Irish city which the Roman historian calls "Menapia2 in Ireland." It was in the reign of Carbri Lifeachar over Ireland that this, his brother Irishman, was ruling over Britain.

Of course various kings of Ireland were, at various times, styled kings of Britain also. And parts of Britain, if not all of it, paid tribute to these Irish overlords. Cormac's Glossary tells that the first lap-dog was brought into Ireland by Irish envoys who were collecting the Irish tribute from southwestern England. "For at that time," says the Glossary, "the sway of the Gaels was great over the Britons. They divided Alba between them, and each one knew the habitation of his friends." (Which is to say that the various resident Irish lords or deputies in Britain, were thickly located, in touch one with another.) "And," it continues, "the Gaels did not carry on less agriculture at the east of the seas, than at home in Scotia. And they erected habitations and regal forts there."

Roman coins, some probably taken in tribute, some in war booty, and some in trade, have been found in various parts of Ireland. Gold coins of the times of Theodosius and Valentinian, and copper coins of Nero, have been found in Meath, Antrim, and Derry, respectively.

Though, because of the independent tribal system and consequent want of cohesion, the Irish nation was weak for defence, yet was it strong for offence-and could, and did, again and again, brave the best of the Roman legions. It was their wonderful discipline and their weight of numbers that enabled the Romans to overcome the bold Irish attacks in Britain. And when at length Rome, threatened by the invading hordes nearer home, had to call back from her island outposts, legion after legion of her soldiers, and that her army in Britain was weakened, the Irish (Scots, as they were always called by the Roman historians) in alliance with the Picts, helped to push south the garrisons that were left and eventually to crowd them off the island.

Britain was then left at the mercy of her northern and western neighbours, and as the British had grown effete under Roman occupation, and were no longer fighters, they suffered fearfully from these invasions.

It was after the destruction of Emania (A. D. 331) that the Irish and Pictish invasions of Britain assumed their most serious phase. The Connaught royal house and its kin was then securely

2 Ptolemy, a couple of centuries earlier, also mentions this Irish city. It has not been identified by our historians.

established over the greater part of Ireland-and probably because of this easy security at home the Irish fighters had both time and inclination to look abroad for that excitement and adventure which was the breath of their nostrils. Soon, so successfully and so threateningly did they carry on their British operations that in 343 the Emperor himself, Constantine, had to take personal charge of repelling them.

Marcellinus records another invasion of the Picts and Scots in the year 360-when they proved a terror to the Romans-and still another in 364, at the inconvenient time when Gaul was being ravaged by Continental enemies of the Empire-and yet again in 368. He always refers to them as the Scots. (The country which we now call Scotland was then inhabited by the Picts in the North, and by the Caledonii in the South. The colony of Scots from Ireland which later gave the country its name, was still an insignificant tribe clinging to the islands and headlands opposite Antrim.)

Probably this latter invasion, as well as some subsequent ones, was conducted by the Ard-Righ Crimthann, uncle of Niall. Irish records say that Crimthann the Great reigned over Britain (meaning, of course, a chief part of Britain) for 13 years, from 366 to 379. The Roman general, Theodosius, father of the Emperor of that name, led the Roman legions against this victorious Irish king, and finally drove him out. The Roman poet, Claudian, says: "And Theodosius, following the Scots through all windings, broke the waves of the Hyperborean Sea with his adventurous oars. From references in the writings of the Romans, it is evident that the Irish and the Picts had at various times made treaty with them. Ammianus Marcellinus, speaking of the invasion of 360, says that those nations "had broken the agreed peace in the British provinces."

In 386 the invaders, successfully fighting their way, had almost reached the gates of London. Theodosius overcame and drove them back.

The British historian Gildas, records three great invasions of the allied fighters, the Picts and the Scots-in 396, 418 and 426. For their attacks had then grown fiercer-as the Roman garrison in Britain had been depleted for much needed service against the Continental invaders of the Empire. Each time the Britons had to beg their Roman conquerors to return and protect them. They sent embassies to Rome thus entreating. By command of the Romans they made the great dike across their Northern boundary from sea to sea, to keep out the invaders. But the Romans were scarcely gone when the invaders came flying over the dike. And

the Britons had once more to cry out for Roman protection. The next time that the Romans returned to free them from their oppressors, they ordered the Britons to put up a defence of solid masonwork across their country. And in consequence was built the great Roman wall, 12 feet high and 8 feet thick-extending from sea to sea.

But walls were useless against these persevering and indomitable invaders. The Britons tediously had to appeal to Rome again. In their appeal they said that their "barbarian" enemies drove them upon the sea, and the sea threw them back upon the barbarians, so that they were either slaughtered or drowned.

In the year 450 the Britons, to save themselves from their enemies, chose as their king a strong man, Vortigern, who, it is claimed by some, was Irish, his proper title being Mor-Tigearna (high-lord).

Finally, to free themselves from the yoke of their neighbours, the British in 474 invited over Hengis and Horsa with their Saxon host. They readily came, cleared the country of the Picts and Scots, and then appropriated it for themselves. The poor harried Britons had exchanged one yoke for another.

A long while after, the Irish were still dominating Wales. One particularly important Irish invasion of Wales, an account of which is contained in an ancient Welsh manuscript, was conducted by an Irish commander, whom they named Ganfael, which probably stands for Ceannfaelad-and who may have been Ceannfaelad, son to King Blathmac, mentioned by the Four Masters under date. 670. After this conquest of Wales, the Welsh account says that the Irish ruled there for 59 years. They were driven out bv Caswallawn.

Sullivan, in his introduction to O'Curry, says that for a long time Wales was ruled by chiefs who were not only Irish but probably owed allegiance to Irish kings.

The Christian faith which the whole Irish people imbibed so readily from Patrick during the fifth century caused a radical change in their character. After that century, there is not, with the exception of the presumed Welsh conquest, any other recorded instances of military raids abroad. If we compare the history of Ireland in the 6th century, after Christianity was received, with that of the 4th century, before the coming of Christianity, the wonderful change and contrast is probably much more striking than any other such change in any other nation known to history.

CHAPTER XVII

GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND

BEFORE quitting the story of the Race in its pagan days, let us see definitely just what stage of civilisation the Irish people had now reached.

In the centuries before St. Patrick the keen and inquiring, intellectual, ones at the Irish courts must have had a fair general knowledge of what was transpiring in the intellectual and commercial world around the Mediterranean. And in turn that world must have had a general knowledge of Ireland and its circumstances. Ptolemy's second century map of Ireland with its good, general outline of the shape and proportions of the Island, and of its coastline, and the generally correct details marked upon it, is a surprise to those who took it for granted that Hibernia or Ierna was little more than a name to the learned of Greece and Rome in the first century of the Christian Era. The general correctness, for instance, with which Ptolemy traces the River Shannon, and other rivers and lakes,' is significant-as well as his properly locating such royal sites as Ailech, and Emain Macha.

Marcianus Heracleota, in the third century, was acquainted with sixteen different Irish clans, and records that there were in Ireland eleven cities of note. These assemblages of habitations which he called cities were not of course those commerical centres which the Romans usually knew as cities. They were evidently the great assemblages of habitations that gathered around a royal court. When we note that Tara had twenty acres of raths, that these raths were covered with residences of the leading ones, and that we might naturally expect, in addition, other many hundreds of residences-habitations of the common people-upon the plain and around the foot of the hill, we may well understand the meaning of Marcianus' "eleven cities of note." (We may here add that the chief structures then were almost always built of wood --with some bronze-while the habitations of the general mass of the people were constructed of upright poles supporting walls of wicker work, or else were simple bothies.)

But in the first century of the Christian Era, Tacitus tells us that the Irish ports were well known to commerce and to merchants. The Phoenicians undoubtedly carried on a fair trade between the Mediterranean and Ireland. The very fertile island, fruitful in soil, and not poor in minerals, had much to give to the Mediterranean traders, and much to get from them. When their ships sailed into the various Irish ports, we can readily see the Phoenician agents travelling thence, at head of bands of burdened slaves, white, and brown, and black, bent under the rich merchandise of Tyre and Sidon-penetrating the country, to the various inland royal courts, to the duns of the chiefs and brughaids, and to the many great fairs, for which Ireland was then distinguished. And we can see them returning, laden with the wealth of Ireland's woods and vales, and of her earth-pelts and metals and ores, and corn; rare products, too, of her weaver's shuttle; fancy ones of her women's needle; and delicate work of her craftsmen. Around the big blazing fire, at the Court, in the evening, we can hear these merchants, mellowed by Irish mead, enchanting the king, the king's scholars, his warriors and visitors, with account of the works and the wars, and the laws and the lore, the statesmen, the orators, the poets and historians, of their far fascinating world. And we can furthermore see occasional ambitious natives-with that roving disposition for which a few centuries later they became noted, if not notorious, on the Continent-some thirsting for knowledge, and some for adventure, returning with the merchants to their ships, and sailing away to the far lands that seemed haloed in glory. Most of these adventurers were eventually swallowed up in oblivion, so far as concerned the land and the kin that they left; though it is certain in later years there were not a few citizen ornaments of the far-flung proud Roman Empire, who, if from them were torn the toga, would stand revealed exiles of Eirinn-such, for instance, as the great Latin poet Sedulius (Seadhal), the Christian Virgil, and the noted Roman lawyer and famous heresiarch Celestius (Cellach), of whom we shall treat in a future chapter.

Undoubtedly Ireland was then rich in metals, and the hands of its unsurpassed craftsmen deftly wrought from them not only the utilitarian article, but also ornaments whose beauty astonishes connoisseurs to-day. From the common sickle of the far-away bronze age to the delicately beautiful spear of days only a little less ancient, and to the beautiful, spiral-decorated bronze ornaments— of all of which, rare specimens still exist-Ireland can show samples of pre-Christian metalwork which in perfectness are paralleled by the productions of few of the most ancient countries.