CULTURE
Irish language declined steadily
during the 19th century and was nearly wiped out by the Great
Potato Famine of the 1840s, which particularly affected the Irish-speaking
population. But despite its decline the Irish language never ceased
to exert a strong influence on Irish consciousness. From the mid-19th
century, in the years following the famine, there was a resurgence
in traditional native Irish language and culture. This Gaelic
revival led, in turn, to the Irish literary renaissance of the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, in which native expression
was explored and renewed by a generation of writers and academics.
It also produced a resurgence in traditional musical and dance
forms. The cultural revivalism became an inspiration to the Irish
nationalist struggle of the early decades of the 20th century.
Ireland was first inhabited
around 7500 bc by Mesolithic hunter-fishers, probably from Scotland.
They were followed by Neolithic people, who used flint tools,
and then by people from the Mediterranean, known in legend as
the Firbolgs, who used bronze implements. Later came the Picts,
also an immigrant people of the Bronze Age. Extensive traces of
the culture of this early period survive in the form of stone
monuments (menhirs, dolmens, and cromlechs) and stone forts, dating
from 2000 to 1000 bc. During the Iron Age, the Celtic invasion
(about 350 bc) introduced a new cultural strain into Ireland,
one that was to predominate. The oldest relics of the Celtic (Gaelic)
language can be seen in the 5th-century Ogham stone inscriptions
in County Kerry. Ireland was Christianized by Saint Patrick in
the 5th century. The churches and monasteries founded by him and
his successors became the fountainhead from which Christian art
and refinement permeated the crude and warlike Celtic way of life.
A flowering of Irish literary
works occurred with the standardization of Irish in the mid-20th
century. After World War II a new wave of poets, novelists, and
dramatists produced a significant literature in modern Irish,
among them Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Máirtín
Ó Direáin, and Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Since
the 1970s a younger generation of writers has made important contributions
in Irish, notably Mícheál Ó Siadhail, Gabriel
Rosenstock, Michael Hartnett, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Áine
Ní Ghlinn, and Cathal Ó Searcaigh.
