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The
Context and Development of Irish Literature:
History, Poetry, Landscape
Part One: From Celtic to Christian, Pre-history to
the twelfth century, page 4
This was also the high period of early Irish art,
particularly the magnificent achievements of the Celtic
workers in gold and the early Christian achievements in
jewelry, sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts.
The Celts were amazingly accomplished at metalwork,
especially the fashioning of torcs or collars,
bracelets, and armbands. Early Christian artists
turned these skills to such magnificent achievements as
The Tara Brooch (early 8th c.) and The Ardagh Chalice
(early 8th c.). The Irish monks devoted their lives to
illuminating the sacred texts, culminating in the
unsurpassed Book of Kells (probably late 8th c.).
During this era, roughly the 6th through the 11th
centuries, Ireland was ruled by a number of "High
Kings," usually from a single family group, or clan, the
Ui Neill or O’Neills, and emanating from their seat of Kingship at Tara.
[see
map] But in the 8th century,
raids from the Norsemen, or Vikings, began along the Irish
coast, as the rich and largely undefended monasteries made
attractive targets for these pirates. The Vikings terrorized
the Irish coasts for centuries, until Brian Boru, then the
High King of all Ireland, defeated the last of them in the
famed Battle of Clontarf in 1014. Boru’s legend--the great leader
who drove out the foreign invaders--would resonate throughout
Irish myth and story all the way into the 20th
century as an example to be followed, or as a mythic standard
against which Ireland’s current leaders fell pathetically
short. (Indeed it becomes the subject of one of Lady Gregory's
history plays, Kincora, produced at the Abbey Theatre
in 1905 and 1909.)
This period stands in Irish imagination as a kind of golden
age, when Irish Kings ruled in their marble halls over an
Ireland that was peaceful, spiritual, in harmony with the
natural world and the heavenly world, and unified in a single
Irish character. This of course is a poetic construction quite in
contrast with the reality, which saw endless internecine wars
between various small chieftain/kings raging fairly constantly
throughout Ireland. These internal disputes
erupted spectacularly in the next stage in Irish history. [end
chapter 1]
End of Chapter 1
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