and from what we know of the Greeks at a like period of growth. In art, in arms, in polity they were, up to the time of St. Patrick, about on a level with the Greeks of the time of which Homer sings; nor need we be surprised that a resemblance has been traced between ancient Irish and ancient Greek military monuments. The bards, as in early Greece, and in Germany in early times, held an important place in society and wielded great power. If it was their profession to flatter the strong, they were often the protectors of the weak. What was thought amongst the Teutons of the bards may be gathered from Uhland's great ballad, and in Ireland the wandering poet, who was credited with divine powers, often made himself unpopular with kings and princes. The bards were the journalists, orators, and historians of those times, and, before being admitted to the sacred order, they had to pass through a long course of training. Their religion was Druidism. They worshipped the sun, and in the neighbourhood of Dublin, to this day, the student witnesses survivals of this worship. The Irish-speaking Celt still calls the 1st of May "La Bealtinne," and throughout the island fires are lit, which are the embers of a once-living worship, the joyful greeting of the returning sun-god. There was a national code and recognised interpreters. Common ownership of land precedes separate ownership.* In Russia and Hindostan the village communities hold the land in common, and in Ireland the land was the property of the Sept. That such was the custom among the Greeks and Romans, in early times, may be gathered from the redistributions of land and the agrarian laws, from the Roman clientage and the Greek tribes, which are evidently cognate institutions of the Clan. One of the most curious facts in comparative politics is, that the custom sanctioned by the Brehon laws of the creditor fasting upon the debtor exists at this hour in Hindostan, and has actually been practised within living memory in Ulster.

Early in our era, the Scots of Erin colonised the west coast of Scotland and the adjacent islands. Traditions of this coloniza

• Maine's Ancient Law.

+ Goldwin Smith's "Irish History and Irish Character."

IRISH COLONIZATION OF SCOTLAND.

11

tion and of frequent intercourse still linger in Scotland.* They acted with their friends in North Britain against the Roman, and in the reign of Constantine's successor the Irish and Picts

* The following remarkable article, which appeared in the Inverness Highlander, in reference to an Irish political question, is understood to be from the pen of an eminent Gaelic scholar :-"There was a time when Clann nan Guidheal an guaillibha a cheile did not mean merely that a handful of Camerons, or of Mackays, or of Macdonalds, should yoke themselves firmly together in crossing a burn or tracking a morass; far less did it teach that a small body of Celts was to be compacted together for purposes of offence towards another body of Celts. And, even supposing that in remote and unchristian times this brotherhood did happen to be so limited, we have arrived at a time when, to say the very least, the bonds should embrace all the branches of the family of the Gaidheal. We are thankful to say that the tendency of the more intellectual enterprises of the race in our day is towards this wider brotherhood. Dr. MacLauchlan, Campbell

of Islay, Matthew Arnold, Professor Morley, and even Professor Blackie, who is supposed to be more intense than broad, are unflinching in their declarations that Celtic learning, Celtic literature, and Celtic history to be what they ought to be, must embrace the learning and the philosophy, the history and the polity of the Scottish, the Irish, the Manx, the Cornish, the Armoric and the Welsh Celts; that we must make careful use of the living speech and current traditions of Highlanders, of the fragments of literature found in the Isle of Man and in Cornwall, of the Cymbri, and of the vast stores of Irish MSS. which have escaped the ravages of Teutonic destroyers. This is a valuable lesson in regard to other things, as well as being a valuable fact in itself, and it points to the duty of the different members of the great family drawing upon each other for cooperation in other departments. Even in the matter of war it is notorious how the Irish bore so brave a hand with the Highlanders in resisting the Danes; a fact of which the mixture of Irish and Scottish names, and some of the confusion of Scottish and Irish history are the natural results. There is not a corner in our Scottish Highlands, there is hardly a pedigree of an old Highland family, which does not bear out this remark. What are the Macdonalds, the Macdonnells, the Donnellies, the Connolies, the O'Connells, but the one grand family of Clann Domhnuill The Mackays, the Mackies, the Macghies, and even the Hoeys, the O'Gheochs, and the Keoghs, are so many modifications of Clann Aoidh. The very Campbells, who have been so largely implicated in the work of denationalizing Scotland, actually claim to be of the Irish stock of O'Duibhne. And, at the great battle of Cluan-tairbh, at which the Irish under Brian Boirmhe overthrew the Danes, in the beginning of the eleventh century, Feochaibh nah-Alba are assigned an honourable position in the records of the time. Another thing, perhaps still more to the purpose, is the very curious fact, that so very large a proportion of Highland "fiction," of legendary lore-corresponding in some measure at the time of its composition with our romances and with our more sober works of fictionshould have direct reference to Irish characters, events and scenes.

No one

is surprised to find this the case in Cantyre and in Wigtonshire. But it is as cer

are said to have reached London and occupied it. It required all the ability of Theodosius to save the province from destruction. He defeated Saxon, Pict, and Scot, and unless Claudian indulges in a wilder poetic license than common, the number of Scots from Ireland must have been very large. The poet describes the victorious general as pursuing them to the extremity of Britain, and slaying so many that the Orcades were stained with Saxon gore, Thule warmed with Pictish blood, and Erin left mourning over heaps of her slain Scots.*

There are traces in South-west Britain of Irish occupation. Some think that Wales was invaded by the Irish.† Irish occupations are referred to in Welsh traditions. One invasion is mentioned in the Triads, and it would appear that, besides the settlements in Scotland and North Wales, the Irish dominion extended over South Wales and Cornwall. In Cormac's glossary we find an envoy sent over to the south-west of England to

tainly, and perhaps more generally, so in the far north Highlands. In GlenUrquhart; in Stratherrick; in Cromarty even, which has been so drenched with Teutonic soporifics; in Applecross; in Skye; and in parts of the Long Island, the setting up of Highland families from Irish offshoots, the marrying of Highland ladies into Irish royal and other families, et cetera, are leading facts in the pedigrees and traditions handed down from remote periods. The wide and deep hold, for example, of the story of Clann Uisneach all over the Highlands is an instructive fact, and one fraught with kindly outcomings from Celt to Celt. Then there is the great Ossianic drama, which is now established to have been neither exclusively Scottish, nor exclusively Irish, but a large network over both countries-wide enough, indeed, as is now being shown by Dr. Hately Waddell, to embrace the territory of Cymbri also. After giving illustrations in regard to our family and friendly relations with the Manx, and to the benefits which are to be derived in a variety of forms from a more intimate acquaintance with the Cornish, we might pass over to Brittany, trace the relationship, and then point to a still wider relationship exemplified by the terms of amity which subsisted so long between the French nation and that of Alban. What we do profess is, that there is a nationality existing among us, that there are traditions, that there are latent sentiments, that there are common interests apart from, and in addition to, those principles of justice and those sentiments of fair play, which should make Highlanders, above all men, give Cothram na Feinne to the Irish. * Maduerunt Saxone fuso

Orcades incaluit Pictorum sanguine Thule :

Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis Ierne.

THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY

13

collect tribute, and this is borne out by the romance of Tristan and Iseult, in which the uncle of Iseult is sent to demand tribute from Marc, King of Cornwall, uncle of Tristan. The tales of King Arthur belong to the period of the Irish occupation.

With the introduction of Christianity there came a new element of civilization, and the warm Celtic nature responded with enthusiastic fervour to the pure and ennobling influences of the Gospel. Their religion burned "like a star in Western Europe."* Columba, or Columbkill, a man of the royal race of Nial, undertook to carry the glad tidings to the Gael, the Pict, the Briton and the Scandinavian, and founded the holy island of Iona, whence went forth missionaries to Iceland, to the Orkneys, to Northumbria, to Man, and to South Britain.t Columbanus did a like work among the half-barbarous Franks, and in France, in

Froude, Vol. I., p. 15.

+"We must remember that before the landing of the English in Britain, the Christian Church comprised every country, save Germany, in Western Europe, as far as Ireland itself. The conquest of Britain by the pagan English thrust a wedge of heathendom into the heart of this great communion, and broke it into two unequal parts. On the one side lay Italy, Spain and Gaul, whose churches owned obedience to the see of Rome; on the other, the Church of Ireland. But the condition of the two portions of Western Christendom was very different. While the vigour of Christianity in Italy, Gaul and Spain was exhausted in a bare struggle for life, Ireland, which remained unscourged by invaders, drew from its conversion an energy such as it has never known since Christianity had been received there with a burst of popular enthusiasm, and letters and arts sprang up rapidly in its train. The science and Biblical knowledge which fled from the Continent took refuge in famous schools, which made Durrow and Armagh the universities of the West. The new Christian life soon beat too strongly to brook confinement within the bounds of Ireland itself. Patrick, the first missionary of the island, had not been half a century dead when Irish Christianity flung itself with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathenism which was rolling in upon the Christian world. Irish missionaries laboured among the Picts of the Highlands, and among the Frisians of the northern seas. An Irish missionary, Columban, founded monasteries in Burgundy and the Apennines. The Canton of St. Gall still commemorates in its name another Irish missionary before whom the spirit of flood and fell fled wailing over the waters of Lake Constance. For a time it seemed as if the course of the world's history was to be changed, as if the older Celtic race that Roman and German had swept before them had turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the Church of the West." History of the English People. J. R. Green, M.A., Examiner in the School of Modern History, Oxford.

Switzerland, in Italy there remain monuments of the sacred zeal which carried the truth to the Lombards-men, like themselves, of Celtic blood-and caused the Gospel star to shine on the darkness of the Main and Upper Rhine. While Columbanus was passing through Switzerland, one of his fellow-labourers was taken ill and could not proceed. The invalid on recovering, remained with the people who had nursed him, and St. Gall commemorates the work he accomplished, and, indeed, enduring traces of the Irish missions may be found in every part of Europe. It was not the sanctity only of the Irish which stood high at this time. Their scholarship was equally illustrious. Eric of Auxerre writes to Charles the Bald: "What shall I say of Ireland, which, despising the dangers of the deep, is migrating with her whole train of philosophers to our coast?" Not only did Ireland send out apostles and philosophers to other countries, she welcomed pupils from every compass to her schools. Thousands of students from all parts of Europe came for instruction to the schools of Armagh, and to " that melancholy plain where the Shannon flows by the lonely ruins of Clonmacanoise."+ Bede tells us that the pestilence of 656 found "many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English nation" in Ireland, who had crossed thither for purposes of study, and he adds,-"The Scots willingly received them all, and took care to supply them with food, as also to furnish them with books to read and their teaching gratis." Charlemagne welcomed Irish scholars and Irish preachers as powerful allies in the civilizing work he had to do. He promoted them to places of honour in his court; he employed them to teach the Frankish youth. Mr. Goldwin Smith recalls how "Scotus

The progress of the Irish Columbanus at her very doors roused into new life the energies of Rome. Gregory determined to attempt the conversion of Britain, but when the Roman mission in Kent sank into reaction, the Irish mission came forward to supply its place. "The labour of Aidan, the victories of Oswald and Oswi seemed to have annexed England to the Irish Church;" and the monks of Lindisfarne, or of the new religious houses whose foundation followed that of Lindisfarne, looked for ecclesiastical tradition to Ireland, and quoted for guidance the instruction of Columba.-Hist. of the English People.

Goldwin Smith.