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In the first century BC the British (or Pretanoi) lived quite happily on their islands all fighting one another, and probably not even aware that they were Pretanoi. This pleasant state of affairs was disrupted by the invasion of the Romans (actually not Romans, but Gauls, Germans, Spaniards, Numidians, Thracians, and lots of others were a few Italians pretending to be Romans for appearance’s sake). After nearly four hundred years of occupation the Britons thought of themselves as Romans (and under this guise had themselves helped invade a few unsuspecting countries such as Dacia).

According to history, in the early fifth century these ‘Romans’ ‘left.’ What actually happened was that, first under Magnus Maximums, and later, under Constantine III, the British (or Romans) went over to the continent to conquer the Roman Empire. Unfortunately they were too early, both were defeated and killed, and we had to wait another 1,500 years for the British Empire. This, however, left something of a military vacuum, which various German (Saxons, Angles and Jutes) were called in to fill by the Romans (or Britons) who were left.

Under Constantine I the Roman Empire became nominally Christian (a Jewish religion, not to be mixed up with Judaism), so all the eastern parts of the British Isles were Christian. The Scots (who lived in Ireland) had never been conquered by Romans or by anyone pretending to be Romans, so they were not Christians, but Pagans, until they were converted to Christianity by Patrick (or Palladius). Meanwhile, behind their backs, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who were Pagans, had taken over the east of England, so that now the western part of Britain was Christian and the eastern part was Pagan (the reverse of what it was before, but perhaps the same as it is today).

Never having been conquered, the Scots in Ireland had continued their bad old ways of fighting one another, and when one group of them, the kingdom of Dál Riada, lost, they decided to take it out on people outside of Ireland. So they attacked the Britons (or Welsh) who lived in Scotland (which wasn’t called Scotland, because the Scots lived in Ireland). But when the Scots from Dál Riada invaded Scotland, it became Scotland, except the bits occupied by the Picts and Angles. Much later the Picts and Angles became Scots, which would have made things easier if the Norse hadn’t invaded part of Pictland (and remained Norse, until they too become Scots, and the last ones to speak Gaelic).

So by around AD 600 (except it wasn’t because Bede hadn’t invented the AD system yet) the Irish Scots were in Ireland, the Picts and Scottish Scots in Scotland, the Britons (or Welsh) mainly in Wales, but also in England and Scotland, and the Angles, Saxons and Juts living in the rest of England and parts of Scotland, and everyone was fighting everyone else including themselves. So the Irish became Irish, the Scots and Picts became Scots, the Britons became Welsh, and everyone else became English, unlike nowadays when everyone on the continent calls the Scots and Welsh English as well, which understandably annoys them intensely — the Irish are either Irish or British, except when they too are called English. This goes to show that you can trust no external source, ancient or modern, to tell you what people call themselves.

In AD 597 St. Augustine turned up in Canterbury and introduced the Roman Church (which became the Roman Catholic Church when it was no longer catholic in the Greek sense of ‘universal’). So in the east there were Roman Christians while in the west the Celtic Church held sway, except as there were never any Celts in Britain, it could not have been the Celtic Church. Unfortunately no-one has come up with a better term — the Irish Church is not adequate, as the Irish weren’t Irish, and it included Welsh, Scots, and some Anglians in Northumbria. According to Bede it should be the Scottish Church, but that confuses modern people who still naïvely believe that the Scots come from Scotland.

At this point in history comes the turning point, from whence all the Irish problems stem, the Synod of Whitby in AD 664. In it the Irishman (or Scotsman) Colman was defeated and went home to Scotland (or Ireland), and the English decided to follow the Roman practice. This is why nowadays we have no idea when Easter falls following the Roman system of calculation, rather than having no idea when it falls following the Scottish calendar (the last prehistorian in the House of Lords was Lord Avebury who introduced Bank Holidays; given this track record of prehistorians dealing with national holidays, we hope Lord Renfrew will finally solve the Easter question). Thus the Irish, Scots, Britons and Picts were on one side, and the English on the other. Except that somehow by the time of the next major event, the Irish had changed their minds, so that everyone in Britain followed the Roman Church and were on the same side, and trying to keep the terrible Vikings and Danes at bay.

This might have been fairly successful, except for the fact that some Vikings went to France and became Normans (or Northmen), so that disguised as Frenchmen (the Franks were Germans who spoke French, whereas the French are Gauls who speak French), they were able to confuse Harold Godwinson by failing to live up to their name and attacking from the south, while Harold was in the north dealing with genuine Northmen. The Norman kings spoke French, so were unable to converse with their English (and Danish) subjects, but this did not matter, as they also controlled large parts of France. However, when they lost control of their French possessions, they had no-one to talk to so they learnt English too. Thus it is tanks to Joan of Arc throwing the Normans (or English) out of France that English rather then French is now the major world language (otherwise the English might have ended up speaking French like the Normans). The other problem with the Normans was that they tried to take over everyone else (Welsh, Irish and Scots), but it is always the English who are blamed for this.

Henry VIII, having lost the final bit of France, founded the Anglican Church to oppose Catholics. The Scots too became Protestants (not to be confused with the Scottish Church, which, as we saw, was Celtic). In 1601 the Scots took over England under their king, James VI, who became James I of England, and so took over Scotland, so that England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were all finally united and could start fighting on another in peace without too much outside interference (except from the Dutch William of Orange, and various Georges of German origin). As part of this process, James sent some Scotsmen back to Ireland to keep the Irish under control. So now the Scots (who had been Irish before the Irish became Irish) now went back to Ireland where the Irish (who had been Scots) were now Irish. Add to this the religious dimension that the Irish (who had not been Catholic) were now Catholic, and the Scots and English (who had been Catholic) were now Protestant, then confusion was bound to reign.

In the eighteenth century the Irish, Welsh and Scots suddenly found they were all Celtic. This fortunately came at an opportune moment, as all over Europe people were discovering the ‘nation-state,’ and with it their national history. Thus the Germans had Germania, the Italians Italia, and the Greeks Graecia (or Hellas), and so they united or freed their countries. The English were too superior for such games, and in any case Britannia was Welsh, not English, so, illogically, they became British. The French too had a problem as the Franks were Germans, so they invented the Gauls. This coincided with the moment in time when the Irish discovered they could speak and write English much better than the English (Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, Shaw, etc.), and had largely changed their language, and they might have stopped speaking Irish but for the foundation of Eire.

The problem still lies with Northern Ireland, where just under half of the population are Scots who stayed at home to become Irish and Catholic, and are in conflict with just over half of the population who were Scots who went away to become Scottish and Protestant, but then came back against to become British and Protestant. These latter want to remain British and Protestant Christians, when an increasing number of the English are becoming Muslim, Hindu, atheist, druids, witches, or incorrigible agnostics like myself, and are also wondering whether they really want to be British any longer. However, the Ulster Freedom Fights (a Protestant group) are now drawing on Irish literature in evoking the spirit of the hero of the great Irish epic the Táin Bó Culainge, Cúchalainn, as a defender of Ulster against the southern Irish, and are even beginning to learn Irish (Bowcott 1991), turning the Irish language into a weapon of the north versus the south rather than vice versa. Unfortunately, Cúchulainn came form the south.

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