Book of Kells

The Book of Kells was written around the year 800 AD. It contains a richly decorated copy of the four gospels in a latin text based on the Vulgate edition. It was transcribed by Celtic monks.
In all, there are 340 folios.

The script is embellished by the elaboration of key words and phrases and by an endlessly inventive range of decorated initials and interlinear drawings. Originally a single volume, it was rebound in four volumes in 1953 for conservation reasons.
It is a masterwork of Western calligraphy and represents the pinnacle of Insular illumination. It is also widely regarded as Ireland's finest national treasure.
The decoration combines traditional Christian iconography with the ornate swirling motifs typical of Insular art.
The manuscript takes its name from the abbey in Kells that was its home for centuries. Today it is on permanent display at the library of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. The library usually displays two of the current four volumes at a time, one showing a major illustration and the other showing typical text pages.

Some Ancient Sites

Newgrange It is located in the heart of the Boyne Valley.

The Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange was built about 3200 BC.The mound covers an area of over one acre and is surrounded by 97 kerbstones.On the Winter Solstice, the light of the rising sun enters the roofbox and penetrates the passage, shining onto the floor of the inner chamber. The sunbeam illuminates the chamber of Newgrange for just 17 minutes. Newgrange has some stunning examples of megalithic art.


Knowth It was built around 3300BC. The carved stones contain a quarter of Western European neolithic art.The eastern passage of the Great Mound at Knowth measures 40 metres, making it the longest megalithic passage in Western Europe. At the end of the passage is a cruciform chamber with a corbelled roof similar in style to Newgrange.


Dowth

It is about the same age as Newgrange and Knowth. The passages tombs are much less spectacular than Newgrange or Knowth with shorter passages and lower roofs.


The Hill of Tarawas the ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland. In ancient Irish religion and mythology was the sacred place of dwelling for the gods, and was the entrance to the otherworld. Saint Patrick is said to have come to Tara to confront the ancient religion of the pagans at its most powerful site.
The megalithic tomb called the Mound of the Hostages is the oldest monument on the Hill of Tara dating back to between 2500 B.C. and 3000 B.C.
At present, there is a big controversy because the Irish Government is planning to build a motorway (M3)through the Gabhra Valley between the Hill of Tara and the Hill of Skryne, County Meath, just 1000 metres from the top of the Hill. Many people argue it endangers part of the nation's cultural heritage.

Bloody Sunday (1972)

Bloody Sunday, Domhnach na Folaij, in Irish, is the term used to describe an incident in Derry, Northern Ireland, on the 30th January 1972 in which 26 civil rights protesters were shot by members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in the Bogside area of the city. Thirteen people died immediately, while the death of another person 4½ months later has been attributed to the injuries he received on the day. Many witnesses including bystanders and journalists testify that all those shot were unarmed. Five of those wounded were shot in the back. The official army position, backed by the British Home Secretary the next day in the House of Commons, was that the paratroopers had reacted to the threat of gunmen and nail bombs from suspected IRA members. However, all eyewitnesses , including marchers, local residents, and British and Irish journalists present, maintain that soldiers fired into an unarmed crowd, or were aiming at fleeing people and those tending the wounded, whereas the soldiers themselves were not fired upon. No British soldier was wounded by gunfire or reported any injuries, nor were any bullets or nail bombs recovered to back up their claims. In the events that followed, irate crowds burned down the British embassy in Dublin. Anglo-Irish relations hit one of their lowest ebbs, with Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrick Hillery, going specially to the United Nations in New York to demand UN involvement in the Northern Ireland "Troubles". That 'Bloody Sunday' marked a major negative turning point in the fortunes of Northern Ireland. Harold Wilson, then the Leader of the Opposition in the Commons, reiterated his belief that a united Ireland was the only possible solution to Northern Ireland's Troubles. William Craig, then Stormont Home Affairs Minister, suggested that the west bank of Derry should be ceded to the Republic of Ireland. Mural by Bogside Artists depicting Father Daly waving a white handkerchief while trying to escort the mortally wounded Jackie Duddy to safety.

Easter Rising 1916

The 1916 Easter Rising occurred between Easter Monday, 24 April, and Saturday 29 April, when about 1, 800 members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army occupied various prominent buildings in central Dublin. Their headquarters was established at the General Post Office in O'Connell St., where Patrick Pearse read out a proclamation establishing the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic. Besides Pearse, the signatories were Thomas Clarke, Seán MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Éamonn Ceannt, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett—all members of the Military Council of the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood)
Other Volunteers seized such buildings as the Jacob's Factory, Boland's Mills and The College of Surgeons.
The leaders of The Rising and their followers held out for a week, vastly outnumbered by the British Forces. On Saturday the 29th of April, Patrick Pearse gave the orders for an unconditional surrender.
The leaders of the 1916 Rising were all put on trial. Fifteen were shot in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin between the 3rd and 12th of May. These executions caused a sea-change of attitudes and created much public sympathy towards the ideals of the 1916 leaders.

Irish Potato Famine

Ireland is in your hands, in your power. If you do not save her, she cannot save herself. I solemnly call upon you to recollect that I predict with the sincerest conviction that a quarter of her population will perish unless you come to her relief.
Daniel O'Connell to the British House of Commons, 1847.

Beginning in 1845 and lasting for six years, the potato famine killed over a million men, women and children in Ireland and caused another million to flee the country. The Famine began in September 1845 as leaves on potato plants suddenly turned black and curled, then rotted, seemingly the result of a fog that had wafted across the fields of Ireland. The cause was actually an airborne fungus (phytophthora infestans)

Ireland's potato crop failures in the past had always been regional and short-lived with modest loss of life. Between 1800 and 1845, sixteen food shortages had occurred in various parts of Ireland. However, during the Famine the crop failure became national for the first time, affecting the entire country at once.

The French sociologist, Gustave de Beaumont, visited Ireland in 1835 and wrote: "I have seen the Indian in his forests, and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland...In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland."

"Famine fever"--cholera, dysentery, scurvy, typhus, and infestations of lice--soon spread through the Irish countryside. Observers reported seeing children crying with pain and looking "like skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger and their limbs wasted, so that there was little left but bones." Masses of bodies were buried without coffins, a few inches below the soil.

Over the next ten years, more than 750,000 Irish died and another 2 million left their homeland for Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Within five years, the Irish population was reduced by a quarter.

The Irish potato famine was not simply a natural disaster. It was a product of social causes.

During the Famine, British government officials and administrators rigidly adhered to the popular theory of the day, known as laissez-faire (meaning let it be), which advocated a hands-off policy in the belief that all problems would eventually be solved on their own through 'natural means.'

In adhering to laissez-faire, the British government also did not interfere with the English-controlled export business in Irish-grown grains. Throughout the Famine years, large quantities of native-grown wheat, barley, oats and oatmeal sailed out of places such as Limerick and Waterford for England, even though local Irish were dying of starvation. Irish farmers, desperate for cash, routinely sold the grain to the British in order to pay the rent on their farms and thus avoid eviction.




The Irish watched with increasing anger as boatloads of home-grown oats and grain departed on schedule from their shores for shipment to England. Food riots erupted in ports such as Youghal near Cork where peasants tried unsuccessfully to confiscate a boatload of oats. At Dungarvan in County Waterford, British troops were pelted with stones and fired 26 shots into the crowd, killing two peasants and wounding several others. British naval escorts were then provided for the riverboats as they passed before the starving eyes of peasants watching on shore.

As the Famine worsened, the British continually sent in more troops. "Would to God the Government would send us food instead of soldiers," a starving inhabitant of County Mayo lamented.

The Irish Potato Famine left as its legacy deep and lasting feelings of bitterness and distrust toward the British

Celtic Art and Designs

The Celts kept no written records but had an oral tradition, so all important events that needed remembering, as well as themes which revolved around their heroes, celtic gods and celtic goddesses and beliefs, were learned celtic artwork largely by continuous repetition as chants or were woven into prose form.

Celtic art is a huge culture as it has it's own history. Celtic art is actually a collection of many celtic designs, pictures etc.
Celtic art work is ancient and by medieval Celtic peoples who spread over Europe in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. They produced sophisticated metalwork, stone and wood carving, and illuminated manuscripts, decorating these objects with a variety of geometrical, knotted, and spiral designs, stylized animals and human figures.

There are some celtic designs to be found in traditional Celtic art which are most famous :
Celtic Knot :



Celtic knots were carved into the rocks by an unknown race of megalith builders thousands of years before the Celtic culture arrived. Celtic knotwork is found in many celtic designs and pictures, jewellery, clip arts.
This style of design and decoration was in fact brought to Britain in the 6th century AD by Saxon Christian monks and was used exclusively to illuminate the hand-written Christian Gospels. The Saxon people used some of the art for personal decoration.

Celtic cross :

Celtic Spiral : The spiral is the natural form of growth, and in every culture past and present has become a symbol of eternal life. The whorls represent the continuous creation and dissolution of the world; the passages between the spirals symbolize the divisions between life, death and rebirth.
the best examples are found on stone monuments such as Newgrange, in Ireland http://www.knowth.com/newgrange.htm

Celtic animal clipart: Animals and birds were sacred to the Celts. Zoomorphic ornaments show that nothing is as it first appears; plants turn into tails, and, interweaving, develop a head, legs or feet.



Celtic design collection and key patterns : The key patterns like the celtic spirals in straight lines, celtic borders and lines, celtic buttons, celtic backgroungs are connected and used repetadly to have a complex designs and symbols.

Typical Irish Dance

Irish dances can broadly be divided into social dance and performance dances. Irish social dancing is danced by formations of couples, often in squares of four couples. Irish social dance is a living tradition, and variations in particular dances are found across the Irish dance community.
Irish performance dancing is traditionally referred to as stepdance. Irish stepdance, popularized in 1994 by the world-famous show "Riverdance," is notable for its rapid leg movements, body and arms being kept largely stationary. The solo stepdance is generally characterized by a controlled but not rigid upper body, straight arms, and quick, precise movements of the feet.
The tradition of step dancing in Ireland grew from an indigenous form of percussive dance that developed alongside traditional Irish music. The current incarnation of this tradition is known as sean-nós dancing (damhsa ar an sean-nós or rince sa sean-nós). The strongest tradition of sean-nós dancing persists in the Connemara Gaeltacht in the West of Ireland, although sean-nós dancers can be found throughout Ireland.