Irish Nationality

								


                                                  PATRICK GEDDES, M.A.


LIBERALISM                                       L.T. HOBHOUSE, M.A.


CRIME AND INSANITY              DR. C.A. MERCIER, F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S.
*** Other volumes in active preparation

IRISH
NATIONALITY
BY
ALICE STOPFORD GREEN
AUTHOR OF "TOWN LIFE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY"
"HENRY II," "THE MAKING OF IRELAND," ETC.

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

  CHAP.                                                      PAGE



     I THE GAELS IN IRELAND                                     7



    II IRELAND AND EUROPE                                      29



   III THE IRISH MISSION                                       40



    IV SCANDINAVIANS IN IRELAND                                57



     V THE FIRST IRISH REVIVAL                                 77



    VI THE NORMAN INVASION                                     96



   VII THE SECOND IRISH REVIVAL                               111


VIII THE TAKING OF THE LAND                                 125



    IX THE NATIONAL FAITH OF THE IRISH                        141



     X RULE OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT                         158



    XI THE RISE OF A NEW IRELAND                              182



   XII AN IRISH PARLIAMENT                                    198


XIII IRELAND UNDER THE UNION                                219



       SOME IRISH WRITERS ON IRISH HISTORY                    255

IN MEMORY
OF
THE IRISH DEAD

IRISH NATIONALITY

CHAPTER I
THE GAELS IN IRELAND

Ireland lies the last outpost of Europe against the vast flood of the
Atlantic Ocean; unlike all other islands it is circled round with
mountains, whose precipitous cliffs rising sheer above the water stand
as bulwarks thrown up against the immeasurable sea.
It is commonly supposed that the fortunes of the island and its
civilisation must by nature hang on those of England. Neither history
nor geography allows this theory. The life of the two countries was
widely separated. Great Britain lay turned to the east; her harbours
opened to the sunrising, and her first traffic was across the narrow
waters of the Channel and the German Sea. But Ireland had another
aspect; her natural harbours swelled with the waves of the Atlantic,
her outlook was over the ocean, and long before history begins her
sailors braved the perils of the Gaulish sea. The peoples of Britain,
Celts and English, came to her from the opposite lowland coasts; the
people of Ireland crossed a wider ocean-track, from northern France to
the shores of the Bay of Biscay. The two islands had a different
history; their trade-routes were not the same; they lived apart, and
developed apart their civilisations.
We do not know when the Gaels first entered Ireland, coming according