Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland – Part 49

~ Part 1~

Darinoi (Corrupted on Nicholaus Germanus’s Map to Clarini)

In his description of Ireland, Geography 2:2 §§ 1-10, Claudius Ptolemy records the disposition of sixteen Irish tribes. Beginning, as before, in the southeast corner of the island and proceeding in a counterclockwise direction, the seventh of these are the Darinoi (Latin: Darini). These people are listed as dwelling on the east coast, south of the Rhobogdioi and north of the Volountioi.

In his 1883 edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, Karl Müller noted three variant readings of this ethnonym, but two of these differed from the standard reading only in their use of Greek accents. Although these accents were first introduced in Alexandria, their use was not regularized until the Byzantine era, long after Ptolemy’s time (Gnanadesikan 220-221). I have, therefore, ignored these two variants. The remaining variant, however, is valid. According to Wilhelm Wilberg’s critical edition of 1838, this third variant is also found in Desiderius Erasmus’s editio princeps of 1533:

Source	Greek	English
Most MSS	Δαρινοι	Darinoi
C, P, R, W, α, Edd	Δαρνιοι	Darnioi

• C is Parisiensis Supplem 119. Presumably this is one of the Codices Parisini Graeci in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, though I have not been able to confirm this.

• P and R are Venetian manuscripts identified by Müller as Venetus 383 and Venetus 516. They are possibly kept in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, though I have not been able to confirm this.

• W is a manuscript currently housed in the Vatican Library: Vaticanus Graecus 178.

• α is identified by Müller as the Codex Ingolstadiensis. He refers to it as the Editio princeps, a term generally reserved for the first printed edition of a work. Today, the editio princeps is usually credited to Erasmus, whose complete Greek edition—based on a manuscript provided by Theobald Fettich of Kaiserslautern—was published by Hieronymus Froben in Basel in 1533. Earlier in the same year, however, Peter Apian of Ingolstadt published an incomplete version of the Geography in Greek and Latin. I can only assume that Müller’s Cod α is a copy of this work.

• Edd Printed editions of Erasmus’s editio princeps of 1533.

Adjacent metathesis—the transposition of contiguous letters in a word—is one of the commonest types of typographical errors found in manuscript sources. In this case, there are good reasons to believe that Δαρινοι [Darinoi] is the correct reading.

Identity

The Darinoi are one of the few tribes listed in Ptolemy’s Geography whose descendants can be clearly discerned in our native records:

Darini. These were located approximately in South Antrim and North Down. Their name, implying descent from Dáire (*Dārios), shows them to have been a branch of the Érainn. Compare the closely related name Dáirine, < *Dārionion, which ... was applicable to the Érainn in general as ‘descendants of Dáire.’ In historical times both the Dál Riata of North Antrim and the Dál Fiatach of East Down claimed descent from Dáire. Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe refers to Dundrum, Co. Down (in the territory of the Dál Fiatach) as Dún Droma Dāirine [The Fortress of the Ridge of the Tribe of Dáire]. (O’Rahilly 7)

To this, O’Rahilly appends the following additional note:

Dáirine, which was commonly written Dáirfhine, was interpreted as a compound of Dáire and fine, ‘tribe, kindred’. (O’Rahilly 455)

Martin Counihan adds a few more details to this account:

The Darini lived in Northern Ireland, but the extent of their territory is not certain. Their name suggests dedication to a deity, or divine ancestor, whose name appears in Irish tradition as Dáire, or more fully as Dáire Barrach. The epithet Barrach means something like “the high one”, or “the bright one”, and is etymologically related to the common tribal name which in Latin is Brigantes.

Dáire occurs frequently as an Irish personal name ... As a divinity, Dáire seems to have been equivalent to Mars ...

Darini/Dáire also crops up here and there in Irish sources as a clan-name and place-name ... There was also Dún Droma Dáirine (Fort of the Ridge of the Dáirini), now Dundrum in County Down: it would not be unreasonable to suppose that Dundrum Castle was the chief stronghold of Ptolemy’s Darini, except that Dundrum is a little further south than one would expect if it were within Darinian territory. (Counihan 2)

Dundrum Castle, County Down

Dundrum Castle may have been a medieval stronghold of this tribe, but it is unlikely to have existed in the late 4th century BCE, the era to which O’Rahilly assigns Ptolemy’s Ireland. Furthermore, as Dál Fiatach also claimed descent from Dáire, Dundrum Castle may well have been their stronghold. The ruins that currently stand on this site are generally thought to be those of the medieval castle built by the Norman warlord John de Courcy around 1200—but see Armitage 339 for a difference of opinion—but references in our native records to Dún Droma Dáirine suggest that an older structure of native provenance once stood here.

Goddard Orpen had already made the connection with the mythical name Dáire by 1894:

Δαρῐνοι (variant reading Δάρνιοι (Orpen 127). This name recalls the Dairine, or descendants of Daire Sirchreachtach or the Plunderer, called Dairfhine in the “Book of Rights”; but the silent fh was possible added to bring in the word fine, a tribe, as an element in the composition. At any rate the spelling Dairine, which was in itself a woman’s name, has ample authority in old MSS. (Orpen 127)

In Irish manuscripts, the mythical name Dáire occurs in several different contexts with several different cognomens:

• Dáire Barrach
• Dáire Cerbba
• Dáire Derg
• Dáire Doimthech
• Dáire Dornmar
• Dáire mac Dedad
• Dáire mac Fiachna
• Dáire Sírchréchtach

Although these individuals were general distinguished from one another and given their own separate genealogies, it is probably safe to assume that, ultimately, they were simply euhemerizations of the same mythical character.

Earlier Opinions

Among the scholars and antiquaries of earlier centuries, Darini was commonly related to the Irish word dair, meaning oak. Consequently, the Darinoi were often linked to the city of Derry, whose name derives from the Old Irish daire, meaning oak grove. In 17th century, the Irish antiquary James Ware wrote:

Darnii or Darini, a People so called. This People inhabited the Countries, which at present are commonly called, the Counties of Londonderry, Antrim and Tir-oen. Some remains of the Name Darnii yet appear in the Word Derry (antiently called Daire-Calgac or the Oak Grove of Calgaick, as also in Dalrieta, by which Name the County of Antrim, or a great Part of it, now called, Routs, was antiently known. (Ware & Harris 39)

To this, Ware’s 18th-century editor Walter Harris adds the gloss:

The Name may be indifferently derived either from the British or Irish, in both which Languages Dâr or Dair signifies an Oak, and Gein or Ein an Offspring, i. e. People sprung from the Oak. (Ware & Harris 39)

As usual, Harris has taken his etymology from the Welsh scholar William Baxter:

Dareni (in some codices of Ptolemy corruptly as Δάρινοι [Darinoi], and in others as Δάρνιοι [Darnioi]) seems to mean Offspring of the Oak. For among the British, Dâr means Oak, and Geni or Eni means Offspring. This people of Ireland are found in Ulaid or Ulster. From them perhaps the city of Derry took its name, as did also Dairmach or Oak City, and Ardmach [Armagh] or High City. (Baxter 99)

Similar opinions were expressed by William Beauford in 1789 (Beauford 67), Charles O’Conor in 1814 (O’Conor li), Lorenz Diefenbach in 1839 (Diefenbach 383), and Karl Müller in 1883 (Müller 79). Roderic O’Flaherty, however, considered this etymology forced and risible (O’Flaherty 24).

It is, of course, possible that the name of the deity Dáire derives from a root meaning oak. The lengthening of a short vowel a to á in a stressed syllable would have been irregular but not unprecedented (Thurneysen §§ 43 ff). The fact that Dáire was eventually replaced by Daire does not preclude this possibility.

The etymologists at Roman Era Names also suggest that Ptolemy’s Darinoi derives from the Old Irish word dair, oak, while offering an alternative and novel hypothesis of their own:

Δαρινοι (Darinoi 2,2,9) lived in the north-east, modern Antrim and Down facing Britain. Maybe their name was Celtic for ‘leaping’ by analogy with OI dairid ‘bulls’, which would presumably make them analogous with the Taurini of northern Italy. A better parallel is OI dair ‘oak’, and modern Derry, which would make the Δαρινοι analogous with the Iceni [whose name some would derive from the Germanic root *aiks, meaning oak]. (Roman Era Names)

Ptolemy’s Tribes of Ireland (After Marcian)

Conclusions

As we have seen, two prominent tribes who dwelt in the northeastern part of Ireland in historical times claimed descent from Dáire: Dál Fiatach and Dál Riata. The former were unquestionably the descendants of the ancient Ulaid, who are generally identified with Ptolemy’s Volountioi. What is more, just as Ptolemy placed the Volountioi to the south of the Darinoi, so the territory of Dál Fiatach in County Down lay to the south of that of Dál Riata in County Antrim. It seems reasonable, therefore, to identify Dál Riata with the descendants of Ptolemy’s Darinoi.

In historical times, Dál Riata were confined to the northeastern corner of the island, where Ptolemy locates his next tribe, the Rhobogdioi. It is possible, however, that the ancestors of Dál Riata occupied a much larger territory a millennium earlier. Furthermore, as we shall see in the next article, there are some reasons to believe that the Rhobogdioi were misplaced by Ptolemy and ought to have been located in the northwest of the island rather than the northeast. If this were the case, then the Darinoi could have occupied all of the modern county of Antrim, perhaps with the River Lagan and Belfast Lough as the territorial boundary between them and the Volountioi.

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References

• Ella Sophia Armitage, The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles, John Murray, London (1912)
• William Baxter, Glossarium Antiquitatum Britannicarum, sive Syllabus Etymologicus Antiquitatum Veteris Britanniae atque Iberniae temporibus Romanorum, Second Edition, London (1733)
• William Beauford, Letter from Mr. William Beauford, A.B. to the Rev. George Graydon, LL.B. Secretary to the Committee of Antiquities, Royal Irish Academy, The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Volume 3, pp 51-73, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin (1789)
• Martin Counihan, Researchgate (2019)
• Lorenz Diefenbach, Celtica, Volume 2, Imle & Liesching, Stuttgart (1839)
• Amalia E Gnanadesikan, The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet, Blackwell Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester (2009)
• Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller (editor & translator), Klaudiou Ptolemaiou Geographike Hyphegesis (Claudii Ptolemæi Geographia), Volume 1, Alfredo Firmin Didot, Paris (1883)
• Karl Friedrich August Nobbe, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, Volume 1, Karl Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1845)
• Karl Friedrich August Nobbe, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia, Volume 2, Karl Tauchnitz, Leipzig (1845)
• Charles O’Conor, Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres, Volume 1, Prolegomena, Pars I, John Seeley, Buckingham (1814)
• Roderic O’Flaherty, James Hely (translator), Ogygia, Or, A Chronological Account of Irish Events, Volume 1, W McKenzie, Dublin (1793)
• Thomas F O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin (1946, 1984)
• Goddard H Orpen, Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland, The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Volume 4 (Fifth Series), Volume 24 (Consecutive Series), pp 115-128, Dublin (1894)
• Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geography, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat Gr 191, fol 127-172 (Ireland: 138v–139r)
• Rudolf Thurneysen, Osborn Bergin (translator), D A Binchy (translator), A Grammar of Old Irish, Translated from Handbuch des Altirischen (1909), Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin (1946, 1998)
• James Ware, Walter Harris (editor), The Whole Works of Sir James Ware, Volume 2, Walter Harris, Dublin (1745)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Wilberg, Claudii Ptolemaei Geographiae, Libri Octo: Graece et Latine ad Codicum Manu Scriptorum Fidem Edidit Frid. Guil. Wilberg, Essendiae Sumptibus et Typis G.D. Baedeker, Essen (1838)

Image Credits

• Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland: Wikimedia Commons, Nicholaus Germanus (cartographer), Public Domain
• Greek Letters: Wikimedia Commons, Future Perfect at Sunrise (artist), Public Domain
• T F O’Rahilly: Copyright Unknown, Fair Use
• Dundrum Castle, County Down: © Crown Copyright, Fair Use