The Oxford History of Ireland 019280202X, 9780192802026

Table of contents :
Editor’s Foreword
Contents
List of Maps
1. Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland
2. The Norman Invasion and the Gaelic Recovery
3. Early Modern Ireland, c. 1500-1700
4. Ascendancy and Union
5. Ireland Since 1870
6. Irish Literature and Irish History
Further Reading
Chronology
Index

Citation preview

THE OXFORD H I ST ORY OF

IRELAND R. E Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford. His previous books include Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and his Family (1976), Lord Randolph Churchill: A fí)litical Life (1981), Modem Ireland, 1600-1972 (1988) and the authorized biography of W. B. Yeats (1997), published by Oxford University Press.

The six scholars who have contributed to The Oxford History of Ireland are all distinguished authorities in their field. They are D onnchadh Ó C o rra in , Professor of Irish History, University College, Cork: Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland K a th a rin e Simms, Lecturer in Medieval History, Trinity College, Dublin: The Norman Invasion and the Gaelic Recovery N icholas Canny, Professor of Modem History, University College, Galway: Early Modem Ireland c.1500-1700

R. F. Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History, University of Oxford: Ascendancy and Union David F itz p a tric k , Fellow and Lecturer in Modem History, Trinity College, Dublin: Ireland Since 1870 D eclan K iberd, Lecturer in English, University College,

Dublin: Irish Literature and Irish History

THE O X F O R D H I S T O R Y OF

IRELAND EDITED

BY

R. F. FOSTER

OXFORD UNIVBRSJTY PRESS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street Oxford 0x2 6 d p Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sâo Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc.. New York © R. F. Foster 1989 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) The text of this edition first published 1989 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland First issued in this edition as an Oxford University Press paperback 1992 Reissued 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library o f Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The Oxford History of Ireland / edited by R. F. Foster p. cm. Rev. ed. of. The Oxford illustrated history of Ireland. 1989. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ireland—History I. Foster, R. F. (Robert Fitzroy), 1949 II. Oxford illustrated histoiy of Ireland 941.5—dc20 DA910.094 1992 91—43476 ISBN 0-19-280202-X 1 3 5 7 9

10 8 6 4 2

Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd. Reading. Berkshire

EDITOR’S FOREWORD of the marks of maturity in Irish historical studies has been a growing interest in pinpointing discontinuities rather than ironing out elisions. The oddly Anglocentric view that stressed simple and continuous opposition of Norman and Irish, planter and Gael, landlord and tenant, appears less convincing than a perspective focusing on breaks, paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities. Nor do Irish historians conceive their function as the imposition of a seamless and retrospective view over the centuries. Thus a compendium approach to a general history of Ireland is well suited to reflecting recent historiographical devel­ opments; and it also highlights certain uncomfortable fragmen­ tations in the evolution of modem Ireland. The jagged edges are coming back into focus. At the same time, chronology cannot be denied, and some dominant themes inevitably assert themselves. Waves of settle­ ment impose patterns and frontiers, social and cultural as well as physical. Religion retains its political importance. Violence, both imposed and reactive, remains a chilling inheritance. All these elements contribute to the contested question of Irish identity, and the concept of long-term ‘colonialism’ in the very special Irish case. And in considering these themes, there is a constant preoccupation with the uses of language—adaptations of English as well as survivals of Irish. In its way, the development of language, and therefore of literature, preserves a record of Irish history in itself. These preoccupations spin connecting threads through this book; though this is by no means to say that a neatly unified ‘approach’ is discernible overall. The scholars who contribute to it have all marked out new paths in their chosen territories—not necessarily by automatically repudiating traditional views, but by redefining preoccupations and casting a cold eye on ruling O

ne

vi

Editor's Foreword

pieties. All are specialists in their fields, but all are highly conscious that their findings must be made as accessible to the general reader as the ancient, popular versions. Given the form of the book, it is dangerous to generalize about the results; but it is worth trying. What emerges is a treatment which stresses an ancient and rooted culture, but also charts the mobility and shifting of Ireland’s constituent peoples into frac­ tured and sometimes unexpected patterns. Early Ireland, in Donnchadh Ó Corráin’s treatment, is not the communalist paradise conjured up by tum-of-the-century pietists: it is char­ acterized by slavery, famine, epidemics, and pagan backslidings as well as by the Christian mission and the high culture of monastic cities. New emphases show not only an unexpected element of Roman influence, but also incursors like the Vikings becoming more integrated than previously supposed. The con­ fused overlaps of early Irish settlement and cultural exchange are demonstrated. Land, language, and communal identity form battlegrounds from the time of the earliest records. International connections establish themselves early on. The same might be said of Katharine Simms’s view of the Norman invasion of Ireland and the Gaelic reaction. Not only is the country inte­ grated into a larger picture; an alteration is traced in the nature of the divisions within Ireland, social, political, national, and eventually religious. Equally striking is the realism of Irish political leaders, faced with the inexorable shift of emphasis in English intervention ‘from acquiring lordship over men to colonizing land’. The word ‘colonial’ impinges at an early stage; the language itself, in naming people and things, reflects it. At the same time Irish forms, practices, and power-structures continue beneath colonial impositions, and sometimes turn those impositions to native advantage. Here too the political use of language, highlighted by Declan Kiberd, is a dominant theme. Nicholas Canny’s view of early modern Ireland also indicates as much; it is marked by the movement and disruption entailed by new waves of colonization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the alterations of every kind of frontier within the island. He also emphasizes the European parallels with Irish

E ditor’s Foreword

vii

society and Irish history—too often seen, to its detriment, as an offshore island falling short of imposed British standards. Most striking of all is the dissonance between the government’s percep­ tion of how Ireland should be administered, and the intractable realities on the ground, where the law meant diíTerent things to different people. The ensuing chapters sustain these preoccupations. The gap between what the theorists of the Union, or mid-nineteenthcentury modernizers, expected Ireland to become, and what actually happened, is delineated by David Fitzpatrick, in terms of implicitly revolutionary legislation as well as allegedly revolu­ tionary organizations. He also follows through yet another kind of demographic alteration, the establishment of an Ireland overseas through emigration—perhaps the fundamental social fact of modem Irish history. Culturally and in a sense politically, the strongest pattern is also one laid down initially in the early modem period and repeatedly demonstrated in the following era: the creation of a confessional identity (or more accurately, several confessional identities). Ulster Presbyterianism from the eighteenth century, no less than the established church in its day of ‘Ascendancy’, and a fortiori O ’Connell’s Catholic nation mobilized in the early nineteenth century, embody powerful and competing political cultures. The final chapters chart the conflicts between them. They also carry through an injunction which repeatedly occurs from the beginning of the book: the necessity to observe an astringent approach to consciously self-validating ‘records’, and the whole highly politicized edifice of Irish historiography through the ages. From a very early period, a powerful idea of national culture and identity has been marketed by one interest or another— often defined, at least implicitly, against another element within the fragmented Irish polity, and asserting a rival and superior legitimacy. These impositions distract from some of the fruitful ambiguities and paradoxes pointed out in this book, such as, for instance, the strange prevalence of nineteenth-century Victorian norms in several areas of twentieth-century Irish life. Such interpretations have often evaded the uncomfortable fact of the

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E ditor’s Foreword

legitimization, and even sanctification, of violence in Irish his­ tory. And they ignore the intense variations in agriculture, prosperity, political affiliation, and much else, over a very small area. As a French observer in the early nineteenth century noted, 'the Irish themselves, from different parts of the kingdom, are very different. It is difficult to account for this surprising locali­ zation. One would think, on so small an island, an Irishman would be an Irishman: yet it is not so.’ In demonstrating these kind of differences as well as the persistence of certain themes in an island whose terrain is nearly as complex as its historical inheritance, the original edition of this book used a great variety of visual information: an illumina­ tion in the margin of a charter, the achievements of medieval artists or Georgian architects, the panoply of a seventeenthcentury countess’s funeral procession, the iconography of ‘No Surrender’ or ‘Erin Go Brágh’, the romantic portraits of national heroes and heroines on a banner or a banknote, provided a vivid synthesis of rich traditions. The Irish landscape itself is evidence of a historical palimpsest, whether viewed from the air or the ground: the shape of fields, the positioning of ringforts, castles, and cottages, the style of architecture, the planning of estate villages, the archaeological excavations in Dublin’s threatened centre, the landscape of the west with its omnipresent rocks and scattered cabins. This edition presents the original text, which stands as a wide-ranging and accessible commentary on the conflicts, settlements, discontinuities, and unities which are brought together in this book. Irish history, as illustrated here, may not be as neatly encapsulated as in P. S. O’Hegarty’s classic account of Ireland Under the Union: ‘the story of a people coming out of captivity, out of the underground, finding every artery of national life in the possession of the enemy, recovering them one by one, and coming out at last into the full blaze of the sun.’ But in many ways it appears both more challenging and a great deal more interesting for that. R. F. FOSTER Oxford, January 1992

CONTENTS L I S T O F MA P S

1. Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland

XÍ

1

DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN

2. T he Norm an Invasion and the Gaelic Recovery

44

K A T H A R I N E SI MMS

3. Early M odern Ireland, c. 1500-1700

88

N IC H O L A S CANNY

4. Ascendancy and Union

134

R . F. F O S T E R

5. Ireland Since 1870

174

DAVID F IT Z PAT R IC K

6. Irish L iterature and Irish History

230

DECLAN KIBERD FURTHER READING

282

CHRONOLOGY

303

INDEX

325

LIST OF MAPS Ireland in 1307

60

Adapted from English Lordship in Ireland 1318-1361 by R. Frame, 1982

Ireland in the later fifteenth century

80

From A New History of Irelandl, Volume Hi, by K. W. Nicholls, 1976

The spread of religious orders, 1420-1530

84

From A New Histoiy o f Ireland, Volume ii, by F. X. Martin, 1987

Distribution of English settlers in Munster

117

The Williamite Campaign, 1689-91

127

From A New History o f Ireland, Volume iii, by J. G. Simms, 1976

Modern Ireland

171

Depletion of age-cohorts, 1851-1911

177

Distribution of farms by size, c. 1930

220

From Ireland by T. W. Freeman, 1950

Percentage of Protestants in each rural district, 1936-7 From Ireland by T. W. Freeman, 1950

222

THE OXFORD HISTORY OF

I RELAND

Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN

Celtic Ireland: The Earliest Accounts T h e fitful dawn of Irish history is illuminated by the works of the classical writers. Festus Rufus Avienus, in his Ora maritima, based on a Greek original of the early sixth century bc, calls Ireland Insula sacra, ‘holy island’: its inhabitants are gens hiemorum, which may mean ‘the race of the Érainn’. The name of the island in Greek is lerne, and it is likely that Avienus’ record means that Ireland was then known as Ériu (modern Irish Éire) in one form or another. If we were certain that Ériu was Celtic (and we are not), this would be good evidence for dominant Celts in Ireland at this period. In fact, scholars are not at all sure when Ireland was conquered by the Celts, but many would agree that the Celtic conquest or conquests (for there may have been a number of them) took place during the second half of the first millennium bc. Pytheas, writing in the late fourth century bc, refers to the British Isles as ‘the Pretanic islands’—and this term is certainly Celtic (it comes from Priteni, and gives Welsh Prydain ‘Britain’). The name is likely to have reached Pytheas from the Gauls. Poseidonios, the Stoic philosopher and historian, writing before 70 bc (his original is lost but substantial passages survive in the works of Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Athenaeus, and, somewhat edited, in Caesar), has a detailed account of the continental Celts, and historians have been all too ready to apply what he says to the early Celtic inhabitants of Ireland. True enough, the threefold division of society, and the institutions of

2 Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland

druids, bardic praise-poetry, and clientship (described by Poly­ bius for the Continental Celts) are known in early Ireland and such Celtic customs as head-hunting, fighting with two-horse chariots, and honouring the greatest warrior present with the ‘hero’s portion’ (the best joint) at feasts occur in early Irish literature. However, much else of what Polybius says applies only to the Celts of Gaul—their preference for oligarchy rather than kingship, for example. It must be remembered, too, that Ireland had highly developed and impressive cultures in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, and the incoming Celts, who were never more than a dominant minority amongst a non-Celtic and non-Indo-European majority, were heavily influenced by the societies which they found before them in Ireland. This is dear in a number of ways. The Irish language is an indigenous realization of Celtic, heavily influenced by the pre-Celtic lan­ guages spoken in Ireland and containing an unknown number of words (personal and population names among them) borrowed from these languages. And it may be useful to note here that Brittonic (or the British form of Celtic) was spoken in early Ireland as well as Goidelic, the ordinary Irish form of Celtic. We do not know what other languages were spoken in prehistoric Ireland, though some scholars attempt to make educated guesses. Early Irish mythological writings link the great Neolithic and Bronze Age sites with the ancient gods and regard them as cult centres of great importance—displaying a continuity of cult as well as of occupation. The best example is Tara, symbolic site of the overkingship of Ireland, which was a major cult centre long before the coming of the Celts. And it is probable that much of what is regarded as Indo-European myth and cult (for example, the sacred marriage of king and goddess, and the linking of fertility with the reign of the good king) is in reality a much older inheritance from the Neolithic agriculturalists and their metal­ using successors. The Roman occupation of Britain stopped short at the Scottish Highlands, and did not extend to Ireland. In the course of his campaign in southern Scotland, when he established forts along the Forth-Clyde isthmus, Agricola looked at the clearly visible coast of Ireland, but postponed any ambition he may have had

Celtic Ireland: The Earliest Accounts

3

to conquer it. Tacitus tells us that Agricola ‘saw that Ireland . . . conveniently situated for the ports of Gaul might prove a valuable acquisition’. He also relates how an Irish petty king, expelled in the course of a dynastic struggle, was received by Agricola in the hope of making some use of him in the future. Tacitus says: ‘I have often heard Agricola declare that a single legion, with a moderate band of auxiliaries, would be enough to finish the conquest of Ireland’—perhaps the understated estimate of the Irish kinglet. But the projected Roman conquest of Ireland went no further. The most detailed account of pre-Christian Ireland is that of Ptolemy, an Alexandrian Greek geographer who wrote in the middle of the second century a d and who based his account on a lost work of Marinus of Tyre. T. F. O ’Rahilly has argued vigorously that Ptolemy’s account of Ireland is much earlier than that of Britain and is based on a lost work of the Greek traveller, Pytheas, dated to c.325 bc, but his arguments are not convincing and it seems wiser to treat Ptolemy’s account as referring to a d 100 or thereabouts. O’Rahilly noted that there were no traces of Goidelic in the names listed by Ptolemy, but this is not surpris­ ing: the most likely source of information (and that indirecdy) is British sailors working into Irish ports—and these would have spoken Brittonic and reported peoples and places in their own dialect. Because Ireland lay outside the Roman empire, and was far less familiar than Britain, information was harder to get and the chances of inaccuracy and corruption were much greater. In these circumstances, it is pleasantly surprising that quite a number of rivers, kingdoms, and royal centres can be identified with certainty, and a number of others with probability. Of the fifteen river-names, the Boyne (Buvinda), the Lee estuary (Sabrona, emended from Dabrona), and the Shannon (Senos) are certain. Ptolemy’s Oboka seems to be the Liffey estuary and his Birgos the Barrow. Howth, Rathlin, Man, and to the north-east of Ireland, the Hebrides, are clearly marked. The west and north-west coasts are poorly recorded. The kingdoms of the east coast, from Antrim to Wexford, are well represented. Ptolemy’s Robogdii may be a corruption of Redodii, in which case they would be identical with the Dál Réti or Dál Riata who later colonized Scotland. The

4 Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland

Darini must represent a people claiming descent from an ancestor or ancestor-god Dáire, and the Dál Riata, and Dál Fiatach of Down, are amongst the historical dynasties of the area that claimed descent from Dáire. The Voluntii are the Ulaid, still the dominant dynasty in northern Ireland in the very early Christian period. They had their cult centre (but evidently not their capital) at Emain, near Armagh, and Ptolemy’s Isamsdon and Emain are identical. The north-east of Ireland appears conserv­ ative: the kingdoms of c. a d 100 can be fairly confidently identified in Early Christian records. Not so the east midlands and the south-east. The Ebdani and the Kauki may have left their traces but their dynasties had disappeared by the Early Christian period. The Manapii (a variant of Gaulish Menapii) are identical with the Monaig. Two small communities of Monaig survive into the Early Christian period, one in Co. Down and one near Lough Erne (who eventually gave their name to Fermanagh, Fir Manach), and the early Irish genealogists claim that these emigrated from the south of Leinster. The Koriondi (who may be related to the Corionototae of Britain, known from an inscription at Hexham) have left no trace in south Leinster, but are probably identical with the Coraind of the Sligo area. The name also survives in the tribal names Cuirenrige and Dál Cuirind. The Brigantes of Wexford must be identical with Brigantes who occupied a great deal of the north of Britain in the Roman period. Their dynasty seems to have collapsed at an early date (O’Rahilly thought the later Ui Bairrche were their successors), but there are clear memories in the Early Christian records of British peoples in south Leinster. The Ivemi, whom Ptolemy shows to be dominant in Munster, are identical with the Érainn, a large group of dynasties which included the Corcu Loigde and which ruled Munster until the rise of the Eóganacht dynasty well into the Early Christian period. Of the remaining dynasties, only the Auteini can be confidently identified. These are the Uaithne of Limerick and Tipperary, who were probably of significance because they dominated the waterway of the Shannon, and Early Christian genealogies record that they occupied lands, too, to the west of the Shannon and stretching northwards.

Inland and Roman Britain 5 A sailors’ chart and not an ethnographical survey which attempts to be complete, Ptolemy’s map gives us an interesting glimpse of Ireland at a very early period—an Ireland where the Connachta (and Uí Néill, from which the later Ó Néill (O’Neill) dynasty derived), Laigin, and Eóganacht have not yet risen to power and where some important later dynasties (the Ulaid and the Érainn, in particular) are seen to be rulers of great kingdoms. Given the rise and fall of dynasties in the Early Christian period, and what may have been a period of considerable changes between the third and the late fifth centuries, the continuity between the Ireland of Ptolemy and that of the early native records is remarkable. What is interesting, too, is the mixed racial and linguistic background of the rulers of Ireland—Britain and Ireland share languages, dominant aristocracies, and whole local populations such as the Cruithin of Ireland and Scotland (where they are known to Latin writers as Picti). This racial mixture is well borne out by later Irish records. For example, the Dumnonii (who were settled in Devon and Cornwall, and in Scotland about Dumbarton) occur in Ireland in the Irish form Domnaim. Their name survives in Inber Domnann (Malahide Bay, Co. Dublin). Early genealogical tradition locates them in Leinster, and later in Connacht where their name survives in Tírechán’s seventh-century campus Domnon ’plain of the Dum­ nonii’, to the west of Killala Bay, Co. Mayo, and Irrus Domnann, Erris, in the west of Co. Mayo. Inland and Roman Britain Ireland lay outside the Roman Empire but was soon to be heavily influenced by it. This was inevitable, and came notably in the wake of the decline of Roman power in Britain in the fourth and especially in the fifth century. Roman material found in Ireland falls into two groups: an early one in the first and second centuries, and a late one in the fourth century and after. The objects of the first period reached Ireland in different ways, including a Roman trading base at Stoneyford on the Nore, but may not (in the view of some scholars) indicate well-established

6 Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland

trading or raiding. The evidence of the fourth and fifth centuries points to close contact. As the Roman grip on Britain weakened, the Irish in the west and the Piets in the north (who had long been a threat as raiders) began to attack the province with growing success. Each had fleets and each ravaged the coastline. Britain was devastated in 367 by a simultaneous attack of Irish, Piets, and Saxons, from the west, north, and east. Ammianus Marcellinus, a contempor­ ary, calls it ‘a barbarian conspiracy’. It marked one of the many stages of Roman collapse, and Roman imperial rule effectively ended in the very early fifth century. Concurrently, Irish settle­ ment in Britain began. It has been suggested that some of these settlements may have been formed with Roman encouragement or at least connivance, in the hope of setting up small bufferstates against further raiders. But this is uncertain. In the fourth and fifth centuries, a large Irish colony, originat­ ing from south-east Ireland, was established in south-west Wales (Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Cardiganshire (now Dyfed)). The rulers were of the Déisi, the ruling class spoke Irish, and the kingdom was apparently bilingual in the fifth century. There was another, less important, Irish colony in north Wales in Anglesea, Carnarvonshire, and Denbighshire. Here some of the colonists (for we do not know whether others were involved) left their name on the Lleyn peninsula, which derives its name from Laigin, the ruling dynasty of Leinster in the Early Christian period. Their name also survives in that of a village on Nevin Bay, Porth Dinllaen, ‘the harbour of the fort of the Leinstermen’. A third colony was established in south-west Britain, in the Cornish peninsula, by colonists called Uí Liatháin. These were probably Érainn and were settled in historic times in the east of Co. Cork. The learned scholar-bishop and king of Cashel, Cormac (d. 908), preserves in his Glossary an account of Irish colonization in western Britain: ‘The power of the Irish over the Britons was great, and they had divided Britain between them into estates; . . . and the Irish lived as much east of the sea as they did in Ireland, and their dwellings and royal fortresses were made there. Hence is Dind Tradui, . .. that is, the triple rampart of Crimthann, king of Ireland and Britain as far as the

Ireland and Roman B ritain

7

English Channel. From this division originated the fort of the sons of Liathán in the land of the Britons of Cornwall.. . . And they were in that control for a long time, even after the coming of St Patrick to Ireland.’ Cormac’s source is not known, but his account is broadly confirmed elsewhere. As Professor Jackson says, ‘it seems a certain fact that, at some time in the late Roman period, Irish colonies from East Munster settled in South Wales, Cornwall and Devon, and from one of them there sprang a line of kings of south-west Wales who were still ruling there in the tenth century’. Less is known of the colony in north Wales: there is no information in Irish sources, but Nennius records how Cunedda and his eight sons drove the Irish out of north Wales in what may have been the middle of the fifth century, though there may have been further struggles before the Irish were finally conquered in this area. By far the most successful Irish colony in Britain was that of Dál Riata in Scotland: it lasted, and finally laid the basis for the kingdom of Scodand. As we have seen, the Dál Riata or at least the group of dynasties to which they belong are located by Ptolemy in the extreme north-east of Ireland. When and why they crossed over to Scotland is uncertain. Medieval Irish legends which tell that this began in the third or fourth century—or indeed before—are most unlikely to be historical. Other traditions state that Fergus Mór mac Eire and his brothers established Dál Riata in Scotland and scholars have argued (on the basis of very flimsy evidence, mainly genealogy which is no earlier than the seventh century) that this event took place about the middle or late fifth century. Whatever its beginnings, the Scottish kingdom of Dál Riata was a great success and by the time Columba came on his mission to Iona in 563 the king of Dál Riata was extending his authority over the Piets to the east. In the middle of the ninth century, Dál Riata took control of all Picdand, and Scodand became a united kingdom under Kenneth mac Alpine. Close reladons with Britain, with Roman and latterly Chris­ tian culture, brought about dramatic changes in Ireland. It is likely that the products of successful plundering expeditions changed the balance of power amongst dynasties within Ireland, and colonies abroad may have provided the resources for dynas-

8 Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland

tic expansion at home. It has, for example, been suggested (perhaps with some plausibility) that the Eóganacht, who were to take the kingship of Munster from the early Érainn, were colonists returned from Britain. The earliest origin-tales of the Laigin convey an impression of extensive overseas raiding, and a poem on their early kings contains Latin borrowings (/«g«wt