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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
How it came about that Caledonia, or Alba, or North
Britain or Scotland, as it is variously called, remained an
Irish-speaking country while west Britain became first
Irish-speaking and then Welsh-speaking is a question that
cannot be fully answered. Scotland was of course easier
of access, and intercourse between Ireland and its north-
ernmost province was regularly maintained. A broad
and turbulent sea on the other hand divided Ireland from
southern Britain. This made it less easy for the Irish
colonists in Wales and the southern peninsula to bring
their families with them, and the settlement was as a
result of a more military character. 1 The proximity of
the Romans and later of the Saxons would in any case
have made it such. In this case, therefore, the rule, main-
tained by certain historians, that invaders eventually inter-
marry with, and adopt the language of, a conquered peo-
ple when they do not bring their women folk with them,
would appear to apply. Doubtless the Irish element in
west Britain, at first the governing race, intermarried
with the native British, and in that manner passed from
the use of Gaelic to the kindred Cymric tongue.
The determination of the fact that west Britain was for
centuries Irish ground has a direct bearing on the con-
troversies that have from time to time arisen regarding
the provenance and nativity of such men as Pelagius,
Sedulius, Boniface and others, who have been called Irish,
but who have also been said to have been born in Britain.
Thus Boniface was born in what is now called Devon-
shire when it was distinctively Brito-Irish territory and
many years
before it fell to the West Saxons.
i When Brandoff, powerful kin? of Leinster, c. 597, heard that Prince Cum-
1
Tnuscacg was
1
coming to Leinster on "a youthful free circuit" he did not
wait to receive him personally and said: "Let a messenger be sent to them
and let them be told that I have gone into Britain to levy rent and tribute."
(Silva Gadelica, 408.)
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