Synopses & Reviews
THE HISTORY OF IRELAND BY STEPHEN GWYNN. THE map facing this page was issued in 1567 and signed Jo Goghe, It has been reduced and reproduced by the Irish Photo. Engraving Co. It is sach a chart as might have been compiled last century for military purposes to illustrate the distribution of tribes in a West African hinterland. The whole coast from Lough Swilly eastwards and round to the south-west is known in detail the west coast much less so and in this, as in all sixteenth-century maps, the west ward projection of Connaught is not rendered. W. S. Green, from special study, held that the Armada was finally destroyed by such a map, when it came round from the north and laid a course for Spain that brought it right up against the coast of North Mayo, where it perished. Lough Erne is also quite wrongly mapped, Mask and Corrib shown as one lake. The west was out of Elizabethan knowledge. Meath is still regarded as a separate region from LeinRter. Six earldoms are shown. Clancarty is printed according to the Irish pronunciation, without the t. Some names may be difficulty to identify thus, Sole uan, in the south-west, for Sullivan, Slegagh for Sligo, VDonrMl is simply DO. O Byrne near quot Dublin is Brin. Killybegs harbour in Donegal is Calbeg, The throe nepts of the MacSwinoyB MacSwiney Banaght, MaeSwinoy Fanacl, and MacSwinoy Doe written here Tooh, that is, Tuatha are depicted in gallo glaBB equipment, The distribution of forest should be specially noted woods were the chief obstacle to conquest in Elizabeth s day. It will be noted that scarcely any towns are shown. The six counties of Northern Ireland indicated thus, amp lt, , PREFACE IN compiling this summary outline of Irish history, Ihave endeavoured to use the Annals of the Four Masters as an armature or central support as far, as they reach that is, up to the Flight of the Earls. Quotations to which no refer ence is attached are from O Donovan s edition of them. It is impossible to recognise fully the rest of my literary in debtedness. In my task I avoided consulting other works of the same character as that on which I was engaged indeed, several of those now available were not then published. But I made some use of Joyce s Short History. His Social History of Ancient Ireland is in quite another category it was a source from which I derived much. Mr Orpen s Ireland under the Normans and Mr Bagwell s Ireland under the Tudors and Ireland under the Stuarts have been of course invaluable quarries of fact and for the period from Cromwell to the Union Lecky s great work has guided me. But I desire to acknowledge with special emphasis the light received from Mr Philip Wilson s Beginnings of Modern Ireland and from Mr Dunlop s Ireland under the Commonwealth. In the later part of the work nothing has been of so much service for my purpose as Mr George O Brien s three volumes on the Economic History of Ireland from the seventeenth century to the great famine. What I owe to Mrs J. R. Green s Making of Ireland and other books is less definite, but it has affected my whole outlook and the same is true of Douglas Hyde s Literary History of Ireland. In the earlier part, Professor Bury s Life of St Patrick helped me more than anything else to a conception of what was involved in the Christianisation of Ireland and Pro fessor Lawlor s book on St Malachy revealed much of Ireland s state just before the Normans came...