The Old Irish World

								

earnestly to be hoped that he will publish before long the results of
his original work.
I owe my warm thanks also to Mr. F. J. Bigger for his unstinted help
in references and suggestions out of the stores of his topographical
knowledge. I may mention as an instance the grave-stone in Kilclief
churchyard carved with a Celtic cross, which he discovered while these
pages were going through the press, so that I have been able to note it
for the first time among Lecale antiquities.
Mr. R. I. Best has rendered me more services than I can here tell,
however gratefully I acknowledge them.
The account of Ardglass has been re-printed with additions, by the kind
permission of the Editor of the Nation. I have to thank the Editor of
the Nineteenth Century for leave to add the article on Tradition in
History, which is inserted at the request of readers in Ireland.
To prevent mistake I may add a word of explanation that the map, or
rather diagram, which is entitled Scandinavian Trade Routes, contains
not only those lines of sea-commerce, but also an indication of the
ways across Europe which were used by Irish travellers from earlier
times. The difference between these routes is clearly indicated in the
text.


ALICE STOPFORD GREEN.


April 25, 1912.

                             IN MEMORY OF

                            THE IRISH DEAD

                               CONTENTS

                                                         Page



           I. THE WAY OF HISTORY IN IRELAND                 1



          II. THE TRADE ROUTES OF IRELAND                  63



         III. A GREAT IRISH LADY                          100



          IV. A CASTLE AT ARDGLASS                        130



           V.  TRADITION IN IRISH HISTORY                 168

                          THE OLD IRISH WORLD

CHAPTER I
THE WAY OF HISTORY IN IRELAND

IN all the countries of Europe the study of history for a citizen of
the State is taken for granted, as the study of tides and currents
might be held necessary for a mariner, or of the winds for an air-man,
or that of the map for a merchant. It is only a dozen years ago,
however, that its study was made compulsory in elementary schools
in England, and in that country men are still discussing, by way of
lectures and so forth, “What is the Use of History.” The historical
instinct among the English people has indeed never been very keen,
so that, as learned men tell us, it would be more difficult to form
a folk-museum in England than in any other country, so few are the
objects of a distinctly national character that have survived. The past
is rapidly overlaid among men who live intensely in the present and
the immediate future. A great gulf separates them from a race like the
Irish, to whom the far past and the far future are part of the eternal
present, the very condition of thought, the furniture without which the