Irish Nationality: Irish Classics

I. The Gaels in Ireland. 2. II. Ireland and Europe. 10. III. The Irish Mission. 14. IV Scandinavians in Ireland. 21. V The First Irish Revival. 28. VI The Norman Invasion. 35. VII The Second Irish Revival. 40. VIII The Taking of the Land. 46. IX The National Faith of the Irish. 52. X Rule of the English Parliament. 58. XI The Rise of a New Ireland. 67. XII An Irish Parliament. 73. XIII Ireland under the Union. 81. Some Irish Writers on Irish History. 94. 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. Alice Stopford Green