thus, the style coming to be practised to some
extent in England, Englishmen and others, in later
times, fell into the error of calling it Anglo-Saxon.
Its genesis in Ireland and progress through the Irish
mission-stations can, however, be quite clearly traced.
Nor was it to Britain only that the Irish art of
illumination spread. Bound up as fine writing was
with the life of the Irish monk, he carried his art
with him wherever he went, and manuscripts illumi¬
nated in the Irish style are scattered throughout
Europe in the tracks of his footsteps.* There are
Irish manuscripts now in Italy, in the libraries of
Milan, Turin, and Naples, all of which are said to
have been brought from Bobbio, the monastery founded
by St. Columbanus in the sixth century. We know,
too, that the Irish missionary influence must have
been strong at Reichcnau, from the prevalence of the
Irish style of writing in the manuscripts there.
The general character of the illuminated designs
" Early Christian Art in Ireland," by Margaret Stokes, chap. iii.
CELTIC IRELAND.
is similar to that of those on the metal-work. The
earliest forms are to be found on the pagan bronzes,
and on the walls of the stone tumuli on the Boyne.
These are decorated with spirals, zigzags, lozenges,
circles, dots, and with a peculiar spiral form of double
lines that diverge and twist again and again, and
of which no traces, or scarcely any, can be found on
the Continent. The uses to which the monastic
scribes put this divergent spiral is extraordinary, and
to it they added, with a skill and variety all their
own, the interlacings and conventional forms found
also in other countries though differently used.
Sculpture.
The main result of Irish sculpture is embodied in
forty-five high crosses of the well-known characteristic
shape—like a Greek cross with the arms projecting—
which combines the Greek and the Latin forms. The
Irish crosses are covered richly with fine sculpture,
and it is noticeable that in the artistic treatment of
the scriptural subjects sculptured on them, the same
combination of Byzantine with Latin influences is
shown as in their shape. These crosses date, speak-
ing generally, from 914 to 1123.
The Christian stones of Ireland include, besides
the high crosses, two hundred stones inscribed in
ogam characters, two hundred and fifty tombstones,
seven pillar-stones, and four altar-stones,* the greater
* "Early Christian Art in Ireland," p. 117, ct scq.
THE ARTS LV ERI.V.
18/
number of the inscriptions being in Gaelic—not in
Latin, as was customary elsewhere. About the tenth
century the Irish cross becomes characteristic of the
country, the old divergent spiral pattern reappears to
decorate it, and the formula of inscription settles
down to " Oro i t dothat request to pray for the soul
of the dead which, among early Christian inscriptions,
is almost peculiar to Ireland.
In Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man, similar
early Christian memorial stones are to be found ; and
the ideas of ornamentation used in the sculpture of
them are quite similar to those found in Ireland,
belonging, it is clear, to a style which overspread
the three countries in the ninth and tenth centuries.
But in the use made of these ideas the difference
between the Irish and British sculptured stones is
great, a difference that lies mainly in the Irish artist's
keener sense of fitness in abstinence from ornament
as well as in its use The same ideas " attained," to
quote Miss Stokes, "a more beautiful result in Ire¬
land because in the hands of a people possessed of
a fine artistic instinct." * Perhaps this fine artistic
instinct is little more than a reverential attitude of
mind towards the thing decorated, and to the idea
of which therefore all its decorations should express
subservience. Perhaps it is the same instinct that
found another outlet in the production of book shrines
rather than costly book bindings.
* " Early Christian Art in Ireland," p. 142.
188
CELTIC IRELAND.
A rclritccture.
The remains of early Irish architecture derive a
special interest from the fact that they supply material
for the continuous illustration of the development of
the art in a way which is almost peculiar to the
country. In Ireland, less than elsewhere, has the
old been pulled down to build up the new ; and we
are, therefore, the better enabled to observe the Irish
conservative instinct at work engrafting new ideas
on old, till at last there was developed the style of
architecture known as the Irish Romanesque. The
history of that style was cut short in very early
days, with its promise of nobler things all unfulfilled ;
but in one century it accomplished results of a very
beautiful character, which may now be studied in
Cormac's chapel on the Rock of Cashel, in parts of
Killaloe and Tuam cathedrals, in the Abbey of
Clonfert (1167), in Queen Dervorgila's church at
Clonmacnoise (1167), and elsewhere. Two years only
before the landing of Fitzstephen in Wexford, the two
last of these churches were built, and they are almost
the last examples of pure native Irish architecture
that have been produced in Ireland.
The earliest stone buildings of Ireland are tombs
or other monuments to the dead. Of these there are
two kinds, the cromlech or dolmen, and the tumuli.
The first of these show in Ireland signs of grcater
antiquity than the finest specimens of the latter, as
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
189
in the entire absence of any attempt at sculptural
decoration, however rude, while in the tumuli such
decorations are plentiful. A cromlech consists of
several large upright stones, with another large stone
placed on the top of them like a roof; and sometimes
it is surrounded by upright stones placed in a circle.
The largest cromlechs of Ireland are in the east and
north, and they decrease steadily in size from east to
west; so that, whereas the average length of a roofing
stone in Ulster is twenty-five feet, in Connaught it
runs from eight to ten feet only.
A tumulus is a dome-shaped building, constructed
without cement, and with a passage leading to the
interior chamber. The most noticeable examples are
to be found in the pagan royal cemeteries of New
Grange, Dowth, Teltown, and Rathkenny; and it is
on the walls and roofs of these that we find the
earliest attempts at carving. In all the tumuli
hitherto examined urns are to be found, indicating
the custom of cremation, and the same remark applies
to the chambered cairns or barrows of Scotland,
whether round or long and horned ; while in South
Britain the barrows contain bones more commonly
than ashes. If the ethnological argument in Chapter I.
be correct, the royal cemeteries on the Boyne began to
be built by that race which we have seen reason to
identify with the Tuatha Dé Danann, and to associate
vaguely with the Caledonian Picts—the large-limbed
red-haired men described by Tacitus, and thought by
190
CELTIC IRE LAW.
him to be more like the Germans than were the Celts
of Gaul. And Irish tradition bears this idea out; the
Bruigh on the Boyne is sacred to the Tuatha Dé
Danann, although it is there that the Milesian kings
were laid to rest. It is interesting to note, in connec¬
tion with the decoration of the walls and roofs of these
great sepulchres, that superior knowledge of the arts
is, by the Irish legend, ascribed to the mysterious
Tuatha.
On the race that built the dolmens less light has
as yet been shed. Twenty-three of these have been
excavated, and while bones have been found in all,
urns have been found in four only. They were not,
therefore, built by the cremating tribes of Ireland
and Scotland. There are no literary traditions about
them, and all that the folk-lore of the people reveals
is that in Ireland, as elsewhere, they are associated
with the idea of giants' graves. Thus it appears
that the race which built them has left no impression
on the literature of the Gael. This is evidence, if it
were necessary, that they cannot be regarded as
strictly Gaelic monuments. The traditional Firbolg
might have been their builder, and, if so, his identity
with the dolmen-building people of Cornwall and
Wales would become highly probable. But on this
subject enough has been already said.
The dwelling-houses of the ancient Irish appear
to have been mainly of two primitive kinds.* Either
* O'Curry's Lectures on " Manners and Customs."
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
they built for themselves quadrilateral houses of clay
or of log's set on end close together, or they built
cylindrical houses of wickerwork with a cup-shaped
roof. The latter form appears to have been more
generally used ; and a homestead would consist of a
group of such houses. The dwelling of a chief might
be a considerable group, including the house for the
women set apart and protected by a stake fence, and
the grianan or sun-house, placed on a pleasant
eminence to serve as a sort of Arcadian drawing-
room. Lime appears to have been much used for
whitening the walls of the houses, as it was also
among the ancient Germans.
The smaller homesteads were generally surrounded
by a fence or a bank with a quickset hedge ; but
the chief's dwelling would need a more effective
protection, and it is in the construction of the protect¬
ing wall of earth or of stone that the character of the
dwelling as a dun or a cathair consisted. A circular
wall of earth, whether single, double, or treble, made
the dwelling a rath, and a deep trench of water be¬
tween the walls made it a dun, as defined in one of the
law tracts. But the word " dun" is ordinarily used
in a very general sense to include all kinds of fortified
places. The city of Tara, for instance, is said to have
consisted of seven duns, with a large group of
houses inside each, besides the foradh or mound of
Tara, round which the fair was held, and on which,
no doubt, the Tocomrach of the High King met.
192
CELTIC IRELAND.
Cathairs and cashels were stone raths ; and the
building of cathairs—stone duns, as they are gene¬
rally called in the west of Ireland—was the first step
taken towards architecture proper unconnected with
tombs. These stone forts are thought to belong to
the last two hundred years before Christ, and they
are found on the western shores of Kerry, Clare,
Galway, and Sligo, with occasional examples in
Mayo, Donegal, and Antrim. The most important
are in Kerry, and in the islands of Arran off the
coast of Galway. Twenty-four of these forts were
examined by Lord Dunraven, and descriptions of
these, with photographs, are given in his "Notes on
Irish Architecture," edited by Miss Stokes. They
are all large amphitheatres, encircled by outer walls,
some of which are eighteen feet thick and twenty
feet high. The walls are built without mortar, and
with undressed stones, which are nevertheless fitted
together with much skill and accuracy. The centre
is of rubble, faced on either side by a thick stone
structure ; and chambers, as well as passages, occur
in these walls, which are also marked by the existence
of real doorways, very different from the gaps in the
bank which do duty for doors in the British forts.
Within the amphitheatre are sometimes found, clus¬
tered together, the remains of little circular and
elongated huts—the first stone dwelling-houses in
Ireland.
The word "cathair," Dr. Sullivan tells us, is
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
193
almost exclusively confined to the south and west
of Ireland ; and it is in the south-west also that these
stone forts are at their best, while their extent is
practically limited to the south and west coasts,
with the single notable exception of Aileach, near
Derry. The same observer also points out that in
the south-west are found the greatest number of
ogam inscriptions: there are none in Ulster, and
only two in Leinster. Ogams cut on wood there may
have been ; for only the stone ogams would have
been likely to be preserved.
The stone forts of Western Ireland are quite
peculiar to it within these islands ; and the fact is
certainly a very significant one. They appear in
that part of the country which is most accessible to
Southern Europe, and open to influences, as well as
immigrations, coming thence. That part is also the
part to which tradition refers the landing of the
Milesian immigrants from the south. The strong
fort is a sign of conflict in the region where the
strong fort is found, whether built by the invader as
a help to secure his footing, or by the defender to
prevent the same. The last supposition is not so
likely in this case, as such huge structures could
hardly have been thrown up by builders quite new to
the work while the enemy was even upon them. It is
impossible, therefore, to avoid suggesting the infer¬
ence, uncertain though it be, that the cathairs were
the work of the invading Milesians, or Scots, of
O
194
CELTIC IRELAND.
tradition, and that their existence where they are is
one more link in the chain of evidence corroborating
the accuracy of that tradition. There is, indeed, a
legend to the effect that the same forts, especially
those on the Arran Isles, were built as a last defence
by subject tribes who, hunted out of Britain, failed
to find an asylum in Ireland, and were driven finally
to this uttermost western coast. But it seems im¬
possible to overcome the inherent improbability of
this explanation ; for why should not a race with
such exceptional architectural skill have entrenched
themselves similarly amid the mountain heights and
passes of North Wales, where there is certainly no
dearth of stone for building?
From the cathair we come to the cashel, a similar
circular wall within which the early monks built their
beehive cells or clochans, their little oratories, and,
later, their belfry towers. Cashels, with their primitive
belongings, are to be found in all parts of the country,
reaching back to the sixth and seventh centuries.
The picturesque situations in which many of these
are to be found, especially in the islands on the west
coast, reflects upon them a singular beauty, and
an interest somewhat more than that of archaeological
inquiry. The most remarkable perhaps is the monas¬
tery on St. Michael's Rock, twelve miles off the
coast of Kerry, in the stormy Atlantic ocean, where
the monastic wall runs along a great precipice over¬
looking the sea.
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
195
We have already considered the practical motive
which led to the almost universal addition of a round
tower to the monastic group of buildings. The idea
of the round tower, and of church towers in general,
can be shown very clearly to have originated in
Syria ; and recent investigators have been able to
trace the type, from its entrance into the Western
world at Ravenna, across Europe to Ireland.* The
Irish Celt, with his preference for round forms, and
under the impulse communicated by the Danish
attacks;f made much of the cylindrical tower, and
preserved more carefully than other peoples his build¬
ings generally. And so it is not surprising that we
should find one hundred and eighteen of these towers
now in Ireland, while only twenty-two examples
can be found abroad. The Irish towers are, more¬
over, peculiar in this respect, that they are not
attached to the churches, but stand alone ; and there
can be no doubt that they owe much of their solemn
picturesque effect to this circumstance. In fact, they
began to be built before churches large enough to
bear them came into existence. And, indeed, the
preference for small churches persisted long in the
country, having behind it the support of a tradition
referred to St. Patrick.
The towers arc assigned by competent judges to
* Dunraven's "Notes on Irish Architecture," vol. ii. p. 180, ct seq.,
and Stokes's " Early Christian Art in Ireland," p. 176.
t See .Map at end of Dunraven's "Notes, etc."
196
CELTIC IRELAND.
three periods (1) from 890 to 927 ; (2) from 973 to
1013 ; and (3) from 1170 to 1238. It is hardly neces¬
sary to point out that the first two were periods of
cessation in the struggle with the Danes. The three
types of towers belonging to these periods mark dis¬
tinctly three stages in the progress of architecture from
the primitive form of the entablature, shown in the
horizontal lines of the doorways and windows, to that
of the decorated Romanesque arch. In the later
towers the beauty and number of the arched windows
increase, and the signs are manifest of an approaching
development from the solemn monotony of strong
grey walls, suitable to the monastic keep of troubled
times, into the storied variety of a fine church tower
standing in a land of peace. That promised future
of the round tower is still unfulfilled ; but, with the
recent spread in Ireland of knowledge about things
Irish, and enthusiasm for them, it may not now be
long delayed, and once more the Irish cylindrical
bell-house may rise, majestic and apart, as in the
olden times, but with all the added beauty of which
its form is susceptible, while free from that vice of
excessive decoration of which Irish art was never
guilty.
The earliest Irish churches were the little oratories
built without cement and with rounded roof, which
are still found standing, with the beehive cells, within
the monastic cashel. Churches, as distinguished from
oratories, stand alone ; but the first churches are of
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
197
the very simplest kind—-mere barns, with no distinc¬
tion of nave and chancel, and no attempt, however
rudimentary, to construct an arch. Presently, how¬
ever, decoration begins, while still all the doorways
are horizontal. The artist bethinks him to repeat
in stone the designs of the illuminated manuscripts
and the early metal-work. Then comes the addition
of the chancel and the chancel arch ; and the arch,
once found, takes gradually more and more hold of
the artistic consciousness, till arched doorways and
windows become the rule. Nevertheless, the idea of
horizontal extension still holds its own with a truly
Irish vitality. We see it in the long level entablature
uniting the tops of the columns, in place of the
separate capitals which belong to the Romanesque
style elsewhere.
This horizontal entablature is the most charac¬
teristic detail of the Irish Romanesque style, which
is in general marked by blending in a thoroughly
artistic harmony the two great architectural styles of
the entablature and the arch. The development from
simple entablature to the mixed type is well seen in
the doorways of Maghera and Banagher, in London¬
derry. As presenting examples of decorated pure
entablature these doorways are almost unique. The
native character of their ornamentation and its rich
delicacy mark, indeed, the second characteristic of
church architecture in the Irish style.
Another important point remains to be noticed.
198
CELTIC IRELAND.
The high, steep roof of such buildings as CormacV
chapel at Cashel, and others of the twelfth century,
can hardly escape the eye of the most ordinary
observer. These roofs are of stone, and so steep as
to include an angle of about sixty-five degrees only.
This result is obtained by the invention 011 the part
of Irish architects of a double vault, the lower arch
being circular, like a barrel, and the other pointed,
as seen from the inside. The pointed arch is then
roofed over with flat stones in the shape of a double
inclined plane, the spaces between the arch and the
plane being filled up by rubble. The desirability of
the steep stone roof may have been suggested by
climate ; but, however that may be, it gives to the
churches one characteristic of their appearance, and,,
while its construction was an invention which may
yet have a future as well as a past in the way of
roofs,* it implied a use of the pointed arch which
would, in the natural course of things, soon have
found its way into the body of later Irish churches.
The church of St. Caimin at Iniscaltra, erected in
1016, two years after the battle of Clontarf, marks the
transition from the horizontal to the enriched round-
arch style of Ireland. This was fifty years before
Romanesque appeared in England, on the building of
Westminster Abbey by Edward the Confessor, in
1066. From that date there was no halt in the pro¬
gress of architecture till the end of the next century,
* The question is, how far it could have been used for larger building.
THE ARTS IN ERIAr.
199
;ind a considerable number of churches were erected.
The finest examples belong' naturally to the twelfth
century. Such are the tomb of Murlough O'Brien in
Killaloe cathedral, the present chancel arch and cast
window of the cathedral at Tuam (1128-1150)—
the interlaced patterns on the mouldings of which
are very fine—the doorway and east window in the
abbey at Clonfert (1167), the nun's church at Clon-
macnoise (1167), and Cormac's chapel on the Rock of
Cashel (1127).*
But, while churches abound, castles are non¬
existent. That fact may have been significant in
the twelfth century, both as expressing the Irish past
and as a sign of the near future. Warlike as the
old Irish were, they had as little idea of entrenching
themselves behind strong walls as they had of cover¬
ing their bodies with armour. Nevertheless, they had
been successful in their struggle with the mailed
Norsemen, and had won peace for their Scottish
neighbours, as well as themselves, by that success.
Now, however, they were to encounter another less
terrible-seeming but much more dangerous enemy.
The Norman was not only a mailed and fort-building
foe ; he was a foe that had made everything else in
his social organization subservient to his urgent desire
to win lands and to rule over others by the sword.
To do this had been his work in history, and he had
* See " Early Christian Art in Ireland," M. Stokes, chap, vi., for
• wrellent accounts of all these.
2 CO
CELTIC IRELAND.
learned to do it well. Capable nations, or persons,
always learn to do well that which their souls are
most bent on doing. The Norseman tried his
"prentice hand" on Ireland in the days of Danish
struggle ; but with all his military genius—and it was
far from contemptible—and with all his true Norse
worship for the naked sword, he was driven out
once, and settled eventually as a colony subject to
the Irish king. When the Norseman came again
as Norman, he was educated in the art of conquest as
well as in the art of war. He had conquered two
countries before he took this one in hand. Yet in
three centuries he failed to conquer it, while it failed
also to drive him out or subjugate him. The suze¬
rainty of England—in itself a harmless thing—was
used amiss, merely for the benefit of fresh immigrants,
whose sympathies were naturally supposed to be
keenest for the English government; and so the true
government of the country was disordered more and
more, the people's peace of mind gone, development
arrested at every point. No words could describe
that arrest of development so eloquently or so lucidly
as the facts of Irish art-history. " Since then," says
Miss Stokes, "the native character of Ireland has
best found expression in her music. No work of
purely Celtic art, whether in illumination of the
sacred writings, or in gold, or bronze, or stone was
wrought by Irish hands after that century."
THE ARTS IN ERIN 201
Music.
Music survived. The habits of musical expression
were so wrought in upon the popular mind by the
practice of the art from times beyond the reach of
the historian's longest vision, and so bound up with
the poetry in which the popular traditions were en¬
shrined, and music is so easily and naturally preserved
by a people as far advanced in musical appreciation
as the Irish must have been, that no matter of surprise
can be found in the undoubted fact that very old
Irish music has been preserved to our own times, and
is now written down and thus made safe, though
not all generally accessible. Nevertheless, it would
hardly be correct to say that music had survived in
the sense of continuing to develop towards its natural
future. As with other arts, so with this art, it is more
than probable that a future was dawning for it seven
centuries ago, which was then postponed, and is still
in a sense before it. There can, however, be no doubt
that the seven centuries were by no means barren of
true native production in music as they were barren
in other arts ; and so the Irish have always been
classed with their kindred, the Welsh and the Scotch,
as a nation with unmistakable popular genius in
music. A lyrical genius it was, however, as fitted
the circumstances of the seven centuries; and for
strictly lyrical work in music and poetry it must be
admitted that the character of those centuries was
202
CELTIC IRELAND.
not altogether unfavourable. It has not been favour¬
able to work on a larger scale ; and so the pro¬
duction of great Irish opera and cantata belongs to
the future of that Irish Renaissance when the ancient
epics will be sung once more by Irish poets, while
the minstrels of Ireland will live again in her modern
composers to weave round the epics a more complex
structure of music—a structure that shall be Irish as
well as modern.
The Irish annals and stories show that several
musical instruments were used in old times; but of all
these the harp is by far the most important. It was
customary for the bards to recite their poems to the
accompaniment of the harp, and this custom con¬
tinued down to the eighteenth century. The race of
the popular Irish harpers is now extinct; but Mr.
Bunting, in his work on the "Ancient Music of
Ireland," written in 1840, describes a great meeting
of harpers at Belfast in 1792, the performance at
which was conducted according to the traditional
rules of Irish harp-playing, the music being played
with rapidity, spirit, and liveliness, quite different
from the slow manner which many persons imagine
suitable to the Irish airs. It is interesting to notice
the agreement of these facts with the observation of
Cambrensis at the time of the Norman invasion.
The slanders of Cambrensis, looking through his
hostile spectacles, on the Irish people, are proverbial,
and can now be read very conveniently in Strong-
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
203
bow's " Conquest of Ireland," in the series of " English
History from Contemporary Writers." Once, and once
only, he finds something pleasant to say. " It is
only in instrumental music that I find any commend¬
able diligence in this nation ; but in that art they
incomparably excel every other nation that I have
met. For their execution is not, like that which we
hear in Britain, slow and laboured, but adroit and
sprightly ; while their tone is full, and the refrain of
their melodies sweet and gay." And in another
place he tells us something of their manner. " They
enter into a movement so sportively, and conclude it
in so delicate a manner, and play the little notes so
sportively under the blunter sounds of the bass
strings, enlivening with wanton levity, or communi¬
cating a deeper internal sensation of pleasure, so
that the perfection of their art appears in the conceal¬
ment of it."
This reference to the bass and the little notes
makes it clear that the old Irish made some use of
the principles of harmony ; and there is good reason
also to think that singing in parts was practised in
some of the Irish monasteries. St. Jerome refers to
the choral service of the Scots at Bangor, county
Down, in the seventh century, and both Bcde and
Cambrensis refer to part singing in one of the
Northumbrian monasteries which was connected
with Bangor. There is some indication, too, of part-
singing in Iona ; and, as another piece of evidence,
204 CELTIC IRELAND,
a reference occurs in the Book of Leccan to the
" harmony of strings," which, if the word is used
accurately, would certainly show that some use of
polyphonal music was made at the time to which the
reference occurs. Moreover, the Irish " burdoon," or
refrain at the end of each verse of a song, was almost
certainly sung in harmony.
Nevertheless, it would be absurd to claim for old
Irish musicians either knowledge or practice of the
principles of harmony proper. The real development
of harmonious music belongs to the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries ; and these were centuries of
darkness in Ireland, centuries in which the condi¬
tions necessary for the growth of harmonious music
were absolutely non-existent. Moreover, the charac¬
teristics of Irish music were such as to favour highly
melodic combinations, while they placed difficulties
in the way of choral composition. This will become
more evident presently.
Down to the end of the eighteenth century a
complete native musical vocabulary was in use.
This is given by Mr. Bunting, and is of much interest
from the picturcsqueness of the terms. For instance,
the names of the first, second, and fifth of the scale
as applied to the. harp-strings, are "sisters"—two
strings lying together for the first—"servant to the
sisters," and "the string of the leading sirens," or
" string of melody," while all the octaves upwards
and downwards are called by two Irish names which
205
he translates as "answering " and "response" respec¬
tively. All the other strings have names of a similar
kind. Then again, for the rates of execution indi¬
cated by the Italian words adagio, larghctto, andante,
allegro, we have the beautiful and very racy Irish
equivalents, " dirge time," " lamentation time," " heroic
time," " lesson time," while a quicker pace is indicated
as " trebly rapid," or jig time.
On the characteristics of old Irish musical com¬
position a few words must suffice. There can be 110
doubt that one characteristic lies in the fact that
many Irish airs of decided antiquity are composed in a
key of five notes only, the fourth and seventh of the
diatonic scale being omitted. One has only to play
or sing this quinquegrade scale to be reminded
forcibly, though vaguely, of Irish and Scotch music.
The antiquity of Irish ideas, and their persistence—
though not to the exclusion of new ones—is well
illustrated by this characteristic use of a scale which
is as antique and natural as it seems to us curious
and quaint. The first musical scale was, no doubt,
the tetrachord 1358, knowledge of which appears
to have been at an early time universal. It is easy
to see how the second note of the common scale
would be discovered from this ; for the fifth of the
fifth gives the octave of the second. Again, the fifth
of the second gives similarly the sixth. Thus the
quinquegrade scale emerges 123568, the conception
of which may be readily formed by playing a scale
206
CELTIC IRELAND.
on the piano with omission of the fourth and seventh.
This was almost certainly the first musical scale for
all ancient Asiatic and European peoples, and it is
still to be found in China and elsewhere.
The old diatonic scale was completed by the
discovery of the fourth as the fifth below, and of the
seventh as the fifth of the third. The whole can be
exhibited as a scries of fifths thus—
4152637,
the dot below the number indicating the lower, and
dots above, the higher octaves. The complete scale,
obtained in this way, was that used for the church
music of the Middle Ages ; and it differs from the
modern diatonic scale, to which the great composers
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries bound all
future music, in the exact values of the third, fourth,
and sixth notes of the scale. In the old scale the
value of the notes are as follows :—-
t 9 si 4 :> 27 24:i -7
S> (>4> :>' 2' 1(5' 12 8' w>
while in the modern scale they run thus—
T 9 5 4 5 j: 1 -7
1 > (s> 4> [)> 0» 8 >
and the scale cannot be exhibited as a chain of
fifths. The true antique quinquegrade scale is exactly
the same as the old scale with the fourth and seventh
left out, and differs, therefore, from its' reproduction
on a modern piano in this respect, that its third and
sixth are both slightly sharpened.
The old diatonic scale was inevitably introduced
into Ireland with the church music of the monasteries,
THE ARTS IN ERIN.
20 7
and was not without its effects on the secular music
outside. So, while the genuine old Irish and Scotch
airs arc in the quinquegrade scale, later music had no
reason to be without the additional notes of the
septigrade scale. But by that time Irish music had
acquired a character, and Irish taste a habit, which
affected all later production and made it seem racy
of the soil.
Irish music, and the old church music, whether
naturalized in Ireland or not, had this common
characteristic, that any note in the scale might in its
turn be used as a tonic. Thus, instead of being
limited, like the modern musician, to the simple
alternative of the major and minor keys, these old
musicians had the choice of five different keys in the
one case, and seven in the other, according to the
note which they chose as tonic. The variety of the
church scales had given rise to much confusion when
the great composers reformed the diatonic scale, and
settled the lines of development by their splendid
work. But something may have been lost for the
future in the reform, greatly as it simplified the
problem of musical composition in harmony.
Irish airs are written in all the five Irish keys, and
those in the key of G with a flat seventh introduced
are common. The flat seventh, indeed, occurs in four
out of the five Irish keys, while, with characteristic
conservatism, the introduction of the additional note
is not allowed to involve departure from composition
208
CELTIC IRELAND.
in the antique scale which had wrought itself into
the Irish musical taste.
The Highland Scotch music differs in no respect
from the Irish. This we should expect ; but it is,
perhaps, a little surprising to find that Lowland
Scotch music is Gaelic too, though much more
modernized in its present form than either of the
other two Gaelic branches. That Welsh music was
much influenced by Irish music at one period there is
no doubt, but as we have it now the music of Wales
is evidently, from its structure, a good deal more
modern than that of the western island.
In the Irish manuscripts the harp is referred to
under the name of "crut," and it is likely that in
early times the instrument had few strings, and was
similar in this respect to the primitive harps of which
we find traces in the history of so many, other
countries. The first picture of a true harp of the
modern type occurs in a St. Blain manuscript of the
ninth century, as a " Cithara Anglica," and this is
one indication among several that the modern harp
had its origin in the British Isles. Thus we hear
that in the twelfth century British harps were said to
be much superior to French. Between the eighth and
the fourteenth centuries, Irish crut-players wandered
over Europe after the Irish manner ; and, on Dante's
authority, Vincenzo Galilei * says that the harp—the
modern harp, no doubt, he means—was introduced into
* " Discorso della Musica antica et moderna." Fiorenze, 1581.
THE ARTS IV ERLV.
209
Italy from Ireland. From this and similar evidence,
it appears that the genesis of the true harp may be
associated with the British Isles, and especially with
Ireland, in which country, it is quite evident from the
general musical history of the two countries, it had
the best chance of being invented. A picture of the
Irish harp occurs on a reliquary made about 1370,
with thirty strings, and this appears to have been the
typical number at that time.
The last fair of Carman was held in the year 718,
and a poem descriptive of it dates from the twelfth
century. In this, there is a list of the musical instru¬
ments used at the fair, among which we find the
" fidel" mentioned. This was, no doubt, the same
as the mediaeval " viele " on the Continent, the bowed
instrument which was the progenitor of the modern
fiddle or violin. The fiddle, like the bagpipe, which
is also enumerated among the instruments at the
fair, appears to have been in use chiefly among the
peasantry, and neither are admitted to any such
place in the literature as is accorded to the royal
and aristocratic harp.
It is certain, however, that in later times the
Irish bagpipe, which was identical with that now
used in Scotland, was a very noted and favourite
instrument, and chiefly relied on for military pur¬
poses till the time of the treaty of Limerick. In
the sixteenth century, the Italian Galilei, in writing
of the bagpipe, says, "It is much used by the Irish ;
210
CELTIC IRELAND.
to its sound this unconquered, fierce, and warlike
people march their armies and encourage each other
to deeds of valour. With it also they accompany
their dead to the grave, making such mournful sounds
as invite, nay almost force, the bystanders to weep."
Irish music survived the twelfth century in Ireland,
and, if this had not been the case, it had at any rate
a direct descendant in Scotland, and found a second
home in Wales, where a kindred race with kindred
ideas, tastes, and customs, was at this very time dis¬
posed to look to Ireland for advice and assistance.
So, in 1180, through the agency of Griffith ap Conan,
the Welsh Eisteddfod was revived in the presence,
at least, of Irish influences, and the Welsh musical
canon was regulated by Irish harpers.* The Welsh
vocabulary of musical terms is manifestly connected
with the Irish, and some of it is Irish, thus marking
the close approximation of the two peoples musically
at this time of Welsh national revival. From the
time of Griffith ap Conan, the Welsh Eisteddfodic
institution never died out, and its steady persistence
expresses a resolve of which Welshmen may well be
proud that the national life should not die in those
inner movements which are of its very essence, what¬
ever the political fortunes of the nation might be.
And so to-day popular musical education—so popular
that children catch the taste and faculty for song like
an infection—is a living reality in Wales as it is
* Sullivan's Introduction, p. 625.
THE ARTS IN ERIN
2 I I
nowhere else in these two islands. Ireland, ere long,
perhaps, will relight her popular torch of music at the
altar where she helped to rekindle a dying blaze, and,
taking up the line of a popular musical culture at the
point to which Wales has brought it, make every Irish
town and hamlet ring with the music of an educated
choir.
Nor is such a revival and development of the
popular taste for song the most that may be hoped.
The song itself, with all its characteristic marks of
melody and rhythm, is not lost. It remains for the
musical genius of Irishmen to study, to feel, and to
reproduce it, with all the developments of which it is
capable and which the general progress of the art
has made possible. In music, as in poetry and the
other arts, an Irish Renaissance is at hand, a time
when the living thought of Irish artists, instinct with
all the knowledge-gain that is humanity's common
heritage from the past, will infuse new powers of life,
growth, and development into those old forms of
expression and ideas of beauty which arc the national
heritage of every Irishman.
INDEX.
A
Acnach, or fair, 168
of Tara, 170
Aicill, Book of, 79, 139, 141
Aileach, 193
Airechts, or Courts of Justice, 159,
etc.
Aires, or nobles, 142
Echtai, 158
, Elective, 154
Fine, 167
Eorgaill, Tuisi,Ard, Cosraing,
*57
Architecture, 1S8
— •, Irish Romanesque, I97_I99
Ardagh, Chalice of, 181, 182
Ard Macha, i.e. Armagh, founda¬
tion of royal seat, 31
Primacy, 117, 129, 130
See founded by Patrick, 113
Argyle, 43
Army, Cormac's national, 71, 73
, its failure, 76, etc.
Arran, Stone forts in, 192, 194
Art, Character of Irish design in,
183, 186
Art, Eflect of Norman invasion on;
Irish, 1S0, 199
Artisans, position in tribe, 153
Artistic instinct, Irish, 179, 180, 187
Assembly, Hills of, 70, 122
, Edmund Spenser's descrip¬
tion, 71
■ , Tribal, origin of Parliamenis
and Courts of Justice, 133
, Various kinds of, 164, etc.
Attecotti, 3, 33
I!
Bagpipe, 209
Banshee, 100, 101
Bardic competition, 84
preparation of the Irish fon
Christianity, xii., xiii., 104, 113
Bards, Influence of, xiii., 77
in danger, 122
, Migratory habits of, 81
, Poets' " Pot of Avarice," 82
, qualifications of, xi., 84
, Satire of, 83
, Tutorial habits of, 82
, Two classes of, xiii., 81
INDEX.
Barristers, Si, 160
Barrows, Long, of Stone Age, 3
, Round, of Bronze Age, 4
Belgae, 5
Bo-aire, i.e. cow-nobleman, 142
Book of Durrow, 184
of Ivells, 1S5
Bothachs, 146
Boyne, Brugh on the, 6, So, 100,
1S9
lirehon, Moral influence of the, 77,
7S
, Antiquity of the, Si
law. Sec Land, Fosterage,
Tenants, Women, etc.
, revision by Cormac Mac Art,
69
Brian Boru, 125, 12S
ISrigit, St., 86
of the Judgments, 87
Britain, Irish attack on Roman,
34' 35
, Irish settlements in West,
35> etc-
, Tribute paid to Irish kings in
South-West, 3S, 39
bronze Age men, 4, 17
Bruigh, the borough, village, guild,
154, 155
, Germs of local government in,
165
Bruighfer, the borough magistrate,
154
——, election of king in his house,
141' 155
, probable convener of the
Tocomrach, 167
, relation to directly represen¬
tative system, 155
IJruigh rechta, bye-laws of the
borough, 154, 155
C
Cairbré Cinn Cait, 33
Caledonians, 5, 13, 19, 190
Carman, 16S
■——, Last fair of, 209
Cashel, 194
Cathair, 191, 192
Ceilé. See Tenant
Cemeteries, Royal, 6, 97, iSy
Chalice of Ardagh, 1S1, 1S2
of Kremmiinster, 182
Christianity, Irish v. Roman, 48,
54> 64
-, Decadence of Roman, from
fourth century, 60
, Irish, in Europe, 60, etc.
, Roman Church organization
prevails, and Irish influence
abroad declines, 64, 66, 67
Church, Tribal organization of Irish.
lr5
, advantages of this, 116
, centralization and union with
Rome of Irish, in the twelfth
century, 117-119, 129-131
Circles of stone, 6
Classes, System of, 141
Clochan, 194
Compurgators, 161
Connor Mac Nessa, 73
Contracts, King's power of making,
142-143
of strangers with manorial
lords, 148
Cormac Mac Art, 35, 6S, etc.
Coronation stone, 47, 53
Council of the Alehouse, 167
Courts of law. See Airecht
Cremation, 2, iSS
Crimes. See Torts
INDEX.
215
Crimes, Responsibility of family for
member's, 140, 160
, Responsibility of tutor for
pupil's, 173
Cromlech. See Dolmens
Crosses, Irish stone, 186, 1S7
Cruithuigh, or Picts, in Ireland, 11
D
I)ae, a family policeman, 158
Dal, tribal assembly dealing with
finance, 165
Dalaradia and Dalriada, 43
Danes, Pagan crusade of, 5S, 125,
etc.
, Confederation of, overthrown
at Clontarf, 128
Danish attacks on churches, 181
cities in Ireland, and parlia¬
ments, 127
Church, 129-130
, First, bishop, 128
kingdom of Dublin, 126
Da vies, Sir J., on law-abiding
character of Irish, 78
Dolmens, 188-189
, Distribution of, 6
•, Ethnology of their builders, 8
Downpatrick, 127
Druid, 83, 133
1 )uns, or forts, 191
, Stone, 28, 192, 193
E
Education, Laws regulating. See
F osterage
, Natural growth of system
of, 174-175
, Physical, 76
Elective kings, 141, 155-156
nobles, 153
Eric of king and aires, 142
Erigena Joannes, 57
Ethnic traditions, Irish, 16
Executive government, 156-158
F
Fair. See Aenach
Fairies, 100-102
Family ("Fine"), Structure of
Irish, 136, etc.
assembly, or Mathluagh, 164
• , Foster, 171
, Industrial, 154
, Religious, 114
Fasting on a creditor, 163
Feast (Feis) of Tara, 31, 70, 170
Feni of Erin, 73, 79
Fergus Mac Ere, 43
Feudalism and tribalism, 144, 150-
J52
"Fidel," i.e. "fiddle," at fair of
Carman, 209
Fuidirs, 146, 148
and modern Irish tenants, 149
" Fine." See Family
Finn Mac Cumhal, 73, 75
Firbolgs, 16, 19, 20, 24, 25, 190
Flaths, or Lords, 154, 155
Fodhla Ollamh, 69
Fomorians possibly pure Ugrian, 18
Forts. See Duns
G
Gaelic language in Aquitaine, 2S
and Picts, II, 12
physical type, xiv., 13, 21
INDEX.
Gavelkind, 134
Geilfine, 136-139
Germanus of Auxerre in Wales, 40,
4i
and Patrick's mission, 108
Gods and goddesses, Irish, 31, 98,
99
Gossipred, 171
Greek in Irish monasteries, 56
Guilds, Origin of, 153
Gwyddel and Gwyddel Ffichti, 10
H
Hallelujah Victory, 40
Harmony, Limited knowledge of, in
Ireland, 203
Harp, Probable origin of modern,
208, 209
Historian, Duties of Irish, xi., 81,
160
History, Materials of Irish, x., etc.
Honour-price of king and aires, 142
Houses of ancient Irish, 190, 191
I
Iberian stock, 13, 19, 20
Ideals, Irish, of heroism, xiii.
Idols, 104
Iona, 44, 47
Illuminated MSS., Dates of, 1S4
Illumination, Irish art of, 184
-, abroad, 1S5
J
Judges. See Brehon
Judicial system. See Airecht
Jury, Germs of trial by, 162
K
Kenneth Mac Alpine,45-47
Kimbay Mac Fiontann, 30
Kindred, Solidarity of, 16S
, Artificial group of, 154
■, Foster, and nationality, 9S,
149
, Idea of foster, and religion
of nature, 101-103
King, Election of, 141, 155, 156
, High, of Erin, 31, 32, 156
, Limited privileges of, 142,
143, 151
Kreinmiinster, Chalice of, 182
1.
Land, Tribal tenure of, 133, 134
, English law applied to Irish,
136, 14S
, Fixity of family tenure of,
how secured, 139, 140
• ■, Law of succession in, 134
•, Private ownership in, 135
Landlordism, Origin of genuine,
146-148
Laoghaire, 110
Law, Criminal. See Torts
, Civil, 162, 163
•, Common, a common inherit¬
ance in Britain and Ireland, 162
Learning, Ireland mission home of,
in dark ages, 61, 65
, Mission centres become
hemes of, 119, 120
Legislatures, Source of, 133, 163
-, Irish. See Tocomrach
Libraries containing Irish MSS.,
xv., xvi., 1S5
INDEX.
Lindisfarne, 48
Literature, when written, xv.
M
.Mac Ere, 97
Magistrates, So, 155, 159
Malachy O'Morgair, 130
Manuscripts. See Libraries
Mathluagh, 164, 167
Metal-work in Petrie Museum, 179
, how dated, 1S1
Milesians from the South, 27, 193
, Four families of, 31
, Physical type of, 21, 23
Missions, Irish, to Picts, 44
, to English, 4S
, to Germany, 63
, to Northern Isles, 55
, to Western Europe, 55, 61,
etc.
Mithal Flatha, 164
■ Tuätha, 164
Monasteries, Irish, abroad, 44, 47,
48, 62
, at home. See Schools
Music, Irish, 201
, Cambrensis on, 203
, Scotch and Irish, 208
, Welsh and Irish, 208, 210
Musical scales, 205-207
N
Naas, 112
National Irish assembly, 69
unity, bardic, 77
Nemidh, Story of the children of,
25
Niall of the Nine Hostages, 35, 39
Normans and the four nations, 49
and Irish development, 177-
17S, 199-200
O
Ogams, Stone, in south-west, 193
Oratories, 196
P
Paganism, Irish, 90
gods as Tuatha or Sulhe, 99-
102
, fairy fosterage, modern form,
103
, four great pagan festivals, 91,
92
, homage to ancestral dead, 93,
97
• , homage to national heroes, 9S
, sun and fire worship, 95
two great religious ideas. 96
R
Races, Tradition of three Celtic, in
Ireland, 16
, Celtic, fair, 19
, Mac Eirbis's three types, 23
, mixed types, 5, 20
, two modern types contrasted,
21
Rath, 190
Red Branch of Emania, 73
Rent, Origin of, 143
• , " fair rent " and " rack rent'
distinguished in laws, 148
, Judicial, 144
Round towers, 181, 195-196