Dublin by Edward Rutherfurd Read Free Book Online Page A

How many tribes were there, he wondered.
      Perhaps a hundred and fifty. Some were large, ruled by powerful clans; some were lesser, ruled by affiliated septs; some hardly more than a group of families, probably sharing a common ancestor, but who proudly called themselves a tribe and had a chief. It was easy, on an island which nature had divided by mountain and bog into huge numbers of small territories, for each tribe to have lands of its own in the centre of which there was usually a sacred ancestral site, often as not marked by an ash tree.
      And who exactly were these tribes? Where had they come from, these Sons of Mil who had sent the legendary Tuatha De Danaan under the hills? Goibniu knew that the conquering tribes had come to the western island centuries ago from neighbouring Britain and from across the sea to the south. The people of the western island were part of a great patchwork of tribes, whose culture and language, called Celtic, stretched across much of north-western Europe. With their swords of iron, splendid war chariots, and magnificent metalwork, their druid priests and poets, the Celtic tribes had long been feared and admired. As the Roman Empire had spread northwards and across to Britain, the main centres of each tribal territory had usually become a Roman military centre or market town and the Celtic gods of the local tribe likewise put on Roman clothes. Thus in Gaul, for instance, the Celtic god Lugh, whose festival this was, had given his name to the city of Lugdunum, which would one day become transmuted to Lyon. And the tribes in turn had gradually become Roman, even losing their old language and speaking Latin instead.
      Except on the outer fringes. In the northern and western parts of Britain, which the Romans largely left alone, the former tongues and tribal customs had continued.
      Above all, in the western neighbour island across the sea, where the Romans came to trade but not to conquer, the old Celtic culture, in all its richness, remained intact. The Romans were not always certain what to call these various people. In northern Britain, which the Romans called Alba, lived the ancient tribes of Picts. When colonisers from the Celtic western island sailed over and established settlements in Alba, gradually pushing the Picts back towards the northern British interior, the Romans referred to these Celtic settlers as Scotti, or Scots. But the Celtic tribes of the western island did not call themselves by that Roman name. They knew who they were, ever since they had come to the island and encountered a friendly goddess there. They were the people of Eriu.
      As he watched the Celtic tribesmen approaching the festival, however, Goibniu's stare was cool.
      Was he one of them? Partly, no doubt. But just as up at those strange old mounds above the Boyne he felt a nameless sense of belonging, at these great Celtic gatherings he could not help an instinctive sensation that he was somehow alien, that he came from some other tribe who had been in this land since long before.
      Perhaps the Sons of Mil had conquered his people, but he still knew how to make use of them.
      His single eye continued to move over the scene, separating, with knifelike precision, the colourful groups into different categories: important, not important; useful, irrelevant; owing him something, or owed a favour. By a large cart he saw two magnificent young champions, arms thick as tree trunks, tattooed-the two sons of Cas, son of Donn. Wealthy. To be cultivated. Some way off stood two druids and an old bard. The old man, Goibniu was aware, had a dangerous tongue, but he had a few pieces of gossip to keep the old man happy. Over to the left he saw Fann, daughter of the great chief Ross: a proud woman. But Goibniu knew that she had slept with one of the sons of Cas, which her husband did not.
      Knowledge is power. You never knew when such information could be used to secure a piece of future