IRELAND THROUGH NEW EYES Diane Warriner immigrated to Canada in 1966 from Northern Ireland. Until this summer she had returned to Ireland only twice for short family oriented visits. Her recent travels, which covered both Northern Ireland (Ulster) and most of the Republic of Ireland (Eire) has given her a fresh perspective on the Ireland of today. Diane is a former school teacher who is presently pursuing a masters degree in Adult Education. The content of this introductory article was adapted from The Story of Ireland by Victor Kelly. SETTING THE STAGE

Ireland was first settled in 4000 BC by the Mesolithic people, who clung to the coast as fisherfolk and left little impression on the environment that remains. They were followed by the Neolithic people who made the perilous journey from the Mediterranean Sea through Ibernia and France to Ireland. They brought agriculture and manufacturing skills with them, and because of their deeply religous nature built huge stone megaliths as monuments to their dead. These still stand in many high areas of the landscape.

During the half millenium before Christ, European people loosely known as Celts, started arriving in Ireland and the last of these were the Gaels, a superior warrior class with advanced ironworking skills. They established dwellings ranging from earth ring forts encircling single farmsteads, to great hill forts surrounded by stone walls and ramparts which housed many. Although their emphasis on military valour encouraged political disunity among rival kings with small kingdoms, they also excelled in the field of art.

On the edge of the then known world, and away from barbarian raids and Roman Legions, they developed the beautiful intricate patterns of spirals and curvets wrought in metal and stone as decorations.

In the early fifth century A.D., St. Patrick and his followers brought Christianity to the Gaels, and from then to the ninth century, Ireland was known as the land of Saints and Scholars. Many beautiful religious pieces were produced in metal, sculpture and parchments combining the Celtic abstract designs and the Christian stories. The seventh century Book of Kells displayed in Trinity College Dublin is an exquisite example of this work.

The ninth century brought the Vikings, who raided monastic settlements and castles, and carried off armour, metalwork, and the occupants to be sold as slaves. Spoils from these raids are still discovered in newly excavated Scandinavian gravesites.

These settlers never intended to colonize Ireland, but to establish trading settlements in large coastal towns, and they behind a legacy of coin usage, marketing and maritime trading skills.

After the Vikings were more or less routed by a united gathering of petty kings and their followers, disunity among rival factions began again .. and one disgruntled king appealed to Henry II of England for aid. The influx of Anglo-Norman knights sent by Henry produced a powerful ruling class in Ireland and this made Henry assume the Lordship of Ireland for England to keep his knights in check.

By the thirteenth century all but the remote and wild west was under Anglo-Norman occupation. But the Irish stubbornly refused to adopt their ways; and as England left the knights isolated and unsupported for long periods of time, they gave up as rulers, married into Irish families and adopted Irish ways.

The Normans' contributions to the Irish culture were .. designed towns, centralized government, and a jury system. They also built magnificent castles and religious buildings still very much in evidence today.

By the fifteenth century, and during the reign of Elizabeth I, the English influence in Ireland had been reduced to a small area known as "the Pole", which stretched around Dublin. Catholic Ireland had become significantly attractive to the enemies of the reformation, so Elizabeth decided to subdue the Irish, starting with Ulster in the north.

In 1607 the Rout of the O'Neils made way for her successor JamesI to 'plant' Ulster with loyal Presbyterian Scots and Anglican English settlers. This plantation changed both the culture of Ulster and the history of Ireland.

Although the original wave of settlers were wiped out by the avenging dispossessed Irish; Ulster had a Protestant majority by the late seventeenth century. The settlers brought with them an alien culture of "Godlinees through industry", village networks clustered around fortified enclosures for defense, and life centred around the town core (the diamond) for trade and commerce.

Protestant infiltration continued after Oliver Cromwell defeated Charles I in England and then invaded Ireland in 1649. Large numbers of Irish Catholics were massacred, thousands forcibly deported and their lands given to English Protestants.

This influx was further entrenched by the defeat of Charles' son James II by the Protestand English King William of Orange in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne. This victory is still celebrated annually in July in the North of Ireland.

The Anglo-Irish control, called the Ascendancy, was established by imposing crippling economic and religious sanctions against all who were not Anglican. In response to this oppression, Catholics and Presbyterians formed a fighting force called the United Irishmen and with the help of France they rose in rebellion in 1798. This was quickly crushed by the superior English armies. The now powerful Anglo-Irish who had large land holdings, allowed their tenants to divide their already small farms into minute holdings, thus increasing their rental income. Demand still exceeded supply due to a rapidly increasing population, and the gentry acquired great local power and status.

Then the potato blight struck between 1846 and 1850, and because potatoes were the main crop, starvation and fever killed one million people and another million fled the country to England or North America. Those landlords not ruined by the famine, sold their estates at a loss to the British government to escape this "green, damp, forbidding country".

By 1914 various British governments had transferred back three quarters of Irish land to the descendents of the original tenants.

All that remains of the vanished ruling class are huge mansions and estates open to the public and maintained by local authorities.

At the height of the Anglo-Irish rule, Dublin was the jewel of Georgian culture, but by the early twentieth century Belfast in Ulster became the most prosperous city in Ireland. The entrepreneurial values held by the mainly Presbyterian north, had promoted shipbuilding, engineering, ropemaking and linen manufacturing concerns. Belfast's commercial communities were convinced that Ulster's prosperity lay by remaining tied to Britain.

Still the majority of Ireland demanded HOME RULE and British Prime Minister Lloyd George was hard pressed to come up witha solution to the Irish problem. As a temporary solution, he proposed PARTITION and six counties became Northern Ireland and a part of Britain, while the remaining twenty six counties became a separate republic in 1921. This partition remains today. will continue.

This article was originally published in Cross Cultures Magazine in Volume 1 - Issue 5 - 1992. Unauthorized copying, distribution or other usage without express written permission of the publisher is prohibited.