Origin of the Irish species and the dangerous fallacy of racial purity
Several historians, scholars and archaeologists of late have now questioned, and quite rightly, the idea of Ireland as a 'Celtic nation' and having become so as a result of a large-scale invasion.
In the 1940s, Kenneth Jackson published an article on the early Irish sagas, A Window On The Iron Age, in which he purported that sagas such as The Táin accurately reflected the situation in Ireland before the coming of Christianity. However, archaeological investigations in this period reflect a different story.
The archaeological record of the Irish Iron Age is very poor indeed with very few burials, no indigenous pottery, poor quality metalwork and nothing like the grand oppida the giant stone and earthen forts seen all over Europe.
There are some earthwork structures such as the Black Pigs Dyke, but there is none of the rich burials such as Hochdorf or Heuneburg on the continent, which were also 'Celtic.'
Finds from both phases of the 'Celtic' Iron Age in Ireland, Hallstatt and La Tene, reflect a more indigenous style rather than a direct reflection of styles on the continent.
The monks who wrote down these sagas did so through a Christian filter, reflecting also the situation of their own times. For example, there are several references to silver, but there are no silver finds in the archaeological record until the Viking era. There is also the question of the swords being mentioned in the sagas. Those found belonging to the Iron Age are much shorter and less robust than those of the Viking period.
The notion that the Romans did not come to Ireland is also being questioned. There is evidence in Lambay Island of settlers having been buried there and, more recently, finds in the vicinity of Drumanagh Fort, Co Dublin, point to a centre of trade coming into and going out of the country.
An Lebor Gabhala (The Book of Invasions, c. 7th century AD) is not a strictly accurate account of Ireland before the coming of Christianity. However, it does show a grain of truth when it depicts not a mass immigration into Ireland of just one ethnic group but several, such as the Fir Belgae and the Sons of Mil. Gaulish records also attest to several waves of invaders coming onto their territory in what is now France. We must not turn a blind eye to our own times that showed waves of migration from the Vikings, Normans, English, and, in this century, Romanians, Nigerians and Polish, to name a few.
The old idea that Ireland became 'Celtic' through a large scale 'invasion' is now, rightly, being questioned.
The notion that we are an indigenous 'race' is relatively recent, through a confusion of the study of linguistics and social Darwinism. In the 19th century, the Swiss linguist Zeuss studied the languages of Europe and concluded that they originated from a common language, Indo-European. He also showed that the various Celtic languages P-Celtic (for example, Welsh and Breton) and the Q-Celtic languages (for example, Irish) originated from a common Celtic language, therefore presuming a common identity, but it must be pointed out that the difference between these different peoples was language, not 'race.'
The early Christian scholars, in writing down the first non-classic language in Europe, also identified themselves from foreigners through the fact that they spoke the Irish language, which was the basis for Manx and Scots Gaelic.
In the 19th century in western Europe, there was much enthusiasm for all things Celtic, with mixed results.
Lady Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl sold like hotcakes and fuelled the idea of the Celt/Irish as the 'noble savage.' This portrayal of the Irish as such was a double-edged sword. On one hand it fostered a serious interest in ancient Irish manuscripts, sagas and music. At the same time, Herbert Spencer, the economist who propounded 'social evolutionism,' tried to show that the Irish, among other 'races' dominated by Queen Victoria's empire, were less civilised than their British masters.
Hence the depiction of the Irish in countless newspapers as ape-like, savage and thus not deserving of their own parliament or even famine relief (laissez-faire economics).
However, Cathleen Ní Houlihan was portrayed by the British empire as a woman who needed an Anglo-Saxon male to protect her or as a childlike creature who would benefit from the rod of correction and would be sent to bed without supper if she did not comply. For more than two centuries now, the notion of 'race' has done more harm than good worldwide and should be scrapped. The idea of some groups in Ireland, such as the Immigration Control Platform, that Ireland must be kept 'pure' and 'white' reflects exactly Hitler's mentality when he proposed that the Third Reich would be populated by a blonde, blue-eyed Aryan race.
Pity nobody spotted the fact that he was a short, fat, dark-haired Austrian.
Patricia Walsh
Greenhill
Mourneabbey
Mallow
Co Cork
