When two countries, or sections of countries, stand geographically so related to one another that their union under a common government will conduce to the advantage of one of them, such countries will continue separate as long only as there is equality of force between them, or as long as the country which desires to preserve its independence possesses a power of resistance so vigorous that the effort to overcome it is too exhausting to be permanently maintained.-FROUDE.

LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EARLY RACES

CIRCUMSTANCES were favourable in Ireland to the growth and preservation of ethnic legends. Among these favourable circumstances were the long continuance of tribal government, and the existence of a special class whose duty it was to preserve the genealogies of the ruling families, and keep in memory the deeds of their ancestors. Long pedigrees and stories of forays and battles were preserved, but under the necessary condition of undergoing gradual phonetic change according as the popular language altered. During many centuries there had been no conquest by foreign races to destroy these traditions; internal conquests and displacements of tribes confuse but do not eradicate traditions and pedigrees.

When the Irish were converted to Christianity and became acquainted with the story of the deluge, the confusion of tongues, and the unity of the human race, the suide (sages) naturally endeavoured to fill up the gap between their eponyms and Noah. The pedigrees now began to be committed to writing, and, as they could for the first time be compared with one another, a wide field was opened to the inventive faculties of the scribes. The result has been the construction of a most extraordinary legendary history, which under the constant care of official suide acquired a completeness, fulness, and a certain degree of consistency which is wonderful.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries this legendary history was fitted with a chronology, and synchronised with the annals of historical nations. We may assume with confidence that a history of a group of tribes admittedly of diverse origins, consisting mainly of names of persons and battles transmitted by memory, must necessarily lack all proportion, not alone as regards absolute, but even as regards relative time; that personages and events may appear in the background that should be in the foreground, and the converse;

[- ca. 100 B.C.]

nay, even that the same personages and events may figure at times and places far apart.

Keeping these things in view, the Lebar Gabhala, or Book of Invasions, a curious compilation, or rather compilations, for there are several editions of it, of the ethnic legends of Ireland, will help us to give the main facts of the early peopling of Ireland. Our guide records the coming of five principal peoples, namely, the followers of Partholan or Bartholomew, those of Nemed, the Firbolgs, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Scots or Milesians."

Partholan and his people were supposed to have come from middle Greece. For three centuries they occupied Ireland, and then all died of a plague. The next comers were the Nemedians who under their king, Nemed, came from Scythia in thirty ships, each carrying thirty warriors. Like Partholan's people they, too, or at any rate most of them, died of the plague; but not until after they had left records of heroic fighting with a seafaring race of invaders, known as the Formorians, who gained some sort of a foothold on the island. The next colonising race, the Firbolgs, seem to have landed at five different places under several chiefs. They were apparently of British origin. The Firbolgs had brought the entire island in subjection before the coming of the fourth race of colonists, the Tuatha Dé Danann. According to the legends, these newcomers were descendants of some of the race of Nemed, who had escaped the fury of the plague and the swords of the Formorians. The newcomers fought with the Firbolgs for the sovereignty of the island and worsted them. The last of the prehistoric races of Ireland were the Scots,' or as they were sometimes called, the Milesians.a

With all their drawbacks, the Irish ethnic legends, when stripped of their elaborate details and biblical and classical loans, express the broad facts of the peopling of Ireland, and are in accordance with the results of archæological investigation. At the earliest period the country was well wooded, and the interior full of marshes and lakes; it was occupied by a sparse population, who appear in later times as "forest tribes" (Tuatha Feda), and were doubtless of the aboriginal (Iberic) race of western and southern Europe. The story of Partholan represents the incoming of the first bronze-armed Celts, who were a Goidelic tribe akin to the later Scots that settled on the sea-coast, and built the fortresses occupying the principal headlands. They formed with the forest tribes the basis of the population in the Early Bronze age. Afterwards came the various tribes known by the general name of Firbolgs.

It is not necessary to suppose that all the tribes included under this name came at the same time, or even that they were closely akin. The legend names several tribes, and tells us that they came into Ireland at different places from Britain. The effect of their immigrations now appears to have been that in the north the people were Cruithni, or Picts of the Goidelic branch of the Celts; in the east and centre, British and Belgic tribes; and in Munster, when not distinctly Iberic, of a southern or Gaulish type.

The fertile plain lying between the Wicklow and Carlingford mountains was occupied by the tribe of Nemed before the arrival of the Firbolgs, if we believe the legend; but the event certainly belongs to a later period, though still to the time of the movements and displacement of peoples which led to the immigration of those tribes. The Formorians, with whom the Nemedians fought, may have been merely some of those incoming tribes. The Irish legend

The Scots carried their pedigree back without a break to Noah. The immediate eponym of the new race was Galam from Gal, valour, a name which might be expressed by the Latin miles, a knight, whence came the names Milesius and Milesians.

[ca. 100 B.C.-1 A.D.]

brings the Nemedians from the east of Europe, which, of course, means only that they came from a distance, perhaps from Armorica or some other part of Gaul.

The Milesian legend seems to consist of two or perhaps of three events. Eber and Erimon, two sons of Galam, or Milesius, the leaders of the invading forces, fight a battle at Sleab Mis in western Kerry with the Tuatha De Danann, whom they defeat. Eber or Heber then marches to Tailti in Meath, while his brother Erimon or Heremon sails round to the mouth of the Boyne, where he lands and marches to meet his brother advancing from the south. This skilful strategic movement betrays the late invention of the legend. The first fact that underlies the story is the incoming of some powerful and wellarmed tribe who seized upon the plain between the Liffey and the Boyne, and made it the centre of an encroaching power.

The new tribes arrived in Ireland towards the close of the prehistoric period, and not long before the beginning of the Christian era, or possibly as late as the first century of it. They were Goidelic, and were related to the dominant clans of Munster and Ulster, though perhaps not so closely to the latter as to the former. When the sons of Galam had defeated the kings of the tribes of the Dé Danann, they partitioned Ireland between themselves and their kinsmen. Erimon got Leinster and Connaught; Eber Find, his brother, north Munster; Lugaid, son of Ith, brother of Galam, south Munster, and Eber, son of Ir, son of Galam, Ulster.

Eber Find, the leader of the north Munster tribes, and Lugaid of south Munster, were grandsons of Breogan, the stem-father of all the new tribes. A long struggle took place between their descendants, in which those of Eber Find ultimately gained the upper hand, and the descendants of Lugaid were gradually pressed into a corner of the county of Cork. This struggle and the position of the tribes of Eber in the plain of Munster seem to show that the latter were, what the legend pretends, a part of the incoming tribes which we shall henceforward call Scots. There seems little doubt that these clans of Breogan or Scots were closely related to the Brigantes,' perhaps they were even tribes of that great clan. The Brigantes who occupied the basin of the Barrow and Nore, and ultimately the county Waterford, according to Ptolemy, support this view. The clan of Lugaid, grandson of Breogan, is almost certainly that which used the Ogam inscribed stones, the last that came into the country, and with which originated the story of the migration from Spain.

THE SCOTI

The opening of the historic period was marked by a great struggle of tribes, which took place about the beginning of the Christian era, and of which Irish annalists have left us but very scanty information, and that confused and misleading. This struggle was brought about by the arrival from abroad of a new tribe, or the rise of an old one. The former view seems the more probable, for at that time great displacements of the Celts were taking place everywhere consequent on the conquests of the Romans, and some of the displaced tribes may have migrated to Ireland. The victors in the struggle appear afterwards as Scots; the conquered tribes are called Aithech Tuatha, that is, vassal tribes, because they paid daer or base rent.

The victors consisted of forty-six tribes, among them being the Scotraige or Scotraide. This tribe probably took a foremost place in the subsequent invasions of Britain; and, it having thus acquired the leadership of the free

[ca. 1-160 A.D.] clans, the latter became all known to foreigners as the Scoti, a name which was subsequently extended to the whole people. That this was the way in which the name was first given is shown by its not having been used in Irish, but only in Latin documents.

In the struggle between the free and servile tribes the latter appear to have succeeded in throwing off the yoke of the free clans or Scots, but after some time the latter, under the leadership of Tuathal, called Techtmar, or the Legitimate (ob. cir. 160 A.D.), recovered their power and took effective measures to preserve it by making some kind of redistribution of the servile tribes, or more probably making a plantation of Scots among them, and building fortresses capable of affording mutual aid. The duns and raths on the great central plain of Ireland to which Tuathal's measure was probably confined appear to have been erected on some strategic plan of this kind, intended to keep up a chain of communication, and prevent the combination of the servile classes. Tuathal in fact founded a kind of feudal system which ruled Ireland while the Scotic power endured.'

Another measure of Tuathal was the formation of the kingdom of Meath to serve as mensal land of the ard ri or over-king. He was not only the founder of the central monarchy, but also it would seem the organiser of the religious system of the people, which he used as a means of securing the allegiance of their princes by holding their chief shrines in his power, while leaving them the rents derived from them. An act of Tuathal, which marks his power and the firm grasp which he had secured over the country, was the infliction of a heavy fine on the province of Leinster, a legend tells us, for an insult offered to him by one of its kings. This fine, called the boroim laigen or cow-tribute of Leinster, was levied until the sixth century. It was a constant source of oppression and war while it lasted, and helped to cripple the power of Leinster.

To carry out his measures of conquest and subjugation Tuathal is credited with having established a kind of permanent military force which afterwards became so celebrated in legendary story as the Fiann or Fenians. He may have seen Roman troops, and attempted as far as his circumstances would permit to form a military tribe organised somewhat after the manner of a legion. Among the other measures attributed to Tuathal was the regulation of the various professions and handicrafts. The former he must necessarily have done as part of his religious organisation, for the various professions were merely the grades of the druidical hierarchy.

RISE OF MUNSTER AND CONQUEST OF ULSTER

If we accept the story of the plantation of the broken Aithech Tuatha, Tuathal's power must have extended over the whole country; but it was practically confined to Meath and Leinster, and perhaps Olnegmacht. Ulaid was independent. In Munster the clan of Degaid had conquered a large tract of the country in the middle of the province, and forced the clan of Dergtind or descendants of Eber into the southwest of Cork and Kerry. From their peculiar position in the south they must have acknowledged the supremacy of Tuathal and his successors.

In the reign of Cond, surnamed of the Hundred Battles, grandson of

The Aithech Tuatha, or servile tribes, have been identified by some antiquarians with the British tribes known as Atticotti. There is nothing improbable in the notion that when beaten they may have crossed over to Britain, where they became known as Atticotti, and were associated with the Scots in their devastations of the Roman provinces.

[ca. 160-254 A.D.]

Tuathal, the clan of Degaid had succeeded in getting the upper hand of the clans both of Eber and Lugaid; and Munster, now divided into three petty kingdoms, was ruled over by three princes of that family. A chief of the Eberians named Eogan, better known as Mug Nuadat, by the aid of his fosterfather the king of Leinster, succeeded in defeating the Degaidian princes and driving them out of Munster. The latter asked the aid of Cond the overking, who took up their cause, and a fierce war arose, in which Cond was beaten and compelled to divide Ireland with his rival. The boundary line ran from the Bay of Galway to Dublin along the great ridge of gravel which stretches across Ireland. The northern part was Leth Cuind or Cond's Half, and the southern part Leth Moga or Mug's Half. By this arrangement the present county of Clare, which had hitherto belonged to Olinegmacht, was transferred to Munster, to which it has ever since belonged.

It was about this time too that the former province received the name Connacht, now Connaught, from the name of King Cond. In the wars between Mug Nuadat and Cond a considerable number of foreigners are said to have been in the army of the former, among whom are specially named Spaniards. Perhaps these foreigners represent the tribe of Lugaid, and this was really the period of the arrival of that tribe in Ireland out of which grew the Milesian story. The earliest of the Ogam inscriptions are perhaps of this date, and support the view just stated.

Mug Nuadat must have been an able man, for he established his race so firmly that his descendants ruled Munster for a thousand years. He seems to have been as politic as warlike, for we are told he stored corn to save his people from famine. He was also enabled to give some to many chieftains who in a tribal community had no such forethought, and thus made them his vassals. His success, however, created a rivalry which lasted down to the final overthrow of the native government, and led to constant war and devastation, and mainly contributed to the final overthrow of the central monarchy. Although Munster remained nominally in subjection to that power, it was thenceforward in reality an independent kingdom, or rather federation of clans under the king of Cashel.

If the Scots failed to subdue the south thoroughly, they succeeded in crushing the Ultonians, and driving them ultimately into the southeastern corner of the province. One of Cond's successors, Fiacha Srabtine, was slain by his nephews, known as the three Collas. Finding an excuse in an insult offered to their grandfather, King Cormac, son of Art, they invaded Ulster, plundered and burned Emain Macha, the ancient seat of the kings of the Ultonians, and made "sword-land" of a large part of the kingdom, which was afterwards known as Airgeill or Oriel. Afterwards the sons of the celebrated Niall of the Nine Hostages, the most powerful monarch of the Scotic dynasty after Tuathal, also carved out principalities for themselves in Ulster which bore their names for centuries: Tir Conaill, or as it was called in English Tyrconnel, the land of Conall, and Tir Eogain, the land of Eogan, from which has come the name of one of the Ulster counties, Tyrone.

INVASIONS OF BRITAIN BY THE IRISH

Constant allusions are made in the legends of the prehistoric kings to warlike expeditions to Alba. The Annals of the Four Masters, quoting the Annals of Tigernach, tell us at the year 240 that Cormac, son of Art and grandson of Cond, sailed across the sea and obtained the sovereignty of Alba. This Cormac was a noteworthy king, who ruled with much state at Tara from about