With so many story tellers going their own separate ways it is not surprising that in mythology there are masses of contradictions and confusion, and there would be many more when Christianity arrived in the Celtic world and there was a need to tone down the more extreme material and somehow fit the new faith into the old setting.
Some of the chaos that characterizes Irish Mythology disappeared with the arrival of the Romans in Britain. They merely dipped their toes into the strange ocean that was Ireland, though they occupied Wales and there was much constant traffic between Wales and Ireland, so much so that many of the myths are interchangable. The romans brought with them qualities that were quite new - a written universal language, Latin, and dispassionate observation, though some was more dispassionate than others. One writer ( Strabo ) held that the inhabitants were addicted to cannibalism and had no marrige ties, another ( Solinus) wrote of the luxuriant pastures, but complained that the people were inhospitable and warlike, and that when a male child is born he was fed tit-bits placed in his mouth on the tip of his fathers sword.
The most pedantic commentator was Ptolemy, who recorded the names of sixteen different peoples or tribes, many of them confirmed from other sources. But the most valuable is Tacitus, the Roman Historian, who in the second century AD noticed the manner in which traditions were shared between Ireland and the mainland of Britain.
No doubt the Roman could have over-run Ireland had they wished, and unquestionably exploritory visits were made, particularly from Wales which they had occupied without any difficulty, but conquering and occupying are two different things as many other nations found throughout Ireland's checkered history. |
