268 BRITISH ETHNOLOGY. v 



Ireland, at the earliest period of which we have 

 any knowledge, contained, like Britain, a dark and 

 a fair stock, which, there is every reason to believe, 

 were identical with the dark and the fair stocks 

 of Britain. When the Irish first became known 

 they spoke a Gaelic dialect, and though, for many 

 centuries, Scandinavians made continual incursions 

 upon, and settlements among them, the Teutonic 

 languages made no more way among the Irish than 

 they did amoug the French. How much Scandi- 

 navian blood was introduced there is no evidence to 

 show. But after the conquest of Ireland by Henry 

 II., the English people, consisting in part of the 

 descendants of Cymric speakers, and in part of the 

 descendants of Teutonic speakers, made good their 

 footing in the eastern half of the island, as the 

 Saxons and Danes made good theirs in England; 

 and did their best to complete the parallel by at- 

 tempting the extirpation of the Gaelic-speaking 

 Irish. And they succeeded to a considerable ex- 

 tent; a large part of Eastern Ireland is now peopled 

 by men who are substantially English by descent, 

 and the English language has spread over the land 

 far beyond the limits of English blood. 



Ethnologically, the Irish people were originally, 

 like the people of Britain, a mixture of Melano- 

 chroi and Xanthochroi. They resembled the Brit- 

 ons in speaking a Celtic tongue; but it was a Gaelic 

 and not a Cymric form of the Celtic language. Ire- 

 land was untouched by the lioinan conquest, nor 



