At the Edge of Ireland by David Yeadon Read Free Book Online

fine for the moment. I’ll leave the big books ’til later.”
    â€œRight y’are then, sir. Very good decision y’made there or I’ll be talkin’ at y’ ’til the fairies pop out with the stars…Not that I’d mind, mind y’, because y’seem like a decent enough fella an’ it’d be a pleasure…”
    â€œThanks, that’s very nice of you, so…any time you’re ready…”
    â€œAh, I see y’re a man who gets t’th’point, so t’speak. T’th’ nub o’ things, and I like that. Can’t stand people prattlin’ on about nothin’ an’ never getting started…so much time a’wastin’, don’cha think? So much paddywackery in a lot of the Irish blarney…”
    â€œYes, I do. So let’s not waste time. Let’s get to the nub and hear your fast version.”
    â€œAh yes—a man after me own heart y’are, sir. So all right, then. This is how it goes…thousan’ plus years in a nutshell, so to speak. Although, I must admit, I never really understood that nutshell thing. D’y’think maybe…”
    â€œWhenever you’re ready…”
    â€œAch, y’re a real cracker, sir. Okay, here goes. It seems that after all the great times of legends and the mighty magical worlds that wrapped our little Ireland in shrouds of mist and mysteries…should I tell y’more about that time…before the coming of the Celts…I’ve got some wonderful tales of far off down all the years…tales of our ancient rulers, the Tuatha Dé Dannan, who were defeated by Milesian invaders around 250 BC and went to hide underground and became our fairy people. And all the great stories of that time like Táin Bó Cuailnge—The Cattle Raid of Cooley —or lots of others and Finn MacCool, our great warrior hero, and the Druids…”
    â€œLet’s maybe come back to all that fairy stuff later…”
    â€œAh, sir—be careful now. You don’t mess about with the fairies—you never know when they’re listening and they’re devilish clever, and cruel when they get upset. Oh yes indeed…”
    â€œOkay, point taken, but let’s start with the coming of the Celts. When was that?”
    â€œWell, they sorta crept in like from around 600 BC . Not like later fast invasions—the ‘casserole of the cultures,’ as they like to call these times. Slowly they got rid of the ancient Stone Age–type tribes, and after St. Patrick arrived in AD 432, they kind of merged their old Celtic and Druid pagan ways with the new Christianity coming over from Rome. ’Course by that time, there wasn’t much of Rome left. The barbarians were flooding in—including a few of the old Asian Celtic tribes, and you’d be right in thinkin’ where the heck was Jesus when he was needed, especially as Constantine had made the Roman Empire Christian! Bit of a letdown there, I’m thinkin’. Anyway, so the Celts settled down nicely as Christians and built churches and monastaries despite what happened later on, they gave the Irish—us—a deep love of language and poetry and mysticism and music and all that good stuff…”
    â€œSo what happened later on?”
    â€œI’m comin’ t’that. Don’t rush the storyteller once he’s off and runnin’…”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œRight. Well. Anyway, so what happened was that the damned Scandinavian Vikings at the end of the eighth century came roarin’ in. Sailin’ by with their huge boats, pillagin’ and plunderin’ and messin’ up the whole Celtic world here. They were a restless bunch to start with—makin’ off with our women and all the rich stuff from the monasteries—even burning the books our monks had copied from libraries brought over here from Rome, which was in a real