Hew Morrison Collection > Leabhar Nan Gleann

30
piceret, dixisse memoratur: Ad terram istam
expugnandam, ex navibus regni mei hue
convocatis, pontem adhuc faciam" (Giraldus-
Cambrensis : Itinerarmm Kambrise II., 1, ed.
Dimock; Giraldi Cambr, Opera VI., p. 111).
Just as the Anglo-Normans in the twelfth
century began the conquest of Sovith-East
Ireland from this point, so the Aiyan Celts in
the fifth century before <^hi-ist would have-
crossed over from this point to Ireland, and by
degrees have penetrated into North- West and
North Ireland, their Aryan blood getting more
and more thin. Of course, these Aryan Celts
who crossed the Irish Sea had still the power
to subdue the primiiiTe non-Aryan inhabi-
tants throughout unto the furthest corners of
tl:e North-We-it and North Irelnu'l. They
made the ancient Aryan social order, which
they brought with them from their distant
home, the basis of the social order in Ireland,
to which the subjugated population must out-
wardly adapt themselves. But these Celts,
according to number, were in North Ireland
certainly in the minority, as were, e.g., the
Franks in Gaul, the Goths in Spain, accord-
ingly the customs of the vanquished primitive
inhabitants were not changed at once, as the
reports of the ancients and the reminiscences
of the Irish Heroic Saga prove. The most
powerful lever for bringing about a change in
the customs founded on the former social order
of the non-Aryan population in Ireland was
Chiistianity, which, since the commencement
of the fourth century, pushinp- forward from
the South, gradually found entrance, and in
the beginning of the fourth century was intro-
duced likewise into the North. In the ninth
and tenth centuries a powerful stream of
Aryan blood came into the veins of the Irish,
as the Norwegians and Danish Vikings gradu-
ally became Gaelicized, Christianized, and
commingled with the Irish.