Alternate Irelands: A Land Full of Snakes
- Jul 21
- 12 min read
By Gary Oswald.
Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire but nor it was ever entirely cut off from interaction with that Empire. After all, from 43 AD to 410 AD, Rome ruled England, Wales and parts of Scotland, which puts them very close to Ireland. Trade between Ireland and Roman Britain was limited, the Irish didn't really have the natural resources to sell, but existent. More dramatically, there are records of both Irish exiles receiving political support from Rome to return home and of Irish kings attacking the Roman Empire. Niall of the Nine Hostages, the legendary founder of the Uí Néill dynasties, died fighting the Romans in Gaul, according to Irish sagas, though most modern historians are sceptical of that and argue Niall's campaign against the Romans was probably constrained to England.
But there was a lot of subtler but more impactful interaction. Marriage and family links between northern Irish groups and southern Scottish groups persisted even during periods where the latter fell within Roman borders. Numerous Irish soldiers served as mercenaries in Britain and, when their service had ended, took back Roman ideas to Ireland.
And some Irish who came over to work for the Romans stayed. Areas in Wales and Cornwall saw the Irish hired as migrant workers for the mines which led to Irish minorities settling in those areas. In the aftermath of the Roman retreat from the British Isles, they called in more of their kinfolk, leading to increasing settlement in those areas by Irish migrating groups and records of Irish kings ruling large parts of Wales. And in Scotland, Irish and Scottish families formed the powerful Dál Riata Kingdom which controlled land in both Scotland and Ireland and had such influence that it lead to the Gaelicisation of the Picts, with the lingua franca of Scotland becoming Gaelic rather than Pictish.
This Irish dominance was short lived, as it was bitterly contested by the British and the formation of Welsh, Anglo Saxon and Pictish centralised kingdoms was at least partly a reaction to their threat. The Welsh drove the Irish out of Wales and the Northumbrians drove them out of Cumbria and Isle of Man, raiding deep into Ireland itself in 684. And these cross-channel attacks of British armies in Ireland and Irish armies in Britain are very common throughout the post-Roman pre-Viking period of history. In particular there are many records of the Irish raiding Roman Britain as far east as the Isle of Wight for goods and slaves, something that increased as Rome lost control over its frontiers.
All of which meant that by the fifth century, and the end of Roman rule in Britain, there was both an Irish minority in Britain and a British minority (of slaves) in Ireland.
The most famous of the Britons in Ireland was Saint Patrick. He was the son of a Roman tax collector and grandson of a Christian priest and, at the age of sixteen, was captured at his father's villa by Irish raiders. He escaped slavery after six years but would return to Ireland as an adult, as a Christian missionary, converting in particular the women and slaves who did not benefit from the existing status quo but also converting members of the existing nobility.
All of this is detailed in two documents Patrick wrote which survived intact: 'the Declaration' which is Patrick's story of his life told in his own words to defend himself against accusations of wrongdoing, and the 'Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus', in which he excommunicated the army of a British king, Coroticus, for enslaving and murdering Irish Christians while raiding Ireland. Many historians argue the excommunication of Coroticus was controversial enough that it led to the attacks on Patrick that he rebuts in the declaration.
Patrick became a major folk hero in Irish Christian history, a figure of huge importance to them who had multiple autobiographies written about him as the man who bought Christianity to Ireland. And the importance of that should not be underestimated. The conversion of Ireland to Christianity is probably the first major event in Irish history, on par with the Norman invasion for the way it changed everything.
Christian Ireland had increased trade and interaction with Europe in a way pre-Christian Ireland didn't. This meant new technologies (such as literacy) and new goods (such as paper). It also meant new social hierarchies, trends towards property ownership and clientages which weakened older clan ties. Arguably it was Christian schools and religious buildings that formed the first major populous towns in Ireland, such as Armagh, whereas previously the population was much less densely distributed. On every level, the conversion of Ireland led to huge changes.
And as an historical figure, who was a major part of that change, Patrick is unique in two ways. First of all, he is the only Roman citizen to have written about his experiences as a slave outside the empire during their century of retreat. No other Roman citizen who ended up under the thrall of the Irish, or the Goths or the Huns or the Vandals, wrote about it and had those writings survive. This gives him a perspective we don't often see. Secondly, he is a the only Roman citizen who we know tried to convert areas of Northern Europe entirely outside of the empire to Christianity in that time period. That sort of missionary work was primarily aimed at Asia and Africa, with Western European Christianity in retreat and efforts there mostly aimed at preventing Christian areas like France and England from entirely abandoning the faith now they were no longer Roman, with Anglo-Saxon paganism on the rise. Ireland as a result became Christian centuries ahead of places like Norway, Russia, or the Baltics.
As a result of this, the Irish church that Patrick founded was far more evangelical, doing much to convert the Picts of Scotland and the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria. As Christianity retreated in Britain during the Anglo-Saxon takeover, the Irish did much to help both re-Christianise Britain and extend the borders of Christendom into Scotland. US author Thomas Cahill talked about the importance of the Irish Christian tradition in revitalising Christianity in Europe in his 1995 book How the Irish Saved Civilization which is still a feature in a lot of Irish book shops. Most actual historians have accused Cahill of stretching the evidence massively to emphasise his point, and there is an argument that civilisation is actually possible without Christianity, but it is undoubtedly true that the Irish did much for preserving Christian faith and as a result were bastions of literature, science and learning in Western Europe.
Bede notes the pedigree of Irish Christian schools, which were one of the few places outside Greece that still taught Greek, and that many Irish men became leaders in and founders of Christian buildings and organisations throughout western Europe. Some of the greatest Christian men of theology or letters in that time period, such as John Scotus Eriugena or Columbanus, were Irish, and Irish clergymen were often at the centre of theological debates, whether that be how to cut your hair's a monk, when Easter is, or whether nuns should also wear the monk's tonsure. (Though it must be said Irish missionaries tended to be more radical than their countrymen back home, so often the 'Irish side' of those arguments wasn't actually followed in Ireland.) Without Ireland, the Church is much weaker and crucially less diverse in ideas.
So given Patrick was the instigator of a massive shift within Europe and yet was unusual in terms of the general trend of European Christianity in his time, then presumably a timeline where he died young, or in other ways avoided his fate, is one that is very different as there's no guarantee someone else comes to do his job.
Well, let’s talk about that. For a start, what happens to the snakes?
Of the two largest islands in the Atlantic Archipelago, Ireland has a notably smaller amount of land fauna than Great Britain. Because it is the island further to the West, many animals who made it to Great Britain after the last Ice Age did not reach Ireland. The mole never made it to Ireland, not did the weasel or any vole species. Most famously, of the four snakes or snake-like lizards in Britain, none are found in Ireland. This was noted as early as the 3rd century AD, when Gaius Julis Solinus wrote that Ireland had no snakes, few birds, and warlike people. Bede even claimed that any snake taken to Ireland immediately died upon smelling the air, and that consuming Irish paper could cure snakebite, though most modern doctors don’t recommend it.
By the 13th century, to try and explain this lack, the story became that the snakes were driven out by Saint Patrick and the early converts of Christianity, though even then it was recorded as a flattering folk tale rather than serious history with the likes of Gerald of Wales talking about it purely to debunk it. After all, Irish Christian theologians had argued as early as the 7th century that islands were formed by the sea separating them from the mainland and so Ireland had some animals from Britain but not others based on who was on there at the time (with some then linking that to the Great Flood and the Ark).
So the AH I am positing here, in which Patrick never converts Ireland, will sadly probably not actually result in an Ireland filled with snakes (Andrew Harvey already wrote that one for SLP’s Emerald Isles).
On the internet, you sometimes see this myth that the snakes story is an analogy of the mass killing/exile of the pagan religious hierarchy of Ireland but that isn’t true. The conversion of Ireland was by all accounts remarkably bloodless and the religious hierarchy largely just became Christian. Later myths about Saint Patrick have him killing a lot of druids, but they were all written centuries after his death by Irish monks who wanted Patrick to appear a bit more badass and edgy rather than the man of peace and forgiveness his own writings make him out to be. These same monks edited Patrick’s own writings to censor passages which presented him as suffering rather than all conquering, which is why our most intact sources are continental not Irish.
Which hints at a wider issue. Patrick was a real person, but Patrick as we know him is a mythical figure who has become the symbol for the process of conversion which began before him and ended after him. The first concrete date in Irish history is 431, which is when Prosper of Aquitaine writes that Palladius was dispatched to Ireland from Gaul to tend to the Christians there, and Prosper later wrote that the Gaulish effort to keep England Christian was accompanied by a similar effort in Ireland. Columbanus likewise accredited much of the conversion of Ireland to Gaulish priests and not British ones like Patrick.
And 431 is during or before when most historians date Patrick's account, not after. Now, Patrick doesn't mention either a date or the names of any Irish kings, so he is hard to date. But Maucteus wrote a letter in 535, calling himself a disciple of Patrick, and while five different dates are given for Patrick’s death by Irish monks, they’re all around 490. That paints him as active in the late 5th century and doesn’t fit with Patrick having converted the people that Palladius then tended to.
So while Patrick’s still an outlier for pushing so much into pagan Ireland, he seems to be a lot less of an outlier, if he is travelling to a country that, yes, is outside the empire and, yes, is mostly pagan, but still has a large enough Christian population (consisting presumably of both British slaves and converted Irish driven out of Britain) that the Gauls are dispatching a bishop to organise them.
Likewise in Patrick's letter to Coroticus's army, he refers to Coroticus's Pictish allies as apostates, as in converts to the Christianity who had then rejected it. So, the Irish missionaries in Scotland are also travelling a much better travelled path than is sometimes assumed.
Christianity in the British Isles very much was in the decline during the Anglo-Saxon era and missionaries from Ireland did much to bring it back, but so did missionaries from continental Europe such as Augustine of Canterbury. And there is evidence that to those people, Ireland was already seen as part of the Christian world because of its population exchanges with Britain. It is rare for a continental source to talk about Irish or British Christians and not Irish and British Christians. So without Patrick and his conversions in Northern Ireland, things slow down certainly, but Palladius is already there and he is likely to be followed by others because, to Gaul, Ireland is no different to England as being inhabited by a pagan majority and a Christian minority who needs help. That is how it differs from Norway or Russia which were entirely pagan.
It’s also a country which was ready for Christianity. Celtic paganism didn’t have a strong doctrine or rules of behaviour, and religions tended to be replaced by those which do once populations grew to the extent that people of different kin groups are interacting regularly. Likewise, countries which have contact with other countries with desired trade goods tend to adapt their religion, and the arrival of people from Britain into Ireland had bought with it new agricultural and craft techniques (such as mills) and more valuable goods. Christianity was associated with riches and innovation. This pattern of religions with strong doctrines spreading through trade lines with other knowledge repeats itself throughout the world.
But more than that, pre-Christian Ireland was culturally homogenous with a single language and a single shared culture, meaning that a missionary who found a winning message in Leinster would be able to repeat that again in Munster. And crucially Ireland, while divided politically into numerous small kingdoms, had a mythology of being one country with a high kingship that could be claimed and the concept of universal laws which travellers between kingdoms could appeal to. This is a political situation which benefits from having a universal church which could then enforce ‘Irish’ Law, and Christianity fits that niche very well. Christians quickly gained a reputation as bringing law and order as they often pushed for punishment of murderers and thieves by the local rulers rather than the pre-Christian status quo where such things were often worked out between the families of the victims and the accused, which increased the prestige of those rulers who listened to them as bringing order and good governance. As well as lawyers, the Christian monasteries acted as stores for grain and neutral parties in disputes, trusted parties which everyone could deal with. It was a situation where converting brought clear advantages to both individuals and the society.
Nonetheless, without Patrick Ireland will convert slower and so might happen after England rather than before. And slowing down the conversion has effects of its own because of the importance of the Irish golden age of Christianity. Ireland having less monks and less Christian schools during the time when it was exporting so many aboard in our timeline will have effects.
The differences between to so called ‘Celtic Church’ of Ireland and Catholics elsewhere are often exaggerated but are real. The Irish organised themselves differently due to operating in a country with stronger family ties and weaker national identity than the post Roman states, with hereditary abbots rather than appointed bishops taking the primary administrative roles. But a lot of that difference was a product of the fact that the Irish had less native towns and more pagans, so the monasteries were their own towns rather than attached to pre-existing ones, which is why they weren’t organised in units of districts but buildings and so would have been viewed as an accident of circumstances.
The Irish certainly differed from Rome in terms of theology on elements such as the dating of Easter, due to being mostly cut off for two hundred years due to the Anglo-Saxon takeover in England. But once contact was re-established and more Latin texts made it to Ireland to be examined, they then adapted the Vatican’s ruling in those matters once one had been made, switching to the orthodox ruling. Nonetheless a later conversion, after rather than before that gap is likely to be one which is more orthodox and sees less Irish variance from the Vatican doctrine.
And this later conversion means less Irish scholars arriving in Europe during the 7th and 8th centuries as they wouldn’t be able to benefit from centuries of schooling. Will this, as Thomas Cahill claims, mean that Christianity doesn’t take hold in Western Europe? No, I think that is a step too far, but I think it is certainly weaker. Many of the great early Christian rulers, such as Charlemagne and Charles the Bald, had Irish scholars in their court.
Likewise Irish society would be more isolated and poorer with a later conversion. The building of churches and religious artefacts did much to accelerate crafting techniques and literacy was encouraged by the religious schools, while Ireland being Christian helped it engage in increased trade with the rest of Europe.
This then brings us to what ended that golden age of Christian wealth in Ireland. Throughout the 8th century, Ireland was increasingly flourishing as the institution of the church began to tie the country together economically and socially and capital became available. This led to larger states and stronger kings and could have inevitably led to a unification.
Except in 795, the first of the Vikings arrived and they spent the next two hundred years raiding and settling Ireland. They deliberately targeted the larger and richer monastic settlements, and as such undid a lot of the economic and social improvement.
So there is an argument to be made, that no Patrick and so a later conversion and a weaker church, actually strengthens Ireland long term if there is no reason for the Vikings to target them.
Gary Oswald is the editor of the Grapeshot and Guillotines, Emerald Isles, and If We'd Just Got That Penalty anthologies.
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