Preface
There is no history of which a correct knowledge is more rare, here or elsewhere, than that of Ireland. This ignorance does not proceed from any dearth of original records, or of modern narrative on the subject, but because nearly all the professing histories are partisan in design, and singularly disjointed and superficial in treatment. The political circumstances of the country, the animosities resulting therefrom, and the want of popular education, have been hindrances to the expression of the ungarbled truth. From our unhappy social relations, an honest history of Ireland would have been a thankless task, and competent men have avoided an undertaking involving great labour and too little reward. While animosities continue alive, and wounds are still open, few readers can relish dispassionate [iii] treatment of antagonists, or plain speaking concerning the short-comings, crimes, or reverses of their respective ancestors; and thus it is that most of our tomes on the subject have been produced either to suit the views and objects of the English masters of the island, or else to soothe with a fulsome flattery the misfortunes of the nation - a flattery which compels foreigners to turn from perusal of such works with contempt, and natives to neglect them, or rise from their study unsatisfied; for where so much is praise, there is but little intelligible explanation of so great national disaster.

Irish history is greatly misunderstood, and this chapter of it, the Anglo-Norman invasion, seems to be so both in its character and extent, and in the causes which produced it. It has been denominated a conquest, whereas it was virtually no more than a limited colonisation, only maintained through succeeding ages by the sword within the district of “the Pale,” and without it by amalgamation and identification more or less complete with the natives. Still more generally it is supposed to have been the result of the treason of Diarmaid Mac Murrogh, and that it would not have occurred if that individual had never existed, or if there had been no abduction [iv] of a Lady Dervorghil. So far from depending on a petty accident, or on any one man’s vengeance or ambition, the invasion of Ireland was the inevitable consequence of the vicinity of a congregation of small and conflicting principalities, like

That the Normans, few in number, though superior in discipline and equipment, should have made good their ground here, has occasioned no little surprise, and requires a word of prominent explanation. They had always the alliance of some of the Irish themselves; they had the neutralising influence on the Irish clergy of Pope Adrian’s bull; but undoubtedly the main element of their success was the incapacity of the head of the Irish nation. From the social circumstances of the island, which I have endeavoured to make plain in some of the succeeding pages, it was indispensable that the office of Chief-King should be filled by a man of superior sagacity, of iron will, and unswerving hand to command obedience, and weld into union any considerable number of the contending clans. Such a man was not the Chief-King of Ireland at the period we are considering; for while the [v] Normans were lucky in possessing a monarch large brained and resolute as Henry Plantagenet, the Irish were unfortunate in the narrow-sighted, feeble, and temporising Ruari O’Conor. A leader like Brian Boroimhe, who destroyed the Danish aggression in the eleventh century, could have repelled the Norman invasion in the twelfth; for the English king, involved in other wars, was unable to despatch any overpowering forces into Ireland. However, if foiled in that generation, the Normans would have returned at more suitable opportunity; and though Henry the Second might have failed, some one of his successors would most probably have succeeded.

We need not read the past then merely to deplore what, from the circumstances of the time, was inevitable. The chief value of history is that in showing us the past, it may assist us in fashioning the present or the future; for a future of its own will arrive to each nation properly so called, even though it lack the present. The instinct which gives and keeps alive the aspiration for nationality is a guarantee of this - an instinct which pervades the globe almost as wide-spread as that of religion, and almost as deep-rooted and powerful in the breast of man, civilized as well as savage, - an instinct most [vi] reasonable and practical in its demands, and most worthy of the attention of a practical age, for, as Montesquieu observes, “no nation ever attained to real greatness but by institutions in conformity with its spirit,” - an instinct not implanted idly by Providence, but indicative of the great fundamental truth that each nation has its own peculiar mission and uses in the scheme of creation - this instinct for self-management active and permanent in the nation as in the individual man.

It ought to be easier for an Irishman of the resent time to write without prejudice of the Anglo-Norman invasion than of any subsequent period of our history - not because the events are remote, for they were the first links of a chain which has extended to our own day - and we have long memories in Ireland; but because in these memories the devotion to their adopted country of the descendants of the Normans obscures, in no slight degree, the wrong inflicted by their fathers. They became “more Irish than the Irish themselves;” their blood is in our veins, and through the wars of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William, the Norman-Irish sacrificed life and lands in the national cause as freely as the more ancient population. I am conscious of no [vii] prejudice in preparing this brief record of a most momentous epoch in our troubled history; but I confess to strong sympathies, and why should I not? It is a matter of patriotism to sympathise with one’s own countrymen in their struggle with the stranger; and it is a matter of humanity to sympathise with the invaded against the invader. Let me trust that these natural sympathies have not beguiled me into withholding or discoloring the truth as I have found it, or where it has seemed to me to be so.

G. H. SUPPLE        
2nd February, 1856.

Chapter I

[...]

When the first Norman invaders looked out eagerly from their galleys at the south-eastern coast of Ireland, which they were approaching, they beheld the shores low and the country generally level. Ireland, which on her three Atlantic sides rears lofty cliffs against the fury of the ocean, and lifts between it and her great central plain a further broad barrier of mountains or hills, is tame on herLeinster coast, where the districts are with one exception flat, and the margin of the sea only a strand. Leinster appeared to the over sanguine gaze of the followers of Fitz-Stephen, to kneel to England and invite [...] (p.1.)

[... T]he Fir-Bolg, the Tuatha-Danaan, and the Milesian, the first named must have been Celts, since we have abundant proof that they continued to form the bulk of the population after the arrival of the other two races. They may have come hither from Gaul or Britain, or even Spain, in which country the Celts had early pushed the aboriginal Iberians from some of the northern provinces. From all those countries Ireland was easily accessible even in that remote age. The date of the Fir-Bolg arrival is entirely conjectural, for it is lost in the haze of antiquity; but it may have been some twelve or fourteen centuries before Christ. They were conquered by the Tuatha-Danaan, a race whose civilization excited so much wonder in the people they subdued, that the traditions speak of them as wizards. The story of their arrival, and the description of their leader, display to us at once their skill in arts unknown to a primitive state of society, and the astonishment which such created among the rude aborigines. They approached the shores in a mist raised by their enchantment, and their leader was “Nuadh of the Silver Hand,” which contrivance was supplied by two of his people as a substitute for the member which he had lost. Credne the goldsmith wrought the silver hand, and the chirurgeons Diancecht and his son Miach fitted it on. [O’Flaherty, Ogygia] Those Tuatha-Danaan were, in all likelihood, Phoenicians, of whose visits at a very early period to the neighbouring island of Britain there is accredited proof.

The third race which came to conquer and settle in Ireland was Miledh, or Miledh Espaine (the warrior of Spain), and his sons and followers, or the Milesians, as they are now popularly called. The most reasonable investigations set down this invasion at a few centuries before the Christian era. From the coming of the Fir-Bolg and from that of the Tuatha-Danaan to this date, there must have been many accessions to the population of Ireland from the kindred nations of the neighbouring countries; for instance, such was a settlement of the Cruithne, or Picts, of North Britain. But the numbers of these colonists were probably too few, and their ambition not sufficiently offensive to occasion permanent record. We have only the three great tides of settlement and conquest taken marked note of by the annalists. The Milesians, or Scots - they subsequently invaded North Britain, and gave it the name of Scotland - overthrew both of the preceding races, and reduced them to serfdom. Who the Milesians were is not established; but their own traditions say that they came hither from Spain, and that they were originally Scythians. Others hazard the opinion that they arrived here direct from the Baltic. There is abundant proof that the Milesians did not constitute more than a section or class of the inhabitants of this island, where they became the rulers. In the year 90 of the Christian era the Fir-Bolg serfs rose in rebellion, and seized for a short time the supreme authority, which was restored to the Milesians by one of the insurgents, who is made favourably known to us for that action and subsequent ones, by the race whom he served, as “Moran, the Just Judge.” So late as the fifth century, St. Patrick, in his Confession, speaks of the Hiberionaces, or native population, and the Scots, or Milesians, as though they were still distinct in the land. In fact, the Fir-Bolg in Connaught appear to have long maintained a sort of independence; and even in modern times, O’Flaherty, in his Ogygia, mentions two contemporary families of handsome estate, - O’Layn, in the county of Galway, and O’Beunachan in Sligo, - who claimed to have sprung from this stock.

[...]

Ftn: Mr. Moore in his History speaks of the capture of Slane Castle as a surprise; I know not on what authority, for I can [193] find none for it in the original accounts. If it is only a surprise, the garrison of the three neighbouring castles would have no occasion to abandon them the next morning before they were assailed. The assertion is in keeping, however, with the the writer’s habit of bestowing a discoloring gloss on any successes of his countrymen. Mr. Moore, the English pensioner, was a very different individual from Thomas Moore the Irish bard. (pp.193-94.)

[...]

The resistance of the Irish so far, though disjointed and without fixity of purpose, lias still been sufficient to prove that, if the ArdRigh Ruari had been a man of boldness and capacity, or had possessed the spirit, energy, and captainship of any one of the minor chiefs - O’Brien of Thomond.Mac Gill-Phadraig of Ossory, O’Ruarc of Breffni, or the Ostman, Asculf of Dublin - the struggle wonld have been different, and the Norman invasion would have been foiled at least in the time of Henry the Second. At Strongbow’s death, the Norman dominion in Ireland appears to have extended (according to our modern arrangement by counties) over the whole of Dublin, all or nearly all of Kildare, the sea coast of Wicklow, considerable portions of Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny, most of Meath, large tracts in Westmeath, and a few in Longford. In Munster they possessed some districts in Waterford, Tipperary and Cork, and that tract in Kerry which Mac Carthy had bestowed on Raymond. They subsequently invaded and settled in portions of Ulster and Connaught; but their territory in all these provinces, instead of being increased in succeeding ages, was vastly diminished by the attacks of the Irish, and by the defection of the outlying Norman colonists, who intermarried with the Gael, and, adopting their manners, names, and hostility to English rule, became “more Irish than the Irish themselves.” It was only after the protracted and sanguinary wars of Elizabeth’s reign, that an English monarch first obtained sway over all this island. (p.199.)

[End]