CoFi'KY — Intercourse of Gaul with Ireland before First Ccnlury. f)7 



a sepaiaLo luoLivc. This may pciliaps bo somewhat early ; it may lie cumini^ 

 to a transition to La Tene III. It may be compared witli the pattern on the 

 shields from the Thames and the Elver Witham' attributed to La Tene II. 



That the La Tene style was distributed in Ireland before the Christian 

 period I had held to be probable, chieHy on the ground that the derived 

 La Tene ornament of early Christian times presumed an extensive use of 

 that style in the preceding period. These stones went far to confirm that 

 opinion, and may be claimed as showing that the La Tene style had taken a 

 deep root in Ireland before the Christian period, and was not to be accounted 

 for by trade or raid from Britain. 



Last year Professor Zimmer, who does not appear to be acquainted with 

 my papers, wrote an important article upon the ancient trade connexion of 

 West Gaul with Ireland.- He sums up in a passage the prevailing error to 

 which I have referred : — " This erroneous view is widespread, even in 

 learned circles that ought really to know better; and during the past decades 

 it has proved baneful for many problems of Irish and British archaeology. 

 Now, this erroneous view is quite naively and openly expressed, and brought 

 forward as the ultima ratio for unproved statements ; now, as a self-evident 

 truth, it forms the basis of scientific theories of present-day investigators 

 of repute ; nay, examined closely, it turns out the sole mainstay for such 

 theories." 



He gives numerous instances of early trade-relations between West Gaul 

 and Ireland. Leaving upon one side the well-known intercourse between 

 Ireland and France and Spain in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, he 

 proceeds to examine various evidence of Ireland's connexion with West Gaul 

 from the time of Giraldus Cambrensis (born 1147) back to Tacitus. He 

 mentions at length the expulsion of St. Columbanus from Luxeuil in the sixth 

 century, and quotes, from the high authority of the Life, an almost contem- 

 porary MS., the passage " Reperta ergo navis quae Scottorum commercia 

 vexerat, omuem suppellectilem comitesque recepit " — an indication this of 

 the direct trade with Ireland." He gives instances from the same time of 

 the Gaulish wine-traders carrying their wares up the Shannon as far as the 

 centre of Ireland. He then gives the passage in Tacitus quoted by me in 

 my paper, " The Origin of Prehistoric Ornament in Ireland," as to the 

 position, size, climate, and population of Ireland as compared with Britain, 



' Hoiae Feralos, Plates xiv. and .\vi. : B.M. Guide. Iron Age, p. 93. 



- Sitzungsberichte der KonigUch Preussischen Akadeniie der Wiasenschaften, 1909, pp. 363 and 

 364. 



^ As Prof. Kuno Meyer points out, it is a long-established fact that " Scotia, down to the tenth 

 century at least, was never used of Scotland, but always meant Ireland." See Transactions, 

 Cymmrodorion Society, 1895-6, p. CO. 



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