THE MEN OF IRON

O n ce again, the fatal curse of the gold-fields threw Ireland into confusion. The Men of the Sword had turned the world of the Halberd-Folk upside down, to compass their possession. But the doom of the Sword-Men had been writ one day, centuries before, in some far-off land; when a meteor fell, and when an unknown genius discovered that it contained a strange metal which, * after much toil *, as Homer expresses it, could be worked into serviceable weapons. Bronze swords could subdue the trumpery halberd : but bronze cannot stand against iron. * Son of A li ', said an Arab chief to another, who dropped his useless lance before the cannon of Napoleon, ' dost thou yield to these infidels ? * * The Son of Ali cannot swim in Hell with a stick \ said the other. Even so might the humbled tyrants of the Sword-People have expressed their resignation, as they fell before the flashing iron blades of the tall, fair-haired newcomers, who landed one fateful day in or about the fourth century B.C. And the ' sword of light ’, the possession which made the giants of the fairy­ tales invincible, was added on that day of strife to the body of folklore which, in future years, Sword-Folk slaves were to teach to the children committed by their conquerors to their charge. For the giant, in spite of his brutality and cunning, is always defeated in the end: the hero, the little man, always succeeds in stealing the sword of light, and in cutting off its lawful owner’s head. The children, pretty innocents, never dreamt that the slaves who fashioned for their amusement these delightful tales out of the common stock of folklore, were uttering dark parables

mare of ethnology, archaeology, and, we may add, politics, the Celtic problem. Was this invasion a * Celtic * invasion ? And what is the meaning of this question ? The word ' Celtic ’ is derived from Greco-Latin literary

sources, and presumably came to the writers who have recorded it, by some now irrecoverable channel, from cer­ tain of the people so designated. But we cannot read into it any more than a vague geographical significance. For the ancient writers it meant nothing more than the bar­ barians who lived in certain regions of Central and Northern Europe. The extraordinary contradictions between the statements about the Celts, made by different ancient writers, are enough to show the misty lack of science in their use of these and similar quasi-ethnic terms: 1 such words are void of scientific significance, and incapable of conveying any exact ethnological information. In the regions which ' Celts ’ are said to have inhabited,

linguistic survivals such as place-names show that languages of a certain clearly defined group were spoken, for which languages the name 1 Celtic ’ may be appropriately used. They belong to the Indo-European family, and are dis­ tinguished from other branches of that family by certain peculiarities, notably the total rejection of the sound of P. This happens with the mechanical regularity of a typescript, executed on a machine in which that letter happens to be broken: and it may well have had a mechanical cause. Possibly the prehistoric people, among whom these lan­ guages first began to develop, mutilated their teeth (like

been conjectured that their cradle was somewhere between the head-waters of the Rhine and the Danube, which rivers have Celtic names (D’Arbois de Jubainville 2) ; or further north, somewhere on the southern shore of the Baltic (Camille Jullien 3). Nor can any one say what the ethno­ logical relationships of the people who developed these languages may have been. One thing, however, is certain ; that nowhere in the world can be found a better illustration of the independence of language and race. As many different racial types are found, in ancient and in modern times, among native ‘ Celtic' speakers as are to be found over all Europe, among speakers of other languages. In short, there is no such thing as a recognizable ‘ Celt \

There is a group of languages; and there is a certain cultural complex associated with them. But these environ­ mental marks of ‘ Celticity ’ have been imposed from with­ out, during a long course of centuries, upon a number of ethnologically different communities: and they have not affected the racial character of those who are clothed in them. The Celticization of Northern Europe is due ultimately to a military expansion on the part of the tribe, whatever it was, among whom the characteristics of Celticity developed. Their early history is obscured by their later develop­

ments. We may quote in this connexion the admirable statement of the facts by Georg Kraft.4 * The cradleland of the Teutons, southern Scandinavia, was never occupied by any foreign nation; in the case of the Celts no com­ parable nuclear region can be identified. Almost every­ where they have been expelled from their seats by the

Great Britain and Ireland-the only strongholds indeed; for Breton, the last Celtic language to be spoken on the mainland of the Continent, is not a survival of the ancient Continental Celtic languages, but an importation, in historic times, from Great Britain. In spite of this, and although in the time of Julius Caesar South Britain, and probably most of Ireland, were inhabited by Celtic speakers, these islands and their inhabitants are never called * Celtic ’ by ancient observers. To them they are the ‘ Pretannic * or ' Pictish * Islands ; a word of which ‘ Britannic * or ‘ British * is a mere corruption. This being so, we must next ask, how and when were the * Pictish1 islands Celticized ? The problem is complicated by the Goidelic-Brythonic

dichotomy. There is no unambiguous evidence for Goidelic in South Britain, other than what might have been intro­ duced in historic times by colonists from Ireland. That country has certainly been the source of the Gaelicization of North Britain. Likewise there is no unambiguous evidence for Brythonic of non-British origin in Irelandunless it be such a word as Manapioi, recorded in Ptolemy's map as the name of a people living on the East Coast. Till quite recently the problem seemed perfectly simple. The great invasion of the Beaker-People, from the Rhine­ land into Britain, at the beginning of the British Bronze Age, introduced the Celtic (Brythonic) speech along with the Bronze culture. Ireland remained Pictish-speaking till the iron-age invasion, which introduced the Goidelic speech from somewhere on the Continent, along with the iron culture of the Second La Tene Period. External history seemed to favour this reading of the

T H E M E N O F I R O N 79 indications. Those who developed the Celtic culture may have been receptive among their neighbours, and have been the first in Northern Europe to acquire a knowledge of the properties of iron. Indeed, it would appear that they somehow appropriated a monopoly of the art of the smith for Central Europe, as did the Philistines for Palestine: and that from the very beginning they realized the military advantage to be derived from this acquisition. We have no records by which we can follow their expansion step by step-but it is clear that no sooner had they mastered the art of making iron weapons, than they began a career of conquest almost comparable with that of Rome in later centuries. Almost; but not quite. They made no effort to weld their conquests into an empire; rather did they break into groups, each group dominating, and covering with the veneer of its language, religion, and civilization, the separate peoples and tribes whom they had subdued. Each of these, forcibly turned ' Celtic \ retained an indi­ viduality, and maintained all their traditional hostilities, until the time came for the empire of Rome to devour them. Some great movement must have taken place in the

third and fourth centuries B.C. to disturb the strange amorphous Celtic world that was thus created. For we find them marching through Italy and sacking Rome. Shortly afterwards we find them pressing into Greece, and, after an abortive raid upon Delphi, establishing the Celtic colony of Galatia-the only Celtic community outside Europe in the ancient world. And about the same time, as an incident in the same course of events (according to the simple theory here stated), they first entered and occupied Ireland. But the actual facts are by no means so simple as would

be postulated by such a theory. It assumes an unbroken Bronze Age for Ireland : it also assumes the total absence from Ireland of the earlier iron-age phases, Hallstatt and La Tene I. But both assumptions are no longer admis­ sible. We have seen in the preceding chapters that there is evidence for an abrupt break in the middle of the Irish Bronze Age : and a recent discovery in the North seems

to be the cloudy semblance of a man's hand rising above the horizon, ultimately destined to tear away the second assumption. The excavations at present (1934) in progress in the caves

at Ballintoy, Co. Antrim, have yielded a quantity of early iron-age pottery of Hallstatt aspect, similar to those found in late Hallstatt sites in England. This at least proves cultural infiltration, if nothing else. Associated with this pottery, and of similar clay and technique, was the upper part of a roughly modelled female figure (fig. 16). The eyes and the mouth are indicated. Above the eye there is a hole, possibly a steam-vent, to prevent the clay from cracking when fired. The breasts are very conspicuous: the arms and the lower part of the body are broken away. This figure links in character with the mother-goddess figures found in Danubian sites, such as Vinca and Butmir ; but it is surprising to find it in association with a late Hallstatt deposit. The cult doubtless lingered in outlying regions; the name of twin mountains called f The Paps of Danu ', mater deorum hibernensium according to the old glossator Cormac, seems to suggest that the personification of Ireland is no mere modern sentiment, but that her soil itself was regarded as being actually the body of the universal Mother.5 In the light of the Ballintoy discovery, the occasional

Hallstatt objects which had already been recorded in Ireland take on a new aspect, and call for a revised con­ sideration.8 They have hitherto been looked upon as chance imports, having as little bearing upon the history of civilization in the country as a Chinese ornament, such as may be found in any modern house in Dublin. But they cannot now be dismissed so lightly. True, a sword, or a bracelet, or any object of metal, might be imported at any time. The East-Anglian disc-brooch, found at Togherstown on Uisnech Hill in Co. Westmeath, means no more than that a certain East Anglian happened to pass that way, and fell among thieves, or otherwise lost his property. But pottery has always a different story to tell. A metal object could travel from hand to hand between

Spain and China. An impressive illustration of this would be presented by the two golden torque earrings, which certainly look more like Irish products than anything else, found by Sir Flinders Petrie in excavations near Gaza, Palestine, if we could find some way of surmounting the chronological perplexities presented by objects, made in Ireland about 1200-1000 B.C., travelling to Palestine, and becoming embedded in strata dated to 2000-1500 B.C.7 But a pottery object would be practically certain to get broken on the way. No one imports common pottery; but the makers of a particular style of pottery can be imported, so that any peculiar form of pottery is always symptomatic of a colony of the people associated with that form. Hence we cannot any longer deny the possibility of an

indigenous Hallstatt occupation of the country. In fact, we have as yet such a scanty knowledge of the hidden things which await discovery beneath the soil of Ireland, that we are not entitled to make any categorical statement what­ soever about the early inhabitants of the country, without large reservations. And we are at present in that phase of scientific development where each new discovery increases our reservations rather than our knowledge. But for the sake of clearing our ideas, and to provide a starting-point for future research, we may venture to set down a tentative statement of the conclusions to which the new facts seem to point. (i) At the beginning of the Bronze Age (say 2000 ± x B.C.)

Ireland and Cornwall were peopled by a Spanish colony (the Halberd-People); South Britain, excluding Cornwall, by a Rhineland colony (the Beaker-People). The former were not Celtic, nor yet Indo-European, in their speech: the latter, we may assume were Celtic. But were they Brythonic or Goidelic ? The prevalence of the Brythonic dialect throughout South Britain would a priori incline us to the former alternative. (ii) In the middle of the Bronze Age (say 1000 ± x B.C.)

the Sword-People subdued Ireland. As their greatest monuments, erected at their first entry and in their first

82 A N C I E N T I R E L A N D energy, lie in the vulnerable region on the East Coast; as they appear to have been brachycephalic; the only reasonable view of their origin is that they were an invasion from South Britain, and if not actually identical with, at least cognate with the Beaker-People at a later stage of cultural development. This at once gets an enormous difficulty out of the w ay : why did the historians repre­ sent the TuathaDe Danann, who are beyond all possibility of question personifications of the Celtic pantheon, as being a race preceding, and hostile to, the 1 Milesian * or iron-age * Celtic ' invasion ? The two groups of invaders should have worked in partnership from the first, even if the gods had been euhemerized into men. It follows that it was they who introduced the Celtic speech into Ireland. But as the predominant Celtic speech of Ireland is, and always has been, Goidelic, we must revise our conclusions as to the Brythonism of the Bronze Age in South Britain; and attribute the later Brythonization of that country to the influence of the comparatively high culture of the Continental Belgae. This is perfectly reasonable, for even a slight superiority, in associated commercial or cultural advantages, is sufficient to tilt the scale in favour of one language as against another. (iii) During the domination of the Sword-Folk, early

iron-age culture filtered into Ireland as it had done into England, and early iron-age colonies established them­ selves here and there : but their history, extent, connexions, and influence are matters for future research, being at present quite outside our knowledge. (iv) In the course of the La Tene II phase of the West

European Iron Age, Ireland was again invaded, by the ‘ Men of Iron ': and we must now consider who these were. On the theory usually held, these were ‘ Celts \ But is

that sound ? Their tall stature and fair complexions would lead to the conclusion that in blood, at least, they were Teutonic. These racial elements remained uncontaminated for long enough to establish the tradition that they were the hall-marks of aristocracy. But so far as we can judge, in our as yet imperfect knowledge of Irish ethnology ancient

and modern, the Teutonic ensemble of racial features is not conspicuously predominant in the country. All the races that have ever inhabited the land are now mingled together inextricably; the facts, as we have them, are quite consistent with the last invasion being that of a small military expedition, of pure Teutonic blood, who entered the country insufficiently provided with women; and who made up the deficiency by taking to themselves women of the conquered inhabitants, after they had com­ pleted their conquest. The inevitable result followed. Whatever may have

been the language of the invaders, the children grew up chattering the speech of their mothers and of the slaves who attended upon them; and so the speech of the con­ quered Sword-Folk persisted, and that of the conquerors wras forgotten in a generation. So far as race is concerned, this so-called ‘ Celtic ’ invasion of Ireland was just as much Teutonic as the Saxon invasion of England. And it is quite possible to maintain that the invaders were actually Teutons in speech. If there be anything in the equation that has been suggested between Fomorian (the name traditionally given by the aborigines of Ireland to the raiders from oversea who harried them, mingling them in­ extricably with traditions of demons and wizards) and some form of the geographical term which we call Pomerania: if there be anything in another possible equation between the name of Coming, a Fomorian leader, and some form of the old Teutonic koninga, ‘ a king1 8: if we may interpret ' Heremon', the name given traditionally by Irish his­ torians to the leader of the ‘ Celtic ’ invasion, as a corruption of some form of the Teutonic name Herrmann : we should be obliged to infer that so far from Ireland being naturally a Celtic country, it would really have been the first land of Western Europe to be Teutonized, if only the invaders had brought a sufficiency of women with them. Eremon was accompanied by his brother Eber, which is straight­ forward Teutonic for ' a boar'— compare the totemistic horse-names of the mythical invaders of England, Hengist and Horsa. Is this the explanation of the statement that

these invaders of Ireland called or considered it Muc-inis, * Pig-island’ ? The absence of women is easily accounted for. The

invaders must have come a long way-from somewhere east of the great * Celtic' block which then occupied the north of the continental mass ; but sufficiently near to its eastern border to have learned something of the art of iron working. The traditions of the immigration, en­ shrined in the Book of Invasions, give prominence to voyages of extravagant length. ' We shall have no rest’, one of their ' druids ' is made to say, ' till we shall reach Ireland, a place farther away than Scythia, three hundred years hence.’ We can cut out the picturesque exaggeration, and still be left with the conception of a long voyage, in the tiny ships of the time, over trackless seas. On such an Odyssey there would be no room except for the warriors themselves, whose faces were fixed on the Land of their Golden Dreams, beneath the western horizon. This reconstruction has many advantages over the

earlier, simpler, but no longer sufficient explanation of the linguistic phenomena. If a Pre-Celtic language had been spoken throughout Ireland down to a date so late as the third or fourth century B.C., a very complete conquest would have been necessary to destroy it so thoroughly. It should have left many traces in the later speech, and especially in place-names. And such a conquest should also have its reflection in a very complete change of culture. But there is, in fact, no such change. The persistence

of bronze-age types, the extreme poverty of La Tene relics, show that in culture the intruders made very little change in the population-except possibly to depress them economically. We cannot safely argue from the particular to the general; but we can see a symbol of the change in the two contrasted cauldrons here depicted. The one (fig. 17) is the splendid late bronze-age specimen of * Celtic ' date but doubtless of aboriginal workmanship, for many years in private possession in Co. Tyrone, and now happily added to the National Collection. It is an un­ usually fine example of the remarkable type of objects,

handiwork, making a heroic but unsuccessful attempt to imitate a bit of La Tene ornament that had fallen under his notice. Incidentally we may remark that the preservative quality

of peat has prevented numerous wooden objects from fall­ ing into decay; and that we have in consequence a fuller insight into the domestic equipment of the folk than would otherwise be available. The carpentry is crude, on the whole. Vessels and other objects are hacked out of blocks of wood. There is little or no evidence of skill in joinery : even when a four-legged table was made, such as was found at Killygarvan, Co. Tyrone, in 1844, the whole is cut out, legs and all, from a single piece of firwood. True, the legs were only 6 in long, but this does not diminish the primitiveness of the technique. These two cauldrons therefore show us just what the

linguistic phenomena would lead us to expect; a popula­ tion that had suffered misfortune, but had kept to its old culture and its old language. The archaeological evidence therefore shows us the population of Ireland in the following strata: (1) A small body of Teutonic military conquerors, who

have introduced iron, but no art; who have made them­ selves landlords, and marry native women, so that their descendants lose the environmental marks of Teutonism (religion, language, etc.). (2) The Sword-Folk (Goidelic) now deprived of their

independence, but speaking their Goidelic language, and maintaining their bronze-age culture with very little change. (3) A few stray artists, here and there, presumably

coming out of Gaul or Britain, who ply their craft in the country (Turoe Stone, etc.) but who exercise singularly little influence on the local culture. (4) The aboriginal Halberd-Folk (Pictish) serfs, and still

deprived of all civil rights: perhaps still speaking their aboriginal language, which survived in the non-Gaelicized parts of Scotland. There are very few Pictish place-names surviving even in Scotland, a fact which has been used as an argument in favour of Pictish having been a Celtic tongue. But the real explanation is quite simple. To Gaelic and Norse speakers, Pictish (besides being the language of a despised people) was difficult both in con­ struction and in pronunciation. Even the missionary Colum Cille was obliged to make his communications through an interpreter. Mark Twain's friends, on their tour in Palestine, substituted words adapted from their own speech for what they called the ‘ dreadful foreign names ’ of people and places which they found in possession. The English in Ireland, in the time of Charles II, did the same thing. And so did the colonists of Scotland. Thus there are important differences between this iron-

age invasion and that of the Sword-Folk. The latter was a colonization, starting from the country now called England: the former was a military expedition, starting from some eastern European source. But there are also certain notable analogies; both of them were mere single episodes in much more extensive shuffles of the pieces on the European chessboard. The Iron invasion of Ireland coincides, as we have seen,

with a great unrest among the Celtic peoples. Likewise, at the time of the incursion of the Sword-Men, we find Dorians and Achaeans in turn pressing down upon the bronze-age Pelasgians (we express no opinion as to where they came from, a point much in dispute, but here irrelevant): and extending their conquests into Asia Minor. The Trojan War is one of the incidents of this revolution, which utterly destroyed the ancient civilization of the near East, and left the stage clear for the glorious development of Classical Greece.