Ireland and the making of Britain

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER

?AGE

Preface ix

Chapter II Lineaments In The Conspectus

I. Founders of Churches and Cities. 2. From Iceland to the Pyramids. 3. Incomparably Skilled in Human Learning.' 4. The Carolingian Renaissance.

i. Founders of Churches and Cities

|HE men that Ireland sent forth therefore were more than intellectuals and devotees. Had they been merely such they could not have got very far. They were indefatigable all-round workers — engineers, architects, painters, penmen, woodcarvers and farmers, as well as the most accomplished schoolmen of their age. Deeply learned and highly bred, some of them the sons of kings, and, like Columcille, eligible to the high throne of Ireland itself, giving their wealth as well as their work, they regarded no form of labor as too lowly or arduous that helped in the compassing of the ends they had in view. A versatility in cases verging on the miraculous, a faith and enthusiasm that removed mountains, and a courage lionlike in its intrepidity, would seem to have been the elements necessary for the accomplishment of the deeds recorded of them. Here and there all over Europe, on high tablelands or by the side of rivers, or in the midst of a desert waste, there rise to-day fair cities boasting large populations and all the refinements of civilization. How came these cities there? Often because one of these Irish peregrini, trusting only God and his own arm and brain, struck out on a fateful and distant day into the trackless forest or across some wilderness and there in the heart of it drove his staff into the ground and made it his home "for the love of the kingdom of the Lord."

First came the hermitage, and then the oratorio, then the monastery, and church, and school, a modified rath or lis or caiseal or caithir, after the Irish fashion, with people flocking from all parts to hear the wisdomladen voice of the stranger. So a center of culture, of industry, and of commerce was set up, and roads were laid, and bridges built, and wells dug, and gardens planteo^ and clearances made in the woods, and herds of goats and cows and sheep and poultry were made to take the place of the wild animals that had greeted the stranger on his coming. And over all till death took him presided the stranger from far Scotia and a number of his countrymen who had in course of time come to him, dignified men with long flowing locks and painted eyelids 1 and a serenity that nothing could ruffle, men who among themselves talked a strange tongue, not Latin though it resembled it, which the natives could not understand, but who talked to the natives in their own speech and seemed to them to be in possession of all knowledge and to be capable of accomplishing all things. And then at last when the stranger died and the people he had brought together began to credit their gain and count their loss, an unspeakable sorrow would fall upon them, and the lamentation would carry his fame to all parts. And a great cathedral would be built and his blessed bones placed therein, and crowds would come to venerate his memory. And so a new city would be born

U striking peculiarity of the Irish peregrin! was their painted eyelids, but they also colored or tattooed other parts of their bodies. They were tonsured in front from ear to ear and their garments were of white homespun. They carried staffs, leathern wallets, flasks and books. Pilgrims traveled usually on foot, but Irish travelers of rank, mingling pleasure with piety, traveled on horseback and with retinue, as in the case of Marcus and Moengal, described in the chronicle of St. Gall.

to the world and the seed planted by the stranger would fructify for ever more. Thus St. Gall, whose father and patron was Ceallach or Gallus, thus Lure, whose founder was Dicuil, thus Bobbio, whose founder was Columbanus, thus Perrone, whose father and patron was Fursa, grew into mountain villages or noble cities. Thus scores of cities and towns from the Irish Sea to the Adriatic — St. Bees, Malmesbury, St. Gibrian, St. Gobain, St. Die, St. Ursanne, Dissentis, San Columbano, San Cataldo, Altomunster, St. Desibod and Beatenberg, among them—' came into being under the fostering arm of the missionary Gael.

A sacred fanaticism carried these tireless Irish pilgrims over the broad expanse of Europe, their tracks studded with hermit haunts and holy wells, round which rose up in the fulness of time noble monasteries and enduring cities. When the fiery Columbanus was expelled from Luxeuil, where on the buried heaps of a Roman city he had founded a lasting school and city, he wended his slow and tortuous way to northern Italy, and as he proceeded, parted one by one with compatriots who were disciples precious to him as life. Dicuil's failing limbs gave way as he accompanied the evicted superior to Besancon, and with his master's blessing he settled in a desert waste to lay the foundation of the noble monastery of Lure. Potentin was left behind at Soissons to become Abbot eventually of Coutances. Ursicinus 1 bade his superior a fond farewell at Basel and, penetrating into the passes of Jura, founded his great monastery at the foot of Mont

iThe names of Irishmen abroad assumed a Latin form in the mouths of continental writers. Colum became Columbanus; CathaiL Cataldus; Siadhail, Sedulius; Ceallach, Gallus; Moengal, Marcellus; Muiredach, Marianus; Duncadh, Donatus ; and so on. A new sobriquet was given in some cases. Thus Comgall, founder of Bangor, figures as Faustus in one of the directions of Columbanus. Other forms were arbitrary, Ailill becoming Elias. "Scotua" meaning "Irishman," was a common appellation.

Ireland and die Making of Britain

Terrible. Ceallach, or Gallus, stricken with fever, abandoned the fateful journey at Bregenz to found, soon after, the peerless monastery of St. Gall. Sigisbert turned aside at Coire to lay in a place of horror and vast wilderness the foundation of the Abbey of Dissentis. Fridoald, one of the last surviving companions of Columbanus, led a colony of monks into the wild Munsterthal and founded the monastery of Granfelden, united later with the hermitage at St. Ursanne and the monastery of Pfermund.

The disciples of Fursa and their contemporaries repeated the marvels achieved by Columbanus and his associates. Their toil and agony and martyr blood hallowed the soil that has resounded in these days to the thunders of the most brutal war in history. Wherever Fursa moved the people kissed his footsteps; at his death kings an< princes vied for his remains. Treasure untold accumulated around his shrine at Peronne, where after his deal a monastery for Irishmen was established, to be pillage( after the lapse of centuries by the marauding Northmei as the centers founded by and named after St. Gobaii St. Gibrian, and many another Irish saint were overrui and plundered during the Calvinist wars of the sixteenth century. The monks who preceded Fursa labored along the Authie, Somme, Seine, Oise, Marne, Aisne, and Meuse — names all familiar to students of the great war; those who accompanied him cooperated in carrying the good work into Belgium and beyond it. Eata, Maelceadar, Amand, Bertuin and others preached the gospel in the Low Countries. Livinus labored at Ghent, throughout Flanders and Brabant indeed. Rumold became first bishop and apostle of historic Mechlin. Ultan governed monasteries at Mont St. Quentin and between the Meuse and Sambre in the region of Maestriche. Wiro founded

St. Peter's monastery, also in the territory of Liege. Fingen established the monastery of St. Vannes at Verdun ; Abbot Maolcalain was the first bishop of St. Michael in Thierache. Others found their way much farther afield, notable among them Fridolin the Traveller, Killian, patron of Wurzburg, and Marianus Scotus, who labored at Paderborn, Fulda, Metz and elsewhere. In the tenth century learning flourished in the region of the Meuse and Moselle, at Toul and Verdun, which were occupied by colonies of monks from Greece and Ireland.

2. From Iceland to the Pyramids

Colman, patron of Lower Austria, had the experience of being seized as a Moravian spy during the war between the Moravians and the Austrians early in the eleventh century. Towards its close John, another Irish missionary, converted multitudes in Sclavonia, between the Elbe and the Vistula, and finally was beheaded at Rethre. St. Tressan and his companions announced the Gospel at Rheims and along the district of Chalons-sur- Marne. A host of others penetrating to the North made the mountains and forests of Germany and Scandinavia resound with the glad tidings of redemption. From Egypt in the East to Iceland in the North, hardly an acre can be found which has not been consecrated by the ceaseless .strivings, the sweat and the blood of the men of Ireland. Little wonder that it seemed as tho in Green's words, "Celtic, and not Latin, Christianity was to mold the destinies of the Churches of the West."

Dicuil, early in the ninth century, tells of an Irishman, Fidelis, who measured the Pyramids and "went thence by the canal to the Red Sea." Far earlier another, Pellegrinus, penetrated to the Holy Land, fasted forty days

J 7 in the desert, returned through Egypt, whence he sailed for Italy, landing at Ancona, to spend the rest of his life near the mountain called after him. In 634 a deputation of scholarly Irishmen, sent by the Irish government, lodged in a hospice in Rome with a Greek and a Hebrew, an Egyptian and a Scythian, w T ho told them the whole world celebrated the Roman and not the Irish Easter. In Constantinople in the ninth century Irish monks told the Greeks that every Irish monastery possest a Chrysostom. Cathaldus of Lismore, returning from the Holy Land, was shipwrecked at Taranto, of which, in recognition of his labors, he became bishop, patron and second apostle. Findan of Rheinau escaped from the Norse pirates of the Orkneys before settling in Switzerland. Pilgrims settled in the Faroe Islands and in Iceland, where, in the year 860, the Norwegians found Irish books, bells and croziers, left there by men who profest the Christian religion. In 659 the Irish Angus or Augustin wrote, apparently in Carthage, to the bishops of which he dedicated his work, perhaps the most original theological treatise of the early Middle Ages.

Note the practical industry of these Irish missionaries and their disciples. "To their untiring industry is it due that half of France and of ungrateful Europe has been restored to cultivation," is the testimony of Montalembert in respect to the monks in general, but it applies to the Irish monks and their disciples in particular. Ursicinus, expelled with Columbanus from Luxeuil, attached to his own monastery at St. Ursanne subsequently a hospital for the sick poor, with baggage cattle to help travelers over the Alps. Wandresgisel, disciple of Columbanus and founder of the monastery of Fontenelles, is reputed to have planted the first vineyard in Normandy. St.

Eata, patron saint of cowherds, is represented in art as surrounded by calves and oxen. St. Fiachra or Fiacre is the patron of the cab-drivers of Paris, to support the poor of which he is said to have turned the wilderness of Meaux into a garden. St. Eloi, disciple alike of Columbanus and Fursa, is patron of farriers and silversmiths, as Dunstan, educated by Irish instructors and craftsmen, is the patron saint of goldsmiths. Frigidian, honored in Italy as San FreHiano, engineered canals in the plains of Lucca. Rudpert, another Irishman whose figure is portraye'd on the coins of Carinthia, started the salt mining that made Salzburg famous, and gave it its name. Magnoald, apostle of Suabia, is reputed to Have discovered the mountain iron of Suilinic and taught the people how to work it.

Andrew of Fiesole, the brother of Donagh or Donatus of Fiesole, who had the reputation of working after the manner of a reasoning bee, helped with his own hands to build there a church of stone and mortar. As a result of pilgrimages to the shrine of Andrew's sister, Brigid, the surrounding wastes were reclaimed, the forests cleared, and the fields planted. Nor was Brigid herein peculiar. Gregory the Great: Has reference to Maura and Britta, two virgins, obviously Irish, who were buried at Tours, where they had come as pilgrims to the shrine of St. Martin. Remi, father of pilgrims, provided suitable retreats on the banks of the Marne for the three sisters of Gibrian, on pilgrimage too from Ireland, "for the love of Christ."

"They did not," says the biographer of Remi, "live only on the charity of those to whom pious Remi had commenced them, but also on their own industry and the labor of their Hands, in accordance with the custom of the religious bodies in Ireland. This life, united to wonderful holiness and constant prayer, won for them a great love among the natives of the country." Dymphna, as the reward of her industry, became the patron saint not only of the insane but also of Brabant. St. Begha or Bee, who first crossed from Ireland to St. Bee's Head, called after her, assisted with her own hands in erecting at Hartlepool the mother convent of England, as her countryman and spiritual director, Aidan, erected at Lindisfarne the mother church of Northumbria. At Lindisf arne the English were taught writing and the letters used among them till the Norman conquest. From Bangor and from among the Irish in Wales Alfred secured professors when he sought to set up schools in England.

3. Incomparably Skilled in Human Learning

To the time of the Conqueror England existed simply as an intellectual dependency of Ireland. It was Irishmen like Aidan, Finan, Colman, Maeldubh, and Fursa who introduced the machinery of Christian civilization into the land which Roman missionaries had trod with fear and trembling. When the Danes destroyed the evidences of progress in England it was Irishmen again, themselves harassed by these same freebooters, who repaired the ravages. Almost every scholar of note in the Anglo-Saxon era was trained either in Ireland or by Irishmen in England. There was hardly a school in England, outside that at Canterbury — though here Irishmen were prominent also in Theodore's time — that was not established and conducted by Irishmen or by men who were Irish-taught. What is now called Scotland they simply made their own. The inauguration there by Columcille of Aidan is the earliest recorded instance of a royal coronation in Great Britain, where the Irish ceremonies came into universal use. "The Irish," says Collins, "colonized Scotland, gave it a name, a literature and a language, gave it a hundred kings, and gave it Christianity."

Aidan familiarized the English of the north with the solemn melody of the Roman chant, and music and astronomy were among the subjects taught by the Irish monks at Glastonbury. Foillan and Ultan, on crossing from Bamborough to Flanders, were asked by Gertrude of Nivelles to instruct her nuns in psalmody, while the music school of St. Gall, under Moengal, was "the wonder and the delight of Europe." St. Gall itself became known as "the intellectual center of the German world," as Bobbio, founded by Columbanus, was long "the light of northern Italy." Baoithin, successor of Columcille at Iona, "had no equal this side of the Alps in his knowledge of sacred scripture and the profundity of his science." Adamnan, abbot also of Iona, and "high scholar of the western world," has left us in his exquisite life of Columcille "one of the most important pieces of hagiology in existence" — moreover "the most complete piece of biography that all Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period, but even through the whole Middle Ages," in the opinion of Pinkerton. 1

Fursa's marvelous visions, says Ozanam, inspired Dante. Johannes Scotus Eriugena ranked with Dante, Chrysostom and Albertus Magnus; no more puissant or original thinker appeared in the long tract between Augustine and Aquinas. Clemens and "Albinus" were "incomparably skilled in human learning and in the Scriptures." Tutilo or Tuthail of St. Gall was at once i Enquiry, Pref. vol. 1, p. xlviia (Edinib., 1814).

musician, orator, poet, painter, sculptor, builder, goldsmith; Dungal, theologian, controversialist, poet, astronomer; Virgilius of Salzburg, prince of astronomers, "most learned among the learned." Nor was Dicuil the only great Irish geographer. Duncan or Dunchad, an Irish bishop, teaching in the monastery of Remi at Rheims, where he died about the close of the tenth century, wrote for the use of his students "Explanatory Observations on the First Book of Pomponius Mela regarding the situation of the earth," as well as a "Commentary on the Nine Books of Martianus Capella on the Liberal Arts." 1 For these reasons "it was that Fingen and Duncan and other Irishmen hlad been so (peculiarly patronized at Rheims, Metz, Verdun, and along the territories of France and Germany. Learning had been revived by Irishmen in the imperial city of Cologne; they taught the classics and the sciences in the extensive diocese of Toul ; they established schools along the Rhine, in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the northern districts of Italy; in short, the Irish ecclesiastics of the tenth and preceding centuries were the persons by whose means the reign of literature had been established in many of the most distinguished cities and provinces of Europe." 2 Every province in Germany proclaims the Irish as its benefactors, says a German author. "The Saxons and the tribes of northern Germany are indebted to them to an extent which may be judged from the fact that the first ten bishops who occupied the see of Verden belonged to that (Irish) race."

Noteworthy was the modesty of these Irish pioneers. Columbanus, friend of Agilulf, king of the Lombards,

iThe MS. (Lat. 4854) Is in the BibliothSque Nationals, Paris. Se» Hist. Lit de la France, I, 549-50.

3 Brenan, EccL Hist, of Ireland, p. 199.

and of Chlothair, king of Neustria, declined late in life the recall to his well loved Luxeuil. Gallus similarly declined the preferred government of Luxeuil and the bishopric of Constance. Virgilius, tho appointed bishop of Salzburg by Pope Stephen II and King Pepin, deferred his consecration for two years. Donatus hesitated to accept the see of Fiesole. Dungal, high in the esteem of Charlemagne, specially desired that he might occupy no higher station in the church than simple deacon. Ultan is represented with a crown at his feet to signify his contempt for the things of the earth.

Not less striking were the mortifications they involuntarily endured. Columcille, a scion of the royal Hy Nial, lived on bread and water and vegetables, as often as not on common nettles; he slept on the bare sand with a stone for pillow, his pallet betimes the naked rock. Adamnan lived at Coludi on two meals a week and frequently passed the whole night in vigil. Columbanus, unwitting rival of St. Benedict, subsisted for three weeks on grass and bilberries and the bark of trees. His followers and successors, tho in many instances of princely birth and upbringing, were scarcely less given to frugal fare. Not St. Gall and Lure alone had princes for abbots: Waldebert, Count of Meaux and Ponthieu, ruled Luxeuil with unparalleled success for forty years. Despite their self-denial, the complaint was made at an early stage that the monks of Luxeuil by their clearances and cultivation were destroying the chase in the surrounding woods. 1

*As the purpose here is to give a preliminary bird's-eye view numerous footnotes have been avoided. These wh»re useful will come later.

4. The Carolingian Renaissance

The number of scholars which Ireland gave to th( empire of Charlemagne amazed Eric of Auxerre. 1 Froi the beginning of the Carolingian renaissance they wen the leaders in every intellectual activity. "Altho it was Italy that inspired Charles with the idea of founding schools throughout the empire, it was Ireland that sent him the masters who were to impart the new learning. . . . . Alcuin, altho an Englishman, is justly considered a representative of Irish learning; with him is associated Clement of Ireland, who assisted in the work of founding the Palace school. Unfortunately history has not preserved the names of Clement's fellow countrymen who, during the reign of Charles and throughout the ninth century, were found in every cathedral and monastery of the empire as well as at the court of the Frankish kings, and were so identified with the new intellecfual movement that the teaching of the newly founded schools was characterized as Irish learning." 2

There is nothing in the whole history of literature more extraordinary than Irish knowledge of Greek during this period when all knowledge of it had apparently died out among others in western Europe. The fact that the em-' perors in the West had to turn to Irishmen for the elucidation of manuscripts that no Greek knew Latin enough and no Latin knew Greek enough to interpret is a mystery as astonishing and difficult to solve in our day as it appeared to Anastasius, 3 the Roman librarian, in his day. From Pelagius and Columbanus through Johannes Scotus Eriugena to Michael the Irishman (Scotus) we are confronted by the evidences of this baffling Hellenic pre-

iVita S, Germani, praef.

2 Turner, History of Philosophy, pp. 241-2.

s Migne, Patrologia Latina, cxxii, 93.

eminence, an incommunicable illumination invisible as to its source and tributaries. In the fifth century Pelagius won an easy triumph over Orosius, the representative of St. Augustine, by his knowledge of Greek. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century knew no Greek. Yet Eriugena in the ninth century not only translated from Greek into Latin and from Latin into Greek but wrote Greek poetry, and Michael Scotus, a contemporary of Aquinas, was among the first to acquaint Europe with the larger philosophy of Aristotle by translating his works from the Arabic. When in the same age Frederick II, who, like Charlemagne, loved to surround himself with Irishmen, decided on setting up the University of Naples, he invited Peter the Irishman to be its first rector, as another Irishman a little later became chancellor at Oxford. Among the students who listened to Peter was the Angelic Doctor himself.

I have fixed the telescope so as to bring into relief some of the lineaments in the conspectus. A summing-up and condensation is provided by an eager student of Irish medieval work abroad :

"By the armies of monastic missionaries and next by learned teachers first attracting pupils to Irish schools from all Christian Europe north of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and next by sending forth men to become the founders of schools or monasteries or churches abroad — the churches of St. Patrick and St. Columba stand out from the sixth century forward as the most energetic centers of religious life and knowledge in Europe; the main restorers of Christianity in paganized England and Roman Germany; the reformers and main founders of monastic life in northern France ; the opponents of Arianism even in Italy itself; originators in the West of the well-meant, however mistaken, system of the Penitentials; the leading preservers in the eighth and ninth centuries of theological and classic culture, Greek as well as Latin ; the scribes, both at home and abroad, of many a Bible text; the teachers of psalmody; the schoolmasters of the great monastic schools; the parents, in great part, as well as the forerunners of Anglo-Saxon learning and missionary zeal ; the senders-forth of not the least bright stars among the galaxy of talent gathered by Charlemagne from all quarters to instruct his degenerate Franks — down to the very eleventh and twelfth centuries." 1

We can measure the strength and richness of the old Irish civilization and the valor and energy of its depositaries by comparing the work performed by it and them with the contemporary work of other peoples similarly situated. The Church of Britain and Wales, for example, which is usually represented as a sister Celtic Church, the co-partner of the Church of Ireland in culture and zeal, did not produce a single missionary or schoolman who gained eminence abroad, and has not bequeathed to us even a single copy of the Scriptures. The dictum "The Roman sowed; the Irishman (Scotus) watered; the Briton did nothing" has a wider application than to the conversion of the English.

iHaddan, (Scots on the Continent), Remains 258-94 (Oxford, 1876).

CHAPTER III i. Ark of Safety for the Old Wisdom. 2. Ireland's Educational Proficiency. 3. Centers of Intellectual Activity. 4. Text-books and Learned Degrees.

i. Ark of Safety for the Old Wisdom

OUR modern civilization has so clearly the imprints of Greece and Rome upon it that the student usually fails to realize the immense vicissitudes through which it has passed in its duration to our day. The fabric of the old world of antiquity to which Caesar more than any other had given name and form was never more securely established than during the two centuries which followed his death. A long period of peace prevailed over the vast empire, and a knowledge of the liberal arts spread into the remotest provinces. From Rome as a center Christianity as well as letters went forth, the former spreading in the face of persecution till Constantine in 312 A. D. put the seal of legality upon it. But already the structure of Roman civilization, built up on foundations laid down by Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Celtic conquests, was shaking under the blows dealt upon it from the north. Till the termination of the reign of the Antonines, for a century and a half, the period of peace and prosperity continued. Then came a century that was full of menace and trouble but in which no vital injury was inflicted on the body politic. And then at last in the middle of the fourth century Rome began to crumble. Barbarians and pestilence were delivering the annihilating blows. The Franks -overran Gaul and descended into Spain, and the Goths poured into the east and into Asia Minor. Over the ruin which the Franks left behind them in Gaul and Spain the Vandals followed, nullifying the efforts at revival. In Asia the Huns poured over Cappadocia, Cilicia and Palestine, while Saracens passed through Egypt over north Africa into Spain. Britain was overrun by northern savages like the Saxons, Angles and Jutes, and Austria by Asiatic nomads like the Huns and Magyars. Then Goth followed Goth in Europe and German and Frank completed the work of destruction, in which earthquake, flood, fire and plague cooperated. In 407 A. D. a multitude of Franks and Vandals burst over Gaul. Roman rule practically ceased and the three kingdoms of the Visigoths, Burgundians and Franks began to form. In 476 Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor in Italy and in 486 Clovis the Frank ended the last vestige of Roman rule in Gaul. Then as if some inscrutable design sought, by a huge phenomenon, to leave no doubt that the world of the Caesars had gone forever, there followed the plague of 542. It raged for four months in Constantinople and for four years in the Roman Empire. "When the plague has ceased, we feel that we are moving in a completely other world than that of 540." 1

At the fall of the Roman Empire Ireland did not share in the ruin of its civilization. That ruin was almost as complete as if the ocean had burst its banks and washed over the plains of Europe. Now Ireland had shared in the commerce, the learning and the traditions of Rome while Rome was still in its strength. The Roman Empire fell swallowed up by tide after tide of heathen savages,

iRury's Later Roman Empire, I, 400.

eager for destruction and plunder. Outside the empire Russia and Germany, like the Scandinavian lands, were still barbarian and pagan. Thus all Europe almost became submerged under a deluge of savage heathendom. Ireland was the one exception, the ark of safety for the old beauty and wisdom of classical days. It was the bridge over what were truly the dark ages of Europe and as soon as the flood of heathen invasion ebbed, light and hope crossed the bridge and were first carried by Irish instructors to all the new-forming nations of Europe, the great heathen tribes destined to become the nations of the modern world.

While Europe, including Britain, was thus in tumult, peace and prosperity were brooding over favored Hibernia. Hundreds of years yet separated her from the Danish raids, and the English were scarcely yet known to civilization. The Romans had never succeeded in crossing, except for commerce, the waves that separated her from Britain. The Milesian Gaels, who had given organization to the country, had been so long settled in Ireland that the memory of that settlement had assumed a mythological character. 1 The assumption is that in the midst of the vast Celtic movements that are discernible over all Europe about 600 B. C. there was also a Celtic invasion of Ireland. One invasion probably followed another and an Irish historical tract, written about 721 A. D., and copied from older sources, gives the definite Gaelic monarchy as beginning contemporaneously with Alexander the Great in the fourth century B. C. 2 From that time onward one form of government, a limited elec-

1 "The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world" ; and come of "as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth" (Edmund Spenser, "View of the State of Ireland," 1596, pp. 26 and 32).

2 "Alexander had reigned five years when the sons of Mil came to Ireland, and the battle of Tailtu was fought in which fell the T. D. D. (Tuatha Da Danaan) with their queens." See MacNeill, Proo. Royal Ir. Acad., 1909-10, p. 132.