THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



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Christianized Ireland by persuasion, established 

 at Armagh a school attended by seven thousand 

 students. Saint Columba created at Iona, in 

 the Hebrides, monastic seminaries, a strong- 

 hold of Christian teaching, thronged by foreign 

 youth, who carried back to less favored coun- 

 tries this light from the West. 



The Irish Christians, long unconnected with 

 Rome, afterward became devout Catholics. 

 The vigorous efforts of Henry VIII and of 

 some of his successors to force Protestantism 

 upon them only embittered resentment. Had 

 the English remained Catholic or the Irish be- 

 come Protestant the heat of later difference 

 might have been partly prevented. The settle- 

 ment of English and Scotch colonists in the 

 northeast corner of the island further compli- 

 cated the situation by the introduction of a 

 hostile religious element. 



Of the Irish in Ireland, 3,243,000, or three- 

 fourths of the entire number, are Roman Cath- 

 olics. The more than a million Protestants are 

 members of the Protestant Episcopal and Pres- 

 byterian churches. 



The homeland of the Irish has an area of 

 32,586 square miles. How nearly one, geo- 

 graphically, are the appropriately called Em- 

 erald Isle and Great Britain few persons ap- 

 preciate. The width of the shallow North 

 Channel, between the Mull of Cantire (Scot- 

 land) and Torr Head, is only 1^/2 miles. The 

 Irish Sea, between Dublin and Holyhead 

 (Wales), is less than 70 miles across, and St. 

 George's Channel, at the southern extremity, is 

 less than 50 miles wide. 



Irish, "the classic language of the Celts," is 

 fast yielding place to English. Spoken in the 

 middle of the last century by more than half 

 the people, it is now spoken by less than one- 

 seventh. The population is likewise steadily 

 growing less. 



There were a million more inhabitants in 

 Ireland in 1801 than there are today. A very 

 careful census was taken by the British Gov- 

 ernment on the Act of Union to determine the 

 number of representatives in Parliament to 

 which Ireland was entitled on a basis of popu- 

 lation. The number thus determined was made 

 permanent, because the government wanted the 

 Irish to feel that they would never have less 

 representatives than then, and also because it 

 was believed that the Irish, being prolific, 

 might have in time an inconveniently large 

 number of representatives in Parliament. As 

 it turned out, however, at present Ireland has 

 one representative for about every 42,000 people 

 and England one for about every 70,000 people. 

 Scotland, with several hundred thousand more 

 inhabitants, has about two-thirds as many 

 members of Parliament as Ireland. 



"The claim of blood was the strongest which 

 the ancient Celt knew." There is nothing finer 

 or more Celtic than the devotion of the Irish 

 in foreign lands to their kin at home. 



The exuberant nature, the sometimes flighty 

 purpose, the impractical attempt, the daring, 

 generous spirit, the faithful and sympathetic 

 nature, the courtesy and the quickness, the love 



of poetry and song, mark alike the ancient and 

 the modern Celt. None but a Celtic soul would 

 have chosen the harp as its national emblem. 



THE BRITISH* 



The names, Englishman, Scotchman, Welsh- 

 man, are historic, each invested with precious 

 traditions of its own. Yet each is a local ap- 

 pellation, fitly associated with a limited area in 

 an island that itself is small. Because English- 

 men form the majority in the island, the mis- 

 take is often made by foreigners of speaking 

 of the "English ambassador," "the English 

 army," "the English navy," when in fact there 

 is no such thing. "The meteor flag" is not the 

 symbol of a petty insular distinction, but of the 

 British race. In the larger personality of the 

 Britisher the Englishman, the Scotchman, the 

 Welshman, and many an Irishman are lost and 

 forgotten. 



the: wexsh 



The Welsh formerly held possession of all 

 the western coasts of Britain from the mouth 

 of the Severn northward for three hundred 

 miles. They are now found chiefly in the 

 Principality of Wales. Though amalgamated 

 with a far more numerous people, they possess 

 a distinct importance of their own. 



Together with the Bretons of Britanny in 

 France and the Cornish, now absorbed in the 

 main English body (the Cornish language has 

 been unspoken for over one hundred years), 

 they constitute the Brythonic group, or one- 

 half of the once great Celtic family. Brython 

 is the name under which the Welsh include 

 themselves and the ancient Britons. 



In spite of the marked revival of Welsh 

 literary effort in the eighteenth and nineteenth 

 centuries, the Welsh language is steadily giv- 

 ing way before the English. In 191 1 only four- 

 tenths of the two million Welsh could speak 

 their Celtic tongue at all. Thirty years earlier 

 it was in daily use by seven-tenths of their 

 people. 



There was no horror of invasion, no form 

 of resistance, no phase of alternate victory 

 and defeat, which, from the time of the Ro- 

 mans, for centuries the Welsh did not undergo. 

 Finally Llewelyn submitted to Edward I in 

 1277. The heir to the English throne was to 

 bear the title of Prince of Wales, and the 

 grandson of the Welshman, Owen Tudor, be- 

 come King of England as Henry VII and 

 found the Tudor dynasty. Shortly afterward 



* See also, in National Geographic Maga- 

 zine, "England : The Oldest Nation of Eu- 

 rope," by Roland G. Usher (October, 1914) ; 

 "Channel Ports and Some Others" (July, 

 1915) ; "London," by Florence Craig Albrecht 

 (September, 1915) ; "One Hundred British Sea- 

 ports" (January, 1917) ; "What Great Britain 

 is Doing," by Sydney Brooks (March, 1917), 

 and "What the War Has Done for Britain," 

 by Judson C. Welliver (October, 1918). 



