Ancient tradition has it that a few generations before the reign of Niall, three brothers, the ‘Three Collas’, relatives of the then “king of Tara”, Muiredach Tírech, first initiated the attack on Ulster, though some scholars now feel the actual invasion was the work of Niall and his “sons”, and took place during his reign. The central battle was at Achadh lethderg, probably near Farney in County Monaghan in 331 AD.”The Collas asked: ‘what country dost thou of thy power the most readily assign us, that we make swordland of it? (for warriors better than the Collas there were none). Muiredach said: ‘attack Ulster; they are not kindly disposed to us.’ But yonder was a warrior force too great for the Collas; so they went to the men of Connacht, and became their protégés, and they received them. Subsequently Connacht came with them, seven battalions strong all told, and they were at the cairn of Achadh lethderg in Farney, in Ulster. From that cairn they deliver seven battles against Ulster, one daily to a week’s end: being six fought by Connacht and one by the Collas.

Every single day Ulster was routed; the Collas’ battle was on the last day; recreant failure in fighting was none there; the battle was maintained for a summer’s day and night, till blood reached shields; hard by the cairn is coll na nothar ‘Hazel of the Wounded.’ [In this last battle] Ulster gave way at break of the second day; the slaughter lasted as far as Glenree. A week then the others spent harrying Ulster, and they made swordland of the country”.At the time of Niall’s attempt at conquest we do not know what type of internal political structure existed in Ulster. Previous to the attack on the North, the existence of the massive earthwork defences — the ‘Great Wall’ — hinted strongly at a definite regional demarcation, even political boundary, and in the prehistoric period the territory of Ulster may not only have embraced the whole north of the island but stretched as far south as the Boyne valley. There was probably a system of tribal alliances, and within this the dominant political grouping were the Ulaid (from whom ‘Ulster’ was to get its name) — the Voluntii mentioned on Ptolemy’s map.

The Ulaid, according to Francis Byrne, “most probably represented a warrior caste of La Tène Celts from Britain, wielding an overlordship over indigenous tribes.” Among these ‘indigenous tribes’, who obviously still formed the majority of the population, the most important and the most populous were the Cruthin (Pytheas’ ‘Pretani’). These pre-Celtic peoples shared in the over-kingship of Ulster, particular those Cruthin later known as the Dál nAraidi (Dalaradians). The Cruthin more often than not bore the brunt of the wars against the Uí Néill, and at times claimed that it was they who were the fír-Ulaid, the ‘true Ulstermen’. In the far west of Ulster the Uí Neill conquest was said to have been the most complete, and most of the Ulster leaders there were driven east. Niall’s “sons”, Connall, Eogan (Owen), Enda and Cairpre, were said to have established their own kingdoms. But this was an eighth century propagandistic fiction. The territory of Connall, now Donegal, became known as Tir-Connall (the Land of Connall), and from Connall were descended the O’Donnells , but Conall was actually a Gaelicised Cruthin. The territory of Owen was Inishowen (the Island of Owen) but Owen was actually probably of the Ulaid. The Clan Owen later expanded into Tir Owen, which is now called Tyrone. From Owen descended the Northern O’Neills, the McLoughlins, O’Kanes, O’Hagans, O’Mullans, Devlins and other Gaelic-speaking settlers . Of all these “sons” Cairpre was probably the only genuine one, while Niall’s remaining sons stayed in control of the Midlands.

In the second century AD there came from upper Egypt one of the greatest of ancient scientists, known to us today as Ptolemy the Greek. He wrote a magnificent work comprising eight books, the Geographia Hyphegesis, in which he not only gives us an account of Ireland, but provides the earliest known “map” of the British Isles, on which is marked various tribal and geographical names. At the beginning of research into Ireland’s ‘Celtic’ roots, the map proved disconcerting to many scholars, because it seemed to contradict the then-assumed antiquity of the Gaelic occupation of Ireland.The renowned Irish linguist T.F. O’Rahilly could find no evidence of Gaelic names in Ptolemy’s account and pointed out that those names which could be traced were of Belgic British stock. To compensate it was suggested that Ptolemy was using sources going back to the fourth century BC. Yet the Roman occupation of the southern part of Britain had already been completed by 84 AD, and it is difficult to believe that the great scholars of the Roman Empire had to rely on sources 500 years old for information about an island their soldiers could see every day from the coast of Galloway and of which they had gained much intelligence through traders.

On Ptolemy’s map are recorded two capitals in Ireland, and two only. One is a place called Isamnion. Scholars now feel that this place is the ancient capital of Ulster, called Emain in the earliest Irish texts, and more generally known as Emain Macha. This ancient seat of the kings of Ulster — still surviving today as Navan Fort — contained a great ceremonial building, the timbers for which were felled at the same time as the massive defensive enclosure of the Dorsey, and presumably by the same population group.The second is Regia e Tera at the centre of County Galway, precisely where Turoe is today, the site of the famous Turoe Stone. An expansive inner ward of linear embankments encloses an acropolis and necropolis in the complex along the western slopes of Turoe and Knocknadala. According to Ptolemy this was “the most illustrious city in all Britannia (Pretania) and the most considerable in size, located in the Western part of Ireland”. It appears to have been the centre of Belgic power. At this time the indigenous Cruthin or Pretani still held Cruthintuatha Croghain, Rathcroghan in Roscommon.

The early phase of the use of iron implements in Ireland extended over about the last two centuries BC and a little beyond. It is marked by the appearance in north-east Ireland of such equipment as iron swords and their bronze scabbards whose ornamentation is based on continental rather than British models. This is consistent with the growing isolation from Britain apparent at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Implements of Late Bronze Age type continued to be a marked feature and burial customs persisted from the earlier Age. Excavations at Downpatrick showed that life continued unbroken.None of this can be taken as evidence of a Celtic migration to Ireland, rather it shows that an ancient land of craftsmen were learning new ways. If there was a movement from the Continent it may only have been of chieftains and their retinues or of craftsmen alone.  Originating, however, in the 19th Century Celtic Romantic movement, the Celtic myth has been pursued by writers of popular fiction and Irish republican nationalist political propaganda. The myth has become the reality and the reality has become the myth.

When the first groups of Celtic-speaking peoples did eventually begin to consolidate their position in various parts of Ireland, their kings took over for their royal sites the neolithic burial places still sacred to the local inhabitants. This has been partially confirmed by archaeological findings — for example, by the co-existence of Celtic Iron Age earthworks and a neolithic passage grave at the ‘Mound of the Hostages’ at Tara — and by Gaelic practice itself: the neolithic burial site at Knowth was chosen by the local Uí Néill kings of northern Brega as their centre from the eighth century onwards. As Francis Byrne remarked: “There can be no doubt at all of the extraordinary continuity of tradition exemplified at sites such as Tara and Knowth. This is in itself a strong argument for the survival of large elements of the megalithic people and of their beliefs in Ireland under the later Celtic overlay.” More notably, it seems that the Celtic newcomers, as Estyn Evan suggested, also “reinforced an older and persistent regional distinction… Gaelic culture as a whole, like the Gaelic language, seems to have taken shape by being poured into an Irish mould, a mould having varied regional designs,” and he asked, “Did the Celts conquer Ireland, or rather did Ireland conquer the Celts?”

One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence which lends weight to the probability that regional differences pertained in Ireland in the prehistoric period, is the continued existence today of parts of a great earthwork ‘wall’, which can be traced from Bundoran in County Donegal to South Armagh. This ‘wall’, known as the Black Pig’s Dyke, makes use of natural barriers and lakes for part of its length, and it must have been a formidable barrier to approaches from the south. The ‘wall’ is situated in a forward position within a drumlin belt, which consists of tens of thousands of “shapely streamlined mounds of boulder clay [which] provided a defence in depth for the kingdom of Ulster”.

Aiden Walsh noted: “Firstly, the Black Pig’s Dyke was not simply a two-line defence (double-bank and double-ditch); it was a three-line defence. The third line was composed of a timber palisade which paralleled the earthwork itself. Secondly, it is clear from [its] scale and nature that we are dealing with a defensive structure. The earthwork also faces south and is set on southern facing slopes to defend those on its northern side. Thirdly, it appears to have been deliberately and quite fully destroyed, presumably during wartime. The short excavation carried out in County Monaghan has told us that this stretch of the monument… was built in the last few centuries BC. Perhaps we are dealing here with… a war extending across the land starting at the boundaries of a kingdom and culminating with the destruction of its capital.”

At the eastern end of the ‘wall’ is a massive enclosure, called ‘the Dorsey’. One evening in 1977, as members of an archaeological team went for an impromptu walk around the perimeter of the earthworks, they chanced upon a portion bulldozed that same day for land reclamation. To their surprise, they noticed the tops of rotted ancient posts just visible in the disturbed ground. As Chris Lynn wrote: “The discovery of this palisade underlines the strongly defensive character of the Dorsey. Its builders were not content to rely on the patch of wet bog for defence of the south-west corner but augmented the edge of the morass with the ditch and a stout palisade.”

A dendrochronological examination was to find that the timbers used to construct the palisade around the Dorsey had been felled a few years after 100 BC. Such massive physical constructions leave us with many unanswered questions. What of the people who were able to erect such impressive earthworks? As Victor Buckley pointed out: “The building of massive, travelling earthworks to monitor traffic northwards needed a cohesive society behind it, be it a monarchy, democracy or theocracy, which could call upon a large manpower-base and utilise vast natural resources.”

What of the war that has been suggested was the cause of its eventual destruction? Was this a war among the pre-Celtic peoples? Or was it between the original inhabitants and the first Celtic-speaking invaders? We will probably never know the answer, but one thing at least is certain — the history of Ireland from then on was that of a continual struggle for power between a multiplicity of factions and their ever-changing alliances.

To be continued

The word ‘Celtic’ is primarily a linguistic term which is applied to a closely related group of dialects referred to as ‘Indo-European’. There is little doubt that the Celtic tribes of Europe were composed of different physical types, and that Celtic speech was adopted by or imposed upon large numbers of subjects. The Celts became dominant over most of Central Europe, and various groups of Celtic-speaking peoples migrated from there to other parts of the continent. When the Roman empire expanded, her legions came into direct confrontation with this “Celtic” heartland, and Caesar’s famous ‘Gallic Wars’ (58-51 BC) not only gives us a personal account of Gaul (modern-day France, Belgium, northern Italy and part of Germany) but of how the Romans extinguished its independence. It was quite possibly in response to Roman expansion that some Celtic-speaking groups crossed from continental Europe to the British Isles.

Yet the Roman destruction of Celtic power had been preceded by another, far more fundamental encounter. The intrusion of the Celts themselves into Europe must have been, as Professor Thomas Markey noted, “one of the most wrenching cultural collisions of all time, the clash between Indo-Europeans and non-Indo-Europeans in early Western Europe.”

What of the pre-Celtic inhabitants of Ireland? Markey pointed out that “Ireland was the final stronghold of the Megalithic peoples in the West, and the Celts who subsequently settled there were the last Indo-Europeans to come into contact with them.” These pre-Celtic people obviously didn’t disappear, but survived, and remained as the majority population. As Francis Byrne noted: “The earlier, non-Indo-European, population, of course, survived under the Celtic overlordship. One group in particular, known to the P-Celts as Pritani and to the Irish as Cruithni, survived into historical times as the Picts or ‘painted people’ of Scotland. The Cruithni were numerous in Ulster too, and the Loíges of Leinster and possibly the Ciarraige of Connacht and north Kerry belonged to the same people.”

Although it is now clear that the Celts were relative latecomers to Ireland, and that when they arrived here they most probably did so in small numbers, their presence has been accorded a remarkable prominence, not the least because of their introduction of a new language. The 1984 seminar held by the Irish Association of Professional Archaeologists, attended not only by archaeologists but representatives from linguistics and environmental studies, deliberated on the theme ‘The origins of the Irish’, and the moderator of the seminar pointed out: “An Irishman was defined as one who spoke either the earliest form of the Irish language or a language immediately ancestral to it. Such a definition then pertains to the appearance of Irish-speaking Celts and is not… to be confused with the arrival of the first people in Ireland.”

Thus the earlier, majority population of Ireland, who had inhabited the island for a greater length of time than that which separates the Celts from us today, were denied the epithet ‘Irish’ in favour of the Celts. The ‘earliest form of the Irish language’ referred to was not, as one might reasonably suppose, that spoken by the original inhabitants, but the specific language, now known as Gaelic, introduced by an incoming Celtic minority.

As far back as 1906 Eoin McNeill, founder of the Gaelic League and one of the most eminent of Irish historians, believed that his research had finally penetrated through the academic obsession with the Celts to allow us to acknowledge the vital part played in our heritage by the original inhabitants. He wrote that “the hitherto current account of pre-Christian Ireland has belittled and overclouded the vast majority of the Irish people for the glorification of a dominant minority,” and he felt he could now safely assert that “the one outcome of [these] studies has been to restore the majority to the historical place of honour from which they have been ousted for a thousand years.” He had obviously spoken too soon. The Celts have certainly contributed richly to the cultural legacy of the Irish, yet they are only one aspect of a heritage which is more ancient and varied than people are generally aware.

Ironically, it is through the very languages introduced by Indo-European peoples such as the Celts that we are now beginning to learn more about the pre-Celtic peoples who were finally to adopt such languages as their own. Heinrich Wagner wrote: “It is likely that the [Celtic invasions] did not involve large numbers of Indo-European-speaking peoples, a view which has led a number of scholars, including myself, to believe that in the British Isles Indo-European language as imposed by small bands of Celtic-speaking invaders from the Continent must have been influenced strongly by the speaking habits of a predominantly non-Celtic population.” So Gaelic would eventually become, not a pure Celtic language, but, as David Green described it, “simply the linguistic expression of the Irish people… a language made in Ireland.”

The 5th and 6th centuries in particular are known to have been a period of unusually rapid development in the Gaelic language, as shown by the contrast between the general language of Ogham inscriptions and the earliest Old Gaelic known from manuscripts. There is little doubt that this was due to the widespread adoption of the Gaelic speech by the original inhabitants and the passage of older words and grammatical forms into Gaelic. By this time, therefore, Gaelic had become, according to Heinrich Wagner, “one of the most bizarre branches of Indo-European” since “in its syntax and general structure it has many features in common with non-Indo-European languages.” These included Semitic and Hamitic influences.

Linguistic analysis is today affording us new insights into this intermingling of peoples. In studying the various branches of ‘Indo-European’, scholars had of necessity to define what it actually is — its permissible vocabulary and grammar — and thereby define what it is not — its impermissible vocabulary and grammar. This ‘impermissible vocabulary and grammar’ was obviously that borrowed from the pre-Indo-European inhabitants of Europe. As Thomas Markey explains: “No Indo-European language displays an acceptably Indo-European word for ‘apple’, a fruit that was an invaluable part of a primitive diet. The apple was presumably unknown to Indo-Europeans in their primordial homeland, wherever that was… We may conclude that, as nomadic herdsmen, the Indo-Europeans borrowed the apple, along with terms for it, from the Megalithic farmers… We now know that something like twenty-eight percent of the Germanic lexicon, including such common words as English folk, have non-Indo-European origins. The language handbooks that have been accepted as the standard for decades are now badly in need of extensive revisions.”

This linguistic study, according to Markey, has meant that “We are now equipped with a potent filter device, a negative definer of non-Indo-European in the West [and] the silence that has long surrounded the pre-Indo-Europeans has finally been made to speak.” Markey was able to identify certain fundamental differences between the two cultures. Pre-Indo-European society was of a matrifocal, non-stratified nature, based on a sedentary, horticultural lifestyle, where there existed advanced boat building and navigational techniques as well as a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy. Indo-European society, on the other hand, was of a patrifocal, stratified nature, with a nomadic lifestyle based on animal husbandry, and where there was a lack of boatbuilding and navigational techniques and only a rudimentary knowledge of astronomy. As Markey concludes: “Clearly, the Megalithic peoples gave more than they got. They lost their language, while the Indo-Europeans pillaged it for loans… The invader was technologically inferior to the resident.”

It was the discovery of iron around 800 BC which was to allow these Indo-European peoples to initiate a major technological revolution of their own, and Europe was to enter its Iron Age.

To be continued

Just as these first peoples of Pretania (the British isles) were our distant ancestors, and we must therefore share many of their physical attributes — amended of course by the various invading minorities who turned their attention to Ireland in later historical periods — so also is it quite conceivable that we have retained some residue of the personalities of these early peoples, particularly in our relationship to the land and the seasons, a matter of life-giving importance to an agricultural community. Whatever beliefs they held — what we now call the Elder Faiths — have obviously long disappeared, yet perhaps it is possible to detect faint echoes of them in long-established rural superstitions and folk memories. Estyn Evans wrote that archaeology was now tending to “confirm what recent anthropological, linguistic and ethnographic research suggests, that the roots of regional personality in north-western Europe are to be found in the cultural experience of pioneer farmers and stockmen, quickened by the absorption of Mesolithic fisherfolk… One should probably look to the primary Neolithic/megalithic culture rather than to the intervening Bronze Age as the main source of the Elder Faiths.”

Professor John Kelleher commented: “The culture that reasserted itself in the fourteenth century and continued viable… down to the early seventeenth century was but the latest stage of the culture that had existed continuously and strongly since prehistoric times… We can be sure that much of it survives in the native population, if only below the level of consciousness.”The visible reminders of Ireland’s ancient inhabitants — the dolmens, stone circles and other burial monuments — are still treated with respect by country people. Tampering with these monuments can even today, according to some, bring bad luck upon the perpetrators, and archaeologists have been refused permission to excavate some monuments because of local resistance. At the beginning of the century W.G. Wood-Martin wrote: “Facts which show the resentment formerly felt by the country people at their disturbance, are well known. It is noteworthy that these former objects of the peasants’ veneration were erected by an early wave of population. It may be suggested that their preservation by means of veneration for traditional beliefs points to the continued influence, up to a very late date, of their builders.” Ironically, this veneration can today prove itself a useful ally to our present concerns with conservation of the natural environment.

In 1991, I published  The Ulster People under my Pretani Press imprint. My friend, Professor Fréchet of the Sorbonne wished to translate it into French but his death prevented that, and the fact that some Irish academics wanted to burn it dissuaded me from bringing out a second edition. Twenty years later, on January 27th, 2011, Holocaust Memorial Day, I visited the Exhibition on the Millisle Jewish Refugees in the North Down Museum and was geatly moved by it. I wrote a comment under James O’Fee’s one in the book of comments provided by Sandra Baillie. Sandra has written in Presbyterians in Ireland summarising her prejudices as an Irish academic about the “Cruithin Myth” and the fact that ” this story has not been taken very seriously by academics or the general public”. I also bought Marsden Fitzsimmons beautiful little book on Travels with Columbanus , which mentions neither the Cruthin nor Mary O’Fee. Furthermore Marsden and Sandra have obviously not read The Ulster People , or know that those academics wished to burn it. But times have now changed as we witness the rebirth of Pretania, the obvious result of Brexit, so here it is again.

I will start with my native Conlig, named in Gaelic as the “Stone of the Hound” after the Standing Stone above the village. We have no evidence of human habitation in Ireland before the retreat of the ice-sheets which covered almost the whole of the island until the end of the Ice Age. The first settlers arrived around 10,500 BC. They probably came from the western shores of Britain, the archaeological evidence tending to suggest either from Galloway in south-west Scotland or Cumbria in northern England. These flint-users were hunters, fishermen and food-gatherers who lived predominantly along the coast or in river valleys such as the Bann. They are our primary ancestors, the ancient Pretani, accounting for 90% of our genes.

 In the period after 4000 BC, during the Neolithic or Late Stone Age, farming was introduced. Crops were grown, animals kept, and many new types of implement were introduced. For the first time man began to leave his mark on the thickly wooded Irish countryside.The tombs and monuments made by these Neolithic farmers are called ‘megalithic’ (i.e. made of large stones), such as the court cairns and dolmens. Ireland is extremely rich in such antiquities, with over 1,200 stone monuments surviving today. The court cairns, which are mainly located in the north of the island, are also found in south-west Scotland, and Séan O Ríordáin commented: “The tombs and the finds from them form a continuous province joined rather than divided by the narrow waters of the North Channel.” This connection with Scotland is evidence of the ancient link which has existed throughout history between what W.C. Mackenzie described as “two great and intimately associated peoples”.