A Feckin' Tour of Ireland by Colin Murphy

Author:Colin Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

The history bit

There have been people here for five thousand years and they left their mark in the form of megalithic tombs. But we’ll get to that. During the late Bronze Age and through the Iron Age (roughly 1100 BC to AD 500), the islanders built large stone forts, and some of these survive largely intact. But we’ll get to that as well.

Next up came the Christians. St Enda founded the first monastic settlements in the fifth century, and ruins from the eighth century are still fending off the Atlantic storms.

The Gaelic clan of the O’Briens laid claim to the islands in the thirteenth century and left behind a castle on Inis Oírr. But in 1582 along came the O’Flahertys, who hacked a few O’Briens into bits. There are still many (peaceful!) O’Briens and O’Flahertys on the islands today – direct descendants of these people.

Cromwell’s murderous forces seized the islands in 1652 and built a garrison. During the Great Famine (1845–51), the islands fared better than most thanks to the plentiful fishing grounds surrounding them, but like in the rest of Ireland, English absentee landlords owned the infertile land and extracted exorbitant rents, though we’ve long since kicked their greedy arses out! And that was a long time ago, so no hard feelings to our English friends!

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