Map of Ireland by Greek polymath Claudius Ptolemy, circa AD 140. 🇮🇪 This would be the oldest known, and likely first ever, map of Ireland.

Ptolemy’s map shows places, features and peoples that are recognizable today, as well as from later Irish literature and other historical sources. The rivers Boyne and Shannon, for example, are clearly marked out as “Buvinda” and “Senus”. Peoples such as the Iverni, Auteini, Nagnatae, Voluntii, Darini, and Robogdii can clearly be identified in later Irish literature. They correspond —in order— to the Érainn of Munster, the Uaithni of Munster, the Fir Ól nÉchmacht who once ruled Connacht, the Ulaid who gave their name to Ulster, the Dál Fiatach, who were an Ulster branch of the Érainn, known as “Dáirine”, while the Robogdii would seem to be the Clanna Rudraige of the mythological Ulster Cycle (they later split into the Dál nAraide, Uí Echach Cobo, and Conaille Muirtheimne). In the case of settlements, it’s a bit less clear. Rhegia (“royal seat”?) in the north might be the Emain Macha of the Ulster Cycle, and Rhaeba has been speculated to be the royal seat of Connacht, Crúachan Aí, also called Ráth Crúachain. Nagnata on the west coast would seem to be Sligo. The site of Eblana north of the Liffey estuary is likely Loughshinny, where there appears to have been a Roman trading outpost. Macolicum might correspond to Emly, which was an important royal seat in Munster before being overshadowed by Cashel.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ptolemy seems to attest extensive colonization of Ireland by Brythonic Celts. Thus we find the Brigantes of northern England/southern Scotland also living in south Leinster. The Venicnii shown in what’s now county Donegal would seem to correspond to the Pictish Venicones of Angus and the Mearns in Scotland. The Gangani of southwest Ireland are also attested in Ptolemy’s map of Britain, living on the Llyn peninsula of Wales, though it’s just as possible that they represent an Irish community in Britain. Finally, the Manapi shown around the Liffey estuary —with an eponymous settlement near where Dún Laoghaire would be today— have been speculated to be Manx settlers, as Pliny the Elder recorded the Isle of Man as “Monapia”.

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It’s deeply saddening to see Europe in the state it’s currently in. And Scotland isn’t in nearly as severe of a situation as France, Germany, Spain, or even England. But what no one sees is that the problem is a spiritual one. It’s plain to see that things getting this way has coincided with the rise of atheism and secularism in the advent of the French Revolution; first slow and creeping, now rapidly accelerating. The people turned their backs on Christianity, stopped praying, and started voting for freemasons (occultists) and Jews… who then opened the flood-gates to hordes of knife-wielding Muslim and African rapists. It will take a miracle to save Europe.

2 Chronicles 7:14

…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

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Killarney National Park; county Kerry, Ireland. 🇮🇪

Beech forest in Lough Key Forest Park; county Roscommon, Ireland. 🇮🇪

Aerial view of Loch Ness in mid-autumn. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A passing comment made by Irenaeus of Lyon (lived AD 125-202) suggests that the Gaulish language was still used by the majority of people in what is now France, over two centuries after the Roman conquest. Irenaeus was a Greek born in the city of Smyrna (located near modern Izmir, Turkey), but his statement suggests that he’d lived in Gaul —where he was the ruling elder (i.e. bishop) of a Christian community in the city of Lyon— for so long, that the Celtic language had become more familiar to him than Latin and even his own native Greek:

You will not expect from me, who am resident among the Celts, and am accustomed for the most part to use a foreign dialect, any display of rhetoric, which I have never learned, or any excellence of composition, which I have never practised, or any beauty and persuasiveness of style, to which I make no pretensions…

-Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies (written ~AD 180); Preface.

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Another early Christian writer, Jerome of Stridon (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; lived AD 342/5-420) stated that in the late 4th century, the Gaulish language was still being spoken in what’s now western Germany by the Gallic Treveri people, as well in central Turkey by the Galatians. Jerome himself had lived among the Treveri in the city of Trier, Germany, for a few years during the late 360s:

That the Galatians, apart from the Greek language, which they speak just like the rest of the Orient, have their own language, which is almost the same as that of the Treverans.

-Jerome of Stridon, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (written late 380s AD); II:3.

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