inhabited the districts at present occupied by Worms, Spire, and Mentz.* By some the Danaans are conjectured to have been Danes; or, at least, from the country of the people afterwards known by that name;† and the Bardic historians, who describe this colony as speaking the Germant language, mention Denmark and Norway as the last places from whence they migrated to the British Isles. Of the claims of the Belge to be considered a Teutonic people, I have already sufficiently spoken; and to them also, as well as to the other two colonies, the Scoti are alleged to have been akin both in origin and language.

Independently of all this testimony of the Bards, we have also the authentic evidence of Ptolemy's map,-showing how early, from the north of Belgium and the shores of the German Ocean, adventurous tribes had found their way to the Eastern Irish coasts. It has been asserted, rather dogmatically, by some Irish writers, that no descent from Denmark or Norway upon Ireland, no importation of Scandian blood into that island, can be admitted to have taken place before the end of the eighth century. How far this assertion is founded, a more fitting opportunity will occur for considering, when I come to treat of the later Danish invasions. It may at present suffice to remark, that traces of intercourse with the nations of the Baltic, as well friendly¶ as hostile,** are to be found, not only in the Irish annals for some centuries before St. Patrick, but also in the poems, chronicles, and histories of those northern nations themselves. Combining these circumstances with all that is known concerning the migratory incursions to which, a few centuries before our era, so many of the countries of Europe were subject from the tribes inhabiting the coasts of the Baltic and Germanic seas, it appears highly probable that the Scoti were a branch of the same Scythic swarm; and that, having gained a settlement in Ireland, they succeeded in bringing under their dominion both the old Hiberionacesas St. Patrick styles the original population-and those other foreign colonies, by whom, in succession, the primitive inhabitants had been conquered.

Among the various other hypotheses devised by different writers to account for the origin of the Scots, and the very important part played by them in Ireland, there is not one that explains, even plausibly, the peculiar circumstances that mark the course of their history. According to Richard, the Monk of Westminster, and his ready copyist, Whitaker, the Irish Scots were no other than those ancient Britons, who, taking flight on the first invasion of their country by the Belge, about 350 years before the Christian era, passed over into the neighbouring island of Ireland, and there, being joined, after an

*Dissertations on the History of Ireland, sect. 13.

† Stillingfleet, Origin. Britann. Preface.-Ledwich, Antiquities, Colonization of Ireland.-O'Brien, Preface to Irish Dictionary.-O'Flaherty remarks, "I shall not aver that Danaan has been borrowed from the name of Danes, as the Danes have not been known to the Latins by that name until the establishment of Christianity, though they might have gone under the appellation earlier; in the same manner as the names of Scots and Picts were in use before they came to the knowledge of the Romans."-Ogyg. part 1. The name of Danes was not known till the sixth century, when it is first mentioned by the historians Jornandes and Procopius.

"Our historians have described, in an eloquent and pompous style, the different and various peregrinations of the Danaans, informing us that they resided, as has already been mentioned, in the northern parts of Germany, to wit, in the cities of Falia, Goria, Finnia, and Muria, and spoke the German language."Ogygia.

With that spirit of unfairness which but too much pervades his writings, Dr. Ledwich refers to this passage as containing O'Flaherty's own opinions upon the subject:-" O'Flaherty allows," he says, "that they spoke the German or Teutonic, and inhabited the cities Falia, Goria, &c. in the north of Germany."

§ The same division of opinion which prevails in England on this question exists also among the modern Belgians themselves, as may be seen by reference to different articles in the Memoires de l'Académie de Bruxelles. See, for instance, Mémoire sur la Religion des Peuples de l'ancienne Belgique, par M. des Roches, (de l'anné 1773,) throughout the whole of which the learned author takes for granted the Teutonic lineage of the Belgæ, treats of them as a wholly distinct race from the Gauls, and applies to the ancestors of his countrymen all that Tacitus has said of the Germans. In speaking of the days of the week, as having been named after some of the northern gods, M. des Roches says:-"Ces jours sont aisés à reconnoitre par les nom, qui les désignent en Flamand; sur-tout si on les compare à la langue Anglo-Saxone, sœur de la nôtre, et aux autres langues septentrionales." On the other hand, in a prize essay of M. du Jardin, 1773, we find the following passage:-"Priusquam in Gallias Romani transissent, Belgæ omnes, ut qui origine Celta, Celtice loquebantur."

Dr. O'Connor, Wood, &c.

See the Annals of Tigernach, A. D. 79, where he notices the grief of the monarch Lugad for the death of his queen, who was the daughter of the King of Lochland, or Denmark. Alliances of the same nature recur in the second century, when we find the monarch Tuathal and his son Feidlim both married to the daughters of Finland kings. By these marriages," says the author of the Dissertations on Irish History, "we see what close intercourse the Scots held, in the second century, with the nations bordering on the Baltic."—

Sect. 5.

In translating the above record of Tigernach, the Rev. Dr. O'Connor has rather suspiciously substituted King of the Saxons for King of the Danes.

**It appears from Saxo Grammaticus (Hist. Dan. lib. 8.) that already, in the fourth century, some Danish chieftains, whom he names, had been engaged in piratical incursions upon the Irish coasts. Here again Doctor O'Connor has substituted Saxons for Danes; and it is difficult not to agree with Mr. D'Alton, who has pointed out these rather unworthy misquotations, (Essay, Period 1. sect. 1.) that they were designed to "favour the reverend doctor's system of there being no Danes in Ireland previous to the ninth century."

interval of 250 years, by a second body of fugitive Britons, took the name of Scuites, or Scots, meaning the Wanderers, or Refugees. This crude and vague conjecture, enlisted by Whitaker in aid of his favourite object of proving Ireland to have drawn its population exclusively from Britain, has no one feature either of authority or probability to recommend it. By Pinkerton, Wood, and others, it is held that the Belge were the warlike race denominated Scots by the Irish; but the whole course of our early history runs counter to this conjecture, the Belge and Scoti, though joining occasionally as allies in the field, being represented, throughout, as distinct races. Even down to modern times, there are mentioned instances of families, in Galway and Sligo, claiming descent from the Belgic race, as wholly distinct from the Milesian or Scotic.t

It cannot but be regarded as a remarkable result, that while, as the evidence adduced strongly testifies, so many of the foreign tribes that in turn possessed this island were Gothic, the great bulk of the nation itself, its language, character, and institutions, should have remained so free from charge, that even the conquering tribes themselves should, one after another, have become mingled with the general mass, leaving only in those few Teutonic words, which are found mixed up with the native Celtic, any vestige of their once separate existence.

The fact evidently is, that long before the period when these Scythic invaders first began to arrive, there had already poured from the shores of the Atlantic into the country, an abundant Celtic population, which, though not too ready, from the want of concert and coalition, which has ever characterized that race, to fall a weak and easy prey to successive bands of adventurers, was yet too numerous, as well as too deeply imbued with another strong Celtic characteristic, attachment to old habits and preju dices, to allow even conquerors to innovate materially either on their own language or their usages. From this unchangeableness of the national character it has arisen, that in the history of no other country in Europe do periods far apart, and separated even by ages, act as mirrors to each other so vividly and faithfully. At a comparatively recent era of her annals, when brought unresistingly under the dominion of the English, her relations to her handful of foreign rulers were again nearly the same, and again the result alike to victors and to vanquished was for a long period such as I have above described. It has been already observed that, in the obscurity which envelops their name and origin, the destiny of the Scots resembles closely that of another people not less remarkable in the history of the British Isles, known by the name of the Picts; and as, according to the Irish traditions, the Scots and Picts made their appearance in these western regions about the same period, the history of the latter of the two colonies may help to throw some light on that of its Scotic neighbours. With the account given by the Bardic historians of the Picts sailing in quest of a settlement in these seas, and resting for a time in the south of Ireland on their way, the statement of Bede on the subject substantially agrees; and while the Bards represent this people as coming originally from Thrace, the venerable historian expressly denominates them a Sythic people. It would, therefore, appear, that the Scots and the Picts were both of northern race,

"It was then," Whitaker says, "they first incorporated themselves into one society." The details of this notable scheme, which supposes so large and important a body of people to have waited 250 years to be incorporated and named, are to be found in the History of Manchester, book i chap. 12. sec. 4.

Lastly, they (the Belgians) settled in Moy-Sachnoly, at this day Hymania, in the county of Galway, after the arrival of St. Patrick, and there O'Layn, and, in the county Sligo, 'Beunachan, to our times the proprietor of a very handsome estate, look on themselves as their real descendants "-Ogygia, part iii. chap. 12.

In the Irish tongue," says O'Brien," the Celtic predominates over all other mixtures, not only of the old Spanish, but also of the Scandinavian and other Scytho German dialects, though Ireland anciently received three or four different colon es, or rather swarms of adventurers, from those quarters." (Preface to Dictionary) One of the causes he assigns for the slight effect produced upon the language by such inf sions is, that "these foreign adventurers and sea-rovers were under the necessity of begging wives from the natives, and the necessary consequence of this mixture and alliance was that they, or at least their children, lest their own original language, and spoke no other than that of the nation they mixed with;-which was exactly the case with the first English settlers in Ireland, who soon became mere Irishmen both in their language and manners"

It happened that the nation of the Picts coming into the ocean from Scythia, as is reported, in a few long ships, the winds driving them about beyond all the borders of Britain, arrived in Ireland, and put into the northern coasts thereof, and finding the nation of the Scots there, requested to be allowed to settle among them, but could not obtain it."-Ecclesiast. Hist. book i. chap. 1. In Bede's account of the region from whence they came, the Saxon Chronicle, Geoffrey Monmouth, and all the ancient English historians concur. The following passage also of Tacitus tells strongly in favour of the same opinion: "Rutile Caledoniam habitantiu meomæ, magni artus, Germanicam originem asseverant."-Agric. cap. 11. Attempts have been made to get rid of the weight of this authority by a most unfair interpretation of a passage which follows in the same chapter, and which applies evidently only to those inhabitants of Britain, who lived in the neighbourhood of the Gauls- proximi Gallis." In speaking of this portion of the British population, the historian says, "In universum tamen æstimanti, Gallos vicinum solum occupasse credibile." To suppose that by the expletive phrase "in universum," so deliberate a writer as Tacitus could have meant to retract or overturn an opinion expressed so decidedly but a few lines before, is a stretch of interpretation, upon which only the sturdy spirit of system could have ventured.

and, most probably, both from the same hive of hardy adventurers who were then pouring forth their predatory swarms over Europe.

That the Picts were the original inhabitants of North Britain, and the same people with the Caledonians, seems now universally admitted; and among the various opinions held as to their origin, the conjecture of Camden that they were but Britons under another name,-some indigenous to that region, others driven thither by the terror of the Roman arms,-has been hitherto the opinion most generally received. It is to be recollected, however, that Camden, in pronouncing the Picts to have been Britons, took for granted that the ancient Britons were the same people with the Welsh, thereby confounding two races which, there is every reason to believe, were wholly distinct. The extraction claimed by the Welsh themselves, and, as it appears, on no insufficient grounds, from those ancient Cimbri, whose martial virtue the pen of Tacitus has immortalized, at once distinguishes their race from that of the first inhabitants of Britain, who were, it is generally allowed, pure Celts or Gael; while the Cimbri, who lent their name to that northern Chersonesus, from whence the Teutonic tribes inundated Europe, were themselves no less decidedly Teutons.*

With respect to the languages of the two races, the radical differences between the Gaelic and the Cumraig have been, by more than one intelligent Welshman, admitted and demonstrated; while no less eninent Irish philologers have arrived at exactly the same conclusion. The words common to the two languages appear to be sufficiently accounted for by the close intercourse with each other, which, in different countries of Europe, the Celtic and Cimbric races are known to have maintained.

For another fact illustrative of the true history of the Cyniry, we are indebted also to a learned Welsh antiquary, who has shown by the evidence of those undying memorials, the names of rivers, headlands, and mountains, that another race had preceded the Welsh in the possession of that country,the words wedded, from time immemorial, to her hills and waters, being all Gaelic or Irish. The original seat, therefore, of the Cymry in Britain, must be sought for, it is clear, elsewhere; and if there be any region where similar traces of ancient inhabitancy are found, where the rivers and hills, the harbours and promontories, are all invested with Welsh names, we may there fix, without hesitation, the site of their primitive abode. This region, the mountain territory of the ancient Picts supplies. In the parts of North Britain once inhabited by that mysterious people, the language of the Cymry is still alive in the names of those permanent features of nature which alone defy oblivion, and tell the story of the first dwellers to all the races that succeed them.

Taking these and some other circumstances that shall presently be mentioned, into consideration, it is hardly possible, I think, to resist the conclusion that the people called Picts were the progenitors of the present Welsh,-being themselves a branch of that Cimbric stock from whence all the traditions of the latter people represent them

See Dissertation prefixed by Wharton to his History of Poetry, where he pronounces the Cimbri to have been a Scandinavian tribe.

The first person who ventured to question the supposed affinity between the Gaelic and Cambrian lan. guages was Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, in his Preface to Mallet's Northern Antiquities. "To con fess my own opinion," he says, "I cannot think they are equally derived from one common Celtic stock." The same writer ventured also to intimate the true reason of the wide difference between these languages. "That the Cimbri of Marius was not a Celtic but German or Gothic people, is an opinion that may be supported with no slight argument." A learned Welshman, the Rev. Mr. Roberts, thus decisively follows up and confirms the bishop's views. "Since the languages of the Cymry and Gael are perfectly distinct, they must be distinct nations; and if the distinction had been cautiously attended to, much confusion, both in history and etymology. would have been avoided." The same writer adds," Had Mr. Whitaker known either the Welsh or Gaelic language well, I am persuaded he would have been very far from sup posing that the Cymry and Gael were the same people, for he would have found that either of their lan. guages is of no more use to the understanding of the other, than the mere knowledge of the Latin to the understanding of the Greek." While such is the view taken by a learned Welshnan respecting the rela tionship between the two languages, a no less learned Irish scholar thus expresses himself on the subject: -"The Gomeraeg spoken at this day in North Wales, and the Gaelic spoken in Ireland, are as different in their syntactic constructions as any two tongues can be." (O'Connor, Dissert on Hist. of Scotland.) Sir W. Betham asserts still more decidedly the radical difference between the two languages, adopting the same views respecting the origin of the Welsh people, which I have above endeavoured to enforce. See his Gael and the Cimbri for some curious illustrations of this point.

Lhuyd, Preface to Geography: already referred to, chap 1., for the same fact.

§ See, for a long list of these Welsh denominations of places, Chalmers's Coledonia, vol. i. chap. 1.—" In the laborious work of Mr. Chalmers," says Dr. Pritchard, there is a collection of such terms, which seems amply sufficient to satisfy the most incredulous, that the dialect of the Cambro-Britons was, at one period, the prevailing idiom on the north-eastern parts of Scotland."

A few instances are mentioned by Chalmers, in which the names given by the Picts or Welsh were superseded by their Scoto-Irish successors. Thus it appears from charters of the twelfth century, that Inver was substituted by the Scots for the Aber of the previous inhabitants; David I. having granted to the monastery of May "Inver-in qui fuit Aber-in" and the influx of the Nethy into the Ern, whose familiar name had been Aber-nethy, was changed by the later people into Inver-nethy, and both these names it is added, still

remain.

to have been derived;—and that, instead of the Welsh having become the Picts, as was supposed by Camden and others, the result of the evidence shows, on the contrary, that the Picts became the Welsh.

Obscure and involved as are the records of British history for some ages after the departure of the Romans, there can yet enough be discerned, through the darkness, to enable us to track the course of this warlike people, in their resistless career towards the south, as well as in that gradual change of name which they underwent during their progress. The entire abdication of the island by the Romans was evidently the crisis of which the restless Picts availed themselves to carry their arms, with a view to permanent conquest, into regions they had before but temporarily devastated. Breaking through the long guarded frontier, they took possession, without any struggle, of all the midland provinces, reaching from the wall of Northumberland to the friths of Forth and Clyde, and there established the Regnum Cumbrense, or Kingdom of Strat-Clyde,* in whose mixed population-composed, as it was, of all the tribes of North Britain,— their old distinctive name of Picts began first to be unsettled and disused. Here, however, they continued to maintain themselves, against all the efforts of the Saxons to dispossess them; and under the German name of the Walli or Welsh, bestowed upon them by the invaders may be traced as acting a distinguished part in the affairs of Britain for many centuries after.

To this epoch of their northern kingdom, all the traditions of the modern Welsh refer for their most boasted antiquities, and favourite themes of romance.‡ The name of their chivalrous hero, Arthur, still lends a charm to much of the topography of North Britain; and among the many romantic traditions connected with Sterling Castle, is that of its having once been the scene of the festivities of the Round Table. The poets Aneurin and Taliessen, the former born in the neighbourhood of the banks of the Clyde,} graced the court, we are told, of Urien, the King of Reged, or Cumbria; and the title Caledonius bestowed on the enchanter Merlin, who was also a native of Strat-Clyde, sufficiently attests his northern and Pictish race. It may be added, as another strong confirmation of the identity between the Strat-Clyde Welsh and the Picts, that from the time of the total defeat of the latter by Keneth Macalpine, King of the Scots, no farther mention occurs of the kingdom of Strat-Clyde. The traditional story of the utter extinction of the Pictish people at this period, so far as to have left, we are told, not even a vestige of their language, bears upon the face of it the marks of legendary fiction; while the fact of their ancient title of Picts having been, about this time, eclipsed by their new designation of Walli, accounts satisfactorily for the origin and general belief of such a fable.

With respect to the period at which this people may be supposed to have fixed themselves in Wales, a series of migrations thither from Cumbria, at different intervals, have been recorded by the Chroniclers; and, among others, it is said that, in the year 890, a body of emigrants, under the command of a chief named Constantine, fought their way through the ranks of the Saxons to that conntry. But their main movement towards the south, whether voluntarily, or under pressure from the invader, must have occurred

Regnum Cumbrense and the Kingdom
Their identity has been clearly proved

* Pinkerton vainly endeavours to make a distinction between the on the Clyde. (Inquiry into the History of Scotland, part ii. chap. 5.) both by Innes (vol. i. chap. 2. art. 2) and Chalmers, book ii, chap. 2. The author of a late popular history, Thierry, (Hist. de la Conquete de l'Angleterre,) has so far confounded the localities of the ancient Welsh history as to mistake Cumbria, the present county of Cumberland, for Wales. Speaking of the Northern Britons he says, "Les fugitifs de ces contrées avoient gagné le grand asile du pays de Galles, ou bien l'angle de terre hérissé de montagnes que baigne la mer au Golfe de Solway." That the Picts, towards the end of the sixth century, formed the main part of the population of this king. dom, appears from a statement in the Life of St. Kentigern, by Jocelin, which shows that Galloway was, at this period, in the possession of the Picts; and it was probably about this time they began to be known by that name of Gelwejenses, which continued to be applied to them for many centuries after. (See Innes, vol. i. book 1. chap. 2.) While thus the Picts were called Galwejenses, we find Matthew of Westminster, at a later period, giving the same name to the Welsh; thereby identifying, in so far, the latter people with the Picts.

"The name," says Camden, "by which the Saxon conqueror called foreigners, and every thing that was strange." Most of the great Welsh pedigrees, too, commence their line from princes of the Cumbrian Kingdom, and the archaiologist Lhuyd himself boasts of his descent from ancestors in the "province of Reged in Scot. land, in the fourth century, before the Saxons came into Britain."-Pref. to Archeologia,

There is, however, visibly and from motives by no means unintelligible, an unwillingness, on the part of modern Welsh historians, to bring much into notice this northern seat of Cymbric enterprize and renown. For the name of Cumbria that of Reged is usually substituted, and the founders of their kingdom in Wales are alleged to have been the sons of a northern prince, named Cynetha, or Cenetha, (evidently their Scottish King Kenneth,) who, "leaving Cumberland and some neighbouring countries, where they ruled, to the government of one of their family, retired into North Wales, their grandmother's country, and seated themselves in the several divisions of it, as their names left on those places do, to this day, testify."-Row. land's Mona Antiqua, sect. ii. See also Warrington's Hist. of Wales, book i.

§ The river Clyde, in North Wales, was, it is clear, named by the new possessors of that country, after the Clyde of their old kingdom in Scotland.

at a much earlier period,—not more than a century, probably, from the time of their first outbreak from their own hills; as, before the end of the sixth age, they had already possessed themselves both of Wales and of Cornwall, and established a colony, apparently by conquest, in the province of Armoric Gaul.

Much more might be added in corroboration of this view of the origin of the Welsh, but that already, perhaps, I have dwelt somewhat more profusely upon it than may seem to be justified by the immediate object I had in view, which was, by inquiring into the most probable history of the Pictish people of Britain, to gain some clue to that of their fellow Scythians, the Scoti of Ireland; as well as some insight into the race and origin of those Cruithene, or Painted Men, who, about the same period, took up their abode in a part of the province of Ulster. With respect to the Scoti, the probability of their having been a Scandinavian people is considerably strengthened by the weight of evidence and authority which pronounces the Picts to have been a colony from the same quarter, as their joint history is thus rendered concurrent and consistent; and it seems naturally to have followed from the success of the former in gaining possession of Ireland, that others of the adventurous rovers of the North should try their fortunes in the same region. Of that detachment of Pictish adventurers which fixed their quarters, as we have said, in the North of Ireland, there will occur occasions to take some notice, in the course of the following pages. I shall here only remark that, by their intermixture with the primitive inhabitants of the country, they were doubtless the means of engrafting on the native tongue those words of Cimbric origin which, notwithstanding the radical difference between the two languages, has given to the Irish and the Welsh so imposing an appearance of affinity.†

CHAPTER VII.

HISTORY OF IRELAND FROM THE LANDING OF THE SCOTI COLONY TO THE ARRIVAL OF ST. PATRICK.

In commencing his history of the Milesian or Scotic monarchs, by far the most trustworthy of the Irish annalists informs us, "that all the records of the Scots, before the time of King Kimbaoth, are uncertian." This monarch, who, according to the senachies, was the seventy-fifth King of Ireland, and the fifty-seventh of the Milesian dynasty, flourished, as we learn from the same authorities, about 300 years before Christ: but the learned Dr. O'Connor, by whom the lists of the ancient kings have been examined with a degree of zeal and patience worthy of a far better task, has shown that, according to the regal lists of the senachies themselves, the reign of Kimbaoth cannot be carried back to a remoter date than 200 years before our era. The reader who has attended, however, to the facts adduced in the foregoing pages, proving how groundless are the claims to a remote antiquity which have been advanced for the Scotic or Milesian colony, will, I doubt not, be of opinion that a scheme of chronology which supposes the fifty-sixth monarch of the Scotic dynasty to have existed 200 or 300 years before the birth of Christ,

Bishop Stillingfleet declares strongly in favour of the opinion that the Picts" were from the same parts" as the Scots; but interprets Bede's words rather too favourably for his purpose, when he represents him as saying that "on being carried by a tempest to Ireland, they found their Gentem Scotorum, i. e. (adds the bishop) their countrymen, the Scythians." Among the most convincing indications of their having been kindred tribes, are those deduced by Buchanan, from their facility of intercourse on first meeting, their mutual confidence and intermarriages, and the amicable neighbourhood of their settlement afterwards in North Britain. "Facile majores Pictorum Scotis fuisse conciliatos puto, atque ab eisdem, ut traditur, adjutos, ut homines cognatos, ejusdem fere linguæ nee dissimilium rituum."-Hist. Scot. lib. ii. 27.

The amount of this resemblance between the two languages appears to be, after all, but trifling. "There is," says Mr. Roberts, the intelligent Welsh scholar, already quoted, "about one word in fifteen similar, but rarely the same, in sound and signification, in both languages. In the first nine columns of the Irish Dic tionary, printed by Lhuyd in his Archæologia, there are 400 words, of which I have not been able to discover more than twenty, in common to both languages, nor have I succeeded better in several trials. Moreover, the grammatical structure, as to the declension and construction, are radically different."-Chronicle of the Kings of Britain.

A learned German glossologist, Adelung, is also to be numbered among those who consider the Welsh tongue to be a descendant from that of the Belgæ, and not from that of the Celta.

Tigernach. "Omnia monumenta Scotorum usque Cimbaoth incerta erant." For some account of this annalist, who died A. D. 1088, see Ware's Writers.-Rer. Hibern. Scrip. tom. ii. &c. &c.