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Bridging
the Old World and the New
eager for destruction and plunder. Outside the empire
Russia and Germany, like the Scandinavian lands, were
almost be-
still barbarian and pagan. Thus all Europe
came submerged under a deluge of savage heathendom.
Ireland was the one exception, the ark of safety for the
old beauty and wisdom of classical days. It was the
bridge over what were truly the dark ages of Europe and
as soon as the flood of heathen invasion ebbed, light and
hope crossed the bridge and were first carried by Irish
instructors to all the new-forming nations of Europe, the
great heathen tribes destined to become the nations of
the modern world.
While Europe, including Britain, was thus in tumult,
peace and prosperity were brooding over favored Hi-
bernia. Hundreds of years yet separated her from the
Danish raids, and the English were scarcely yet known
to civilization. The Romans had never succeeded in
crossing, except for commerce, the waves that separated
her from Britain. The Milesian Gaels, who had given
organization to the country, had been so long settled in
Ireland that the memory of that settlement had assumed
a mythological character. 1
The assumption is that in the
midst of the vast Celtic movements that are discernible
over all Europe about 600 B. C. there was also a Celtic
invasion of Ireland. One invasion probably followed
another and an Irish historical tract, written about 721
A. D., and copied from older sources, gives the definite
Gaelic monarchy as beginning contemporaneously with
Alexander the Great in the fourth century B. C. 2 From
that time onward one form of government, a limited elec-
1 "The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this
end of the world" ; and come of "as mighty a race as the world ever brought
forth" (Edmund Spenser, "View of the State of Ireland," 1596, pp. 26 and 32).
2 "Alexander had reigned five years when the sons of Mil came to Ireland,
and the battle of Tailtu was fought in -which fell the T. D. D. (Tuatha Da
Danaan) with their queens." See MacNeill, Proc. Royal Ir. Acad., 1909-10,
p. 132.
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