530 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



district had never been visited either in the Old Stone or the 

 Bronze age. Nevertheless Mr W. J. Knowles 1 suggests from the 

 close resemblance in fact identity of a great number of Neolithic 

 objects in Ireland with Palaeolithic forms in France (Saint- Acheul, 

 Moustrier, Solutre, La Madeleine types), that the Irish objects 

 bridge over the gap between the two ages, and were worked by 

 tribes from the continent following the migration of the reindeer 

 northwards. These peoples may have continued to make tools of 

 palaeolithic types, while at the same time coming under the in- 

 fluence of the Neolithic culture gradually arriving from some 

 southern region. The astonishing development of this Neolithic 

 culture in the remote island on the confines of the west, as illus- 

 trated in Mr W. C. Borlase's sumptuous volumes 2 , is a perpetual 

 wonder, and indeed would be inexplicable but for the now proved 

 immense duration of the New Stone Age in the British Isles 3 . 



The Irish dolmen-builders were presumably of the same long- 

 headed Iberian stock as those of Britain 4 , and they were followed 

 by Kelts of the Gaelic branch, many of whom, however, may 

 well have arrived before the close of the Neolithic Age. Of the 

 Kymry there appear to be but slight if any traces, and since 

 those prehistoric times the intruders have been almost exclusively 

 Continental and British Teutons ; the former were chiefly Danes 

 who formed settlements at such seaports as Dublin, Waterford, 

 Cork, and Limerick, but were eventually all absorbed by the 

 vigorous Gaelic aborigines 5 . And now all alike have in their turn 



1 Survivals from the Paleolithic Age among Irish Neolithic Implements, 

 1897. 



' 2 The Dolmens of Ireland, 3 vols., 1897. 



3 See pp. 10- 1 1. 



4 They need not, however, have come from Britain, and the allusions in 

 Irish literature to direct immigration from Spain, probable enough in itself, 

 are too numerous to be disregarded. Thus, Geoffrey of Monmouth : " Hibernia 

 Basclensibus [to the Basques] incolenda datur " (Hist. Reg. Brit. ill. 12) ; and 

 Giraldus Cambrensis: -"De Gurguntio Brytonum Rege, qui Rasclenses [read 

 Basclenses] in Hiberniam transmisit et eandem ipsis habitandara concessit. " 

 I am indebted to Mr Wentworth Webster for these references (Academy, Oct. 

 19, 1895). 



5 Not, however, always without a struggle, as in Dublin, where even after 

 their acceptance of Christianity the Danes refused to worship at the same altars 



