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Subject: Re: [DNA] Galloway-NW Irish
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 17:42:48 EDT



John, yes, if you mean his online article on Dunadd: An early Dalriadic
capital. Campbell's book influenced Alistair Moffat's thinking, and here I quote
a paragraph from his book Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before
History:

"The Scots called themselves the Gaels and are generally understood to have
been Irish in the first half of the 1st Millennium AD, only later settling in
Argyll. But this may not be accurate. When Bede was describing the desparate
political situation facing Roman Britain at the beginning of the 5th
century, he clearly believed that the Scots who raided in the south came from
Argyll. If he was correct, then the tradition of the migration of peoples from the
north of Ireland to Argyll around 500 under the leadership of Fergus Mor
macErc in only that, a tradition, an origin myth concocted to comfort and
legitimize later kings. Archaeology supplies no evidence to support the migration,
and indeed there is a possibility that population movement took place in the
opposite direction. It seems likely that people who spoke Gaelic this,
Q-Celtic as opposed to P-Celtic British, had occupied Argyll since the pre-historic
period, perhaps as far back as the early Iron Age."

In a previoius paragraph, he refers to the Scotti, mentioned in several
sources, who raided northern Britain usually with the Picts. From the perspective
of the Romans, the Scotti or Scots, these people appear to have occupied
territory above the frontier and Hadrian's Wall, where they harrowed the native
Britons between the two Walls - Hadrian's Wall and Antonine Wall. The
inference from the sources suggests they occupied territory in what the Romans
regarded northern Britannia and secondly they are recorded as early as 314 fighting
alongside the Picts. By 364, we find the Atecotti in the company of Scotti
and Picts. They are thought to have originated from the Hebrides.

I think we are both in agreement about Campbells article. I guess we really
don't know much about the early kings of Dal Riata, which makes the tasks of
working out who is who more difficult. Although tradition makes Kenneth,
king of the Scots and Picts, of Dal Riata stock, the origins of his father,
Alpin, are less than clear. His lineage might well been invented in order to
give Kenneth some respectibility.

Alan

In a message dated 25/09/2006 06:02:14 GMT Standard Time,
writes:

Alan - have you read Ewen Campbell's article on the Dal Riata? I found a
few old references to his article on the list so I assume it was discussed
last
year sometime. To briefly summarize the article, Campbell doesn't believe
the Scottish Dal Riata originated in Ireland, but were long indigenous to
the
western portion of Scotland, that mentioned by Adomnan as on the west side
of
the dorsal fin of England. He describes a fluid situation of people coming
and going constantly between this part of Scotland and Ireland with
probably
very little ethnic distinction. He does not believe the Picts of this area
were displaced by a massive immigration of Irish gaels from NE Ireland in
the
early 6th century as described in the Shenchus Fer nAlban. Archaeology
apparently has forced this revision of thought concerning the Scottish Dal
Riata -
but Campbell goes further than most who seem to allow a limited invasion of

elites might have occurred.

Campbell does have a point. There is almost nothing known about the
presence of the Dal Riata in Ireland in early historical times. And
Campbell even
goes so far as to state the small Irish kingdom of Dal Riata in NE Ulster
was probably settled by Scots and not vice versa as the histories describe.

The entry in the Four Masters describing Fergus Mor, Angus and Loarn
settling
in Scotland in 503 is almost certainly a later insertion into the annals.
So
are the early entries in Tigernach. Campbell seems to believe the line
that
later became the Kings of Scotland were simply given a faked Irish pedigree
linking them to the line of Heremon in Ireland. The pedigree of the Dal
Riata
is itself untraceable. Not a single name can be traced in the Irish
annals,
which is perhaps not surprising, since the events in question took place
before the historical period of the annals themselves. We do find later
references to the Dal Riata in later sources, including the Tripartite life
of
Patrick, the Book of Rights, the Shenchus Fer nAlban; but it isn't in the
least
clear if these are actual historical references or simply mythmaking. The
earliest Irish pedigree for the Dal Riata kings of Scotland is in Rawlinson
B.502
(c. 1120 AD). And here they are given a descent broadly shared by the
Ulaid
of Ulster and the Erainn of the South of Ireland, which is why O'Rahilly
stated they were Erainn in origin.

As far as I can tell from re-reading the historical sources, Campbell may
well be right that there was no large scale migration from NE Ireland to
Scotland; only a similar people long settled in both areas with constant
contacts
between them. Dividing them up between Irish Gael, Dal Riata Scot and
native Pict would seem to be a fruitless task. And here history is no
guide since
the events took place before any contemporary records were kept. All we
have is mythmaking and legend - and anyone familiar with the Lebor Gabala
Erren
knows how adept the Irish scribes were at fabricating pedigrees for
political
purposes.


John





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