'Irish' dominated British Isles?

I guess they probably call themselves the Irish.

So a Celtic dominated British Isles.

How could it be possible for the inhabitants of what we now know to be Ireland dominate both islands? And be the principal ruling party of such.
 
Maybe. You'd need to keep England divided culturally or the population difference will overwhelm the rest of the isles. Maybe keeping Cumbria, Hen Ogledd and Cornwall Briton while the rest of England falls to the Saxons could help there.
 
Do Gaelicized Vikings count as Irish? If so, it's substantially easier since Norse-Gaels already dominated Ireland, most of Scotland, and almost dominated England (if the battle of Brunanburh had gone the other way).
 
How could it be possible for the inhabitants of what we now know to be Ireland dominate both islands? And be the principal ruling party of such.
Does Gaelic rather than Irish would work?

If so, an early medieval PoD could work. Let's imagine a fall of Romania in the late IIIrd or IVth century instead of the Vth century : it means that while Germania's Barbarians are in a lesser capability of political takeover of provinces (probably leaving it to post-imperial Roman ensembles) but with a Roman-Britain possibly more weakened while in its process of restabilisation, aborted ITTL.
Meaning raiding and settling parties as Scotti and Picts have a field day, possibly ending up as dominating the western and northern chunk of Great-Britain, and with a progressive/partial Gaelicisation of Pictish peoples. You could end up with a Gaelic Ireland and western Great Britain, a Pictish North-East and a Britto-Roman south-east. Not the most likely scenario, giving it involves more than one PoD, but still pretty much workable.
 
I guess they probably call themselves the Irish.

So a Celtic dominated British Isles.

How could it be possible for the inhabitants of what we now know to be Ireland dominate both islands? And be the principal ruling party of such.
If you could butterfly away the Viking raids and have the Synod of Whitby go a bit differently, Ireland becomes the intellectual and religious heart of the British Isles. Trainee priests and the sons of kings and great nobles go to Irish monasteries to finish their education and have Irish priests and tutors. Gaelic, as well as the common tongue of Ireland, Man and Scotland (including OTL Cumberland, Westmoreland and Northumberland) is the court and trade language of the rest of the British Isles and gradually supplants Anglic over the next five centuries and Welsh and Cornish over the following five. By the C21st, Cornish is still extinct (just not enough speakers though more loan-words have moved into the more similar Gaelic TTL than into English) Welsh is still widely spoken by 20-25% of the population of Wales (as OTL. North Wales is remote enough that I suspect survival rates to be broadly similar, South Wales still has coal, iron and decent ports and will speak the main language of the economy in which it is intertied). Anglic (Sassenach) is a minority language still spoken in OTL rural East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Many more loan words from Dutch and Friesian than OTL.

Does Gaelic rather than Irish would work?

It would have to seeing as how the situation is somewhat confused. The Picts and the Scots seem to have invaded Scotland from Ireland and the Milesians Ireland from Scotland. The original Irish culture was thoroughly extirpated by the Milesians to the degree that we have one surviving word from their language, the word "mourn" meaning "slave" (which is why we have the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland)
 
If you could butterfly away the Viking raids and have the Synod of Whitby go a bit differently, Ireland becomes the intellectual and religious heart of the British Isles. Trainee priests and the sons of kings and great nobles go to Irish monasteries to finish their education and have Irish priests and tutors. Gaelic, as well as the common tongue of Ireland, Man and Scotland (including OTL Cumberland, Westmoreland and Northumberland) is the court and trade language of the rest of the British Isles and gradually supplants Anglic over the next five centuries and Welsh and Cornish over the following five. By the C21st, Cornish is still extinct (just not enough speakers though more loan-words have moved into the more similar Gaelic TTL than into English) Welsh is still widely spoken by 20-25% of the population of Wales (as OTL. North Wales is remote enough that I suspect survival rates to be broadly similar, South Wales still has coal, iron and decent ports and will speak the main language of the economy in which it is intertied). Anglic (Sassenach) is a minority language still spoken in OTL rural East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Many more loan words from Dutch and Friesian than OTL.



It would have to seeing as how the situation is somewhat confused. The Picts and the Scots seem to have invaded Scotland from Ireland and the Milesians Ireland from Scotland. The original Irish culture was thoroughly extirpated by the Milesians to the degree that we have one surviving word from their language, the word "mourn" meaning "slave" (which is why we have the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland)
Picts invading Scotland from Ireland? What?
 
It is disputed, but the Picts are believed to have supplanted the Caledonae after being pushed out of Ireland by the Milesian invaders. The Scots definitely invaded from Ireland. Dalriada started as a kingdom in east Ulster and ended up as one on the west coast of Scotland.
 
Picts invading Scotland from Ireland? What?
It's difficult.
We know the Scots took over the Pictish Kingdom of Alba as part of their expansion eastward from Dal Riada but we don't actually know what languages they spoke.
Some think the scarcity of clear nonGaelic names means they spoke a language more closely related to the Goidelic than Brythonic. Others highlight that considering it's sometimes hard to differentiate between some Norse and Anglian words/names as specifically one or the other that even if Picts were clearly Brythonic they could be easily absorbed like a reverse of the Irish settlers in South Wales.
My view is that they were mostly native Celtic speakers related but different to both Goidelic and Brythonic and their loss of language is like how the Anglian dialects spread in Northeastern Britain - all the advantages were with switching.
 
It is disputed, but the Picts are believed to have supplanted the Caledonae after being pushed out of Ireland by the Milesian invaders. The Scots definitely invaded from Ireland. Dalriada started as a kingdom in east Ulster and ended up as one on the west coast of Scotland.
I know little about pre-Dark Age Britain but from what I can read the Milesians aren't actually real but are just a mythical people, also seems weird to think there was an invasion from Ireland during this time.
 
The Picts and the Scots seem to have invaded Scotland from Ireland and the Milesians Ireland from Scotland
It is disputed, but the Picts are believed to have supplanted the Caledonae
Picts are much more probably the result of Northern Brittonic coalitions of people in the IIIrd century (not unlike other Barbarians),giving their association with early mentioned peoples.
At the very least, Alex Woof points this as the most likely theory (which, again, is fitting what we know of ethnogenesis along the Roman border elsewhere) in From Pictland to Alba.

The original Irish culture was thoroughly extirpated by the Milesians to the degree that we have one surviving word from their language, the word "mourn" meaning "slave" (which is why we have the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland)
What remains of the Milesians once the Galician theory is cleaned off? (Honest question, I'm quite blurry on ancient Irish history)
 
I know little about pre-Dark Age Britain but from what I can read the Milesians aren't actually real but are just a mythical people, also seems weird to think there was an invasion from Ireland during this time.
Re the "Milesians" it is a bit like "Aurelius Ambrosianus" or "Arthur" as historic figures they are much more likely (virtually certain in fact) to be mythological rather than reality but it has been archaeologically demonstrated several generations of someones did marshall resistance against the invading Angles and Saxons and led the Britannic forces to victory at Badon delaying/retarding the invasion by a generation.
Likewise the "Milesians", call them what you like and speculate on their origins as you will, a Gaelic speaking invader conquered the island of Ireland and smashed, supplanted or assimilated the existing tribal cultures. Stripping ancient legend of its more improbable features, it seems likely that they found an admixture of several older cultures living in relative peace(which are remembered in myth as the Formorians and Firr Bolg -Bag Men sounds like a plausible description for a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture to me), uniting to resist the invaders (Gaels/Milesians). Take away all the trappings of myth oabout how evil these two peoples were and you see a picture of a local confederation of tribes or trading alliance massing to repel the newcomers (again this sounds suspiciously like what would have happened). Deconstructed the legends do indicate a (simplified and sanitised) narrative of invasion. I am using the term "Milesian" as shorthand you understand, not as a literal belief in their origin myth. I don't believe that Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf either but I am quite happy to talk about "Romans" as a historic people.

Invasions are generally more likely to go the other way Scotland to Ireland. They may have grander scenery but Ireland has better land and milder weather. However if a group was pushed out of Ireland, they really had nowhere else to go. Such groups or movements of folk tend to be a) battle hardened (by whoever is doing the pushing); b) desperate and c) concentrated (they have no other frontiers to watch, taxpayers to placate or allies to entreat). So they aren't good news for a settled culture when they arrive!
 
Re the "Milesians" it is a bit like "Aurelius Ambrosianus" or "Arthur" as historic figures they are much more likely (virtually certain in fact) to be mythological rather than reality but it has been archaeologically demonstrated several generations of someones did marshall resistance against the invading Angles and Saxons and led the Britannic forces to victory at Badon delaying/retarding the invasion by a generation.
Likewise the "Milesians", call them what you like and speculate on their origins as you will, a Gaelic speaking invader conquered the island of Ireland and smashed, supplanted or assimilated the existing tribal cultures. Stripping ancient legend of its more improbable features, it seems likely that they found an admixture of several older cultures living in relative peace(which are remembered in myth as the Formorians and Firr Bolg -Bag Men sounds like a plausible description for a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture to me), uniting to resist the invaders (Gaels/Milesians). Take away all the trappings of myth oabout how evil these two peoples were and you see a picture of a local confederation of tribes or trading alliance massing to repel the newcomers (again this sounds suspiciously like what would have happened). Deconstructed the legends do indicate a (simplified and sanitised) narrative of invasion. I am using the term "Milesian" as shorthand you understand, not as a literal belief in their origin myth. I don't believe that Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf either but I am quite happy to talk about "Romans" as a historic people.

Invasions are generally more likely to go the other way Scotland to Ireland. They may have grander scenery but Ireland has better land and milder weather. However if a group was pushed out of Ireland, they really had nowhere else to go. Such groups or movements of folk tend to be a) battle hardened (by whoever is doing the pushing); b) desperate and c) concentrated (they have no other frontiers to watch, taxpayers to placate or allies to entreat). So they aren't good news for a settled culture when they arrive!
I'm not sure I get it, when are you claiming this invasion happened, from where more or less and by what groups(linguistic or ethnic)?
 
The comment about invasions is separate to what I have to say about the Milesian/Gaelic invasion of Ireland. Theirs would most probably have been a conventional Scotland to Ireland -unlike the arguable Pictish and proven historic Scotic/Dalriadan invasions which went the other way. They could possibly have come from England or Wales but we have a slightly better idea of the history of those nations/regions 200 BC -200 AD and there is no strong indication of any Gaelic folk wandering passing through or being fought off that I know of.
Archaeologically we know that several different cultures arrived in Ireland in prehistoric times and we have (some surviving) written records from the 500s on. By that point the locals are claiming in song and story that they are the descendants of invaders who, ten or twelve generations back, conquered the island. Given the movements of people generated by the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the movements of people out of Central Asia into Europe, I don't see that as an implausible claim. Irish prehistorians refer to a period of apparent economic and cultural stagnation in late prehistoric Ireland, lasting from c. 100 BC to c. AD 300. Data on pollen extracted from extracted from Irish bog indicates that the impact of human activity upon the flora around the bogs from which the pollen came was less between c. 200 BC and c. AD 300 than either before or after. This is also the point where inhumation burial starts to become common. The third and fourth centuries saw a rapid recovery in population.
So why not take the Irish at their word? An invasion with massacres and enslavement would explain all of the above and earlier records of Irish peoples (by the Romans) gave them names like Brigantes which hints that they were Brythonic speakers.
 
@ShortsBelfast
Well, that's an interesting outlook, admittedly. But there remains the issue of the origin of this Milesian migration : as you said, there was not much close possibility that would match a Gaelic speaking people moving in Ireland at this point. Couldn't be more possible that, while a partial migration might have happened from east to west, the core of the problems appearing in Ireland during this period being an inner problem?

After all, Roman conquests did destabilized/changed regions beyond their political/military reach (as southern Germany after the Cesarian conquests), and the roman tendency to weaponize tribes and peoples trough clientelisation, I'm not sure it would have asked much for an inner upheaval latter told in the form of foreigners being its cause both to existing small migrations (without really necessiting a Gaelic-speaking population) and the tentation to entierely "foreignize" the antagonist. It's basically what happen with the Arthurian myth you mentioned : while there's certainly something there, the clear cut division between Bretons and invading newcomers doesn't fit archeological evidence (we'd be talking, so far, of an admixture of Germanic and native peoples without clear political identity safe molding over former native delimitations).
 
Arguably yes, and all these people would have been Celts of one stripe or another which complicates things. We do know from Ptolemy's writings in the 2nd century AD that the tribes of Ireland included at least three with names identical or similar to British or Gaulish tribes: the Brigantes also the name of the largest tribe in northern and midland Britain), the Manapii (very close to the Belgic tribe of Menapii in Gaul) and the Coriondi (very close to Corinion later Cirencester and the Corionotote of northern Britain).
 
Top