self-description by these groups or whether it was an
externally generated label. The word is an Irish cognate
of Welsh Prydain and earlier Celtic Pretani, from
which the modern English terms Britain and Britons
derive. The equivalence of British “p” with Irish “kw,”
later “c,” is well established, and the modern English
forms in “b” derive from Latin forms themselves,
based on a mishearing of the British pronunciation.
Cruthni thus, in some sense, means “Britons,” although
by the Middle Ages the Irish distinguished between
the descendants of the Romano-British population liv-
ing south of the river Forth (in Scotland), whom they
called Bretain (Britons), and the unromanized tribes
to the north, whom they called Cruthni and who were
known in Latin as Picti, the Picts. It is incorrect, how-
ever, to designate the Irish Cruthni as “Picts,” for they
were never so-called by Irish Latinists such as Adom-
nán, who while using Pictifor those in northern Britain,
simply Latinized “Cruthni” when referring to the Irish.
Groups of Cruthni were found across Ireland, but
only three groups were of any significance: the Sogain,
a major subject people of the Connachta whose seven
tribes were scattered across Connacht proper and
Mide; the Loígis (whose name survives as modern
Laois) in western Leinster; and finally a large group
oftúathaoccupying most of Antrim and some of the
neighboring districts in the northeast. It is with this last
group that we shall principally be concerned. If the term
“Cruthni” does imply an origin in Britain (the alternative
view would be that the island takes its name from the
people) then there is no reason to suppose any particular
connection between the various Cruthnian groups within
Ireland. Their ancestors may have made the crossing at
different periods and from different places in Britain.
Since the migrations are not recorded in the annals it is
fairly certain that any such migrations happened before
the fifth century A.D., perhaps long before.
While the Sogain, the Loígis, and the smaller groups
of Cruthni scattered throughout Ireland were for the
most part loyal vassals within established over king-
doms, the northeasterners were a major force in their
own right. Their territory in the mid-sixth century
seems to have covered most of the land between Lough
Foyle and the Lagan. They were bordered on the south-
east by the Ulaid, on the southwest by the Airgialla,
and on the west by the Northern Uí Néill. They were
at this stage divided into many túatha. At the battle of
Móin Daire Lotheir in 563 two of the Cruthian túatha
under Baetán mac Cuinn, aided by the Uí Néill, fought
against their over king Áed Brecc. Áed, together with
seven of his allied kings, was slain, and at least one
further Cruthnian, Eochaid Láeb, is said to have
escaped the battle. This puts at least eleven kings of
the Cruthni at this battle, giving some sense of their
extent. Two years later Áed Brecc’s successor as
Cruthnian over king, Áed Dub, slew Diarmait mac
Cerbaill, king of Tara. In 637 the Cruthni were defeated
by Domnall mac Áeda, king of Tara, at Mag Rath
(Moira, County Down), and the battle became a central
point of saga. These events of the decades around 600
give some indication of the importance of the Cruthni
in the early period.
By the eighth century a single kingdom had
emerged to dominate the Cruthni, that of the Dál
nAraide of Mag Line (Antrim), and its name gradually
drove that of the Cruthni from the record. In the later
ninth and early tenth centuries Dál nAraide even began
to exert their authority over the Ulaid, and they rewrote
their own origin legends to make it appear that they
had always been Ulaid.
Modern scholars have always stressed that there is
no evidence of British speech or other cultural traits
among the Irish Cruthni, but it must be conceded that
we have no early texts emanating from their province
and that the record of their personal names, and so
forth, may have been normalized by the chroniclers,
just as they were able to produce Gaelic forms of the
names of Pictish kings in Britain whose own preferred
spelling forms are preserved elsewhere. This said, had
any migration occurred before the fifth century it is
quite likely that British and Irish Celtic would have
been close enough that convergence of dialects rather
than language shift would have been required to bring
the two tongues together.
A further problem regards the relationship between
the Cruthni and Dál Riata. By the seventh century the
kingdom of Dál Riata had emerged, extending from
the valley of the Bush in Antrim as far as Mull and
the adjacent mainland in Scotland, with ecclesiastical
centers at Armoy, Kingarth, and Iona and royal centers
at Dunseverick, Dunadd, and Dunollie. In Ireland, Dál
Riata was completely enclosed by Cruthnian túatha,
while in Scotland it appears to have been the beach-
head from which Gaelic language and culture was
eventually to spread to the whole region. At the end
of the sixth century Áedán mac Gabráin, king of Dál
Riata, seems to have displaced Áed Dub as over king
of the Cruthni and become a dominant figure in the
north of both Britain and Ireland. Later genealogists
gave Dál Riata a distinct descent from the Cruthni,
making them either exiles from the Dingle peninsula
or a branch of the Ulaid, but the close geographical
and political relationship between the two groups begs
some questions. It is also odd that the Irish population
group described as “Britons” should be such close
neighbors of a population group in Britain perceived
as Irish by their neighbors. Possibly both groups rep-
resent the two halves of a people who bridged the gap
between Britain and Ireland, in cultural as well as
geographical terms.CRUTHNI