IRELAND 



3050 



IRELAND 



these old Celtic heroes, Finn, or Fingal, espe- 

 cially having the wildest of legends woven 

 about his name. 



Barbarians these early people were, but not 

 in the sense of the earliest inhabitants, who 

 knew not the use of metal or even of fire; for 

 the Scoti possessed the rudiments of agricul- 

 ture and had definite systems of government 

 and religion. Each of the numerous provinces 

 had its king, and all these were in a measure 

 subject to the king of the central province, 

 Meath; and each clan had its chief. At the 

 head of the religious system were the Druids, 

 those priests about whose name so much mys- 

 tery hovers. 



The First Great Event. This was not a war, 

 but the coming of an unarmed priest who 

 to-day is Ireland's patron saint Saint Patrick. 

 About 432, it is believed, he came to the 

 island, and despite obstacles did a work little 

 short of miraculous in spreading among a 

 pagan population the doctrines of Christianity. 

 The Irish did not become mere passive con- 

 verts. They were swept by a passion for 

 missionary labor, and from their newly estab- 

 lished monasteries missionaries in great num- 

 bers went out to Britain and to the Continent, 

 and did a wonderful work. Students, too, 

 thronged to Ireland and sought education in 

 its monasteries, and for a time, as one histo- 

 rian says, "The new religious houses looked 

 for their ecclesiastical traditions not to Rome 

 but to Ireland." At no subsequent time has 

 Ireland played so great a part in the history 

 of the world. 



The Coming of Invaders. This religious 

 progress, which seems to have been attended 

 by little of secular progress save in the art of 

 music, met a rude check in the last decade 

 of the eighth century in the coming of the 

 black Viking ships, with their hordes of Danes 

 and Norsemen. The Scandinavian tribes estab- 

 lished themselves on the coast, building or 

 occupying Cork, Waterford, Limerick and 

 Dublin, and took to ravaging the country, 

 finding particular delight in plundering the 

 monasteries. It is probable that the famous 

 round towers of Ireland were built in the 

 eighth and ninth centuries and were used as 

 defenses against these fierce invaders. For 

 more than two centuries the Danes harassed 

 the island, but in 1014 were overthrown by a 

 celebrated hero, Brian Boroirahe, more com- 

 monly known as Brian Boru. Brian had 

 brought almost all of the island under his rule, 

 but he fell in the very moment of his victory 



and the island slipped back into anarchy again. 

 Says an old rhyme: 



Each man ruled his own tribe, 



But no man ruled Erin. 



For more than a century and a half this 

 state of things continued, with scarcely a gleam 

 of light in the darkness and misery; and then 

 came the English, and a new phase in Ireland's 

 history began. Pope Hadrian IV had given 

 Henry II of England permission to subdue the 

 island, and when Dermod Macmurrough, a 

 deposed Irish king, took refuge at the English 

 court and asked aid, Henry allowed him to 

 call for volunteers among the English. The 

 leader of these volunteers was Richard, Earl 

 of Pembroke, best known as "Strongbow," who 

 placed Dermod again on his throne, married 

 his daughter and later succeeded him. Other 

 Norman nobles settled in the island, and when 

 in 1172 Henry II landed at Waterford, he was 

 greeted as "lord of Ireland." 



Relation of the Two Islands. The Norman 

 nobles and their followers received from the 

 king great grants of land, and after they had 

 put down the opposition of the natives they 

 allied themselves with them and began to 

 defy the power of the king. Adopting the 

 customs and language of the natives, they be- 

 came more Irish than English, and the hold 

 of England on the island grew weaker. In 

 time only the region about Dublin the "Pale" 

 as it was called felt the English influence. 

 Under Henry VII, a strong king, there was a 

 change. Sir Edward Poynings, a man with 

 English interests at heart, was placed in charge, 

 and he put through several measures looking 

 toward the strengthening of English control, 

 most important of which was the law which 

 made the Irish Parliament dependent on the 

 king. It must not be forgotten that through- 

 out all this time the mass of the Irish people 

 was scarcely civilized, and could hardly be 

 expected to understand and appreciate English 

 laws and customs. 



Henry VIII was for the most part very wise 

 in his dealings with Ireland. He provided that 

 Irish law and not English should be enforced 

 in the untamed districts outside of the Pale, 

 and he allowed representatives from these re- 

 gions to become members of Parliament. It 

 was this mixed Parliament which in 1541 con- 

 ferred on him the title of King of Ireland. 

 But to the religion of the island Henry was 

 not so kindly. In his attempt to enforce the 

 reformed faith which had been introduced in 

 England, he had the monasteries destroyed 



