An overflowing population and warlike arms for
all--here we have the conditions for migratory conquest. On these
conditions the Celtic migrations were based. The spread of these
conditions to the Germans led to the later Germanic expansion, and
their further spread brought about the Slavonic and Turanian
migrations which drove the Germans down upon the subject peoples of
Rome, peoples whose power of resistance and will to defend themselves
had been already broken by that Roman policy so frankly described by
Tacitus.
Just as the universal subjection of science and invention to the
purposes of warfare has reduced Europe to its present condition, so
the universal possession of iron made Europe in the third and fourth
centuries a scene of universal war. Though Ireland was fortunately
untouched by the great migratory movements of the Continent in that
age, these movements reacted on Ireland by weakening the neighbouring
provinces of the Empire.
The raids on Britain and Gaul for booty and captives--raids from
which, as I have argued, the Irish got their new name of Scots--were
followed by Irish settlements on various points of the British coast.
The conquest of eastern Meath or Bregia by the kings of Connacht and
Uisneach forced a part of the population to migrate, and one body of
the migrants settled in Demetia, in the south of Wales. We can safely
place the conquest of Bregia in the second half of the third century,
but it does not follow that the settlement in Wales was made at the
same time, for the story of the Déisi migration makes it appear that
the expelled population remained for many years in Leinster before the
settlement in Munster. There may have been a similar delay before
their kindred crossed over to Wales.
In south-western Britain, there was also an Irish colony, apparently
from Munster and headed by princes of the Eoghanacht dynasty which
displaced the earlier line of the Iverni. Cormac's Glossary mentions
in the Cornish region a stronghold named Dinn Map Lethan. This name, a
mixture of Cymric and Gaelic, means the fortress of the Sons of
Lethan. The Ui Liatháin, or descendants of Liathán, were one of the
principal septs of the Eoghanachta, and their territory adjoined the
Munster coast in the district immediately to the west of the Déisi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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