The “Declaration of Arbroath”

The ‘Tyninghame’ copy of the “Declaration” from 1320 AD

Alongside the battles and bloodshed of the Scottish “Wars of Independence” in north Britain there was also a diplomatic struggle – a war of words and propaganda. The two Norman warlords the “Scottish” Robert the Bruce and the “English” Edward II vied for the support of the Pope, who had confirmed Edward’s feudal Lordship over the Norman Barons in Scotland.

On 10 February 1306 Robert the Bruce and John the Red Comyn, lord of Badenoch, met at Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries, resulting in the murder before the altar of Comyn by Bruce. The subjugation of Buchan, which then took place in 1308, saw vast areas of Buchan in northeast Scotland, then ruled by Clan Comyn, burned to the ground by Bruce and his ruthless brother Edward, immediately following their May 1308 success at the Battle of Barra.

After his defeat at Barra, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan fled to England. Bruce’s men chased him as far as Turrif, a distance of sixteen miles (25 km). Before heading south to lay siege to Aberdeen Castle, the Bruces “destroyed by fire his whole Earldom”, including all the castles and strongholds, principally Rattray Castle and Dunarg Castle.

Bruce’s men then proceeded to kill all those loyal to the Comyns, men, women and children, in an orgy of ethnic cleansing, which was to haunt Bruce on his deathbed, destroying their homes, farms, crops and slaughtering their cattle. Terrorising the locals, Bruce prevented any possible chance of future hostility towards him and his men. The Comyns had ruled Buchan for nearly a century, from 1214, when William Comyn inherited the title from his wife. Such was the terror and destruction, however, that the people of Buchan lost all loyalties to the Comyns and never again rose against Bruce’s supporters.

The Pope was a powerful figure in medieval times. Bruce’s killing of Comyn (Cummings) on holy ground at Greyfriars Kirk led to his excommunication. The Pope had turned his back on Bruce – so that in 1318 Bruce, his lieutenants and his bishops were all excommunicated.

Bruce reacted by having three letters sent to the Pope. The first was a letter from Robert himself, the second from his lackeys, the Scots clergy, and the third from the nobles of Scotland. The third letter became known as the “Declaration of Arbroath” and survives to this day, being used by modern Scottish Nationalists for political purposes.

In this letter, the Scots, who claimed descent from Irish invader warlords, vaunted their expulsion of the native Britons and their utter destruction of the Picts, neither of which they were actually able to achieve, for we are the descendants of these ancient peoples. Their claim of one hundred and thirty Kings is pure fabrication and most of the second paragraph is nonsense. The relics of St Andrew were probably brought to Britain in 597 as part of the Augustine Mission, and then in 732 to Fife, by Bishop Acca of Hexham, a well-known collector of religious relics.

This translation of the original Latin was compiled by Alan Borthwick in June 2005

To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord John, by divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman and Universal Church, his humble and devout sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick Dunbar, Earl of March, Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus, Earl of Caithness and Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter, Steward of Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland, James, Lord of Douglas, Roger Mowbray, David, Lord of Brechin, David Graham, Ingram Umfraville, John Menteith, guardian of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander Fraser, Gilbert Hay, Constable of Scotland, Robert Keith, Marischal of Scotland, Henry Sinclair, John Graham, David Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton, William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Mushet, Fergus of Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald Cheyne, Alexander Seton, Andrew Leslie and Alexander Straiton, and the other barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of Scotland send all manner of filial reverence, with devout kisses of his blessed feet.

Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today. The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken a single foreigner. The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles — by calling, though second or third in rank — the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter’s brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron forever.

The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same kingdom and people, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter’s brother. Thus our nation under their protection did indeed live in freedom and peace up to the time when that mighty prince the King of the English, Edward, the father of the one who reigns today, when our kingdom had no head and our people harboured no malice or treachery and were then unused to wars or invasions, came in the guise of a friend and ally to harass them as an enemy. The deeds of cruelty, massacre, violence, pillage, arson, imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries, robbing and killing monks and nuns, and yet other outrages without number which he committed against our people, sparing neither age nor sex, religion nor rank, no one could describe nor fully imagine unless he had seen them with his own eyes.

But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand. Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in your sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose vice-gerent on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of Jew and Greek, Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a father on the troubles and privation brought by the English upon us and upon the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort the King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can, to win peace for ourselves. This truly concerns you, Holy Father, since you see the savagery of the heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day; and how much it will tarnish your Holiness’s memory if (which God forbid) the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time, you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons pretend that they cannot go to help of the Holy Land because of wars they have on hand with their neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is that in making war on their smaller neighbours they find quicker profit and weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our Lord the King and we too would go there if the King of the English would leave us in peace, He from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess and declare it to you as the Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom. But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to our prejudice, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.

To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as duty calls us, ready to do your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as His Vicar; and to Him as the Supreme King and Judge we commit the maintenance of our cause, casting our cares upon Him and firmly trusting that He will inspire us with courage and bring our enemies to nought. May the Most High preserve you to his Holy Church in holiness and health and grant you length of days.

Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day of the month of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty and the fifteenth year of the reign of our King aforesaid.

 

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Gallipoli Centenary

On Tuesday, 23rd and Wednesday 24th March, 2010, following Turkish Victory Day on 18th March and as part of a Pilgrimage to the Dardanelles to commemorate the 95th Anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign (Çanakkale Savaşlari), the Somme Association held two unique Services of Remembrance for the 10th (Irish) Division in the First World War. This afternoon, with senior colleagues from the Somme Association and the Chairman of Dalaradia, Robert Williamson, I attended A Service of Commemoration to mark the centenary of the Campaign in Christchirch Cathedral, Lisburn.

The Gallipoli Campaign was initiated on 25th April 1915 (ANZAC Day) and lasted until 9th January 1916, with the British objective of capturing the Ottoman Capital of Istanbul and relieve Russia. It was badly organised and resulted in a Turkish victory but losses on both sides were enormous due to the exceptional fighting abilities of the opposing armies. Half a million men fought in each and casualties for both were a quarter of a million men.

Following the failure of the Anglo-French naval force to drive a passage through the Dardanelles in order to capture Istanbul, the allies decided to capture the Turkish forts overlooking the straits by a land invasion. At dawn on 25th April 1915, troops of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. The plan was for the 29th Division and the Royal Navy Division to advance rapidly north from Cape Helles, and for the Australians and New Zealanders (ANZAC) to land on the west coast with the intention of crossing the peninsula and so preventing Turkish reinforcements from moving south.

The landings at Cape Helles did not go well because of strong Turkish resistance, the Ottoman Imperial forces including Kurds and Armenians, and the initial targets of the village of Krithia and the high ground of Achi Baba were never achieved. The Australians and New Zealanders fared little better. Because the Royal Navy commanders had underestimated the effect of the tidal current on the west coast, they were landed some 2,000 metres north of their proposed landing place and came under intense fire from the Turkish defenders.

After three months of bitter fighting the allies at Cape Helles had made little headway against determined opposition, while the ANSAC were pinned down by a series of of Turkish attacke, augmented by constant accurate sniper fire, one famously by a woman soldier. The British Government reluctantly decided to break the stalemate by making a fresh landing at Suvla Bay using the 9th Army Corps.. The 10th (Irish) Division was in this force and it included units from all the Irish infantry regiments. They made an opposed landing at Suvla Bay in early August.

Immediately prior to this attack the Australians and New Zealanders made a determined attack to capture the high ground at Chunuk Blair. The Wellington Battalion captured this high ground and held it for 48 hours before being overwhelmed by a Turkish counter-attack. The New Zealand attackers were the only troops of the entire force who caught sight of their ultimate objective – the Dardanelles – whilst holding Chunuk Blair.

The Gallipoli Campaign resounded profoundly on all nations. In both Turkey and Ireland it was a defining moment in history and laid the foundations of the Turkish and Irish Wars of Independence. For Turkey it meant the rise of the great military commander, Kemal Atatürk, who fought here and is justly considered the Father of the Turkish Nation. It was also the first major battle of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and marks the birth of national consciousness in both countries.

On 23rd March at Green Hill Cemetery, Gallipoli, the Somme Association’s President , His Royal Highness The Duke of Gloucester, KG, GCVO in the presence of Civic Dignitaries and Old Comrades’ Associations from throughout Ireland laid a single wreath to the memory of all those who fought in the Gallipoli Campaign. He then planted and dedicated four Myrtle trees, one for each of the Provinces of Ireland from which they came, to the 12,000 Volunteers of the 10th (Irish) Division, of whom more than 4,000 lost their lives. Throughout the Mediterranean World the Myrtle is a symbol of Love and Immortality, its scent the scent of Paradise. The area would henceforth be known as the Duke of Gloucester’s Grove. Following this, His Royal Highness unveiled the Association’s Memorial to the former combatants.

On 24th March at Green Hill Cemetery, Gallipoli, a second Service of Remembrance was held in the presence of Her Excellency, Mary McAleese, President of Ireland. Her Excellency dedicated a plaque to the memory of the individual Regiments who formed the 10th (Irish) Division, their Comrades-in-Arms and their brave Turkish adversaries. The nine Regiments were the Royal Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Rifles, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Connaught Rangers, the Leinster Regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the Hampshire Regiment.

Speaking at the events, as the Chairman of the Somme Association, I said that I was delighted that both HRH The Duke of Gloucester and Her Excellency the President of Ireland had accepted the invitation to attend the ceremonies. The Duke, as quondam Earl of Ulster, had agreed to follow his late mother, The Princess Alice, as President of the Somme Association, and he was Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Anglian Regiment, the Royal Army Medical Corps, and the Royal New Zealand Army Medical Corps, a true ANZAC. Princess Alice was fondly remembered in Northern Ireland because of her visit there following the Befast Blitz of 1941. President McAleese was well known for her work in bringing the two communities in Northern Ireland closer together, particularly through the establishment of the Irish Tower at Messines in Belgium. In attending this ceremony in Gallipoli she had proved herself to be a truly great President of Ireland.

I quoted the famous statement of Kemal Atatürk in 1935 to the mothers of the Allied soldiers:

“Uzak memleketin topraklari üstünde kanlarini döken kahramanlar:
Burada dost bir vatanin toprağindasiniz.
Huzur ve sükun içinde uyuyunuz.
Sizler Mehmetçiklerle yan yana, koyun koyunasiniz.
Uzak diyarlardan evlatlarini harbe gönderen analar;
Gözyaşlarinizi dindiriniz, evlatlarini,bizim bağrimizdadir.
Huzur içinde rahat rahat uyuyacaklardir.
Bu toprakta verdikten sonra artik bizim evlatlarimiz olmşlardir.”

“Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives…
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country- therefore rest in peace.
You lie side by side here in this country of ours with Turkish soldiers…
You, the mothers, who sent their sons
from far away countries, wipe away your tears;
your sons are now lying in our bosom and will rest in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land
They have become our sons as well…!

Echoing the words of the former President of Turkey, Süleyman Demirel, 15 years previously, when the Somme Association first came to Gallipoli I went on:

“Bir zamanlar birbirine karşi savaşirken
Hayatlarini kaybetmiş yüzbinlerce genç insan
Topraklarimizda; Gelibolu Yarimadasi’nda
Mehmetçiklerle kucak kucağa kefensiz yatmaktadirlar.
Bu ibret ve hüzün dolu tablo insanliğa
‘Barişin değerini bilin’ diyor.
Ne mutlu anlayana;
Ne mutlu Insanlik ve Bariş için canlarini feda edenlere…”

” Hundreds of thousands of young men fought and gave their lives here in the Gallipoli Peninsula. It presents a picture of sadness beyond belief. So we must tell the world that they must appreciate Peace so that these men will not have lost their lives in vain “.

I finished by addressing the 10th (Irish) Division itself.

To the sons of Ulster and to the sons of Ireland we say:-

“Sons of Ulster, soldiers of Ireland. Do not be anxious. The War is over – both here and in your beloved Ireland. The Western Front is no more and Ireland, at last, is at peace with herself and with her people. But we will always remember you, so long as the sun shines and the rain falls and the wind blows on Suvla Bay”

And in Ulster Gaelic:

Inniu, deir muid le fir Uladh agus le fir na hÉireann:-

“A Fheara Uladh agus a Shaighdiúiri na hÉireann, ná biodh imni oraibh. Tá an Cogadh thart-ni amháin san áit seo, ch in bhur dtír dhílis féin in Éirinn. Níl an Fronta Thiar ann níos mó, agus, sa deireadh, tá tír na hÉireann fàoi shíocháin léi féin agus len a pobal.

Ach cuimhneochaidh muid oraibh go deo, fhad is a shoilsíonn an ghrian agus a thiteann an fhearthainn agus fhad is a shéideann an ghaoth ar Bháigh Suvla”

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Ptolemy’s British Isles (Latin)

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Ptolemy’s Ireland (Greek)

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State Commemoration of the funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

Higgins wreath

President Higgins lays a wreath to Mr O’Donovan Rossa
Glasnevin 2015 08 01 Tower - Patrick Hugh Lynch (21) (Small)

Today, as Vice-President of the Somme Association, President of the Ullans Academy and Patron of the Dalaradia organisation, I attended, with a senior colleague, the State Commemoration of the funeral of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. I had been invited by Heather Humphreys, T.D. on behalf of the government of the Irish Republic, this being the start of the official  calendar marking the 100th anniversary of the events of 1916.

The Irish president Michael D. Higgins, prime minister Enda Kenny, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Chriona Ní Dhálaigh and government ministers took part. Although he died in exile in 1915, the Fenian leader, who fought for Irish independence, was buried in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery. His original funeral is seen as a pivotal moment in Irish history. Several of those who attended went on to take part in the 1916 Easter Rising.

Fifteen hundred members of the public who applied for tickets attended. Members of the diplomatic corps, including from the UK, were in attendance as well as members of the extended O’Donovan Rossa family whose ancestor spent long periods in British jails for his activities. Large screens showed the event outside the cemetery where there was a public viewing area, with spaces for up to 5,000 people.

In the 1850s, O’Donovan Rossa was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) known colloquially as the Fenians, a reference to Na Fianna, the legendary band of Gaelic warriors who had conquered Ireland from our Cruthin and Belgic ancestors in Irish mythology. The IRB was a small, secret, revolutionary body committed to the use of force to establish an independent Irish republic.

O’Donovan Rossa was imprisoned in various jails in England for his activities and later moved to New York following his release, continuing his efforts to oppose British rule in Ireland. After his death, his remains were brought to Ireland by the American liner St Paul from New York to Liverpool. They were then transferred to the steamer Carlow, which carried them to Dublin.

At the original funeral, the Easter Rising leader Padraig Pearse delivered the oration as follows and this was enacted beautifully by Jim Roche today.

It has seemed right, before we turn away from this place in which we have laid the mortal remains of O’Donovan Rossa, that one among us should, in the name of all, speak the praise of that valiant man, and endeavour to formulate the thought and the hope that are in us as we stand around his grave. And if there is anything that makes it fitting that I, rather than some other, rather than one of the grey-haired men who were young with him and shared in his labour and in his suffering, should speak here, it is perhaps that I may be taken as speaking on behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised in the Fenian faith, and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the Fenian programme. I propose to you then that, here by the grave of this unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such unbreakable strength of soul as belonged to O’Donovan Rossa.

Deliberately here we avow ourselves, as he avowed himself in the dock, Irishmen of one allegiance only. We of the Irish Volunteers, and you others who are associated with us in to-day’s task and duty, are bound together and must stand together henceforth in brotherly union for the achievement of the freedom of Ireland. And we know only one definition of freedom: it is Tone’s definition, it is Mitchel’s definition, it is Rossa’s definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause that the dead generations of Ireland served by giving it any other name and definition than their name and their definition.

We stand at Rossa’s grave not in sadness but rather in exaltation of spirit that it has been given to us to come thus into so close a communion with that brave and splendid Gael. Splendid and holy causes are served by men who are themselves splendid and holy. O’Donovan Rossa was splendid in the proud manhood of him, splendid in the heroic grace of him, splendid in the Gaelic strength and clarity and truth of him. And all that splendour and pride and strength was compatible with a humility and a simplicity of devotion to Ireland, to all that was olden and beautiful and Gaelic in Ireland, the holiness and simplicity of patriotism of a Michael O’Clery or of an Eoghan O’Growney. The clear true eyes of this man almost alone in his day visioned Ireland as we of to-day would surely have her: not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well.

In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before or perhaps ever again, in a spiritual communion with those of his day, living and dead, who suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit too with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons to-day, and speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate. This is a place of peace, sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity and with all restraint; but I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and, hating them, to strive to overthrow them. Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their miraculous ripening to-day. Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! — they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

In his welcoming speech, John Green, Chairman of the Glasnevin Trust put these words in context, as O’Donovan Rossa later thought differently about his role as an “unrepentant Fenian”, repudiating violence and supporting the John Redmond ideal of Home Rule for Ireland rather than that Pearse ideal, based on Gaelic nationalism, which seems so out-of-date today.

 

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The Belgic British Tribes of Ireland

The Manapians or Menapii were a tribe of Belgae (Fir Bolg in Gaelic) originating in northern Gaul in pre-Roman and Roman times. According to descriptions in such authors as Strabo, Caesar, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy  their territory had stretched northwards to the mouth of the Rhine in the north, but more lastingly it stretched along the west of the Schelde. In later geographical terms this territory corresponds roughly to the modern coast of Flanders, the Belgian provinces of Oost and West Flanderen. It also extended into neighbouring France and the river deltas of the southern Netherlands. They may well have been a Germanic-speaking people with Celtic over-lords. It was the Manapians along with the Morini and other Northern tribes who maintained an independent Gaulish area following Caesar’s campaign of 57 BC, when he massacred 50,000 Belgic warriors at the earliest recorded Battle on the Somme.

In the 19th century the great Belgic leader Ambiorix became a Belgian national hero because of his resistance  against Julius Caesar, as written in Caesar’s Commentaries of the Gallic War (Commentarii de Bello Gallico). In 54 BC  Ambiorix brought together an alliance of Belgic tribes, the Eburones, Menapii, Nervii and Atuatuci allied to local German tribes. He launched an attack on 9000 Roman troops under Sabinus and Cotta, Caesars favourite generals, at Tongres and wiped them out. Caesar retaliated quickly, determined to exterminate the Belgic confederacy which was ruthlessly ravaged in all-out genocide. Ambiorix, however, was never captured and disappeared from the pages of Continental History, but the Eburones re-emerged in Britain as the Brigantes (Ui Bairrche) and thus they and the Manapians (Managh) came to Ireland, the latter occupying a fortress at Drumanagh in Leinster, which, although it is the largest in Ireland, has remarkably never been fully excavated. Are they afraid of what they might find? The Brigantes survive in the placename Breda viz. Knockbreda and Newtownbreda.

In 52 BC the brilliant Belgic leader Commius of the Atrebates turned against his former ally Caesar. He led a large force to join the armies of his kinsman Vercingetorix against him in a great insurrection which was to change the course of European history. Following Vercingetorix’s defeat, Commius became over-leader of the Belgic Atrebates, Morini, Carnutes, Bituriges, Bellovaci and Eburones and many Belgae followed him to his British Kingdom in the last Celtic folk movement to Britain, rather than endure the savagery of Roman civilisation. In the twenty years following Julius Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March, 44 BC, Commius’ British Kingdom grew in size and wealth. In the nine years from 34 BC there were three occasions under Caesar’s successor Octavian (Augustus Caesar), 34, 27, and 26 BC, when a full scale invasion of Britain was contemplated. Commius then appears to have set up a Belgic enclave around the mouth of the Shannon in Western Ireland which became known as and was recorded by Ptolemy as Gangani, the descendants of Gann, the form of his full Celtic name. Ptolemy also designates the Lleyn peninsula in northwest Wales as the “headland of the Gangani”.

Meanwhile his sons took over from one another in surprisingly swift succession as kings of South East Britain. Each re-emerged as Kings of the expanding British Belgic settlements in Western Ireland; these were Tincommius (Gaelic Sen Gann), Epillus (Eochill) and Verica (Ferach). However a war between the tribes of Britain brought Verica (Bericus) to the Court of the Emperor Claudius to ask for support. And so in the year 43 AD a Roman army under the able command of Aulus Plautius landed in Britain. Among the distinguished soldiers of this army were Vespasian and his son Titus, both of whom were destined to become Emperors of Rome. It was therefore among the Britons that those soldiers were trained who destroyed that Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified.

By this time the Brigantes controlled the largest section which is now northern England and a significant part of the midlands, centring on what is now known as Yorkshire. The modern town of York was originally known by the name of Eboracum, founded by the Romans in 71 AD and deriving from the Eburones, whose High Goddess of Sovereignty was Brigantia. Ptolemy also places the Brigantes in South Wexford and the attributes of Brigantia have been taken over by “St Brigit”. They survived into the period of documentary history as the Ui Bairrche giving their name to the Barony of Bargy. It could be that the Brigantes invaded Ireland under pressure from later Belgic and Gaulish tribes and that prior to this they had lived in parts of Britain which were more proximal to Wexford. But they could also have migrated under pressure from the Romans in the 70’s AD, perhaps landing at Lambay Island.

The legendary Ninth Legion, Legio IX Hispana, the Spanish Legion, was one of the oldest and most feared units in the Roman Army. Put together in Spain by Pompey in 65 BC, it came under the command of Julius Caesar who was Governor of Further Spain in 61 BC, and served in Gaul throughout the Gallic Wars from 58 – 51 BC, the Legion was decisive in ensuring Caesar’s control of the Republic. After Caesar’s assassination it remained loyal to his successor Octavian. It fought with distinction against the Cantabrians in Spain from 25 – 13 BC but suffered terribly in the British revolt led by Boadicea ( Boudicca) in 60 AD, losing as many as 50 – 80 per cent of its men . However, several high ranking Officers who could only have served after 117 AD are well known to us, so we can safely assume that the core of the Legion was still extant in the reign of Hadrian, 117 – 138 AD.

The first great leader of the Fenians (later “Gaels”, which means “Wild Men” or “Raiders” in the native British tongue) in Ireland, Tuathal (Teuto–valos) Techtmar, was probably a Roman soldier, commanding Q-Celtic speaking auxiliaries from Spain. The earliest known source for the story of Tuathal Techtmar’s conquest of Ireland from the Aithech thuatha (Vassal Tribes) is a poem by Mael Mura of Othain AD 885. Mael Mura intimates that about 750 years had elapsed since Tuathal Techtmar had marched on the ancient British or Cruthin ritual centre of Tara to create his kingdom of Meath, which would date the invasion to the early 2nd Century AD. This is probably approximately correct. The standard pseudo-historical convention is employed, however, to make him an exiled Irishman returning with a foreign army.

The account in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, which does contain a shadow of history, is probably older and in this we see that Tuathal was born outside Ireland and had not seen the country before he invaded it. We can synchronise his invasion to early in the reign of Hadrian (122 – 138) and his death fighting the Cruthin near Antrim in the reign of Antoninus Pius (138 – 161).This fits with Juvenal (c 60 to 127 AD) who wrote “We have taken our arms beyond the shores of Ireland…” Tuathal may indeed represent the fictitious Mil Espáne (the Soldier from Spain), or even the Ninth Legion, the Legio IX Hispana, but that we will probably never know.

What we do know, however, is that the Manapians were driven north under pressure from the Southern Gaels to merge with the older British Cruthin in Ulster. We meet them again in their last strongholds of Taughmonagh (Tuath Monaigh or the Manapian Nation) in South Belfast, Fermanagh (Fear Manach or Men of the Manapians), Monaghan (Muinachan) and the Mournes (Monaig). Remnants of other Belgic British clans settled close to one another in southern Ireland, such as the Velaborians and Coriondians have been lost to history.

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Northern Ireland…Ulidia…Old British Ulster

1. Belfast City 333,871  
2. North Down and Ards District Dal Fiatach 156,672
3. Antrim and Newtownabbey District Upper Dalaradia 138,567
4. Lisburn City and Castlereagh District Dalmunia 134,841
5. Newry City, Mourne and Down District Iveagh 171,533
6. Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon District East Oriel 199,693
7. Mid and East Antrim District Lower Dalaradia 135,338
8. Causeway Coast and Glens District Dalriada 140,877
9. Mid-Ulster District West Oriel 138,590
10. Derry City and Strabane District Venniconia 147,720 .
11. Fermanagh and Omagh District Manapia11 Northern Ireland local government districts, operating in shadow form 2014-2015.
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The Myths of Peter Shirlow – The Collective Strikes Back.

Peter Shirlow is a Professor in the School of Law at the Queen’s University of Belfast, now Professor of Conflict Transformation there and a key member of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice (ISCTSJ), which is linked to the Causeway Institute for Peace-building and Conflict Resolution, founded by my friends Jeffrey and Kingsley Donaldson. Shirlow’s latest book The End of Ulster Loyalism? was published in 2012 by Manchester University Press. In this book he advises that “Using their experience as a deterrent, Loyalists can show the motivations behind violence and how these were misplaced, and the burdens imprisonment placed upon family members. Doing so is an invaluable way of transmitting lessons about the past, dispelling myths and falsehoods and discouraging its repetition.” “One myth located within loyalism is that the Cruithin as (sic) the original stock of Ulster driven out by the Celts. Therefore the Plantation of Ulster was a reclaiming of a homeland. Much of that work has been produced by Adamson (1991).There is no archaeological evidence for such a people”

Such a mischievous, misinformed, and indeed libellous, rendering of my work is not unusual  but what is the real purpose behind it?. The Cruthin, of course, are a historically attested people in Ireland, who occupied large parts of the modern counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry and Donegal in the early medieval period and anciently the whole country before the coming of the Belgae from Great Britain. They maintained their ritual centre at Tara until their defeat at the Battle of Moira in 637 A.D. Their name in Middle Gaelic is Cruithnig or Cruithni; Modern Gaelic: Cruithne .Their ruling dynasties included the Dal nAraidi (Dalaradia) in southern Antrim, the Ui Echach Cobo (Iveagh) in western Down and the Cenél Conaill in Donegal (British Venniconia). Early sources preserve a distinction between the Cruthin and the Ulaid, who gave their name to the kingdom  of Ulster (Ulaidh), although the Dál nAraide claimed in their genealogies to be na fir Ulaid, “the true Ulaid”. The Loigis, who gave their name to County Laois in Leinster, and the Sogain of Connacht are also claimed as Cruthin in early Irish genealogies.

Variations of the name include Cruthen, Crutheni, Cruthin, Cruthini populi, Cruthne, Cruthni, Cruithni and Cruithini. It is generally accepted that this is derived from Qritani or Qriteni, which is the Old Gaelic version of the Old British Pretani or Priteni. From the latter came Britanni, the Roman name for those now called the Britons. Early Irish writers used the name Cruthin to refer to both the north-eastern Irish group and to the Picts of Scotland. Likewise, the Scottish Gaelic word for a Pict is Cruithen or Cruithneach, and for Pictland is Cruithentúath. It therefore obvious that the Cruthin and Picts were the same people or were in some way closely linked. Professor T.F. O’Rahilly describes them as, “the earliest inhabitants of these islands to whom a name can be assigned”. It is also obvious that Cruthin was a name used to refer to all the Britons who were not conquered by the Romans – those who lived outside Roman Brittania, north of Hadrian’s and then the Antonine Walls.

And they have left a wealth of archaeological artifacts in Ireland because of a variety of factors, among them the continued survival of a predominately rural way of life, for many of the artifacts blend effortless into the surrounding environment.   Dolmens, court cairns, passage caves, stone circles, and standing stones abound. Rath Mor of Moylinne, was a residence of the kings of Dalaradia, the Kingdom of the Cruthin. It is an ancient archaeological site situated near Lough Neagh, in the present parish of Donegore, and the place is still known as the Manor of Moylinne. After an existence of eleven hundred years, the royal habitations  were burned to the ground in 1513.

O’Neill, i.e.. Art, the son of Hugh, marched with a force into Trian Congail, (the Third of Congal Cláen, which includes Belfast) and burned Moylinne (in Antrim), and plundered the Glynns. The son of Niall, son of Con Mac Quillin, overtook a party of the forces, and slew Hugh, the son of O’Neill, on that occasion. On the following day the force and their pursuers met in an encounter, in which Mac Quillin — namely, Richard, the son of Roderick— with a number of the men of Alba (“Scotland”), were slain. After that destruction of the habitations in Rath Mor Mag Uillin, the Castle of Dunluce became the chief residence of the “Mac Quillins” (Gaelicised British ap Llwelyn), and the deserted Rath Mor was never re-edified.  Rath Mor Mac Uillin, signifying the Great Rath of McQuillin,  was the original designation of the spot where stood the ancient palace of the Cruthin kings of Ulster. It was often written Rath Mor Magh Line, again Moig Cuillin, and now Moylinne.

Furthermore it was not I, but Professor Emeritus John MacQueen of Edinbugh University, who first suggested in 1955 that the Kreenies (of Galloway, from which many Scottish settlers came, during and especially after the Plantation period) were by origin Cruithnean (Cruthin) settlers, probably fishermen and small farmers, from Dal Araide (Dalaradia), just the people who might be called Gossocks or servile people by the Cumbric native Britons they found in Galloway (my parentheses). So what’s the problem here? Much of it stems, I fear, from the pronouncements of JP Mallory, the Irish-American  Professor Emeritus and “Elder Statesman” of Archaeology at Queen’s, who describes the early “Irish” as those who spoke the earliest attested version of the “Irish” Language, even though that language is anciently called Gaelic and still is, whose speakers were pre-dated in Ireland by thousands of years by the indigenous inhabitants…Says it all, doesn’t it?

That icon of “serious” scholarship, that doyen of revisionist Irish historians (I mean this man is a Celebrity, a Superstar among his kind!), Robert Fitzroy (Roy) Foster, has written in his chapter History and the Irish Question  from Interpreting Irish History -The Debate on Historical Revisionism Irish Academic Press, Dublin 1994, “Still the depressing lesson is probably that history as conceived by scholars is different to what it is understood to be at large, where “myth” is probably the correct, if over-used, anthropological term. And historians may overrate their own importance in considering that their work is in any way relevant to these popular misconceptions- especially in Ireland.The habit of mind which preferred a visionary Republic to any number of birds in the hand is reflected in a disposition to search for an Irish past in theories of historical descent as bizarre as that of “the Cruthin people” today (I. Adamson’s book Cruthin: The Ancient Kindred (Newtownards,1974) is interpreted by Unionist ideologues as arguing for an indigenous ” British” people settled in Ulster before the plantations), the Eskimo settlement of Ireland postulated by Pokorny in the 1920s ,the Hiberno-Carthiginians of Vallancey, or the Gaelic Greeks of Comerford.” How wonderfully cynical, petulant and trite. And, of course, he is completely wrong.

Yet in Wherever Green is Read in the same volume,  Seamus Deane more sensibly, and much more intelligently, argues. “Perhaps it is now time for the stereotype to invert, so that the South can start reading the jargon of the North’s  newly aquired writerly status, complete with its “myths” of the “Cruithin” (Ian Adamson’s redaction of the Gaelic story of dispossession, much favoured by the UDA and, increasingly, by Glengall Street) its evangelical religion and, of course, its poetic rhetoric” . But for Peter Shirlow this is a non-starter. According to him such “myths and falsehoods” should be dispelled and their repetition discouraged, leading in my view inexorably to the End of Ulster Loyalism, which, apart from the more impenetrable and wiser groups, he and his operatives have successfully infiltrated. But this philosophy also encourages the separation of “Scotland” from “England”, and thus the loss of the United Kingdom’s seat on the United Nations Security Council, with dire ramifications for World Peace.

Common Sense was published by the (New) Ulster Political Research Group and not, as Shirlow has erroneously stated, by the Ulster Democratic Party..He should know that these groups were very far from being the same thing. This is poor scholarship indeed. As we have seen the real myths and falsehoods are those of the Koch/ Cunliffe myth of Tartessian “Celtic”, the Mallory/Warner myth of the first Irish being “Irish” speakers to push them as far back in history as possible and the Woolf/Frazer myths of the Northern Ui Neill and Gaelic Dalriada, the Cenel Conaill and Epidians of whom were actually Cruthin. In accepting these and deprecating the Cruthin, such myths have become the Myths of Peter Shirlow himself and “The Collective”, ie Academia, the BBC and the Mediacracy, of which he is part, can strike back with impunity at the very heart of Loyalism itself.

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British North America

Ulster Accordion Band's photo.

The growing economic and political power of the new republicans in  British North America prior to the Revolutionary War proved threatening to other sections of American society, who stayed decidedly Loyalist, including many Catholic Jacobites from the Highlands of Scotland, who had fought the House of Hanover in the 1745 rebellion and remembered the defeat of 1715, but who became staunch Loyalists because of the generous treatment they received in America from their former adversaries. Various “cultural minorities”, fearful of an increase in the power of the majority, often sought British help or protection – New Rochelle, for example, the only place where the French Calvinists still spoke French, was an area of substantial Huguenot Loyalism.

Nor were America’s Black population convinced that an alliance with radical republicans was really to their advantage. Most of the Black community were “strongly attached to the British”, according to one contemporary Loyalist source. Certainly there was a widespread fear of Black people among the newly consolidating American “establishment”, partly an extension of the perennial dread of slave revolt, and intensified by the mass desertion of slaves in response to a wholesale British offer of freedom. Indeed, we have seen that a strong disapproval of Black slavery was the most glaring omission from the Declaration of Independence and that Matthew T Mellon, in his study of the racial attitudes of America’s “Founding Fathers”, Early American Views on Negro Slavery, concluded that while the leading men at the time of the Revolution were all concerned with how to abolish the slave trade, economic pressures and moral indifference prevented them from energetically pursuing its abolition.

As the American Revolution gained momentum, the Indian peoples made some attempt at neutrality, but generally they favoured the British Government. They had no enthusiasm for the westward-pushing, uncontrollable colonial settlers who coveted their lands, and believed that the British Government, rather than the Americans, would be the most likely to seek restraints over this movement. Nothing highlights this allegiance better than the careers of the prominent Loyalists who emerged from among the Mohawk people, such as John Deserontyon, Aaron Hill and Joseph Brant, who commanded the Iroquois nations with great skill on the British side during the Revolutionary War. Even today Chief Earl Hill of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Nation, whom I met with Ed Kenny of the Ulster Accordian Band in Canada, still professes that his people “were proud of their status and designation as United Empire Loyalists”.

A delegation from the Mohawk nation came to Ulster in 1990 to attend the tercentenary celebrations of the Battle of the Boyne. During their visit they were no doubt made aware of the divisions which still run deep within Irish society as a consequence of that battle. This division must have seemed quite unnecessary to them, for in their own communities – in which Orange Lodges sit alongside self-help workshops – Protestants and Catholics are fully integrated and work together as Mohawks. It is surely high time that the communities in Ulster began that same process of integration, so that a new generation might finally escape the burden which our past history has for too long imposed upon us. As Chief Dan George has reminded us: “What wonders are children expecting while we hand them our problems? What hopes do we nourish in them while we are leading them into despair?”

I thought of the Loyalists when I stood at the memorial in Philadelphia to the unknown British Soldier of the Revolutionary War, which I was shown by my friend Paul Loane. For as many as one in three Americans had remained Loyal to George III. But in 1783 Britain finally signed a treaty with its rebellious American colonists, abandoning tens of thousands of people who were still deeply attached to the British crown. To the 12,000 refugees who had fled from the Rebels to make a new home in the swamps of Florida it was a disaster. As it was, too, for the 20,000 Black slaves who had rebelled against their masters to fight for the King. From the Southern ports of Charleston and Savannah alone, fearing dreadful reprisals, more than 20,000 loyalists, slaves and soldiers were evacuated by the Royal Navy. In New York City, originally Iroquois Mohawk territory and the heartland of Loyalism, 30,000 people left for new lives in the Maritimes and Nova Scotia, while 2,500 travelled to Quebec and the Bahamas. This was the largest civilian evacuation in American history. There they created their “own imperial answer to the United States” and a “Loyal America in contrast to the republican America they had fled”. It became known as Canada, which in Iroquois Kannata means Village or Settlement.

In 1872 Lord Dufferin of Clandeboye became the third Governor General of Canada, bolstering imperial ties in the early years of the Dominion, and in 1884 he reached the pinnacle of his diplomatic career as eighth Viceroy of India. His statue, with a Canadian Trapper on one side and an Indian Sepoy on the other, sits in the grounds of the City Hall Belfast. I used to look out at it from my office as Lord Mayor of Belfast and latterly from the High Sheriff’s office. My friend, Lady Lindy Guinness, the last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, is very proud of her ancestry from him. I have visited her often to speak of matters historical, and it was at her home many years ago I first met Van Morrison, Robert Kee and her then Chef Stephen Jeffers… She is descended, of course, from the ancient Cruthin kings and queens of Iveagh and the ancient British kings and queens of Albion, that country of perfidious renown.

In Africa, Loyalist exiles also established what was meant to be a utopian settlement, built by 1,000 Black slaves who had escaped to Canada, but who wished to built a new life in the land of ther ancestors. Partly organised and funded by Abolitionists, the new settlement of Freetown, however, eventually became yet another British Colony, Sierra Leone, run by white men for their own benefit, its history stained by endless riots and rebellions. Yet Freetown’s story was more than a chronicle of broken promises and false hopes. For the people who settled there achieved a greater degree of freedom than they could have had or probably still have in the United States of America. In a sense the American Loyalists were victors after all.

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The Mallory/Warner Myth of Irish/Irelander

Perhaps one of the most important pieces of myth-making in recent history has been the article by the Irish-American scholar J.P. Mallory, formerly of the Department of Archaeology, Queen’s University, Belfast..This article named Two perspectives on the problem of Irish Origins appeared in Focus on the Origins of the Irish, Bulletin of the Navan Research Group, Number nine, 1991.The article is extremely clever and subtly executed.

Mallory states immediately “ that Irish is employed throughout this paper in a purely linguistic sense to identify both those who produced our earliest Irish records and those who spoke a language immediately ancestral to our earliest recorded documents and in no way implies any particular ethnic, racial or archaeological group”..Fine, but not strictly true..for the language itself is called Gaeilge and the “Irish” epithet for it is a relatively modern one.

But having defined “Irish” as a language he goes on to contradict himself, saying that “The Irish arrived in Ireland with a mixed agriculture-stockbreeding economy which is indicated both by the names of plants and animals and by terms associated with the technology of farming”. So we were moved from an article on Gaelic linguistics to a people whom he defines as “the Irish” who spoke “Irish” and he continues to speak of “the Irish” throughout the rest of his article.

Mallory gets over the obvious inconsistency of all this by referring to those inhabitants who constituted the bulk of the population of Ireland before the arrival of “the Irish” as “Irelanders”, thus creating an ”Irish/Irelander” myth and denying the epithet of “Irish” to the original inhabitants..His problem was that those inhabitants are actually the ancient British Pretani or Cruthin. This constitutes a form of cultural imperialism which would be accepted nowhere else in the world. Yet, because of it, the Northern Ireland Office here instructed its operatives to treat my views on the subject as “eccentric” or “loyalist”.

But it goes further than that. Mallory’s colleague in the Navan Research Group, the Englishman Richard B. Warner, formerly of the Department of Antiquities, Ulster Museum, Belfast, tried incessantly to downplay the Cruthin. In the radio programme The Cruthin.- A Common Culture, BBC Radio Ulster 12.07.89 he stated that the Cruthin were “rather minor and they are rather unimportant and they made very little influence on Irish power or politics”, a remarkably inaccurate statement for any academic to make and “rather” stupid. And in his retirement interview for the Belfast Telegraph he revelled in his opposition to the Cruthin.

 What more can you say.?  I rest my case.

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