Download Category: Ireland

By
Wayne Lawrence

PREFACE

THIS OVERVIEW OF THE GAELIC CELTS WILL BE OF INTEREST NOT ONLY TO PEOPLE OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH DESCENT, but also to anyone with ancestral ties to the `British Isles’. A geographical name which appropriately reflects on a bygone era of Celtic domination when England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were populated by Britons (Brythonic speaking Celts).

The Gaelic speaking Celts (the Gaels) the last to migrate to the British Isles, went directly to Ireland from the Continent (perhaps from France & Spain) in the first century BC. Their language became the `lingua franca’ of the Irish, and their descendants in Scotland, hence the name Gaelic Celts. Their history encourages nostalgia and their culture deserves acclaim and envy. Nevertheless, the realities of history must be recorded with impartiality.

A perusal of the contents will alert the reader to historical facts which have been omitted or minimised by most popular historians. We believe the reader will acknowledge these pertinent facts which explain the misfortunes and ultimate decline of the Gaelic Celts ascendancy in Ireland and Scotland.

IN HIS OFT QUOTED BOOK, THE SECRET SOCIETIES OF IRELAND, Captain H. B. C. Pollard, late of the Staff of the Chief of Police, Ireland, gives much valuable information concerning the Clan-na-Gael (Seepage 69 et seq.).

“In 1869 a new secret Irish-American organization was formed, known as the Clan-na-Gael. It traces its origin back through a permanent secret society known as the Knights of the Inner Circle, which, in turn, descended from the Knights of St. Patrick, known as the Ancient Order of Hibernians to-day. It was originally a seceding circle (The Brian Boru) of the United Irishmen, an American society tracing back to 1789.”

By 1873, the Clan had absorbed all independent Irish secret societies save that of “The Irish Confederation” of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa with which it had reached an arrangement for mutual toleration.

The original organizer of the Clan had called it the United Brotherhood, and in all its work a simple letter cipher composed of the next letter in the alphabet after the one really meant, was utilised. The secret name of the Clan being the United Brotherhood, it was therefore designated and spoken of as the V. C.

“Determined now her tomb to build,Her ample skirt with stones she filled,And dropped a heap on Carnmore;Then stepped one thousand yards, to Loar,And dropped another goodly heap;And then with one prodigious leap Gained Carnbeg; and on its height Displayed the wonders of her might.
And when approached death’s awful doom,Her chair was placed within the womb Of hills whose tops with heather bloom.”

On his visit to the Loughcrew hills, also called Sliabh na Caillíghe (The Hill of the Hag, or Witch) Jonathan Swift was determined to collect local folklore. With a friend acting as translator from the Irish, he heard tales of the “monster woman” who once ruled the area[2]. The name of the ancient hag was Garavogue, the local incarnation of An Cailleach Bhéara, he Hag of Beare. As the legend goes, she was attempting a magical feat requiring her to drop an apron full of stones on three of the Loughcrew peaks, jumping from one to the next. Had she succeeded, she would have ruled over all of Ireland. She was able to drop her cairns of stones on the first two peaks, but missed her mark and fell to her death on her last leap. But as a result of her efforts the hills are crowned with a wonderful assortment of 5,000-year-old passage tombs in various states of preservation[3].

PERHAPS THE MOST ENDURING CONTRIBUTION WHICH VIKINGS MADE TO IRELAND was through their foundation of major coastal towns, most notably those at Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford. However, Vikings also established many smaller settlements which have generally received less attention. In this paper I comment on a range of Viking-influenced settlement, including raiding bases, towns, coastal stations, and rural sites. A broad definition of the word ‘viking’ has been used to refer to people with Scandinavian cultural affiliations active outside Scandinavia[2].

This avoids the semantic difficulties posed by ethnic labels: for example, at what point should a Scandinavian settler in Ireland be called Hiberno-Scandinavian? What of Irish people who came to dwell in Scandinavian colonies, whose children may have borne Norse names and adopted Scandinavian cultural traits? The difficulties of being over-specific with ethnic terminology has been emphasised in recent studies, where the argument has been made that ethnic identities are subjectively, rather than objectively, created or assigned[3]. Such ambiguities carry over into the interpretation of material culture in Ireland.

The first records of Viking-attacks on Ireland relate to the 790’s. Pádraig O’Riain has suggested that the earliest form of Viking-settlement consisted of ships remaining at anchor near a shore or riverbank during a raid[4]. The carrying of booty to Viking-ships is recorded in early Irish accounts
of the Vikings and recent discoveries in Dublin may support his theory.

ONE OF THE MOST BELOVED STORIES OF TRADITIONAL LITERATURE written by those who support the modern identity of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel is the story of the coming of the prophet Jeremiah to Ireland. According to this story shortly after c. 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, conquered Jerusalem, Jeremiah the prophet, accompanied by his scribe Baruch, and the daughters of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, fled that country and for a short time resided in Egypt. From there they took ship to Ireland, where one of the daughters married Eochaidh the high king (heremon or ardri) of Ireland. A variation says that the marriage took place in Jerusalem. The royal couple governed the Emerald Isle from their capital at Tara in County Meath. Jeremiah, at that time an old man, was also reputed to have established a sort of ministerial training college at Tara. He became a revered figure in Irish legend.

Over the course of the centuries the royal line established at Tara was transferred from Ireland to Scotland to England where it survives today in the person of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. A wondrous stone, variously called the Stone of Destiny, Stone of Scone, or Coronation Stone, upon which Her Majesty and her predecessors on the thrones of the three kingdoms were crowned, thought to be the stone that the patriarch Jacob slept on at Bethel (Genesis 28:18-22) was also believed to have been brought to Ireland by Jeremiah.

There is a street in Drogheda named after Oliver Cromwell’s work there; it is called Scarlet Lane for the blood which flowed down its streets. Why was Cromwell in Ireland and why in Drogheda?

OLIVER CROMWELL CAME TO IRELAND IN 1649 as head of the English army that was given the task of suppressing those Royalists who wanted to restore the English monarchy. The monarch, Charles I, had been beheaded in 1649 after losing a civil war to the forces of Parliament. Of course, many still had loyalty to the king and his son whom they wanted to install as Charles II , and many of those loyalists were in Ireland.

Not only was there Irish support for a monarchy, but also there was hope that Charles II would repay the Irish for its support by granting freedom of worship to the Roman Catholics. The first order of business of the new Council of State which succeeded the monarchy as ruler of England was to regain control of Ireland , and Oliver Cromwell, who had proven himself an able military commander during the civil war, was sent to Ireland to reestablish suzerainty over Ireland .

THE MENTALITY OF DECEIT

The facts of history may hurt but they are not calculated to offend.

The campaign of violence and denigration conducted during the past quarter of a century against the Protestant Unionist majority of Northern Ireland has been based on deliberate falsification of historical fact by the two traditional enemies of Ulster – Irish Nationalism and the Roman Catholic Church. The Irish Nationalist concept of history, fantasised by the rich Gaelic imagination and fused with the superstitions of Romanism, has obscured historical truth in a mist of mystery and superstition.

The outcome of such deception has been the widespread mistaken belief that the Irish were the original inhabitants of the island now called “Ireland”, that they therefore have some sort of divine historical right to its ownership, and that the history of Ulster somehow began with the so-called “Plantation” in the seventeenth century, when these “invaders” are alleged to have ousted the so- called “original” religion of the island, said to have been Roman Catholicism.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and those who have come to believe this lie, especially the Irish themselves, have also become its most tragic victims; for the fusion of history and legend in the Irish mind has led to m^identification of the oppressor as the British Protestant “colonialist” and the failure to recognise that the real bondage of the Irish was imposed upon them in the twelfth century when the light of unadulterated Christian doctrine was corrupted by the forced colonialism of the Roman Catholic Church.

THE object of Mr Kettle, in writing this book, is, I take it, to reveal to English readers what he not inaptly terms as “The Open Secret of Ireland,” in order to bring about a better understanding between the two nations, and to smoothe the way to a just and final settlement of their old-time differences. Any work undertaken on such lines commends itself to a ready welcome and a careful study, and I feel sure that both await Mr Kettle’s latest contribution to the literature of the Irish question. As the son of one of the founders of the Land League, and as, for some years, one of the most brilliant members of the Irish Party, and, later, Professor in the School of Economics in the new National University in Dublin, he has won his way to recognition as an eloquent exponent of Irish national ideas; whilst the novelty of his point of view, and the freshness, vigour, and picturesque attractiveness of his style ensure for his work a cordial reception on its literary merits, apart from its political value.

Undoubtedly, one of the main sources of the Anglo-Irish difficulty has been mutual misunderstanding, generating mutual mistrust and hatred. But the root of the difficulty goes deeper. It is to be sought in the system of misgovernment and oppression which successive generations of British rulers have imposed upon what, with cruel irony, British historians and statesmen have been wont to call “the sister country.” This is the real “open secret” of Ireland, a secret that all who run may read, and the effective bearing of which is: that tyranny begets hatred, and that freedom and justice are the only sure foundations of contentment and goodwill between nations.

During the past thirty years, and especially since 1886, when Mr Gladstone threw the weight of his unrivalled genius and influence into the scale in favour of justice to Ireland, a great deal has been done to erase the bitter memories of the past, and to enable the English and the Irish peoples to regard each other in the light of truth, and with a more just appreciation of what is essential to the establishment of genuine and lasting friendly relations between them.

But it would be idle to ignore the fact that, to a considerable section of the English people, Ireland is still a country of which they possess less knowledge than they do of the most insignificant and remote of the many islands over which the British flag floats. Mr Kettle’s book ought to be of service in dispelling this ignorance, and in enabling Englishmen to view the Anglo-Irish question from the standpoint of an educated and friendly Irish opinion.

The output of purely political literature on the Irish problem has been increasing during the past few years, and there is room for a book which aims at focusing attention upon some aspects of it which the mere politician is apt to pass lightly over or to ignore altogether. Like most of Mr Kettle’s work, the book bears the impress of his individuality, and, to many of his readers, this will constitute much of its charm and merit. At the same time, in order to prevent misunderstanding, it is necessary for me to state that I do not commit myself to acceptance or endorsement of everything which the book contains. I content myself with stating, from personal experience, that nothing which Mr Kettle writes about Ireland can fail to be worthy of notice by everyone interested in the Home Rule controversy, and that I believe the circulation of this volume will serve to stimulate thought about Ireland, and so to hasten the advent of that brighter day when the grant of full self-government to Ireland will reveal to England the open secret of making Ireland her friend and helpmate, the brightest jewel in her crown of Empire.

ON JUNE 17TH 1922, THERE TOOK PLACE IN THE TOWN LAND OF ALTNAVEIGH, a blood-thirsty massacre of defenceless Protestant people, as the Roman Catholic, Irish Republican Army sought to strangle at birth the new State of Northern Ireland, by these and other acts of genocide. As it is vital that our people, especially our young folk, remember the fact s of hi story and what fate would await us in a Roman Catholic-dominated, all-Ireland statelet, we issue this the first in a series of “Lest We Forget” pamphlets.

Newspapers of that time reported the massacre with the following headlines:-

“RED DAWN NEAR NEWRY”
“BOMB DROPS IN CRADLE”
“HOUSES BURNED TO THE GROUND”
“HARROWING STORIES TOLD BY SURVIVORS”

Rev. P. McKee who conducted the funeral services of the victims, had this to say:-

“From this congregation, a young lad, a man in the prime of life, and his wife have been done to death in ways that leave un-manifested no form of bestial cruelty and fiendish malice––the marauders have left us a bloody mile of roofless houses, and blood and fire on what was once a beautiful country road. I shall never forget the sights I saw, or the narratives told to me by the survivors. God give me strength to remember that lesson and to interpret it.—even in warfare there is a certain limit to atrocity, a certain code of honour is practised by all but the vilest savage.
In this, those who wrought Saturday’s deed of shame have no share––-When the victims asked their assassins, “What have we done?” they got the answer — “YOU ARE PROTESTANTS”.

GENERATIONS OF ROMAN CATHOLIC IRISH REPUBLICANS HAVE PROCLAIMED loud and long that the source of all of Ireland s woes has been the presence of the English. The Emerald Isle, once famed as a land of Saints and Scholars, has been drenched in blood down the centuries, as inhuman fiends posing as patriots have murdered, maimed and massacred, rebelled and waged civil war, often with the blessing of the Roman Catholic clergy, in the supposed cause of Irish freedom.

However the suppressed facts of history are that when King Henry II of England landed with an army of 4,000 at Waterford in October 1171, he came at the Pope s behest and carrying as his authority the Papal Bull Laudabiliter, by which the Roman Pontiff claimed the right to bestow Ireland as a gift to the English King on condition that he suppressed the ancient Celtic or Culdee Church, and brought the island and its people into submission to Rome.

We reproduce herewith the Bull Laudabiliter by which Pope Adrian IV (above) gave Ireland to England: