Ask the average Irish person to describe Gaelic civilization and negative terms might follow. Warlike, violent, fragmented, uncivilized. Ask the same person to describe Roman civilization and the opposite occurs. Greatness, law, civilizing influence, cosmopolitan achievement. The negative perception of Gaelic Ireland is not innate, it is taught. Which raises the question – by whom, and for what purpose?
Gaelic Ireland describes a period between 800BC and AD1600 when the people of Ireland took on customs, culture and identity recognizably different to other eras. This is similar to the ‘Roman’ period and culture in Italy. The Gaelic era is well documented thanks to the efforts of Gaelic scribes who diligently recorded law, myth, culture and history in illuminated manuscripts and Annals.
The spotlight has returned to Gaelic Ireland thanks to DNA advances, with initial findings in 2004 seemingly confirming Gaelic myths of a Celtic invasion from Iberia. This was a false positive, the maternal side mitochondrial DNA missing 99% of the picture. It took the miracle of whole genome sequencing in 2016, analyzing 3.2 billion base pairs, to upend thinking and rewrite history books.
Science confirmed the arrival of farmers from Turkey’s Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period, around 4000BC. They brought markers of Irish identity we recognize today like stone walled fields, dairy farming and crop cultivation. Sites like Newgrange show a heavenly homage that never left, even if the Gods may change. A major shift in genetics occurred during the later Beaker phenomenon around 2500BC, when 90% of the male line was replaced leaving much of the female line intact. This later replacement, which originated from modern day Ukraine – Russia, is seen as ‘population swamping’ because there is no present evidence for a violent arrival. The incoming people outnumbered a smaller population and benefitted from technological and social advantages.
What is most interesting is that DNA shows the Beaker phenomenon was the last mass movement into Ireland for 3000 years. The alleged Celtic invasion from 800BC simply did not occur, the origin story of Gaels invading from Iberia a myth. In reality, the Irish developed internally with external inspiration from Celtic, Roman and other sources from about 2000BC to 800AD, a remarkably long period. They were not isolated as they borrowed and bought, talked and traded, but did so largely on their own terms.
A SOCIETY OF EXCEPTIONAL CULTURAL MERIT
The Gaelic society which developed was a civilization of extraordinary value and values, one of the most sophisticated in Europe. Particularly in its later period following the fall of Rome, Ireland was a shining light of scholarly endeavor, complimented by legal advancement and community-based kinship. The all-island society of the Gaels developed a collective identity much earlier than most of Europe, a civilization without a centralized state but not without centralized structure. They shared one language, laws, religion, mythology, origin stories and kin-based community structures. Even sport was all island, hurling the oldest still-played field sport in the world.
Brehon Law, operated by a learned class who refined it over centuries, was comparatively more restorative than European neighbors. Island-wide assemblies agreed humanitarian laws like the Law of the Innocents, 697AD, which enshrined protection for women, children and clerics in time of war. Animal welfare laws protecting economic concerns resulted in a more humane approach. Women had protected status under Brehon Law, afforded a right denied for centuries after the Anglo-Norman arrival – divorce. There was imperfect application of these laws as their utility varied across kingdoms and classes. Regardless, their legislation highlighted societal values and ideals.
Irish crafts developed during this period arrived at a place of world leadership, particularly in manuscripts and metallurgy. The Book of Kells, the Tara Brooche and the Ardgah Chalice are in the upper echelons of global masterpieces.
Ireland’s creator society – its scribes, harpists, poets and craftsmen – enjoyed lifetime patronage in an island with an extraordinary appreciation of culture.
Societal structures also reflected egalitarian thinking. Land was held collectively by the kin group, not the private property of the King. This was reversed under Anglo-Norman systems, placing extraordinary concentrations of land, wealth and political power in a single unelected monarch. In Ireland’s many Tuatha or Kingdoms, the king was not automatically the eldest son but chosen from within the wider kin group. This limited democracy promoted personal character over strict bloodline inheritance.
It is important not to eulogize a society that utilized slavery, even if it was common for the time. Gaelic Ireland was highly stratified and class based, the honorable intentions of Brehon Law not applied or upheld equally across the island.
Still, by any measure and every comparison, Gaelic Ireland was a society of exceptional cultural value and merit
EXTERNAL SLANDER – INTERNAL DIMINISHMENT
That this period in Irish history receives more negative than positive perception is the result of external slander as well as internal diminishment. The Anglo-Norman arrivals wasted no time in attempting to discredit so as to legitimize their land grab.
Gerald of Wales Topographia Hibernica, published 1188, described the Irish as ‘barbarous’ and ‘beasts’, a filthy people. He would claim the Irish were ‘ignorant of letters, unable to read or write’, a lie all the more preposterous given Ireland’s long mastery of language which restored literacy to parts of Britain and Europe.
He would call Ireland warlike, an accusation Gaelic texts seem to reinforce by detailing every skirmish in Gaelic Ireland. However, these are occasions of note. Many involved small bands engaged in equally small operations with low or zero fatalities. Some years in the record contain no activity at all. No comparable records exist in many locations, Ireland’s advanced scribal tradition inadvertently creating a disproportionate impression. There was unquestionably less of the all out, annihilistic warfare in Ireland than in feudal Europe. Remarkably, no complete catalogue of all skirmishes in Gaelic Ireland that quantifies their frequency and extent has ever been undertaken, allowing assumption to rule.
So too the suggestion of a fragmented society is an unnecessary diminishing of a complex reality. Gaelic Ireland was among the more culturally coherent regions in Europe, sharing one law, language, religion, mythology, sporting traditions, social structure and a collective sense of identity. The application of its law did not match its ambition, yet the ambition remained. The idea that the incoming Anglo-Norman system of one king, centralized power, extraordinary concentration of wealth and vassals tied to generational poverty was a universal improvement is suggested in propaganda but not evident in practice.
Gerald would lament Ireland’s ‘failure’ to aspire to the status of citizen, which for Gerald meant submitting to serfdom. This conveniently aligned with the wishes of the sponsor of his travels – King Henry II. This was propaganda cloaked as observation, an effective tool for centuries.
If war, famine, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement were the hard tools of colonization then ethnocide, othering and the diminishment of Irish humanity were its soft ones, justifying the hard elements. The approach refined in Ireland would be used across an Empire.
REVISIONISTS WITH AN AGENDA
Remarkably, the diminishment of Gaelic Ireland did not end with partial independence. 20th century historians undertook necessary revisionism to remove myth and romanticism from 19th century works. But the revisionists, schooled in Anglo-centric institutions, had an agenda of their own. A ‘value free’ interpretation of Irish history stripped it of nationalist heroes. It was coldly academic, in no danger of feeding nationalist flames. The dispossessed, the famine dead, those murdered in atrocities rarely got a voice. While the work was expertly authenticated, what was excluded, and why, was more about present-day concerns than its value to the subject at hand.
Ireland is not unique in this. Britain is seeing savage revisionism of its imperial history, much of it necessary. But when the pendulum swings, there is a risk of over correction.
New slanders seek to replace the diminishment of Gaelic Ireland. False claims of violent Gaelic invasions of Scotland emerge, for which there is no evidence. The change was cultural and through inspiration and emulation, in much the same way the Celts influenced Ireland.
With new DNA evidence and a new millennium bringing a fresh generation of historians, we can be more optimistic of dispassionate analysis. We might also expect agenda-free observation.
We might give the last word on Gaelic Ireland to a scholar external to Ireland and Britain. Michael Richter, Professor of history at Konstanz University in Germany, used this description in his work Medieval Ireland:
“This book is concerned with the Irish, the most important and influential of the Celtic peoples in the Middle Ages. We are relatively well informed about the Irish, since they developed a written culture at an earlier stage than most other European peoples. After those of the Greeks and Romans, theirs was the most significant European culture of the early Middle Ages”
Barbarous? Hardly.
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Author – John Crotty. @itsjohncrotty. Article based on extracts from upcoming book ‘The Irish Tricolour’, published February 12th. John Crotty is a published History Press and Merrion Press author and the foremost authority on the history of the Irish Tricolour and Spike Island.