Modern Irish Drama: W. B. Yeats to Marina Carr, Second Edition

1. Early Irish History

3 Early Irish History C ON T E M P OR A R Y I R I S H S O C I E T Y is a moving point on a continuum of evolving, superseding, incorporating cultures created by migration , conquest, colonization, imperial domination, religious and racial conflict and prejudice, and an overriding belief in a people’s coherence, unity, and destiny. This destiny began with the aboriginal settlers of prehistoric Ireland who crossed the land bridge from what is now Scotland some ten thousand years ago and who were followed by Neolithic herders and then by farmers six thousand years ago— the latter clearing vast tracts of arable land out of the ubiquitous forests and building the great passage tombs such as Newgrange. In the Bronze Age (4000 to 3000 B.C.), the Beaker people brought metallurgy to Ireland, and they were followed in the third century B.C. by the most westerly expansion of the Celts and the Iron Age. Celtic civilization created an heroic epoch, using Irish, the native Celtic language of Ireland (sometimes referred to as Gaelic or Irish Gaelic) to produce the first vernacular literature of western Europe and a glorious high culture. Although waxing and waning over the centuries, this culture remains an inspiration, a foundation, an architectonic, and the pride of contemporary Irish life. The imperial Romans in Britain knew about Ireland but chose not to invade an island noted for its fierce warriors and rapacious pirates because they had enough difficulty with the unconquered Celtic Britons and Picts surrounding the perimeter of Britannia. When Rome’s decline accelerated in the fifth century A.D., and as 4 | B AC KG ROU N D S the legions protecting Roman Britain were withdrawn, Irish and Germanic raiders began to plunder the disintegrating colony. A young, Romanized, Christian Celt named Patricius was captured by Irish slavers and taken across the Irish Sea. After servitude as a shepherd in Ireland, he made his way to the Continent for ordination as a priest and then returned to the land of his former captors as one of Christianity’s first missionaries. In the next century, the great Irish monasteries such as Armagh, St. Kevin’s Glendalough, and St. Columba’s Iona in the Hebrides off Scotland were founded. These monasteries flourished and, through the scribes’ dedication and perseverance, preserved Roman and Greek literature. Thus, with the conversion of the pagan Germans, Goths, Franks, and Vandals, and with the extension of the Irish monastic movement to Britain and the Continent, classical culture was reintroduced to western Europe; Christianity was revitalized; and an intellectual, philosophical, ecclesiastic bulwark was built that helped the West to withstand the onslaught of Islam from the east and south later in the Middle Ages. Celtic Ireland after St. Patrick was Christian and princely. Possessed of relative peace and surplus food production, it consequently could support a high culture. Many warrior chiefs gave fealty to the kings of the four traditional provinces: Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. A titular high king, crowned at Tara, eventually reigned loosely over all. Then the first of the historical invasions began. The Viking terror commenced in A.D. 795, and a partial Scandinavian occupation remained in effect for more than two hundred years, resulting in Ireland’s isolation from continental Christian culture . It also led to the founding of Ireland’s first cities: Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and others. The great high king Brian Boru, who reigned from 1002 to 1014, contained the Vikings and their Irish allies in Leinster and died victorious in battle at Clontarf. But next came the Normans from Wales in 1169 under Strongbow . He was supported by the English king Henry II, to whom E A R LY I R I S H H I S T OR Y | 5 most Irish kings and bishops submitted, and Ireland began eight hundred years of conflict with England, a struggle that in Northern Ireland has only just ended. Again and again over the centuries, civil wars and rebellions brought English troops to subdue the Irish populace and to lay waste the land. The Tudor and Stuart governments began the plantation system in Ulster to pacify the rebellious North in what was in reality the first English colony. They moved Protestant colonists from England and Scotland into the towns and onto the land, displacing the native Irish, most of whom had resisted the Reformation and remained...