A people
who alone in Europe preserved, not in dry chronicles alone, but
illuminated and adorned with all that fancy could suggest in
ballad, and tale, and rude epic, the history of the mound-raising
period, are not justly liable to this taunt. Until very modern
times, history was the one absorbing pursuit of the Irish secular
intellect, the delight of the noble, and the solace of the vile.
At present, indeed, the apathy on this subject is, I believe,
without parallel in the world. It would seem as if the Irish,
extreme in all things, at one time thought of nothing but their
history, and, at another, thought of everything but it. Unlike
those who write on other subjects, the author of a work on Irish
history has to labour simultaneously at a two-fold task--he has to
create the interest to which he intends to address himself.
The pre-Christian period of Irish history presents difficulties
from which the corresponding period in the histories of other
countries is free. The surrounding nations escape the difficulty by
having nothing to record. The Irish historian is immersed in
perplexity on account of the mass of material ready to his hand.
The English have lost utterly all record of those centuries before
which the Irish historian stands with dismay and hesitation, not
through deficiency of materials, but through their excess. Had
nought but the chronicles been preserved the task would have been
simple. We would then have had merely to determine approximately
the date of the introduction of letters, and allowing a margin on
account of the bardic system and the commission of family and
national history to the keeping of rhymed and alliterated verse,
fix upon some reasonable point, and set down in order, the old
successions of kings and the battles and other remarkable events.
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