THE MEN OF THE SWORD

A f e w years ago it was possible to maintain that the bronze-age population of Ireland had been continuous from first to last, rising gradually with the flowing tide of European civilization ; evolving steadily from the ‘ flat hatchet' stage to the stage of the ' socketed hatchet'. But as new facts come to light, this simple theory becomes less tenable. In the middle of the Bronze Age in Ireland there is a profound breach in continuity, no less real for all that its records, historical and archaeological, are of the vaguest. Nothing short of an overwhelming invasion can explain the facts; an invasion so devastating, that the invaders seemed very gods to the dispossessed, and as gods trod the soil. It was possible to maintain that the bronze-age people

of Ireland derived its bronze culture fundamentally from their Spanish homeland. This is still true in a sense, in that their rivals in Great Britain, the Beaker-People, as such, never made any impression upon Irish civilization. Their characteristic form of pottery is practically unknown in Ireland, so that it was natural to infer that they never penetrated to the country. But the use of the beaker did not endure throughout the Bronze Age, even in Eng­ land. It disappeared early, though the people associated with it persisted; and it is quite possible that after the Beaker-Folk had ceased to make beakers, they, or at any rate some closely cognate community, pressed into Ireland (doubtless out of Britain) and overturned her people and their civilization.1 It was possible to maintain that the bronze-age popula-

have taken place is only too probable. A country upon which Nature has bestowed gold, in quantity sufficient to make invasion worth while, is going to be invaded sooner or later. This is one of the numerous laws of Naturehuman nature-against which Utopia-mongers are im­ potent. If in addition it be really true that the auriferous country has been controlling an important source of mineral supply in a neighbouring region, exasperation is added to gold-hunger. As we saw in the preceding chapter, this may have been the case, as between Ireland and the tinlands of South Britain. The Halberd-Folk who colonized Ireland from Spain were a little in advance of the BeakerFolk who colonized Britain from the Rhineland, in laying hold of Cornish tin. And when the invaders of Britain realized this, and learnt that the gold of the land of Ireland was good, they gathered strength and carried out their great invasion of the latter country. A reminiscence of this catastrophe lived on in memory

for generations. Warped and distorted, cut up into a number of incoherent and mutually contradictory folk­ tales, it reached the early Christian historians of Ireland, who did what they could to reduce its chaos to a semblance of order. They re-modelled it, after the manner of Pro­ crustes, upon a framework of chronology, which (chiefly following Eusebius among ecclesiastical historians, though not in slavish reliance upon him) they gradually built up from data ultimately of Biblical origin. A student in search of historical actuality might reasonably complain that they had better have left it alone: from his point of view they made a sorry mess in fitting together the

pieces of their puzzle. Many of them they lost, or, rather, had already been lost before the remainder reached the hands of their manipulators: and in some cases, perhaps, they contrived new pieces, to fill awkward holes in the quaint picture which they produced out of their material. But such disdainful criticism is not quite fair, even though it contains much truth. The ancient historians, like all of us, made mistakes : but they did the great service of preserving much that otherwise would have disappeared for ever; and beneath all their weird dreamland delirium we can even yet discern real, if elusive, truths.3 The history which was thus contrived has been sum­

marized so often that it seems superfluous to go over the well-trodden ground once more. But the most prominent features may be lightly touched upon, so far as these have a bearing upon our present reconstruction. Our historians picture the occupation of the country as a series of inva­ sions. In this, beyond question, they are perfectly right. They begin before the Flood: the story of Capa and his companions is not the only antediluvian invasion of which they tell us : there were others, notably that of a heroine called Cesair, which is quite clearly one of the many ancient cosmogonic flood-myths of the world, artificially fitted into the Biblical scheme by boldly uniting Cesair to the kindred of Noah. Then, after long intervals, come ‘ Partholon ', * Nemed *,

and the ' Fir Bolg \ When we compare the tales told of these three invasions, we realize that they are nothing more than three different versions of one story. The people thus variously designated occupy Ireland; are much persecuted by invaders from overseas, uncanny demons, called ‘ Fomorians'; and they either die of an annihilating plague (the Partholonians) or flee the country (the Nemedians). The latter take refuge in Anglesey, in Britain, and in ' the Northern Islands of Greece \ for which we need not trouble to search a modern atlas. Of their descendants, some are enslaved by the King of Greece: they escape from his servitude and return to the inherit­

farrago would obviously have neither sense nor reason. But underlying it there are grains of history, some of which can be isolated, and, with the help of archaeological evidence, can even be substantiated. We may safely ignore the antediluvian stories: these are either cosmo­ gonic mythology pure and simple, or else they are later scraps of folklore, artificially projected back into the primaeval world. The Partholon-Nemed-FirBolg legend meets us next: we speak in the singular number, for these three groups of stories, as we have seen, are in essence but one. They stand appropriately at the begin­ ning of the tale, even before the gods: for they are un­ doubtedly a reminiscence of the Halberd-Folk. The last of these three names must not be translated * Belgae ’, as has sometimes been done. It means * Men of Bags \ and its most reasonable explanation reveals the people so designated as wearers of breeches. One tale, less extravagant than that which introduces

us to the ‘ Northern Islands of Greece *, makes the Fir Bolg avoid oppression by a flight to Aran, to Islay, and to other islands on the outskirts of the British Archipelago. Here at once we see an explanation, which is actually given us in this story-and the only reasonable explana­ tion available-of the most perplexing buildings in Ire­ land : namely, the colossal stone fortifications in the West, which are especially conspicuous upon those very Aran Islands.4 On those barren rocks, peopled by a folk who retained a primitive simplicity until their exploitation in recent years by tourist agencies, we are taught to see the last refuge of a disinherited people, where the Men of the Halberd, driven out by the Men of the Sword, made their last despairing stand. Protected behind the great walls

58 ANCIENT IRELAND which they built for themselves, they managed at least to keep body and soul together, on the bleak and economic­ ally unattractive islands which afforded them an asylum (fig. i i ). The invasion of the ' wizards ’ who dispossessed the

Men of the Halberd was so overwhelming, as we have said, that it seemed a thing supernatural. History has here been thickly overlaid with folklore, with myths derived from ancient legends of the antagonisms of light and darkness, of good and of evil, so that practically nothing of mere mundane affairs is left. A theogonia has been substituted for a sordid story of piracy. The very name given by the historians to the invaders-' People of the god, [son] of [the earth-mother] Dana ’— ascribes to them a divinity. The archaeologist must here fill the gaps, for the historians cannot produce a single historical record, in the strict sense of the term. According to the explanation here adopted, the enorm­

ous forts of the Aran Islands are silent but eloquent wit­ nesses to the terror inspired by the Sword-Men. Who could have thought it worth while thus to fortify a group of barren rocks, miles out to sea ? No one : except people who feared that, even there, ruthless, gold-greedy plun­ derers might find them out. The old stories of how the Nemedians and the Fir Bolg-in essence one and the same people-fled to certain islands and there in desperation ‘ dug themselves in in an all but literal application of the old saying ' Between the devil and the deep sea ’— these must be essentially true ; for the forts stand to this day, impressive witnesses to their truth. If those mighty walls had proved unavailing to keep out the invaders, armed with their irresistible glaives, the refugees would have had no prospect other than to be hurled, over the towering cliffs of their island sanctuary at the end of the world, into the boundless, fathomless ocean. These forts, then, are the testimony of the invaded to

the might of the invader. To balance this testimony and to confirm it, the self-glorification of the invader has found expression in gigantic tumuli, such as those in the Valley

established in its own self-centred village community, with its own head man to rule it and to direct its affairs. When one of these roitelets died, those who had served him during life, and now feared him all the more in that he had entered the number of the gods, of their own good will formed themselves into gangs of labourers, and erected a great tomb to honour him-and to shut him in. This tomb, whose coverless skeleton we call a dolmen, was a spontaneous expression of fear, reverence, honour, affec­ tion, or whatever other emotion the departed may have inspired in his own little domain. But in contrast with the individualistic dolmens and

their purely local interest, the social order, of which the great tumuli are the expression, is based on a centralized and widespread tyranny. They must have been made to order: not in the sense in which we use this expression in reference to a suit of clothes, which is paid for with an agreed sum of money : but in the manner of the Egyp­ tian pyramids to which we have just compared them, made to the order of tyrannical Pharaohs. Such a mon­ arch commandeers the available activities of a kingdom, and (except perhaps for just enough provision to keep his wretched serfs alive) he makes no return whatsoever. Without knowing how many labourers were actually employed, or the distance from which they were obliged to carry the material, it would be impossible to calculate exactly how much time the building of such a structure as the tumulus now called New Grange would occupy. I have made a very rough estimate that the weight of its materials may be about 50,000 tons; and when we recollect that when completed it was covered with a sur­ face layer of blocks of quartz, the nearest natural source

leaving successors who would have an equal right with himself to interment inside it after death, and who were expected to have sufficient power during life to protect it from violation. Otherwise he would not have left it and its treasures with a vulnerable entrance passage. It was not, like the dolmen-tumuli, a single grave, made once for all for a single man : it was a common sepulchre, which was to hold the ashes of members of a special family or caste. Spontaneous loyalty to an individual is one thing: enforced loyalty to a caste or a dynasty is quite another, and the establishment of such a caste indicates, of absolute necessity, a complete change in social organiza­ tion. The sculptured stones contained within these chambers

tell the same story. The more often these mounds are visited-and the present writer may fairly claim to have visited them more often than most people-the more does the conclusion appear inevitable that these stones were never intended for the place where they are now found. The sculpture was certainly executed before the building of the chambers, and with no reference to their decora­ tion. We can find it built in, in places where it is almost completely hidden. There is no regularity, order, or rhythm in the arrangement of the designs inside the chambers. At least one of the decorated stones in New Grange has been broken to make it fit the place where the builders desired to set it-breaking the ornamental pattern also. This fact is sufficient to negative the explana­ tion of these hidden sculptures which I was formerly inclined to give, namely, that they were magical in purpose, and might possibly have been expected to work their magic

all the better if they were unseen and so unlikely to be met by counteracting magic. A simpler explanation would be, want of forethought in correlating the work of a number of stone-cutters, each engaged in preparing decorated stones for the monument. But that explana­ tion will not fit some cases where there is evidence of a change, not only of plan, but of technique, in the decora­ tion ; indicating that the stone had been used at different stages of artistic evolution, and therefore in different generations. Nothing will satisfactorily fit these facts but the con­

clusion that the tyrant who, for his own glory and the glory of his heirs, forced the enslaved Halberd-Folk to build the sepulchre which was to be his eternal habitation, went so far as to compel his serfs to violate the tombs of their own fathers, and to appropriate as mere buildingstone the memorial grave-marks upon which had been impressed their traditional religious symbols or totemsigns. In fact, we must conclude that the cemetery on which there now stands a number of small burial-mounds, and these three great royal mounds, was originally a forest of large memorial blocks of carven stones ; and that these were all forcibly appropriated by the builders of New Grange and of the other great tumuli. It is possible, indeed probable, that from time to time symbols were added to the stones after they had been set in their new position and adapted to their new use. But we repeatthe vast majority of the sculpturings were never meant for the place where now we find them. These chambered earns have been described so often

that a brief general account of them is all that is here necessary.5 As a rule (though not invariably) they are situated in elevated positions, where they are visible over a wide area. Doubtless this is intentional: like the hill­ top shrines which are so conspicuous a feature of Pales­ tinian scenery, they are placed as monuments to which honour can be paid from a long distance: as landmarks and as centres of local cult. The chambers (fig. 12) were built of large stones, closely set together on end, and

roofed with slabs. Unlike the dolmen chambers of the earlier people, the roofs did not, as a rule, consist of one large slab only : there were several, overlapping each other after the fashion of the slates of a roof, though laid flat, not on a sloping base: or, to be more exact, propped up by smaller packing-stones to a slightly oblique position, sloping downward toward the outside of the chamber. Obviously the purpose of the slope was to carry away rainwater, and so to prevent it from flooding the chamber beneath. The entrance-passage was constructed in the same way-two parallel rows of stones on end, supporting a roof of flat slabs. The chambers having been built, the outline of the proposed earn was laid out with a ring of large boulders: and then stones were heaped up within the ring, till the entire structure was covered over. The opening at the outer end of the passage was closed with stones which could be removed when it was necessary to enter the chamber to deposit a fresh interment. This entrance is usually low, and the passage, at least

at its outer end, is often uncomfortable and awkward to penetrate. It widens inward ; but usually the transition to the comparative spaciousness of the chamber itself is made abruptly, by an inner doorway and jambs. As a rule, the burial-chamber is of a roughly circular or oval plan, and around it there is ranged a series of recesses, no doubt intended for the reception of the buried dead themselves, and whatever deposits the survivors placed with them. Cemeteries of such chambered earns exist on Carrowkeel

Mountain, Co. Sligo, excavated by the Royal Irish Academy in 1911, already referred to in the previous chapter; at Lochcrew, Co. Meath (a series of about twenty-five such monuments, now much wrecked, and remarkable for the great series of carved slabs which have been incorporated in their structure); at Brugh na Boinne on the Boyne, about five miles from Drogheda; and individual speci­ mens exist on Knocknarea Mountain (an enormous earn, dominating a wide area, and traditionally connected with Queen Medb), on several of the Dublin and Wicklow

scanty. No metal was deposited with the dead. The bodies were normally burnt, and reduced to fine ash, but there were one or two groups of bones belonging to persons who had been buried. The ashes were in a few cases deposited in pottery vessels, all of them ‘ food-vessels \ not the large cinerary urns ; but as a rule they were merely placed upon flat stones of about the size of a child’s school slate, which were piled up within the burial-recesses. A few beads and pendants of limestone and pins of bone, all intrinsically worthless, were the only gifts left for the dead, as well as the inevitable smooth quartz pebbles which, whatever they may mean, are a constant feature of bronze-age interments. Some sherds of the bowl­ shaped vessels with impressed dots, characteristic of the Halberd-People, showed that the two civilizations over­ lapped at the time when these mounds were erected. This was also indicated by the long cam with homed ends, described above, page 44, evidently a reminiscence of the horned barrow of the Halberd-People. It was a late, degenerate example: the horns were badly built without regular shape, and there was no doorway in the portico which they formed. In all other respects the architecture and contents of its chamber conformed to that of the chambers in the circular mounds. There is also one long mound, not yet investigated, in

the series of burial tumuli in the cemetery called Brugh na Boinne, which includes New Grange. This important burial-place stands upon a tongue of land about three miles long and one mile across, formed by a long bend of the River Boyne. At its entrance, as we approach it

64 A N C I E N T I R E L A N D from the mouth of the river, there is an enormous circular enclosure surrounded by a single earthen wall. This may be a fortification of some kind: but it is equally likely to be a sort of amphitheatre, the scene of the ceremonies which must certainly have taken place at the burial of important personages. It may further be suggested that this is the structure to which the name Brugh na Boinne, ‘ Palace of the Boyne ', properly attaches. Such a name obviously is more suitable for a building of the kind than for either a cemetery or a burial-mound ; but it is often applied indifferently to the whole group of burial-places in the area or, specifically, to New Grange, the largest mound in the series. Once again, New Grange has been described so often

that it is unnecessary to describe it again in detail. Let it suffice to say that it is a huge pile of stones, practically circular on plan, covering about an acre of ground, and something over 40 ft high. It is surrounded with a circle of large standing stones, which, if the intercolumniation was uniform throughout, must originally have been about thirty-five in number: but only twelve remain. Another standing stone was erected on the summit, and yet another inside the burial chamber; these were in existence down to the eighteenth century, but are no longer to be seen. Round the foot of the mound there is a kerb of flat

slabs, about 5 ft in breadth and 10 ft, more or less, in length. These are set up on their longer edges, touching one another end to end-or at least they were originally so set, but the pressure of the great weight of material behind them has thrown many of them out of plumb and out of alignment. There seem to be about 100 of these stones, most of which, at the moment of writing, are buried. A trench was run about half round the mound some years ago, and exposed such of these slabs as lay in its course. Three of these slabs are very elaborately decorated-

one at the entrance; one diametrically opposite to the entrance ; and a third which, so far as can be determined at present, appears to have no relation to any interior

T H E M E N O F T H E S W O R D 65 structure. Of the rest, about one-half of the slabs, which were exposed in the excavation, were found to bear scribings of the simplest kind-on one stone a zigzag, on another a spiral, and so on. As a decoration of the great burial-mound nothing more pointless or undignified could be conceived; it would have been better to have left them in their unadorned simplicity. But we suggest that each of these may have once marked a grave, and that the zigzag or spiral would have told a contemporary passer-by all that he needed to know about the dead man underneath. So far as the present writer is concerned, the results of* this partial and preliminary excavation strengthened him in the view that the stones were collected by the builders on the spot, from the graves of an earlier people. Indeed, there is actually one stone remain­ ing, in a field close to New Grange, which escaped notice, and still appears to serve its original purpose as a gravemark; it is decorated with spirals and other geometrical patterns. We may however quite reasonably admit that it was the great elaboration of the carving on the stone at the entrance which led to its having been selected for the position which it now occupies. The entrance to New Grange faces south-east (looking

outward) and gives access to a passage about 3 ft wide and 62 ft long, formed of two rows of upright stones supporting horizontal slabs. This roof is very irregularly constructed, the height of the passage ranging at random between 4 ft 6 in. and 7 ft 10 in. according to Coffey's measurements. On both sides there are stones, some of which bear ornament; these are interspersed without any regularity among stones which are perfectly plain. It is evident that the builders have laboured to bring the stones to a true face by pocking over the whole surface: and here and there a stone can be found bearing faint traces of ornament, zigzags and the like, partly effaced by the pocking process-a further proof of the secondary use of the stones, and the obsolete nature of the ornament which they bear. The right-hand jamb of the entrance to the chamber itself has upon it a remarkable series of

with its three grave-recesses, and its ornamented stones scattered at random round the lower part of the walls. There is only one ornamented stone in the domed super­ structure. It may be noted that the sister mound of Dowth, a

mile or so away, had also not improbably a ring of stand­ ing stones around it, which have been smashed up to provide building material for a little late mediaeval church in the immediate neighbourhood. These tumuli are the monuments of the rulers. Only

the highest aristocrats were in a position to have such grandiose tombs erected. The common people, SwordFolk and Halberd-Folk, had to be content with lowlier obsequies. Simple burial was doubtless frequently re­ sorted to, with or without associated grave-goods: but in the soil of Ireland such a burial could hardly have the smallest chance of preservation. Even the bones rot away to nothing in its humid climate. Cist-burials, where the enclosing stones keep the deposit from direct contact with the corroding earth, are more likely to retain some instruc­ tive material; and we may mention as of especial interest the cist found at Keenogue, Co. Meath, in which a flexed body with a food-vessel was discovered inside a massively built cist specially noteworthy for its ‘ crazy-paving ' floor of irregularly shaped flat stones (fig. 13). This inhuma­ tion interment was part of a cemetery in which the major­ ity of the bodies had been burnt, forming an ‘ Urn-field' that yielded some exceptionally fine pottery. Other ‘ Urnfields' have been found at Ballon Hill, Co. Carlow, and at Drumnakilly in the neighbourhood of Omagh, Co. Tyrone; and doubtless there are many more awaiting an investigation which, it is to be hoped, will be more thorough and scientific than that accorded to the two places last named.7 The Keenogue cemetery was carefully examined

on behalf of the National Museum by Dr. Mahr, and the cist mentioned above, with its contents, has been recon­ stituted in the Museum. A burial at Bunbrosna, Co. Westmeath, which was

excavated by Miss Ruby Murray and the present writer, threw some light on bronze-age customs and manners in the presence of the mystery of death. The construction consisted of a well-built but very small cist in the heart of a low mound. There were two small food-vessels in the cist, lying on their sides, and evidently deposited empty; the bones of a single individual; and a couple of small beads of jet. The bones were not burnt, but they were all smashed into fragments, many of them not larger than a shilling: most of the fragments were inside the cist, but some of them were lying outside, covering the lowest of several large stones which were piled, one on top of the other, over the mouth of the cist. And on some of these bone fragments were bronze stains such as could have been produced only by long-continued contact between the bone and a bracelet: but the most careful search and sifting failed to reveal the slightest trace of such an ornament or of any other, with the exception of the two beads. There was certainly no bronze in the cist, and never had been. The only explanation that seemed to fit the facts was

as follows. The dead man must have received a temporary burial somewhere, the body being deposited wearing the ornaments which had decorated it during life : bronze bracelets, a jet necklace, and quite possibly gold adorn­ ments as well. It lay long enough for the flesh to decay and to mingle with the surrounding earth, and for the bones to rot. Then, for some reason, it was re-interred in the mound. The cist provided would have been too small to hold even a crouched infant's body: but it is big enough to hold the crushed fragments of rotted bones, carried from the first burial in sacks or baskets. Some animal bones, which happened to have been in the earth where the man was first buried, were accidentally trans­ ferred along with them: the animals could not possibly

68 A N C I E N T I R E L A N D have made their way alive between the close-fitting stones of the cist, and even if they had done so, their skeletons would have remained entire. And further, the ' resurrec­ tion men' who transferred the bones must have appro­ priated the ornaments. They did not notice the two beads, which had slipped with the bone fragments into one of the sacks, nor yet the bronze stains, which remained for somewhere about three thousand years to testify against their act of sacrilege. That they realized that they were committing a dangerous crime against a vin­ dictive ghost is suggested by the care which they took to close him in. Not one, but half a dozen large flag-stones were laid over the cist. After the first of these had been placed in position, a straggler arrived with another lot of bone fragments from the now-emptied grave. As the cist had already been closed, these were sprinkled over the stone cover, and then the other covers were laid down on top of them and the grave-mound closed in-till the day came for the revelation of guilty secrets ! 8

There are two chief classes of Megalithic monuments in Ireland dolmens, and the various combinations of stand­ ing stones. The former we have assigned to the HalberdPeople. Single standing stones may belong to any period whatsoever; they serve a variety of purposes, but have no distinguishing mark of date or of the racial connexions of those responsible for their erection. But groups of standing stones, especially those ranged in circles, have a specific character, and presumably belong to a specific stage of the history. A circle of standing stones is a conspicuous adjunct to

New Grange : and a very definite tradition of the use of these monuments lasted into historic times, a fact which suggests that they could hardly have had an origin in very remote prehistoric ages. Stone circles are not very conspicuous features of the Irish landscape: probability favours their ascription to invaders from South Britain, where this type of monument is frequent, where indeed some of the greatest examples in existence are to be found.