Geographic Ireland
The island of Ireland is situated in the extreme
northwest fringe of the Continent of Europe. In area
it measures 32,500 sq. miles, about a fourth the size of
Arizona. Its total coastline is 1,970 miles. The island comprises
a large central lowland surrounded by a broken border of coastal mountains that vary greatly in geological structure. The highest peak is Carrantuohill in Co. Kerry, 3,414 ft above sea level. The central plain is covered with glacial (glaciers are why there are no snakes in Ireland) deposits of clay and sand. It has considerable areas of bogland and numerous lakes.
Ireland is divided into thirty-two counties, twenty-six in the Republic and six in Northern Ireland. The division of the country into counties began with King John in the year 1210. The process continued under Queen Mary and Elizabeth, and by the 18th century thirty-two counties constituted the basic units of administration within the country. In terms of area the largest county is Co. Cork, followed by Co. Galway. Co. Louth is the smallest county. The most heavily populated county is Co. Dublin, with 1,056,666 inhabitants. [July 02 Census] Co. Leitrim has the fewest inhabitants, 25,032. The population of the whole island of Ireland [July 02] is 5.5 million, with 3.8m in the Republic and 1.7m in Northern Ireland.
Historical Ireland
While the Celtic history of Ireland is approximately 3,000 years old, the history of the island, known previously as Ierne to the Greeks or Hibernia to the Romans, reaches back many millenniums, when the first neolithic peoples arrived. The descendants of these first immigrants built such impressive structures as Newgrange, already old when the Celts arrived in the first millennium BC. Eire or Erin is her name in Gaelic, the native language of the Irish. There were successive migrations of various European Celtic peoples to Ireland, but the last and most dominant group were the Gaels from northern Spain (Galicia), who gave the language itıs name.
It was the monks from Ireland who reeducated and re-Christianized Europe after the Dark Ages, ranging as far as Germany and Italy. They were emissaries of the Celtic Church, which evolved after the conversion of Ireland by St. Patrick. Patrick was a British Celt, who had been kidnapped as a teenager and taken to Ireland. He escaped, but returned to convert his adopted country. The Celtic Church, although connected to the Church in Rome, developed in consonance with Celtic custom and eventually united all Celts in Western Europe in a single church (Ireland, Scotland, Man, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany). It was this union that produced the most beautiful religious illuminated manuscript in Western Europe: The Book of Kells, named for the abbey where it was created in approximately the sixth century. The remainder of this much-looted book can be viewed at the library of Trinity University, Dublin. The Celtic Church was ordered dissolved in the seventh century, but existed in some form for centuries afterwards. Small vestiges of the prayers and tunes can still be found in both Catholic and Protestant prayer and hymnbooks to this day, so Celtic spirituality is still alive!
Given the proximity of Ireland to other parts of the British Isles, Ireland became inevitably entwined with the broader currents of European civilization. In 1014, at the battle of Clontarf, Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, won a great battle against the Viking invaders, but his death (in his 80s) in that battle deprived Ireland of the best opportunity to establish a permanent national monarchy. In the twelfth century Henry II of England began attempts to bring Ireland within the orbit of England, inaugurating a complex relationship that remains to the present. For centuries thereafter English influence remained marginal and Ireland retained its distinctive Celtic culture. However, the battle for religious and political domination ended in 1603 when English conquest brought Ireland under direct English rule. In the 18th century , harsh Penal Laws were enacted which initiated extensive Irish emigration commonly referred to as the Flight of the Wild Geese, affecting both Irish aristocracy and common folk. They found welcomes and positions of authority elsewhere:
War-battered dogs are we, Fighters in every clime; Fillers of trench and of grave, Mockers bemocked by time, War-dogs hungry and grey, Gnawing a naked bone, Fighters in every clime, Every cause but our own.
Emily Lawless, With the Wild Geese
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