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Towards the end of the Roman empire, Brittania was under almost continual attack.

During the fourth and fifth centuries the Irish landed all along the western coastline of Cornwall, Wales and western Scotland.

Northern Brittania was facing incursions by the Picts from north east Scotland, while from across the North Sea came the Germanic tribes - the Angles, Saxons and the Jutes. These events set off a whole series of language shifts on the island of Britain.

The Irish invasions of Cornwall probably triggered off the mass migration of Brittonic speakers to Roman controlled north-western France, which combined with a residue of native Gaulish speakers to form of Brittany, or Lesser Britain (in Welsh, Llydaw). The name Great Britain came into existence to avoid confusion with Lesser Britain.

The Irish also settled on the west coast of Wales, although legend has it that a Brittonic chieftain named Cunedda from southern Scotland marched south to expel them from north-west Wales.

The Irish remained in south-west Wales, founding ruling dynasties in the kingdoms of Dyfed and Brycheiniog (Brecon), both place-names of Irish origin. Some Irish words were adopted by the Welsh, such as cnwc, meaning hillock, and cadach, meaning rag. It seems that Irish died out as a living language in Dyfed sometime in the seventh century.

The Irish had more success in Scotland. Indeed it was a Goidelic speaking tribe from Ireland called the Scoti that ended up giving their name to Scotland.

After the initial settlements in the fifth century, over the centuries the Scoti were to become the dominant people in the land, eventually displacing the Picts in the east and the Brittonic speakers in the south.

The Brittonic speakers of northern Britain had other enemies to worry about as well. Indeed, it is their battles with the emerging Germanic kingdoms of present day England that have provided us with the earliest record of Welsh poetry, ironically composed far from the present boundaries of Wales.

As in Scotland, it was to be an invading tribe that gave its name to that part of Brittania lost to the Germanic tribes - Angle Land, or England.