GLIMPSES OF ANCIENT IRELAND.

BY ÆNGUS REALTACH.

XX.—THE GAEL IN ALBAIN.

IT is historical that there were Irish colonies a very early date in Albain—that Scotia, one of the ancient names of Ireland, was thus introduced into North Britain and was afterwards applied exclusively to that country—and that all North Britain was first united into a kingdom by those emigrants. It of interest to the Irish historical student to know how far those ancient Irish colonies can be supposed to be represented in the present population of Albain.
 Until recently, the Highlanders, at least most of their principal tribes, used to say that they descended from the Irish. Now they say, or at least their literary men say for them, that they descend from the aboriginal Picts. Which statement is correct ? Or is not each only partially so? They also say that the Picts were Gael, aboriginal in the country. What are the evidences for and against this theory—respecting the always-vexed question of the origin of the Picts?
 "What does history tell about the early inhabitants of North Britain? When the Romans penetrated to the Grampians they were encountered by tribes whom they mention as the Caledonians. At a later period the people who fought with them in the same quarter, and often made hostile invasions into South Britain, they spoke of as the Picts and Scots. The Picts were the aborigines of the country. The Scots were partly the colonists from Ireland, particularised by Bede as Scoti qui incolunt Britanniam, and partly invaders direct from Ireland. These facts, and the facts in the next paragraph respecting the Scots, are historical and now admitted on all hands—by the advocates of the the new Highland theory, well as by all other writers—so I need not pause to support them by quotations or references.
 The first colony of which we know went from Erin to Albain, A.D. 238.; the second, A.D. 503. Among, the many other ancient names which Erin bore—Inisfail, Inisalga, Falla, Banba— Scotia was included. The various traditions of the Milesians concur in saying that they came originally from Spain under a leader whom they remembered as Miledh Espainé (Miles Hispaniae) "the Spanish warrior ;" that from him they derived the name of Clann-Miledh, or Milesians, and from his wife Scota, that of Scots. At any rate, the term Scotia was first applied to Erin exclusively; then it was extended to the Irish colony in Albain, which the British and Saxon monastic annals notice as Scotia Minor or Scotia Nova. In the ninth century, the Irish or Scots in Albain established, under Kenneth Mac Alpine, their rule over all Britain north of the Forth ; and in the following century, the tenth, the name Scotland was first given to all that country. The term Scots continued to be occasionally applied to the Irish of Erin down to the eleventh century, when they finally dropped it.
 The Scotic colonies in Albain—inhabiting the country between the Clyde and Ross—were able, notwithstanding the disparity of numbers, to eventually conquer the Picts, who even lost all traces of a distinct existence. Because as we are told the Scots were more skilful in war. There are abundant evidences that the aborigines of Northern Britain were less advanced in civilization than those of the South or than the Irish. The Romans found the South-coast Britons—the people of Kent who had constant communication with Gaul, and those near the Land's End, who had traded with the Phœnicians ages before—much more civilized than the Britons of the interior, and these again than the Caledonians (caoillda oin, "people of the woods") in their less fertile soil and harsher climate. Then the term Picti, "painted people," betokens their primitive condition for a long time. The Irish called them for centuries before by a similar name—Cruithné (from Cruith, colour). The Irish first civilized Albain, and the Irish monk Columba christianized the Picts.
 As to the present inhabitants, they used to claim an Irish origin, and even Skene admits that "the traditions at present current among the Highlanders themselves rather support this theory." But these traditions ignored altogether any Pictish, i.e., aboriginal blood ! On the other hand, the modern theory, of which Skene is a zealous advocate, claims a Pictish descent for the Highlanders, and ignores altogether the Scotic, i.e., the Irish blood ! This is absurd. Both Scots and Picts must have left descendants ? Argyll and Western Inverness were occupied by the first Irish colony for six hundred years, and by the second for three hundred years, before Kenneth Mac Alpine founded his monarchy. Must not those colonists, so long in the land, and then strong enough to effect such a change, have left posterity ? And must not the Picts have left posterity ! The early writers of the country say that they were wholly exterminated—a ridiculous supposition, proved to be incorrect so far as regards the Southern Picts, those of the Lowlands, and also improbable as regards those of the Highlands. The only rational conclusion is that the present Highlanders spring from both people, the Scots and the Picts—the one or other strain prevailing in particular localities and particular tribes.
 But who were the aborigines, the Picts ? That is a question which has ever vexed the antiquary, and still remains a mystery. The ethnologists are now agreed that they were Celts, but whether of the Gaelic branch, or the Kymric (like the Britons), or a mixture of both, is the point in dispute. The advocates of the theory that the aborigines of Albain were Gael adduce the statement in Tacitus that there were three nations in the island of Britain—the Britons, the Silures, and the Caledonians. But this statement does not prove that the three were not of cognate race. Nor if they, were different, does it prove that the difference in the Caledonians was not obtained from Ireland. There may have been Irish colonization antecedent to the historical, just as there were certain scattered prehistoric Cruithné or Pictish colonies in Erin, which no doubt went there from Albain. What Tacitus says does not help to show that the Gael were aboriginal in Albain. Let us examine the other principal fact cited. The first name of the whole island of Britain was Albion—from an ancient Celtic word signifying " white," which exists in the Roman adjective albus and in the name, Alps—though in the modern Celtic—in the Kymric I see as well as in the Gaelic—the same word signifies "a height." In either, case the name Albion, might have been equally suggested by the chalky cliffs of Kent and the snow-covered hills of the extreme North. Well, the term Albion was supplanted by that of Britain, and was afterwards limited to the north of the island, which is still known as Albain or Albany. From this it is inferred that there were inhabitants of the island before the Kymri and supplanted by them, and that they then retreated northward with the original name of the country, and that those people were Gael. But the fact that the name of Albion thus receded northward, though a curious one, is not alone sufficient to support this view of a change of race; and there is nothing else to support it—no traditions, whatever among either Kymri or Gael. In fine, it is impossible to prove that the Picts— that is, the aborigines of Albain—were Gael.
 Is it possible to prove that they were Kymri? There are far stronger arguments in favour of this theory. The ethnologists in general favour it. Aber was the Kymric term for the mouth of a river; Inver (inbhear) the Gaelic. And Latham, like old Camden, cites the fact that the term aber prevails along the east coast of Scotland as it does in Wales, while inver prevails on the western Scottish coast. The term aber could not have got there unless the Kymric people who used it were there also. I observe that aber has been introduced into the Gaelic Dictionary published by the Highland Society. Excellent as that dictionary generally is, I think philologists will agree that this phrase is most improperly introduced as Gaelic. It is nothing to the purpose to say that it is reducible into two Gaelic words; very many other Kymric words are so reducible because of the Celtic affinity of the two languages. But aber was never a Gaelic phrase; it is not to be found in any other dictionary of the tongue either old or new; and it was never used in the local nomenclature of Ireland, or of the western—the Scotic side of Albain.
 Nevertheless, the presence of the term aber along the east coast only shows that the Kymri were in eastern Albain at a very early date. But it is proof of the Kymric relationship of the southern Picts, that their kingdom of Strathclyde is mentioned by the old writers as British, like Cumbria or Wales. And if the southern Picts were Kymric, partly or wholly, so must have been the northern, for they were never spoken of as distinct people while the Picts were always spoken of as distinct from the Irish or Scots, whose Gaelic origin is unquestioned.
 And yet there must have been a great Gaelic element in the northern Picts, if not in the southern, for, as Tytler shows, the Gaelic language existed in nearly all the country north of the Forth in the eleventh century. For this and other reasons, it is very likely that at least the northern Picts were a mixed Kymric and Gaelic people, and though any conclusion must be only speculative—a mere weighing of probabilities—I think the balance of the data tends to show that the Kymric was the aboriginal blood in the Pict, and that the Gaelic strain was obtained from the Scotic colonists.
 The Scots having made themselves the masters of the country, it is reasonable to suppose that the dominant clans would have the most Scotic and the least Pictish blood ; and accordingly most of the principal tribes did always claim an Irish origin. The Siol Cuin, or "race of Con," is the name borne by the Mac Donalds (a branch of whom returned to Ireland in the thirteenth century), with the Mac Dougals and others, because of a descent deduced from the celebrated Con Ceadcatha, or of "the Hundred' Battles,'' Ardri of Erin in the third century. The Siol Alpine are the Mac Gregors, Mac Kinnons (Mac Fingon), Mac Nabs (Mac an Aba), and Grants—having always deduced their genealogy ; from King Kenneth Mac Alpine— whence Mac Gregor's motto, "My race is royal."  The Clan Roich, or Monros, with the Mac Millans and Buchanans, are the Siol O'Cain, because they traced their ancestry to Donal O'Cahan, an Irish chieftain. The Clan Chattan (Mac Pherson and Mac Intosh) claimed the same ancestor. The Mac Neills asserted that they were a branch of the Hy Nial of Ireland. The first of the Campbells married the daughter of Dermid O'Duin, a chieftain of Argyll, the centre of the old Scotic colonies, and the Campbells were so proud of that maternal descent that their favourite tribal name was the children of Dermid." Skene says that the above pedigrees are erroneous. Perhaps so ; but his citations do not prove it. And in denying those genealogies he only substitutes mist beyond three or five hundred years back, which among the the Celts, who, like the Arabs, attach a great importance to such things, is esteemed no pedigree at all. Five hundred years, forsooth ? Cuirm gan Caoimhneas! The late John O'Donovan, a senachie as conscientious as learned; has verified for fifteen hundred years the standing genealogies of the Hy-Fiaclira of Connaught—O'Cummin, O'Dowds, O'Heyne, &c.  And it is but one oak in a wood. A further proof of the popular and heredity impression in Scotland, that the Gaelic speech and whatever is Gaelic in the population were derived from Ireland, is the fact that the Lowlanders down to the present century always called the language of the Highlanders the Irish, or as they pronounced it, The Erse.

Advocate (Melbourne, Vic. : 1868 - 1954), Saturday 23 April 1870, page 10