But Mediterranean traders had long been immune to such dire warnings, and with the knowledge they brought back, a scholar created a geographical masterpiece. In this medieval copy of his book Geographia, we can see how Ptolemy mapped the world as it was known to the Romans around 150AD. And there on the westernmost point is Hibernia. This is the first map of Ireland and its peoples. 

 

We can recognize some of the names, for example, Eblana is usually interpreted as Dublin, the river name, if the Shannon is there, for example, the river Lee, I suppose, which all Cork people would like to see mentioned. There are some names interesting enough here, we have Brigantes for example, and the Brigantes over here in West Wales, and they are clearly related.

 

What does that tell us?

 

Well, it works two ways. Either it means that there were Brigantes here in the west of Britain first of all, who then migrated to Ireland. But it is possible that they might actually represent population groups that originated in Ireland and then came to the western province of Britain, because you do have quite substantial Irish settlement in western Britain, in Wales, as we know it nowadays. 

 

This notion of the Irish colonising parts of Britain, it rather turns our historical sense of things on its head, doesn’t it? We always like to see ourselves as the eternally put-upon, (It could be problematic.)conquered by the other lot. We were doing the same.

 

In this day and age, we’re insisting that everybody apologise to us, including our nearest neighbors, but I suppose if you go back far enough, we invaded them before they invaded us, so if there are apologies to be bandied about, we might take the first step, you know?