Eyewitness to Irish History , livre ebook

Eyewitness to Irish History
Peter Berresford Ellis
Copyright 2004 by Peter Berresford Ellis. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data :
Ellis, Peter Berresford.
Eyewitness to Irish history / Peter Berresford Ellis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-471-26633-4 (Cloth)
ISBN 978-0-470-05312-6 (Paper)
1. Ireland-History-Sources. I. Title.
DA905.E44 2004
941.5-dc21
2003014214
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Sing to me the history of my country, It is sweet to my soul to hear it.

Aoibhinn, aoibhinn Echtg rd Flann mac Lon in (c. A.D. 850-918)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Ancient Ireland
2 Early Christian Ireland
3 The Viking Terror
4 Ireland and the Angevin Empire
5 Irish Princes and Norman Lords
6 The Tudor Conquests
7 The Flight of the Princes
8 Obedience to the English Empire
9 The Insurrection of 1641
10 The Cromwellian Conquest
11 The Williamite Conquest
12 The Penal Laws
13 The Insurrection of 1798
14 Union, 1801; Insurrection, 1803; Catholic Emancipation, 1829
15 Repeal, Starvation, and the Insurrection of 1848
16 The Insurrection of 1867 and the Land League
17 The Insurrection of 1916
18 The War of Independence, 1919-1921
19 The Civil War, 1922-1923, and the Aftermath
20 Irish Neutrality and the Irish Republic of 1949
21 A Protestant State and Civil Rights
22 The Long War
L Envoi
Further Reading
Index
Acknowledgments
Each quotation is followed by its source and is thereby acknowledged throughout this book. Every effort has been made to contact the owners of any material that still may be within copyright, but in some cases, the passage of time, often seventy years after the death of the writer, made these efforts difficult. For those who have given their permission, without fee, for the purpose of presenting a unique insight to Ireland s troubled history, I acknowledge a particular debt of gratitude.
To Mo Mowlam and Hodder and Stoughton, for permission to quote the extract from Momentum (2002); Cormac O Malley and Rena Dardis of Anvil Books, for permission to quote from On Another Man s Wound (1937, Anvil edition) and The Singing Flame (1978); also to Rena Dardis of Anvil Books for permission to quote from My Fight for Irish Freedom (1923, Anvil edition) by Dan Breen, and Guerrilla Days in Ireland (1949) by Tom Barry; to Clodagh Feehan of Mercier Press (Ireland), copyright holders for One Day in My Life (1983) by Bobby Sands; the Francis Hussey Estate; and others, I would like to express my thanks. My acknowledgment to the late Terry de Val ra, copyright holder of Dorothy Macardle s The Irish Republic (1937), who expressed his willingness to quote from Miss Macardle s work before his death.
Attempts to contact Fred Holroyd, for permission to quote War Without Honour (1989) have proved unsuccessful, as have attempts to contact Marie McGuire to quote from To Take Arms (1972).
I would also like to place on record my special appreciation to my researcher, Elizabeth Murray; Liz Curtis; Fr. Desmond Wilson; Silvia Calamati; Fr. Joe McVeigh; Frances Mary Blake; Bernadette McAliskey; Jack Lane; David Sexton; and, of course, my wife, Dorothy, without whom my task would have been made that much harder.
Introduction
Ireland has one of the oldest traditions of historical continuity in Europe. From the evidence of its ancient texts, it claims over three millennia of oral and written history. Irish literature began to blossom in the sixth century A.D. with its poetry, mythology, legal texts, chronicles, and annals. Calvert Watkins, professor of linguistics at Harvard, wrote: Irish has the oldest vernacular literature of Europe; our earliest monuments go back to the sixth century. Professor David Greene of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies clarifies this statement by pointing out that although Greek and Latin have considerably older literatures, the writers of those languages were often not native speakers of them. Latin and Greek were used as lingua franca but were not necessarily mother tongues.
For example, many early Latin writers were, in fact, Celts. Caecilius Statius (fl. c. 225-165 B.C. ) became the chief comic dramatist of Rome, with forty-two titles of his plays still known. But he was an Insubrean Celtic warrior from Mediolanum (Milan) who was taken captive at the Battle of Telemon in 225 B.C. when the Romans defeated the Celtic armies of Aneroestes and Concolitanus. As a slave in Rome, he learned Latin, began to write, and finally won his freedom. He was one of many Celts who were to make their literary mark in Latin, just as many Irish writers in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries have used the English language in which to make their literary reputations.
Ireland, or ire in the Irish language, is an island that lies immediately west of Great Britain, separated from it by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and the Celtic Sea. It comprises some 32,598 square miles or 84,429 square kilometers. Today it remains partitioned between the independent Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland together with Northern Ireland (as a component of the United Kingdom) are part of the European Community. The island s population, given in the 2001 (U.K.) and 2002 (Irish Republic) Census, is just over 5.6 million, with 3.9 million living in the Republic and nearly 1.7 million living in Northern Ireland. The first official language of the Republic is the Irish language. The 2002 Census reported that nearly 1.5 million speak Irish, and English is the second official language. However, English is the predominant one. In Northern Ireland, the Irish language was discouraged by the government until 1991 and now has some recognition under the peace process. The 2001 Census showed that 167,480 citizens of Northern Ireland speak Irish, but English remains the official and predominant language.
The island of Ireland is composed of a large, fertile central plain roughly enclosed by a highland rim. The highest mountain is Carrantuohill (Corr n Tuathail, signifying an inverted reaping hook), standing 3,414 feet high (approximately 1,040 meters) in the range known as MacGillycuddy s Reeks, which rises to the west of the lakes of Killarney, County Kerry. The island s longest river is the Shannon (An tSionna, the old one, named after the ancient goddess Sinann), which flows 224 miles southwest from a spring under the Cuilach Mountain, in County Cavan, to the Atlantic Ocean. During its last 70 miles it forms a wide estuary. The capital of the Republic of Ireland is Dublin, or, in Irish, Baile tha Cliath (town of the hurdle ford). The principal city of Northern Ireland is Belfast, or Beal Feirste (mouth of the river Feirste).
The earliest inhabitants arrived in Ireland around 7000 B.C. and the earliest man-made structure, situated in County Derry, is said to date from this time. In the subsequent millennia, settlements proliferated; cattle herding and forest clearing, crop growing, and even cheese making began. The great structures, built with astronomical alignments, such as Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth, were constructed around 3200 B.C. , which makes them older than the Egyptian pyramids.
Tara, or Teamhair, in County Meath (Midhe, the middle province ), was being used by 2100 B.C. , and it evolved into the chief center of the high kings of Ireland. According to the Lebor Gab la Erenn , or The Book of Invasions , the earliest complete text of which survives from the twelfth century, Tara took its name from T a, wife to remon, the first Gaelic ruler of Ireland, having displaced the earlier name of Druim Ca n (Ca n s ridge). It is generally accepted that the Gaels, a branch of the greater Celtic peoples whose civilization spanned Europe from Ireland in the west to the central plain of Turkey in the east, north from Scotland and Belgium, south to southern Spain, and across the Alps into the Po Vall