PRE-CELTIC IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 21 January 1915, Page 29

PRE-CELTIC IRELAND

Under the auspices of tho National Literary So-' —ciety, Dublin,-the Rev. Dr, J. P. Mahaffy, Provost of trinity College, delivered recently an interesting lecture on ‘ The Pre-Celtic Population of Ireland.’ Dr. Sigerson, President, occupied the chair, and there was a large attendance. - ' In the course of his address, the Provost said that they could find traces of people in Ireland before the Celts came in the stone monuments, in the raths, and in the rude stone cycles which apparently the Celts found in the country when they arrived, and which they copied, but were not certainly the first to use. He had no guarantee that the people who came before the Celts were one people; he saw no reason why two or three races might not have been in Ireland when the Celts

arrived. Who were those people, what where they like, and of what type were they ? The present people in Ireland were so mixed that it was very hard to find a pure Celtic type.

Pictures from Caesar and Tacitus.

In Caesar and Tacitus they had certain features noted. The people were large, ruddy in complexion, fair or red-haired; full of eloquence, fond of swagger; they had plenty of courage, but perhaps not much endurance; they were very much given to religion, very idealistic, but not too honest. That was the kind of picture they had in Caesar and Tacitus, and he did not think it was very difficult to find that type in Ireland. He remembered very well in his young days another type —a creature like a Yahoo, with a tail-coat, a mouth extending from ear to ear, fiat face and projecting teeth. He remembered that sort of man in Ireland, but he was now quite extinct. That was a very primitive and low race in type. That type was perpetuated in the pictures of Punch of fifty years ago. There was another typegloomy, handsome people with very black hair and grey eyes, with no fun in them and not at all Spanish. He found them in the out-of-the-way parts of Ireland. They would find them on Lord Killanin’s estate in Spiddal and in the middle of the country where they found a high plateau. These types also afforded evidences of an earlier race than the Celts in this country. He believed that the names of rivers and mountains in many places were derived from the pre-Celtic inhabitants. Rude pottery and "buildings were common to most primitive people, but there were two things that might perhaps be called peculiarthe one was the style of ornament adopted by a nation in this work and the other was the music. Celtic ornamentation in Ireland was more elaborate in detail than amongst any other Celtic people, and this was due he held to the admixture of the Celtic and an earlier people in Ireland.

Beautiful National Music.

The Celtic people in the rest of Europe showed no great talefft for music, but when they came to the northwest fringes, to Norway, 'Scotland, Wales, and Ireland they found an enormous quantity of beautiful national music. Was it not very remarkable that it was only on this fringe they found this music, and was not the inference that it was the earlier people had the music, and had taught tho Celts when they arrived how to play and sing ? The elaborate, beautiful ornamentation and music wore due not to Ireland being Celtic but to its having enjoyed the advantage of a Firbolg population before tho Celts ever came. Ireland was not a country in which one race did everything. All races which had come into the country had contributed their share to make Ireland the delightful, illogical place it was.