Ireland

Ireland. Second largest of the British Isles, 32,595 square metres in area, largest of all Celtic lands; its modern population, between 4 and 5 million, is smaller than that of Scotland, although the island may have contained more than 9 million in 1840. Ireland was divided into thirty-two counties in the 17th century, twenty-six of which formed an independent nation in 1922, first as the Irish Free State and, after 1949, as the Republic of Ireland, occupying 26,601 square metres, or 81.6 per cent of the total. Six counties remained a part of the UK in 1922 and were partitioned from the rest as Northern Ireland, a name with no currency before that time; all six, however, are coextensive with the ancient province of Ulster, whose full borders embrace three more counties, now in the Republic.

According to widely known literary tradition, the Irish name for Ireland, Éire, derives from Ériu, one of many feminine personifications of the country (see below); the dative and genitive forms of the name are Érinn, Érenn. At the same time the name is strikingly similar to that of the Érainn, a people of early southern Ireland. According to the late medieval, biblicized pseudo-history Lebor Gabála, Ireland is named for Ír, the first of the Milesians. The Greek forms for Ireland as recorded in Ptolemy (2nd cent. AD), Ierna, Iernē (elsewhere Ivernē), were latinized into Hibernia (also Iverna, Ivernia). Modern commentators have identified the Iverni with the Érainn of early Ireland, specifically the subdivision known as Corcu Loígde. For a period in the early 20th century the anglicized term ‘Ivernian’ was coined to denote all the population of early Ireland. From Latin also come the terms Scotia for the island and Scotti for its inhabitants, especially those in the north-east. When people from the north-east of Ireland invaded what they then called Alba in the 4th century, that country came to be called Scotland after them. Additionally, the ancient people known as the Attecotti may also have been in fact from Ireland.

Celtic-speaking peoples were by no means the earliest inhabitants of Ireland. Radiocarbon dating indicates human habitation in what is now Co. Sligo as early as c.7500 BC, but the Celts did not arrive until the first millennium BC, specific dates for which are still under contention. This means that most of the best-known archaeological remains in Ireland, e.g. Newgrange (c.3200 BC), Dowth, and Knowth, were built by pre-Celtic peoples, even though they are frequently cited in Celtic tradition. Among the earliest Celtic-speaking peoples may have been the Priteni (or Picts), who migrated west from Britain; the Belgae, also found on the Continent and in Britain; the Lagin, perhaps from Armorica [Brittany] who may have invaded both Ireland and Britain simultaneously; and finally the Gaels or Goidelic-speakers. The language inherited from these invaders, Irish, is the most prominent of the Q-Celtic family. T. F. O'Rahilly argued in Early Irish History and Mythology (1946) that only the last invaders, the Goidelic-speakers, were Q-Celts and that all the earlier peoples were P-Celts, a controversial assertion that has little or no acceptance despite the enormous influence of his study. Shadowy parallels for the early populations of Ireland are found in the Lebor Gabála, which applies the name Milesian to the Q-Celtic ancestors of the modern Irish.

Unique among Celtic countries are Ireland's many poetic personifications and characterizations, most of them female. Among the oldest is iath nAnann [land of Ana], in the 10th-century Sanas Cormaic [Cormac's Glossary], alluding to Ana, the pre-Christian earth-goddess. Perhaps as old are the three beautiful divinities of the Lebor Gabála, Ériu, Banba, and Fódla. Also from the Lebor Gabála is the first invader, Cesair, a woman whose name can be a poetic synonym for Ireland. Two early modern personae, Cáit Ní Dhuibhir and Róisín Dubh [Dark Rosaleen], depict a lovely maiden in distress. Not all personifications have radiated sexual allure, however. The loathsome Cailleach Bhéirre [hag of Beare] proffers the forbidding face of sovereignty; she appears reincarnated in Sean-bhean Bhocht/Shan Van Vocht, ‘the Poor Old Woman’, an emblem of the United Irishmen's rising in 1798 and frequently cited since then. A weakened Ireland could still be nurturing as in Druimin Donn Dílis [faithful, brown, white-backed cow]. Yet other female figures are powerful and commanding, like Granuaile, based on the historical 16th-century Mayo coast pirate, Gráinne Mhaol NíMháille, and Caitlín Ní hUallacháin [Cathleen Ni Houlihan], much evoked by 19th- and 20th-century nationalists. The two most important non-female metaphors for Ireland are Fál or Lia Fáil, the phallic stone of Tara, and Claidheamh Soluis [sword of light; reformed spelling Claíomh Solais]. Two common poetic nicknames are Inis Ealga [noble isle] and Inis Fáil [island of destiny], alluding to the stone Fál. In Geoffrey Keating's history (17th cent.) Ireland is Muicinis [pig island].

Although Ireland is nearly bisected on an east-west axis by the Shannon River, the historical imagination has favoured a north-south division along a nearly invisible line called the Eiscir Riada that runs from outside Galway City into what is today Dublin. Two stories explain this bifurcation. In the better-known version, Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles] claimed the land north of Eiscir Riada, while Eogan Mór (also known as Mug Nuadat) took the south; all territory was consequently either Leth Cuinn [Conn's half] or Leth Moga [Mug's half]. A division along the same line, Eiscir Riada, is made in the Lebor Gabála, with Éber Finn taking the north and Éremón taking the south. The north-south division persists in the alignment of Ireland's five provinces. Initially Ulster (earlier Ulaid) and Connacht are mostly north of the Eiscir Riada, while Leinster (Lagin) and Munster (Mumu), so large as to be counted as two-east and west- are south. When Mide is counted as the fifth province (and thus Munster as one), it also lies north of Eiscir Riada. Although the composition of each province reflects centuries of migration and settlement patterns, part 2 of the Welsh Mabinogi offers a different origin story: all the men of Ireland are slain except for five pregnant women whose sons establish the five provinces of Ireland.

While Ireland was not conquered by the Romans, it drew closer to the rest of Europe with Christian evangelization, putatively led by St Patrick, beginning in the 5th century. Subsequently, early Irish writing was expressed in an adaptation of the Roman alphabet. As well as being the oldest written vernacular in Europe, the Irish language [OIr. Goídelc; ModIr. Gaedhealg; reformed ModIr. Gaeilge] survives in the largest volume of early texts of any early European language, more than 600, many of which have never been edited or translated. Some, not all, are bound in great early codices like the Book of the Dun Cow [Lebor na hUidre] (c.1100), Book of Leinster [Lebor Laignech/na Núachongbála] (c.1160), and Yellow Book of Lecan [Lebor Buide Lecáin (c.1390). From the advent of Christianity in the 5th century until the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in 1169, writing, in Irish or Latin, was largely an ecclesiastical franchise. Native-born clergymen absorbed pre-Christian narratives and in time made their own use of them.

Thus much of what is called ‘Celtic mythology’ in this volume has been transmitted to us by scribes unsympathetic with, if not hostile to, the religious traditions that had fostered the original traditions. Not surprisingly, some 19th- and early 20th-century commentators argued that heroic stories from early Irish literature did not constitute a ‘mythology’ because they had been compromised in transmission. Clearly, the characters of some divinities, notably Ana for whom the Tuatha Dé Danann are named, are nearly lost. Some heroes, such as Lug Lámfhota and Fionn mac Cumhaill, were certainly originally divinities. Yet much of the unwritten pre-Christian original tradition has been retained, as is implied by the numerous parallels between Old Irish literature, ‘Celtic Mythology’, and classical, Norse, Slavic, Indian, and other Indo-European mythologies. Additionally, more recent archaeological finds in the British Isles and elsewhere co-ordinate many aspects of the milieu depicted in the four major cycles of early Irish literature, the Mythological, the Ulster, the Fenian, and the Cycle of Kings.

Written tradition in Irish survived the 12th-century reform of the Irish Church, which brought with it the introduction of orders of Continental monasticism, like the Benedictines and the Cistercians, and ended the native monasticism of Celtic Christianity. Prominent families, including gaelicized Normans, acted as patrons in the transmission of manuscripts down the departure of the native aristocracy, the ‘Flight of the Earls’, at the beginning of the 17th century. Increased anglicization diminished Irish literary tradition, yet manuscripts continued to be produced in large numbers, sometimes abroad, e.g. Duanaire Finn at Louvain in the Spanish Netherlands, through the 18th century and up to the middle of the 19th.

Proscription of the Irish language in commerce and legal affairs meant that its speakers, though they were still a majority of the population as late as 1800, were often illiterate and powerless. Lack of the ability to write did not prevent the survival of an enormously rich oral tradition, which began to be collected, translated, and published in the 19th century. T. Crofton Croker's first volumes, Researches in the South of Ireland (1824) and Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1825), attracted European attention, including that of the Brothers Grimm and Sir Walter Scott. Over the next two centuries hundreds of other collectors would fill libraries with narratives, many of which are rooted in the oldest documents of Irish literary tradition. The voluminous files of the Irish Folklore Commission, compiled in the 20th century, are more extensive than collections from any other western European country. At the end of the 20th century, the wellsprings of this oral tradition had by no means been exhausted. Oral tradition has survived the calamitous decline of the Irish language. The 1911 census recorded that only 17.6 per cent of the population could speak Irish to any degree, certainly a smaller number at independence eleven years later. The Free State Government (which became the Republic of Ireland, 1949) made a knowledge of Irish a requirement for schools and for applications to civil service positions, a policy that continued until 1973, and also created financial and other incentives to native speakers to remain in the Gaeltacht or Irish-speaking regions. With the 21st century approaching, more than 1 million persons had some knowledge of Irish while no more than 100,000, about 3.3 per cent of the population of the Republic, spoke Irish as a primary language. Ir. Éire; ScG Éirinn; Manx Nerin, Yn Erin; W Iwerddon; Corn. Ywerdhon; Bret. Iwerzhon, Iwerzon, Iverdon. See also Bibliography under ‘Irish’.