Hebrides
The Hebrides comprise a widespread and diverse archipelago off the west coast of mainland Scotland. There are two main groups: the Outer Hebrides; these islands have a long history of occupation dating back to the Mesolithic, the culture of the residents has been affected by the successive influences of Celtic and English-speaking peoples. This diversity is reflected in the names given to the islands, which are derived from the languages that have been spoken there in historic and prehistoric times; the Hebrides are the source of much of Gaelic music. Today the economy of the islands is dependent on crofting, tourism, the oil industry, renewable energy; the Hebrides have lower biodiversity than mainland Scotland, but there is a significant presence of seals and seabirds. The earliest written references that have survived relating to the islands were made circa 77 AD by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, where he states that there are 30 Hebudes, makes a separate reference to Dumna, which Watson concludes is unequivocally the Outer Hebrides.
Writing about 80 years in 140-150 AD, drawing on the earlier naval expeditions of Agricola, writes that there are five Ebudes and Dumna. Texts in classical Latin, by writers such as Solinus, use the forms Hebudes and Hæbudes; the name Ebudes recorded by Ptolemy may be pre-Celtic. Islay is Ptolemy's Epidion, the use of the "p" hinting at a Brythonic or Pictish tribal name, although the root is not Gaelic. Woolf has suggested that Ebudes may be "an Irish attempt to reproduce the word Epidii phonetically rather than by translating it" and that the tribe's name may come from the root epos meaning "horse". Watson notes the possible relationship between Ebudes and the ancient Irish Ulaid tribal name Ibdaig and the personal name of a king Iubdán recorded in the Silva Gadelica; the names of other individual islands reflect their complex linguistic history. The majority are Norse or Gaelic but the roots of several other Hebrides may have a pre-Celtic origin. Adomnán, the 7th century abbot of Iona, records Colonsay as Colosus and Tiree as Ethica, both of which may be pre-Celtic names.
The etymology of Skye is complex and may include a pre-Celtic root. Lewis is Ljoðhús in Old Norse and although various suggestions have been made as to a Norse meaning the name is not of Gaelic origin and the Norse credentials are questionable; the earliest comprehensive written list of Hebridean island names was undertaken by Donald Monro in 1549, which in some cases provides the earliest written form of the island name. The derivations of all of the inhabited islands of the Hebrides and some of the larger uninhabited ones are listed below. Lewis and Harris is the largest island in Scotland and the third largest in the British Isles, after Great Britain and Ireland, it incorporates Lewis in the north and Harris in the south, both of which are referred to as individual islands, although they are joined by a land border. Remarkably, the island does not have a common name in either English or Gaelic and is referred to as "Lewis and Harris", "Lewis with Harris", "Harris with Lewis" etc. For this reason it is treated as two separate islands below.
The derivation of Lewis may be pre-Celtic and the origin of Harris is no less problematic. In the Ravenna Cosmography, Erimon may refer to Harris; this word may derive from the Ancient Greek: ἐρῆμος (erimos "desert". The origin of Uist is unclear. There are various examples of Inner Hebridean island names that were Gaelic but have become replaced. For example, Adomnán records Sainea, Elena and Oideacha in the Inner Hebrides, which names must have passed out of usage in the Norse era and whose locations are not clear. One of the complexities is that an island may have had a Celtic name, replaced by a similar-sounding Norse name, but reverted to an Gaelic name with a Norse "øy" or "ey" ending. See for example Rona below; the names of uninhabited islands follow the same general patterns as the inhabited islands. The following are the ten largest in their outliers; the etymology of St Kilda, a small archipelago west of the Outer Hebrides, its main island Hirta, is complex. No saint is known by the name of Kilda, various theories have been proposed for the word's origin, which dates from the late 16th century.
Haswell-Smith notes that the full name "St Kilda" first appears on a Dutch map dated 1666, that it may have been derived from Norse sunt kelda or from a mistaken Dutch assumption that the spring Tobar Childa was dedicated to a saint. The origin of the Gaelic for "Hirta"—Hiort, Hirt, or Irt—which long pre-dates the use of "St Kilda", is open to interpretation. Watson offers the Old Irish hirt, a word meaning "death" relating to the dangerous seas. Maclean, drawing on an Icelandic saga describing an early 13th-century voyage to Ireland that mentions a visit to the islands of Hirtir, speculates that the shape of Hirta resembles a stag, hirtir being "stags" in Norse; the etymology of small islands may be no less complex. In relation to Dubh Artach, R. L. Stevenson believed that "black and dismal" was a translation of the name, noting that "as usual, in Gaelic, it is not the only one." The Hebrides were settled during the Mesolithic era around 6500 BC or earlier, after the climatic conditions improved enough
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of his first major published volume. Heaney was born in the townland of Northern Ireland, his family moved to nearby Bellaghy. He became a lecturer at St. Joseph's College in Belfast in the early 1960s, after attending Queen's University and began to publish poetry, he lived in Sandymount, from 1976 until his death. He lived part-time in the United States from 1981 to 2006. Heaney was recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry during his lifetime. Heaney was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, its Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994, he was the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1996, was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 1998 was bestowed the title Saoi of the Aosdána. Other awards that he received include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Golden Wreath of Poetry, the T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread Prizes.
In 2011, he was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2012, a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust. His literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world". His body is buried at the Cemetery of St. Mary's Church, Northern Ireland; the headstone bears the epitaph "Walk on air against your better judgement", from one of his poems, "The Gravel Walks". Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn, between Castledawson and Toomebridge. In 1953, his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles away, now the family home, his father, Patrick Heaney, was the eighth child of ten born to Sarah Heaney.
Patrick was a farmer, but his real commitment was to cattle dealing, to which he was introduced by the uncles who had cared for him after the early death of his own parents. Heaney's mother, Margaret Kathleen McCann, who bore nine children, came from the McCann family, her uncles and relations were employed in the local linen mill, her aunt had worked as a maid for the mill owner's family. Heaney commented that his parentage contained both the Ireland of the cattle-herding Gaelic past and the Ulster of the Industrial Revolution. Heaney attended Anahorish Primary School. Heaney's younger brother, was killed in a road accident while Heaney was studying at St. Columb's; the poems "Mid-Term Break" and "The Blackbird of Glanmore" are related to his brother's death. In 1957, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at Queen's University Belfast. During his time in Belfast, he found a copy of Ted Hughes's Lupercal, which spurred him to write poetry. "Suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life," he said.
He graduated in 1961 with a First Class Honours degree. During teacher training at St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast, Heaney went on a placement to St Thomas' secondary Intermediate School in west Belfast; the headmaster of this school was the writer Michael McLaverty from County Monaghan, who introduced Heaney to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh. With McLaverty's mentorship, Heaney first started to publish poetry in 1962. Hillan describes. In the introduction to McLaverty's Collected Works, Heaney summarised the poet's contribution and influence: "His voice was modestly pitched, he never sought the limelight, yet for all that, his place in our literature is secure." Heaney's poem Fosterage, in the sequence Singing School from North, is dedicated to him. In 1963, Heaney became a lecturer at St Joseph's, in the spring of 1963, after contributing various articles to local magazines, he came to the attention of Philip Hobsbaum an English lecturer at Queen's University. Hobsbaum set up a Belfast Group of local young poets, Heaney was able to meet other Belfast poets such as Derek Mahon and Michael Longley.
In August 1965, he married a school teacher and native of Ardboe, County Tyrone. Heaney's first book, Eleven Poems, was published in November 1965 for the Queen's University Festival. In 1966, Faber and Faber published called Death of a Naturalist; this collection was met with much critical acclaim and won several awards, including the Gregory Award for Young Writers and the Geoffrey Faber Prize. In 1966, Heaney was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's University Belfast; that year his first son, was born. A second son, was born in 1968; that same year, with Michael Longley, Heaney took part in a reading tour called Room to Rhyme, which increased awareness of the poet's work. In 1969, his second major volume, Door into the D
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic or Scots Gaelic, sometimes referred to as Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish. Most of modern Scotland was once Gaelic-speaking, as evidenced by Gaelic-language placenames. In the 2011 census of Scotland, 57,375 people reported as able to speak Gaelic, 1,275 fewer than in 2001; the highest percentages of Gaelic speakers were in the Outer Hebrides. There are revival efforts, the number of speakers of the language under age 20 did not decrease between the 2001 and 2011 censuses. Outside Scotland, Canadian Gaelic is spoken in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Scottish Gaelic is not an official language of either the United Kingdom. However, it is classed as an indigenous language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which the British government has ratified, the Gaelic Language Act 2005 established a language development body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig.
Aside from "Scottish Gaelic", the language may be referred to as "Gaelic", pronounced or in English. "Gaelic" may refer to the Irish language. Scottish Gaelic is distinct from Scots, the Middle English-derived language varieties which had come to be spoken in most of the Lowlands of Scotland by the early modern era. Prior to the 15th century, these dialects were known as Inglis by its own speakers, with Gaelic being called Scottis. From the late 15th century, however, it became common for such speakers to refer to Scottish Gaelic as Erse and the Lowland vernacular as Scottis. Today, Scottish Gaelic is recognised as a separate language from Irish, so the word Erse in reference to Scottish Gaelic is no longer used. Gaelic was believed to have been brought to Scotland, in the 4th–5th centuries CE, by settlers from Ireland who founded the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata on Scotland's west coast in present-day Argyll.:551:66 However, archaeologist Dr Ewan Campbell has argued that there is no archaeological or placename evidence of a migration or takeover.
This view of the medieval accounts is shared by other historians. Regardless of how it came to be spoken in the region, Gaelic in Scotland was confined to Dál Riata until the eighth century, when it began expanding into Pictish areas north of the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. By 900, Pictish appears to have become extinct replaced by Gaelic.:238–244 An exception might be made for the Northern Isles, where Pictish was more supplanted by Norse rather than by Gaelic. During the reign of Caustantín mac Áeda, outsiders began to refer to the region as the kingdom of Alba rather than as the kingdom of the Picts. However, though the Pictish language did not disappear a process of Gaelicisation was under way during the reigns of Caustantín and his successors. By a certain point during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become Gaelicised Scots, Pictish identity was forgotten. In 1018, after the conquest of the Lothians by the Kingdom of Scotland, Gaelic reached its social, cultural and geographic zenith.:16–18 Colloquial speech in Scotland had been developing independently of that in Ireland since the eighth century.
For the first time, the entire region of modern-day Scotland was called Scotia in Latin, Gaelic was the lingua Scotica.:276:554 In southern Scotland, Gaelic was strong in Galloway, adjoining areas to the north and west, West Lothian, parts of western Midlothian. It was spoken to a lesser degree in north Ayrshire, the Clyde Valley and eastern Dumfriesshire. In south-eastern Scotland, there is no evidence that Gaelic was widely spoken. Many historians mark the reign of King Malcom Canmore as the beginning of Gaelic's eclipse in Scotland, his wife Margaret of Wessex spoke no Gaelic, gave her children Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic names, brought many English bishops and monastics to Scotland.:19 When Malcolm and Margaret died in 1093, the Gaelic aristocracy rejected their anglicised sons and instead backed Malcolm's brother Donald Bàn. Donald had spent 17 years in Gaelic Ireland and his power base was in the Gaelic west of Scotland, he was the last Scottish monarch to be buried on Iona, the traditional burial place of the Gaelic Kings of Dàl Riada and the Kingdom of Alba.
However, during the reigns of Malcolm Canmore's sons, Alexander I and David I, Anglo-Norman names and practices spread throughout Scotland south of the Forth–Clyde line and along the northeastern coastal plain as far north as Moray. Norman French displaced Gaelic at court; the establishment of royal burghs throughout the same area under David I, attracted large numbers of foreigners speaking Old English. This was the beginning of Gaelic's status as a predominantly rural language in Scotland.:19-23 Clan chiefs in the northern and western parts of Scotland continued to support Gaelic bards who remained a central feature of court life there. The semi-independent Lordship of the Isles in the Hebrides and western coastal mainland remained Gaelic since the language's recovery there in the 12th century, providing a political foundation for cultural prestige down to the end of the 15th century.:553-6By the mid-14th century what came to be called Scots emerged as the official language of government and law.:139 Scotland's emergent nat
Beinn Dorain
Beinn Dorain, is a mountain in the Bridge of Orchy hills of Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It is the subject of Moladh Beinn Dòbhrainn. An t-urram thar gach beinn Aig Beinn Dòbhrain; the Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson composed a work for full chorus, chamber chorus, symphony orchestra and chamber orchestra based on MacIntyre's poem, entitled Moladh Beinn Dobhrain in 2007. In this lyrical, tonal work, Stevenson used the original text and Hugh Macdiarmid's English translation of the verse, it was premiered on 19 January 2008 in Glasgow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Opera Chorus, Glasgow University Chapel Choir and The Edinburgh Singers
Raidió Teilifís Éireann
Raidió Teilifís Éireann is a semi-state company and the national public service media of Ireland. It both produces programmes and broadcasts them on television and the Internet; the radio service began on 1 January 1926, while regular television broadcasts began on 31 December 1961, making it one of the oldest continuously operating public service broadcasters in the world. RTÉ publishes a weekly lifestyle magazine called the RTÉ Guide. RTÉ is financed through advertising; some RTÉ services are only funded by advertising, while other RTÉ services are only funded by the licence fee. RTÉ is a statutory body, run by a board appointed by the Government of Ireland. General management of the organisation is in the hands of the Executive Board headed by the Director-General. RTÉ is regulated by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. Radio Éireann, RTÉ's predecessor and at the time a section of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, was one of 23 founding organisations of the European Broadcasting Union in 1950.
This section deals with the history of RTÉ as an organisation. For details on this history of the various services see the separate articles on those services. For history of the broadcasting service prior to 1960, see Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and RTÉ Radio 1. Broadcasting in Ireland began in 1926 with 2RN in Dublin. From that date until June 1960 the broadcasting service operated as a section of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, those working for the service were directly employed by the Irish Government and regarded as civil servants. RTÉ was established on 1 June 1960 under the Broadcasting Authority Act 1960, the principal legislation under which it operates; the existing Radio Éireann service was transferred to the new authority, made responsible for the new television service. The television service started broadcasting on 31 December 1961, from the Kippure transmitter site near Dublin. Eamonn Andrews was the first Chairman of Radio Éireann, the first director general was Edward Roth.
The name of the authority was changed, at the suggestion of Áine Ní Cheanainn, to Radio Telefís Éireann by the Broadcasting Authority Act 1966, both the radio and television services became known as RTÉ in that year. The Broadcasting Act 2009 changed the name of the organisation from "Radio Telefís Éireann" to "Raidió Teilifís Éireann", to reflect the proper spelling of the name in Irish. However, the station retains "Radio Telefís Éireann" carved in stone at the entrance to its Donnybrook headquarters in Dublin. Under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Authority Act, 1960 the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs of the day could direct RTÉ "not to broadcast any matter, or any matter of any particular class". In 1971 the first such directive was issued by Gerry Collins, directing RTÉ not to broadcast "any matter that could be calculated to promote the aims or activities of any organisation which engages in, encourages or advocates the attaining of any particular objective by violent means". A year Collins dismissed the entire RTÉ Authority over a report of an interview with Seán Mac Stíofáin, the chief of staff of the Provisional IRA.
RTÉ reporter Kevin O'Kelly, who reported the Mac Stiofáin interview, was jailed for contempt in a court case arising out of the interview. Kelly refused to identify Mac Stiofáin's as the voice on a tape seized from his house by the Garda Síochána. In 1976 Conor Cruise O'Brien, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, amended Section 31 and thereafter issued a new annually-based directive to the RTÉ authority. RTÉ was now explicitly banned from broadcasting interviews or reports of interviews with spokespersons for Sinn Féin, the Provisional IRA, or any organisation banned in Northern Ireland under the UK's Northern Ireland Act 1973; these directives were reissued on an annual basis until the final one appeared in January 1993. During the late 1970s RTÉ was accused of extending the censorship rules into a system of self-censorship. A small minority of programme makers emerged who approved of Section 31 supporters of the Workers' Party, including Eoghan Harris, Gerry Gregg who opposed that party's official policy.
Opponents of censorship were portrayed as secret IRA sympathizers. The effect of this ban was greater than and similar to, though less harsh than, the censorship provision introduced in 1988 in the United Kingdom; the UK ban did not prevent reports of interviews with spokespersons. This allowed interviews using actors' voices dubbing the direct speech of censored persons; this was not permissible on RTÉ. In 1992–93, in O'Toole vs RTÉ, RTÉ was found by the High Court and Supreme Court to have illegally and unconstitutionally extended the censorship ban to Sinn Féin members who were not speaking on behalf of the party; the RTÉ ban did not affect UK stations broadcasting in the Republic of Ireland as, until 1988 at least, viewers in the Republic were still able to hear the voices of Sinn Féin representatives. The following figures were issued by RTÉ as part of their annual report in 2012. In 2012 RTÉ received in total €180,894,000 in public funding from the licence fee, it received €127,100,000 in commercial revenue.
RTÉ total expenditure in 2012 was €327,023,000. They had restructuring costs of €46,161,000 in 2012. Losses for the year came to €65,147,000. Profit and Loss across radio and online services. RTÉ receives income from two main sources: The television licence fee. Within the State, it is necessary to pay a fee of €160 per annum to possess any piece of
Dunblane Cathedral
Dunblane Cathedral is the larger of the two Church of Scotland parish churches serving Dunblane, near the city of Stirling, in central Scotland. The lower half of the tower is pre-Romanesque from the 11th century, was free-standing, with an upper part added in the 15th century. Most of the rest of the building is Gothic, from the 13th century; the building was restored by Rowand Anderson from 1889–93. The Cathedral was once the seat of the bishops of Dunblane, until the abolition of bishops after the Scottish Reformation. There are remains of the vaults of the episcopal palace to the south of the cathedral. Technically, it is no longer a cathedral, as there are no bishops in the Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian denomination. William Chisholm, the last Catholic bishop of Dunblane became bishop of Vaison in France. After the Reformation, the choir became the parish church but the nave fell out of use, its roof had fallen in by about 1600, it contains the graves of Margaret Drummond of Stobhall, a mistress of King James IV of Scotland and her two sisters, all said to have been poisoned.
Unusually, the building is owned by the Crown, is looked after by Historic Scotland rather than the church governance. The building is 13th century in date, though it incorporates an freestanding bell-tower of 11th century date on its south side; this tower was increased in height in the 15th century, a change visible in the colour of the stonework, in the late Gothic style of the upper storey's windows. The choir is unaisled, but has a long vaulted chamber which served as chapter house and sacristy on its north side; the choir contains the mural tomb of Bishop Clement. Many of the 15th century choir stalls, which have carved misericords are preserved within the choir. Further, more elaborate, canopied stalls are preserved at the west end of the nave. Dunblane has the largest surviving collection of medieval Scottish ecclesiastical woodwork after King's College Chapel, Aberdeen; some detached fragments are displayed in the town's museum. The cathedral was restored in the late 19th century under the control of Rev Alexander Ritchie DD, who commissioned architect Robert Rowand Anderson to oversee the works, with these works completed by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1912.
Preserved within the arcaded nave are two early Christian stones, a cross-slab and a possible architectural frieze, survivals from an early medieval church on the same site, founded by or dedicated to the'Blane' whose name is commemorated in the name of the town. Dunblane Cathedral churchyard contains one war grave, that of William Stirling, a gunner in the Royal Marine Artillery during World War I. Bishop Clement of Dunblane Rev James Finlayson DD Sir David Russell James Stirling and the Stirlings of Garden John Stirling of Kippendavie by Peter Turnerelli Jane Stirling daughter of the above In the nave of the Cathedral is a standing stone by the monumental sculptor Richard Kindersley which commemorates the events of 13 March 1996 – the Dunblane Massacre; the quotations on the stone are by E. V. Rieu, Richard Henry Stoddard, Bayard Taylor and W. H. Auden. Dunblane Cathedral is one of at least seven churches in the town; the others are St Blane's, St Mary's, the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to the Holy Family, the Quaker Meeting House, the Dunblane Christian Fellowship, the Eastern Orthodox parish dedicated to Saint Nicholas.
Ministers and clergyMichael Potter 1692 The Very Rev James Cockburn, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland The Very Rev John Rodger Gray, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland BurialsMalise II, Mormaer of Strathearn Margaret Drummond, mistress of James IV of Scotland James Finlayson, Church of Scotland minister and writer Jane Stirling, pianistWeddingsIn April 2015, tennis player and Dunblane native Andy Murray returned to his hometown to marry his long-term partner Kim Sears in a private service at the Cathedral. List of Church of Scotland parishes Dunblane Cathedral Historic Environment Scotland. "Cathedral Square, Dunblane Cathedral... ". Historic Environment Scotland. "Dunblane Cathedral and precinct, buried remains". Dunblane Cathedral Arts Guild Engraving of Dunblane Cathedral by James Fittler in the digitised copy of Scotia Depicta, or the antiquities, public buildings and gentlemen's seats, cities and picturesque scenery of Scotland, 1804 at National Library of Scotland Engraving of Dunblane Cathedral in 1693 by John Slezer at National Library of Scotland
Ireland
Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, St George's Channel. Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, the twentieth-largest on Earth. Politically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers five-sixths of the island, Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. In 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.6 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. Just under 4.8 million live in the Republic of Ireland and just over 1.8 million live in Northern Ireland. The island's geography comprises low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland, its lush vegetation is a product of its mild but changeable climate, free of extremes in temperature. Much of Ireland was woodland until the end of the Middle Ages. Today, woodland makes up about 10% of the island, compared with a European average of over 33%, most of it is non-native conifer plantations.
There are twenty-six extant mammal species native to Ireland. The Irish climate is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and thus moderate, winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area, although summers are cooler than those in continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant; the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC. Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century AD; the island was Christianised from the 5th century onward. Following the 12th century Norman invasion, England claimed sovereignty. However, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, was extended during the 18th century. With the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. A war of independence in the early 20th century was followed by the partition of the island, creating the Irish Free State, which became sovereign over the following decades, Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom.
Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s. This subsided following a political agreement in 1998. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community while the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, as part of it, did the same. Irish culture has had a significant influence on other cultures in the field of literature. Alongside mainstream Western culture, a strong indigenous culture exists, as expressed through Gaelic games, Irish music and the Irish language; the island's culture shares many features with that of Great Britain, including the English language, sports such as association football, horse racing, golf. The names Éire derive from Old Irish Eriu; this in turn comes from the Proto-Celtic *Iveriu, the source of Latin Hibernia. Iveriu derives from a root meaning'fat, prosperous'. During the last glacial period, up until about 10,000 BC, most of Ireland was periodically covered in ice. Sea levels were lower and Ireland, like Great Britain, formed part of continental Europe.
By 16,000 BC, rising sea levels due to ice melting caused Ireland to become separated from Great Britain. Around 6000 BC, Great Britain itself became separated from continental Europe; the earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC, demonstrated by a butchered bear bone found in a cave in County Clare. It is not until about 8000 BC, that more sustained occupation of the island has been shown, with evidence for Mesolithic communities around the island; these Mesolithic communities lived as hunter-gatherers across the island until about 4000 BC. Some time before 4000 BC, Neolithic settlers arrived introducing cereal cultivars, domesticated animals such as cattle and sheep, large timber building, stone monuments; the earliest evidence for farming in Ireland or Great Britain is from Co.. Kerry, where a flint knife, cattle bones and a sheep's tooth were carbon-dated to c. 4350 BC. Field systems were developed in different parts of Ireland, including at the Céide Fields, preserved beneath a blanket of peat in present-day Tyrawley.
An extensive field system, arguably the oldest in the world, consisted of small divisions separated by dry-stone walls. The fields were farmed for several centuries between 3500 BC and 3000 BC. Wheat and barley were the principal crops; the Bronze Age – defined by the use of metal – began around 2500 BC, with technology changing people's everyday lives during this period through innovations such as the wheel. According to John T. Koch and others, Ireland in the Late Bronze Age was part of a maritime trading-network culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age that included Britain, western France and Iberia, that this is where Celtic languages developed; this contrasts with the traditional view that their origin lies in mainland Europe with the Hallstatt culture. During the Iron Age, a Celtic language and culture emerged in Ireland. How and when the island became Celtic has been debated for close to a century, with the migrations of the Celts being one of the more enduring themes of archaeological and linguistic studies.
The most recent genetic research s
