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3
Unit One.
I. Read and translate the text.
The history of modern Ireland begins on December 1921, under the ‘treaty’
concluded between the British government and the leader of the IRA of that day
Michael Collins and his colleagues, the foundations were laid for Ireland to be
divided into two separate areas of sovereignty: that of the new Irish ‘Free State’,
which covered twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties; and that of the remaining
six counties, to be known as ‘Northern Ireland’, with a developed Parliament of its
own but under the overall sovereignty of the British government at Westminster.
That this was far from being a neat or indeed logical solution of the Irish problem
is made clear by one simple geographical fact. The most northerly point in Ireland,
Malin Head in County Donegal, was, and still is, as a result of that treaty, not in
Northern Ireland at all but in what has popularly come to be known as the South.
Perhaps the geography, rather than the history, of Ireland is a more reliable starting
point.
The very first inhabitants of Ireland arrived across the channel perhaps some 8,000
years ago. A look at the map shows at once what geography does to history: the
physical closeness of Britain made its attentions inevitable. If you move away from
the coast towards the centre of Ireland it becomes easier to forget the grasping
motherly figure – the Grand Old Dame Britannia. There have been 800 years of
attention from London, but there were 8,000 years of human life in Ireland before
that.
The first substantial traces of independent Irish life are to be found in the valley of
the river Boyne, and they are substantial indeed: the great passage-graves of Dowth,
Knowth and Newgrange with their numerous satellite tombs. They were built about
3,000 BC by the new Stone Age successors of those first inhabitants to come across
the straits from Britain. They are the burial chambers of their tribal kings – kings of a
simple agricultural society which already carried the unmistakable imprints of
civilization. The decorated carvings of the interior are executed without the help of
any iron tools. You could call them the earliest personal signatures of an Irish
identity. Outside too, on the stones that surround the vast burial mound at ground
level, are further sophisticated examples of this early
Irish art.
These people had come as the invaders and they were to be followed by
successive waves of invaders, moving across from Britain and Europe or arriving
direct from France and Spain, and developing still more sophisticated ornaments of
civilization: Bronze Age and Celtic Iron Age jewellery, collars, necklaces and ear-
rings; Iron Age decorated weaponry – ornaments of civilization made in Ireland.
It was the last of these successive waves of invaders, the Gaels, arriving in Ireland
probably just before the birth of Christ, who were to set the most conspicuous and
enduring imprint on what ‘Irishness’ was to be like. Heir language was to remain the
language of the majority of people of Ireland until some two hundred years ago.
3
Unit One.
I. Read and translate the text.
The history of modern Ireland begins on December 1921, under the ‘treaty’
concluded between the British government and the leader of the IRA of that day
Michael Collins and his colleagues, the foundations were laid for Ireland to be
divided into two separate areas of sovereignty: that of the new Irish ‘Free State’,
which covered twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties; and that of the remaining
six counties, to be known as ‘Northern Ireland’, with a developed Parliament of its
own but under the overall sovereignty of the British government at Westminster.
That this was far from being a neat or indeed logical solution of the Irish problem
is made clear by one simple geographical fact. The most northerly point in Ireland,
Malin Head in County Donegal, was, and still is, as a result of that treaty, not in
Northern Ireland at all but in what has popularly come to be known as the South.
Perhaps the geography, rather than the history, of Ireland is a more reliable starting
point.
The very first inhabitants of Ireland arrived across the channel perhaps some 8,000
years ago. A look at the map shows at once what geography does to history: the
physical closeness of Britain made its attentions inevitable. If you move away from
the coast towards the centre of Ireland it becomes easier to forget the grasping
motherly figure – the Grand Old Dame Britannia. There have been 800 years of
attention from London, but there were 8,000 years of human life in Ireland before
that.
The first substantial traces of independent Irish life are to be found in the valley of
the river Boyne, and they are substantial indeed: the great passage-graves of Dowth,
Knowth and Newgrange with their numerous satellite tombs. They were built about
3,000 BC by the new Stone Age successors of those first inhabitants to come across
the straits from Britain. They are the burial chambers of their tribal kings – kings of a
simple agricultural society which already carried the unmistakable imprints of
civilization. The decorated carvings of the interior are executed without the help of
any iron tools. You could call them the earliest personal signatures of an Irish
identity. Outside too, on the stones that surround the vast burial mound at ground
level, are further sophisticated examples of this early
Irish art.
These people had come as the invaders and they were to be followed by
successive waves of invaders, moving across from Britain and Europe or arriving
direct from France and Spain, and developing still more sophisticated ornaments of
civilization: Bronze Age and Celtic Iron Age jewellery, collars, necklaces and ear-
rings; Iron Age decorated weaponry – ornaments of civilization made in Ireland.
It was the last of these successive waves of invaders, the Gaels, arriving in Ireland
probably just before the birth of Christ, who were to set the most conspicuous and
enduring imprint on what ‘Irishness’ was to be like. Heir language was to remain the
language of the majority of people of Ireland until some two hundred years ago.
