The history of Ireland’s appeal lies in its mountains, seashore, tranquil lakes, lovely gardens, and old demesnes. It is in the lush water meadows, in the shade of its ruined castles and in the hedgerows of fuchsia and whitethorn. Ireland’s people are at once delightful and lovingly open. As we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, let us look at the Emerald Isle.
Geologists have ascertained that the oldest known rocks in Ireland in the southeastern county of Wexford date from the pre-Cambrian era, two billion years ago. About two million years ago there was a long period of intense cold with temperatures below freezing. The giant deer that roamed Europe reached Ireland about 12,000 years ago.
The first known inhabitants were hunters, fowlers and fishers who frequented the coastal region or the shores of lakes and rivers. Radiocarbon tests gave a date of 8,150 years ago on charcoal vestiges of man’s earliest known habitat. Their diet was mainly shellfish, nuts, and water-lily seeds. Farming people arrived about 5,500 years ago and appear to have been of Mediterranean origin, having come from what is now Spain and Portugal. Stone monuments they constructed, and burial places and shrines have survived.
It appears that the first Celts may have arrived toward the end of the Bronze Age. In the first century A.D. when the Romans invaded and occupied Britain, historians there made no mention of the invasion of Ireland by the Celts. The Celtic warriors came with their refined artifacts and superior technology and subdued and acculture the earlier inhabitants. The civilization was Celtic in its linguistic, legal, and social structures.
Saki wrote of Crete, that it is a country that has made more history than it could consume. In the 7th century A.D., Celtic Ireland had become Christian. The country was divided into 150 petty kingdoms called tuatha. Powerful rulers built up their internal administration and jurisdiction.
Irish history may have begun in Ulster because the earliest reliable evidence of man’s presence on the island about 6,500 B.C. was found south of Coleraine in County Derry. The people lived a semi-nomadic life with fishing, trapping, and hunting waterfowl. Many later immigrants came across the narrow channel from the southwest of Scotland. They erected waterside dwellings, and huts made of wattles during the seventh to the fourth millennium B.C..
The dawn of the Metal Age about 2000 B.C. brought another wave of immigrants to the island. They were known as the Beaker Folk. They crafted exquisite metal artifacts including flat axes, spearheads, daggers, scabbards, horse bits, harness decorations and gold ornaments such as collars, earrings, and discs. In 1855 in County Derry a laborer digging potatoes found a gold penannular brooch, the Dalriada Brooch, which is now in the National Museum in Dublin.
The Vikings as skilled navigators, in 825 sailed into Strangford Lough, reached Downpatrick, and sacked it. They plundered Armagh in 868, but the monks saved the treasured Book of Armagh. The penmanship of scribe Ferdomnach is exquisite. He drew decorative initials and the symbols of the four Evangelists. Viking influence is seen in the artisan of the fine bronze and gold reliquary made to contain St. Patrick’s bell.
So it has become time to say “Top O the Mornin’ To Ye” and may the luck of the Irish be with you always. May the late Al Campbell celebrate this day with the choirs of Heaven by singing “Danny Boy.”