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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
isle of the Gael was in the full tide of military conquest.
So in an inscrutable manner the military prowess that
had carried the high-king Dathi on the heels of Roman
rearguards to the foot of the Alps and almost secured
to Ireland the enduring hegemony of what are now called
the British Isles bent itself to the Christian yoke. The
fierce intoxication of mortal combat on the field of battle
ceased to allure the Irish heart, overtaken and surprized
by the doctrines of the new religion. Instead, Christian
temples and schools arose over the land and a new army
of mental and moral champions succeeded to the warrior
hosts of the Fianna. In their persons the Celt, the Gael 1
and the Gaul returned as spiritual knights-errant to the
insular and continental fields over which in ultra-
Roman days ancestral Keltoi and Galli had wielded em-
pire from history's dawn. And the area over which the
Irish Gaels carried the evangel of civilization was not
inferior to the vast region that knew the Celt as lord when
he parleyed with Alexander, sacked Delphi and Rome,
lent his dying body to the Pergamene sculptor, and fought
his last continental fight with the legions of Cssar.
4. VARIETY AND EXTENT OF IRISH MEDIEVAL WORK
While there were very few countries in Europe where
Irish missionaries and schoolmen did not dispense their
services, their work differed in character, in degree and
in result in each of them. Their chief work was in France,
Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, England,
Scotland, and north Italy. What is now called Scotland
was the first theater of their operations and Irish mis-
sionaries Christianized and civilized it while Irish sol-
i Gaedhal or Gael Is the word in the Irish tongiie for "Irishman." Scotua
is the Latin word for "Irishman." Scotia and Hibernia are the Latin words for
"Ireland." Scotland means "land of the Irish." See Appendix B.
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