Early Inhabitant
Above : Ancient Europe Map
From the earliest times of which we have any knowledge, Ireland was inhabited by people speaking a language which they called Gaelic. This was one of the languages spoken by the Celtic group of the ” Aryan ” branch of the human family. The ” Aryan ” or ” IndoEuropean,” or ” Caucasian ” race had occupied Europe before the dawn of history, having absorbed or exterminated the pre-Aryan races. They formed four great groups which were situated approximately as follows : the Graco-Latin along the Mediterranean ; the Teutonic around the Baltic ; the Sclavonic in the East, and the Celtic in the Centre and West. Almo9t all the language spoken at the present time by the nations of Europe belong to one or other of those great groups.
The most important to us of those families of mankind are the ” Celts “—a name, however, which was not their own, but was given to them by the Greeks. Their original home appears to have been on the Upper Danube from whence they had spread over Central and Western Europe, and had entered Spain and Northern Italy four centuries before the Christian Era More than a century later some Celtic tribes crossed into Asia Minor, where centuries afterwards they were known to St. Paul as the Galatians* This last migration, however, seems to have been due to some serious upheaval. The power of the Celts thenceforward declined, and they gradually sank under Roman influence on the South, and Teutonic influence on the North.
*
“Galicia ” in Spain and ” Galicia ” in Austria similarly derive their names.
Whenever the various races came into contact, much intermingling took place. Tribes of one race were often interspersed with those of another race. This appears to have occurred in particular in the North, where many of the Teutonic tribes, prior to the third century B.C., were tributary to their Celtic neighbours. There was much similarity in the social and economic systems of both, especially in the tenure of land—so important in primitive societies. To this is probably due the fact that in later history we find some tribes of Teutonic race speaking a Celtic language. Neither in early history nor in modern times is the language spoken by a people a reliable test of the race to which that people belongs.
The fact that a Celtic language was the earliest tongue that we know with certainty to have been spoken in Ireland is not, therefore, a sure indication that the earliest inhabitants of the country in historic times were purely of Celtic race. It is certain that Ireland was early occupied by pre-Aryan peoples, traces of whose language even are said to be found in some of our place-names. The extent to which these were absorbed by the later Aryans is uncertain. Our annals suggest that the early colonies completely disappeared, and that the later ones were almost altogether supplanted by their respective successors. Modern critical students hold, on the other hand, that a large proportion of the inhabitants of Ireland were pre-Aryan in race, whose identity became merged in that of the later Celtic speakers.
There is uncertainty, too, as regards the origin of the Celtic speakers themselves. We know nothing positive as to their race, the countries from which they came to Ireland, the number of colonies which came, or the respective periods at which they arrived. Tradition says nothing of their race, but tells, as we shall see, of various waves of immigration, all of which are said to have originated in Greece and the countries on the east of it, and to have come to Ireland, some from the North, and some from the South, each succeeding wave supplanting the one which preceded it. It is also held, on the other hand, that the process of colonisation was gradual, and that some of the latest arrivals of Celtic speakers were originally Teutonic in race.
