I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
There is no thrill like that which comes to the exile
when he stands again on his native earth.
It chokes expression.
Many times I have returned to the land of my birth
and always comes this hush of words,
in deference to the fool heart's mingled joy and sadness.
So wrote the Reverend James Cotter
on his return to Tipperary in 1929.
From his adopted homeland, America.
Like so many men and women before him and since,
driven from these shores by famine, deprivation and political strife,
spurred on by the will to succeed in a new land,
the Reverend felt this compulsion to return from whence he came.
Even US Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy
made this pilgrimage to the land of their forebears.
So strong is the compulsion, this exile's hunger to return home,
that each year thousands of Irish emigrants
come in search of their roots, in search of their heritage.
In two short weeks they attempt the impossible,
to trace their family history, armed only with a few dates
and perhaps one or two obscure place names.
It's natural to seek an understanding of the past.
History can help to explain the present
and give insights into the future.
The past is all around us,
living and breathing in our architecture, culture and art.
Who can look upon the magnificent Book of Kells
and remain untouched?
Such treasures beg us to look deeper
beyond these manifestations of the past,
to create links with our own history.
For many, this small green island
represents the eternal enigma.
Cloaked in a rich and complex history,
the Ireland of today is inextricably linked
with the Ireland of old.
Here past and present merge into a multifaceted,
multi-coloured tapestry of life,
resembling the patchwork quilted fields
that is the Irish countryside.
But 11,000 years ago,
the Ireland encountered by the first men to arrive here
was very different.
The land had just shaken off
the frosty shackles of the Ice Age.
The stirrings of new life appeared
and rivers flowed once again.
The first Irishmen were hunters.
They stopped the coastal regions in search of food.
Some 2,500 years later,
Neolithic cattle farmers and grain growers arrived.
Working their way along the river valleys,
they cut through the deep forests of oak,
ash and elder.
They had found along the Antrim coast
a tough, durable flint perfect for cutting instruments.
These flints became part of the very first international trade,
and samples have been discovered
in Cornwall and mainland Europe.
These farming pioneers steadily prospered,
so much so that they commissioned a series
of impressive passage graves
to be built throughout the country.
Here in the Boyne Valley,
they built a huge complex of three major structures
known as Newgrange and Newgrange.
The great prehistoric mound at Newgrange
is just as awesome in engineering
and sheer size as the pyramids of Egypt.
Yet 500 years before the first stone
was laid on the very first pyramid,
Newgrange was the centre of a society
far more advanced than the Egyptians.
Who built this magnificent cave
no one knows for certain.
Some say it was a pagan temple
built to honour a mysterious sun god.
But whatever the reason,
each year something very strange takes place here.
On the morning of the winter solstice at 9am,
sunlight begins to filter into the inner chamber
through a small opening above the mound's entrance.
Soon the whole chamber is a vast basin of light.
Even today,
this once-a-year alignment of sun and stone
remains an architectural wonder.
Pier Bode, the Billy Men,
Tuhaday Danan, people of the goddess Dana.
These early settlers were given fanciful names
by the earliest writers in Ireland.
Little is known of these strange peoples
except that they were most probably Celtic in origin.
A mystical warrior race,
the Celts journeyed to Ireland from mainland Europe
in the thousand years before the coming of Christ.
Tough, fighting men, they played as hard as they fought.
Their boast was that their only fear
was that the sky might fall.
Julius Caesar praised the courage of the Celts
and referred to their passion for burial mounds
and their love of attending funerals,
a tradition we now know as the Great Irish Wing.
But make no mistake,
the Celts were advanced for their time.
They brought to Ireland its language,
an advanced social order, and a complex legal system
The Breitham Code of Laws, of course,
from the word Breitham, meaning a judge,
Breith meaning judgment,
it was a customary code, as you might call it.
It wasn't obviously bid up through acts of an assembly
or parliament or anything like that.
It was rather something that was handed down
orderly from one generation to another
and probably was written down for the first time
about the eighth century, seventh or eighth centuries.
The greatest of all punishments, I suppose,
for an Irishman was to be banned from his own people
because the two important elements in his life
were the family, the finna, the large family,
not the small nuclear family that we talk about nowadays,
and the tua, which was of course the local status,
we might call it, about the size of, let's say,
a quarter of an Irish county nowadays.
It was, of course, therefore, the worst possible punishment
that could occur to him.
Just how sophisticated the Celts were
is shown by their building expertise.
They lived in wraths and crannogs.
Wraths are dwellings made from wooden constructions
bounded by earthen walls.
Today the term wrath is still very much a feature
of our towns and villages, with place names like
the Celts who also lived in crannogs, or lake dwellings,
such as this reconstructed one at Craiganoan in County Clare.
Filled with brushwood and stone, they were artificial islands
built in the shallow waters of lakes.
The Celts, like the Romans, worshipped many gods.
One of the most popular of these was the great god Lug.
You find the name of this Celtic god Lug, or Loo,
in many place names throughout Western Europe,
probably best known, I suppose, as Leon in England.
Probably best known, I suppose, as Leon in France, Lugdunum.
You get it also, of course, in Leiden in Holland.
It's supposedly at the basis of Lignitz in Silesia.
Possibly it's at the basis of the old French province of Leon
and the Spanish province of Leon.
I think possibly London is also taken from Lugdunum, Lugdunum.
And, of course, we have place names in Ireland associated with them.
Probably best known, Lowth, County Lowth.
In fact, the Irish word for a leprechaun,
or for these little rather strange preternatural figures
that one associates with certain events in Ireland,
is Leucorpon, which is supposed to incorporate
the name of this prehistoric and pre-Christian Celtic god.
There is no written history originating from this period,
apart from own stones.
Thankfully, there was a great oral tradition
that has left us two extraordinary epic tales
easily on a par with Homer's Odyssey.
The Thornbucculna depicted in this modern mosaic at the Setanta Centre
tells the story of the Red Branch Knights,
Coughlin the hero and Queen Maeve of Connaught.
The story goes that Setanta, a brave young warrior,
set out to join the Red Branch Knights,
the elite force at the court of King Conor Macnaser.
To pass the 100-mile journey, he hurled a ball before him.
When Setanta arrived at the royal palace,
he found a fierce dog guarding the entrance.
With deadly accuracy, he drove the hurly ball down the dog's throat,
killing him instantly.
King Conor, instead of being angry, made Setanta a knight
and pronounced him Coughlin, or the Hound of Ulster.
St Patrick features in a later epic, the Fenian Saga.
As the might of the Roman Empire began to wane,
so the Irish undertook raids into Europe
to take, amongst other things, slaves.
It was during one such raid that a boy named Patrick was captured.
Whilst tending sheep for his master and Wilka,
he underwent a conversion to Christianity.
After many long years, he finally escaped
from Slemish Mountain in North Antrim.
But he vowed to return one day and convert the pagan Irish,
a feat he accomplished in the year 432.
Today, St Patrick is celebrated all over the world
as the patron saint of Ireland.
On his day, March 17th, everyone is an honorary Irishman,
and parades are held from Dublin to Detroit,
from New Ross to New York, and from Sligo to Sydney.
By the beginning of the 5th century, Ireland had a system of kingdoms
based on what were then five provinces,
Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connacht and Meath.
Meath is no longer a province, but it was here, at Tara,
that the high king of all Ireland resided.
Today, grassy mounds are all that remain of royal Tara,
where massive wooden buildings once housed the fort of kings,
the banqueting hall and the fort of sinners.
Around Easter time, a fire was lit here on the hill of Tara.
A fire on what was, by decree, a night of darkness everywhere.
St Patrick resolved to go to the nearby hill of Slane,
where he lit an Easter fire in breach of the king's decree.
Patrick's fire burned brightly into the night,
purely visible from Tara across the plain.
The king was outraged.
His warriors rode out to arrest Patrick and his followers.
But the young Patrick made such an impression on the king
that he agreed to have all his subjects converted to Christianity,
though declining for himself the offer of salvation.
St Patrick's adventures, as told by the storytellers of old,
may or may not be true.
But he did establish churches,
notably at Saul in County Down, Armagh and Cashel.
He also went to Connacht, and it was here, at Crug Patrick,
that he was supposed to have fasted for 40 days and 40 nights.
It's been a place of pilgrimage ever since.
Along this route, the Abbey of Balintubber
welcomed the road-weary pilgrim,
providing spiritual and bodily sustenance.
The Irish took enthusiastically to Christianity,
and with it came a huge self-confidence,
generated by the excitement of change and discovery.
They founded monasteries in the most remote of places,
such as here in the Skelligs.
This was the island of saints and scholars.
As the English art historian Kenneth Clark put it,
Western civilisation would have perished
but for the fact that learning and study
was kept alive in places like the Skelligs.
Abbeys such as Clonmacnoy's and Bangor
became great centres of learning.
Thousands flocked here from the continent,
fleeing from a Europe laid to ruin by barbarian invasion.
At the same time, Ireland was sending her sons abroad
to preach Christianity.
Probably the greatest glory of early Irish Christianity
is the work of the Irish monks and scholars abroad.
We're not absolutely certain, of course,
who was the first to go abroad.
His name, and that was undoubtedly Saint Columba,
after founding his monasteries at home in Derry and in Durrow,
in 563 to be exact, and we're pretty certain of that date,
he left Derry and sailed for the Western Isles of Scotland,
ultimately settling in Iona.
So by the time of his death in 597,
I should think a considerable part of Scotland
had been converted to Christianity.
Moving on from Northern Britain to France,
we come, of course, to the equally great figure
of Saint Columbanus, or Columban,
almost the same name as Columba,
and he arrived in Gaul probably about 590.
They moved up northeast towards the Paris area,
on to Maud, ultimately to the Rhine,
then up the River Rhine,
where he probably composed his famous boating song,
ultimately into Switzerland,
and then we can trace his path through Switzerland,
I've done it myself,
by the various church dedications along Lake Constance,
and ultimately to the far side of Lake Constance,
the Vaudensee, the town of Braegens,
and there he found another monastery,
but it lasted only about two years,
and he made his way across as an old man now in his 70th year,
made his way across the Alps, down to Milan,
took part in the Aryan controversies in Milan,
wrote his famous series of sermons there,
probably in 613, and ultimately founded his last monastery
at Babiol, south of Milan, in 613,
where he died in 615.
I think the Irish, the furthest the Irish monks
and scholars got on the European mainland
was probably to southern Russia, the city of Kiev,
because in the 12th century,
a group of Irish Benedictine monks
set up a famous monastery of St James,
still standing and still bearing in its architecture
the relationship, a very clear relationship,
to the Rock of Cashel and Cormack's Chapel,
Irish Romanesque designs on the doorway.
Legend has it that the Celts looked out upon the fierce Atlantic,
crashing against the barren rocks of the west coast.
They dreamed of what might lie beyond this great expanse of water.
Their bards or poets spoke of the mystical land to the west,
the land of eternal youth.
Indeed, some say that an Irish sixth-century monk,
St Brendan the Navigator,
discovered this mystical land, the Americas.
The English adventurer, Tim Severn,
proved it possible by repeating the journey
on the boat in 1977.
This was the golden age of the Irish race.
Amongst its treasures is the magnificent Book of Celts.
The Book of Celts is a very old book.
It contains the four gospels of the New Testament
in Latin, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
It is written on skin, not on paper.
It is written in the days before printing.
It is about 1200 years old.
And it's treasured very much in Ireland
because it is large,
larger than the other manuscripts which have survived.
Also, it is beautifully decorated.
There is decoration and design on nearly every surface,
and we think it was written by a community of monks.
It is called the Book of Celts
because it comes from a town about 40 miles northwest of Dublin.
Some people say, what would the Book of Celts cost?
What could its price possibly be?
And we have to say, well, this treasure is the treasure of Ireland.
It's the treasure of the world, really.
It's priceless.
The Book of Celts, although the most beautiful example
of manuscript illumination,
is just one of a number housed in Trinity College Dublin.
Many more magnificent treasures of this Celtic age
are now on display at the National Museum.
We are here in the National Museum in the Treasury,
and many of these treasures have been shown
in the United States and in Europe.
And we have some new publications of these books,
and of course the actual objects themselves.
Behind me here, we have the Cross of Calm,
one of the more famous antiquities of Ireland.
It was made in the 12th century
for the kings of Connacht, the O'Connacht,
and it was found in Cong, in County Mayo,
a little over 100 years ago.
Other pieces include the Tara brooch,
a very famous brooch which was worn by some king
or chieftain in the 8th century.
It is beautifully decorated not only on the front,
but also on the back.
And with it, one can also admire objects
such as the Arda chalice from Arda in County Limerick.
It is also dated to the 8th century.
Other discoveries and objects of merit
include the bell of St. Patrick,
and it is said that this bell was buried with him in his grave.
And then later on, in the 11th, 12th century period,
a very fine shrine was made in which this bell was kept.
If the Irish took St. Patrick to their hearts,
they were not so welcoming to the next visitors,
the Norsemen or Vikings.
The Vikings crossed the North Sea from Scandinavia in 795 AD.
They had one motive,
to plunder the rich monasteries and castles of Ireland.
Their splendid boats sailed up the River Shannon,
leaving death and destruction in their wake.
It was to herald a wave of exploitation
and invasion for the Irish.
To protect themselves from attack,
monks built round towers.
From their outpost to the top,
they could see for miles around
and still remain well protected.
For 200 years, the Vikings ransacked Ireland
until a warrior king emerged to save the day.
Brian Baru travelled the country
trying to unite the chieftains against the fearsome Norsemen.
Here, at Armagh Cathedral,
he had his name inscribed as Imperator Scotomian,
Emperor of the Irish.
At the grand old age of 72,
Brian Baru led an attack on the Viking settlement
here in Clontarf, on the north shore of Dublin Bay.
It was Good Friday, April 23 in the year 1014.
The battle raged for 12 long hours.
And at its end, the victor, Brian Baru, lay slain.
His body was carried the 70 miles to Armagh
in mournful procession.
The reign of the Vikings was well and truly over.
But with Brian and his immediate heirs dead,
the high kingship was once again up for grabs,
and Ireland, without a leader, was vulnerable to invasion.
Music
Who knows had things gone differently
on that fateful spring day,
the Irish might now have been speaking Norwegian.
As it was, we adopted the tongue
of the second wave of invaders, the Anglo-Normans.
In 1169, the King of Leinster, Dermot Macmurro,
eloped with Dervorgilla.
Now, unfortunately, Dervorgilla was the wife of Tyrannor Rourke,
a close ally of Rory O'Connor, High King of Ireland.
Fearing his life, Dermot fled to seek aid from the Normans.
Their king, Henry II, dispatched a group of Norman knights
from Wales to Ireland.
Minitrally, these Norman invaders were much better equipped
than the Irish, who were, in any event,
divided amongst themselves.
Meeting little resistance, they rapidly established
bridgeheads throughout the country.
One of the more famous, or infamous, of these knights
was Strongbow.
Not only did he conquer Waterford,
he also married Dermot Macmurro's daughter
at this tower built by Reginald the Dane.
Indeed, such was the power of these Norman knights
that King Henry himself came to Ireland
to ensure their continued allegiance.
At the time, it must have seemed like a very low-key affair.
The Irish were well used to frequent invasions.
But this was the start of 800 years of struggle
between Ireland and England.
A struggle that even today dominates the relationship
between the two countries,
and all because of the elopement
of a 40-year-old one-eyed woman
called Derva Gillor, or Rourke.
The Normans brought with them great skills in castle building,
examples of which can still be seen today,
like Trim Castle in Leinster,
Carrick-Fergus Castle in Ulster,
and Roscommon Castle in Corinth.
Their agricultural methods were also very advanced,
but their real contribution to medieval Ireland
was their dynamism.
Despite the Normans' virtual assimilation into Irish society,
there followed years of strife between the two peoples,
until gradually the English influence was reduced
to a small area around Dublin,
an area which, because it was surrounded by wooden paling,
was called the Pale.
But those Norman descendants who lived outside the Pale
became, in the words of one Irish chronicler,
more Irish than the Irish themselves.
So it was that the English confined themselves
to the relative safety of the Pale,
afraid to venture out into the wilderness that lay beyond.
For these proud Celtic chieftains,
with their strange dress and their rough-and-tumble ways,
were to the Britons nothing short of barbarian.
But all was to change with the succession of Elizabeth I
to the throne of England in 1558.
The Irish had not taken kindly to the attempts of her father,
King Henry VIII, to impose his reformed religion on them.
For her part, Elizabeth wanted to finally bring
the Irish chieftains to their knees.
Perhaps she was influenced by the fact that her mother, Anne Boleyn,
was of the old Norman family of Butler.
They were the Earls of Ormond in the temporary Kilkenny region.
One of the first victims of Elizabeth's scorched-earth policy
was the Earl of Desmond.
Like a fragile house of cards, chieftain after chieftain fell,
but not so in the north of the country.
There the great challenge to the English power
came in the formidable figure of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone.
Joined by Red Hugh O'Donnell, chieftain of Turconnell,
now called Donny Gaw, he rebelled against the Crown.
Together they gained control over much of Ireland,
inflicting large casualties on the English.
Eventually, though, the might of Elizabeth's armies fell upon them,
and they were defeated here at Kinsale at Christmas 1600.
Within seven years the Earls of Tyrone and Turconnell
had fled to the continent.
The flight of the Earls left Ireland conquered and leaderless.
There was now little to stop full colonisation,
and there followed the plantations of Ulster,
in which land was given to Protestants from Scotland and northern England.
The once proud Irish lords were in effect reduced to tenants on their own land.
Rebellion flared once again in 1641.
A year later the Old English, or Normans, and the native Irish
united to form a parliament in Kilkenny.
Under the brilliant Owen Roe O'Neill, nephew of the great Hugh,
the Irish forces inflicted a humiliating defeat on the English at Ben Bourbe in 1646.
All appeared to be going well, until O'Neill died and Cromwell invaded in 1649.
The soldier who brought down the English monarchy, Oliver Cromwell,
was a brilliant military strategist, yet he is remembered in Ireland
first and foremost as a fanatical bigot.
His crimes against the Irish were on a par with Hitler or Stalin.
In Drohada he had every man, woman and child put to the sword.
Wexford too had a taste of Cromwell's barbarism.
To hell or to Connacht was the cry with which he dismissed those Irish who had survived,
Connacht being one of the most desolate and infertile areas on the island.
On Cromwell's death and with the succession of King Charles II in 1660,
things improved somewhat.
Catholicism could be openly practised and some land was returned to its original owners.
Upon his death in 1685, Charles was succeeded by his younger brother,
the Catholic King James II.
Hopes were high that some justice would at last be done for Ireland.
These hopes were dashed however when a revolt in England put William of Orange on the throne.
In 1689 James II fled to Ireland.
Landing at Consale he was greeted by a welcoming cannon salute from Charles IV.
His forces multiplied by enthusiastic Irish supporters quickly occupied most of the country.
But Ulster with its strong Protestant population held out against him, notably Derry,
a city that had been completely walled around in 1618.
Inside its walls 30,000 people, mostly refugees, faced a slow death by starvation.
Cats and dogs were sold for food at one dollar each, around 40 dollars in today's currency.
For 105 days the garrison held out until Williamite ships brought relief and raised the siege.
At the same time, William and his army of Protestant, English, Dutch, German and French
had landed at Carrick Fergus.
They moved southwards, all the while James and his army of Irish and French forces in their sights.
At the famous Battle of the Boyne the two kings met.
A battle which is still remembered today by both sides of the religious divide,
but for very different reasons.
King William announced victory while James fled the country.
The Catholic side had their sieges too.
Here in Limerick there was an equally heroic resistance.
Eventually a treaty was signed giving the Irish the right to practice their religion.
It further provided that those soldiers who wanted to could seek refuge in France.
The treaty was signed on this stone which has now been greatly reduced by souvenir hunters hacking at it.
The treaty was however broken by the English, as one poet put it,
ere the ink with which it were writ could dry.
To this day, Limerick is known as the city of the broken treaty.
In the aftermath of the 1691 treaty, 14,000 Irish sailed out to France
to become the nucleus of what became known as the Wild Geese.
For 100 years until the time of the French Revolution,
these and others who followed them were to be rewarded for their valor.
On far foreign fields from Dunkirk to Belgrade lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade.
When the day comes and the sky is alight and the hope marks under the green banner of the gale,
that day you will be glorious in the battle that will scatter the cursed English across the water.
The 18th century was a potpourri of land dispossession, bloody rebellion and constitutional change for the Irish.
In 1641, prior to the Cromwellian settlements, 59% of the land of Ireland belonged to native Irish Catholics.
In 1695, this figure had been cut to almost 14%.
By 1714, only 7% of this rich and fertile land remained in the hands of Catholics.
Ireland at this time was ruled by about 4% of the population, who alone had political rights.
This elite group, dubbed the Protestant Ascendancy, poured money into cities for refurbishment.
It is to them that we owe such magnificent buildings as the forecourts and the GPO.
The Duke of Leinster, for instance, decided that Dublin was too crowded.
So he had Leinster House built outside what was then the city limits.
He wrote to his mother, Leinster House does not inspire the brightest of ideas.
However, the present occupants may not agree. They are our own parliamentarians.
Dublin may have been a great cosmopolitan centre, but a cloud of bigotry and poverty hung over the country.
The penal laws passed in 1704 and 1709 effectively meant that the native Catholic Irish had no rights.
They couldn't own property, take up a profession or practice their religion.
The Irish parliament, which at this time was exclusively made up of Protestants of the Church of Ireland, enacted these laws.
They were scarcely less severe on those non-conformist Protestants who were Presbyterians or Methodists.
So began the emigration of those persecuted for the religious beliefs.
This largely Presbyterian movement that was to give America, amongst others, Presidents Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson.
Inspired by the American Revolution, the first stirrings of nationalism came with Jonathan Swift,
a leading Protestant. He was Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in the mid 1700s.
It was in these forbidding surroundings that Swift wrote his classic novel, Gulliver's Travels.
The American War of Independence had a profound effect on Irish thinking.
So whilst the British were busy fighting the American colonists, a group of Irish volunteers took it upon themselves to mutiny.
Here at College Green in 1778, they protested at the trade restrictions imposed on Ireland by Britain.
Their muskets donned placards with slogans like, free trade or this.
They won for themselves a more or less free government. And under Henry Grattan, the country flourished.
This fine example of 18th century opulence is now occupied by a large banking group, the Bank of Ireland.
It once housed Grattan's Parliament, or the Patriot's Parliament as it was then known.
The rise of republicanism in France and the Americas gave life to a new breed of Irish revolutionaries.
In 1798, there occurred a bloody rebellion masterminded by the exiled Irish patriot, Wolf Tone, the father of Irish republicanism.
Despite a large military force from France to help them in their struggle, the Irish lost the day.
And with it, the opportunity for Irish independence.
What became known as the Year of the French was a year of tragedy for Ireland.
The English decided that the Protestant Parliament should be suppressed.
The active union between Ireland and England took place in 1800.
Irish members of Parliament now had to travel to Westminster to put their case.
But just when the country seemed most broken, there arose the remarkable Daniel O'Connell.
His first aim was to secure Catholic emancipation, and he could only do this by presenting his case at Westminster.
Until O'Connell, the peasantry had voted as their landlords had directed them.
Yet such was his charisma that he persuaded them to vote for him, despite threats of eviction.
His election in 1826 forced Britain to rethink, and emancipation was granted in 1829.
So great was O'Connell's reputation throughout Europe that when the Belgians were electing their king, many voted for Daniel O'Connell.
O'Connell, in his attempts to repeal the active union, held a rally here on the Hill of Tara.
But although more than half a million Irish people attended, the English were not influenced, and the active union remained.
The failure of this movement was no doubt compounded by the great famine of the 1840s.
Year after year, the potato crops failed, and the corn was taken in lieu of rent.
At its end, one million Irish had starved to death.
Visitors wrote of the horror they encountered.
I saw sights that will never wholly leave the eyes that beheld them.
Cowering wretches almost naked in savage weather.
Little children, their faces bloated yet wrinkled with a pinkish hue, who would never, it was plain, grow up to be men and women.
Yet another million emigrated to the United States.
They brought with them the bitter memories of English rule, memories which were to influence American history for years to come.
Among those who emigrated were the Kennedys and Fitzgeralds, forebears of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Largely Catholic, these emigrants brought with them their religion and ideals, most notably their great sense of family and heritage.
The famine, however, did not kill republicanism.
A new organization, the Fenians, was founded simultaneously in New York and Dublin by James Stevens and John O'Mahony.
1867 was the year of the Fenian Rebellion in Ireland.
The American branch also attempted to invade Canada from their base across the border.
Both failed.
But the flame of republicanism, which had been lit by tone and carried by the Fenians, was to be rekindled sixty years later in the rising of 1916.
This statue of Charles Stuart Parnell lies at the northern end of Dublin's O'Connell Street.
O'Connell himself stands at the southern end.
Both are guardians of the capital's main thoroughfare.
And both practice the same brand of politics, an end to the act of union by constitutional means, in contrast to the armed rebellion advocated by followers of tone.
Parnell was born here in the comfortable surroundings of Avondale House and County Wicklow in 1846.
An ambitious young man, he was elected to Parliament in 1875 as the member for Meath.
Within four years he became known as the uncrowned King of Ireland.
Ten years later, he was dead.
His own timely death came in 1891 in the aftermath of a torrid sex scandal.
He was named by Captain O'Shea, husband of his longtime love Kitty O'Shea, as correspondent in divorce proceedings.
In his short reign, Parnell had managed to change the course of Irish history, not since O'Connell had home rule or a separate Irish Parliament seemed possible.
Along with Michael Davitt, the father of the Land League, he had succeeded in breaking the power of the landlords in Ireland.
One such landlord, by the name of Captain Charles Boycott, dared to defy the League when he continued to evict tenant farmers for non-payment of rent.
Consequently, he was ostracised by the community, thus giving the English language a new word, boycott.
During this period, a new Irish identity emerged.
Douglas Hyde founded the Gaelic League in 1893, dedicated to the preservation of the Irish language.
And the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded here in Hayes Hotel, Thurles, County Tipperary, to restore national games such as hurling.
Irish literature also witnessed a new renaissance.
Names like George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Sean O'Casey and James Joyce were destined to ring out throughout the literary world.
If you could transport yourself back in time to Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century, you would find yourself in a city of tree-lined Georgian squares with long lighted drawing room windows.
And, and this is the crucial point, a poet, they said, on every street corner.
Dublin, remember, is the only city in the world that has actually bred three Nobel Prize winners for literature.
George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, William Butler Yeats, the poet, and the modern playwright, still alive in Paris, Samuel Beckett.
Before them had gone the tall, elegant shadow of Oscar Wilde, whose family lived in the corner of Marion Square, number one Marion Square, a beautiful house with wrought iron railings.
And yet to come was the extraordinary, bespectacled, cantankerous figure of James Joyce, who was to revolutionise the novel in English.
And here you have, in this city, in this small city, the second city of the empire admittedly, but a small city, here you have, compressed into 20 years, one of the most remarkable renaissances of all time,
the equivalent in poetry, in prose, in drama, of the renaissance in painting that had happened in Italy centuries earlier.
But it seems to me much more fun, much more alive, with tremendous verb, enthusiasm, and inventiveness, and all in English literature.
On the Home Rule issue, as it came to be called, all was going well. Ireland was to have her own parliament with the repeal of the Act of Union.
But September 1914 saw its postponement as World War I broke out.
The majority of the island, north and south, supported Britain during the war.
But there were those who did not. The 1916 Rising has become a cornerstone of Irish history.
It was on Easter Monday 1916 that a thousand men gathered here at the General Post Office in Dublin.
Horace Pierce read the proclamation to bemused passers-by.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland.
The Rising had begun.
After a week of bloody fighting in the streets of Dublin, the Rising was over, put down by the might of the British Army.
16 of the leaders were executed at Kilmainham Jail.
The mood of the country turned, and thousands flocked to join the cause of an independent Ireland.
A four-year struggle commenced in which the British tried to quash the revolt using the notorious black and tans,
so called because their khaki jackets and black trousers resembled the markings of the famous pack of limerick hounds.
The rebels, in the form of the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, led by Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, developed what was then a new tactic, guerrilla warfare.
After the general election of 1919, those Republicans who had been elected chose to stay in Ireland.
They established here the first parliament, or Dáil, since Gratton's Parliament.
The Mansion House is now the residence of Dublin's Lord Mayor.
It was a time of great bloodshed for Ireland, and atrocities were committed by both sides.
Finally, world opinion forced the British government to seek a settlement with the Irish.
A treaty was signed between the English, led by Lloyd George, and the Irish, led by Michael Collins, in December 1921.
It effectively gave dominion status to 26 of the 32 counties.
The other six, known as Northern Ireland, was given a form of limited self-government.
With signatories led by Michael Collins, the signing of the treaty was a necessary concession to achieve peace.
For the Republican members of the cabinet, led by de Valera, it was a sell-out.
Ireland was not and would not be free until all her people had been freed from British rule.
A bloody civil war broke this fragile peace.
Collins' Free State Army prevailed, although he himself was killed in an ambush by the anti-treaty forces.
The resultant government, led by W.T. Cosgrave, ruled the country for ten years, initiating many reforms.
De Valera succeeded Cosgrave in 1932. A renowned world statesman, he was acting President of the League of Nations for a time.
Upon the outbreak of World War II, he made the decision to keep Ireland neutral.
De Valera's vision of Ireland has been quoted by many in latter years.
It may have meant a fanciful return to a Celtic Ireland long since past, yet the man and his ideals cannot be separated from the history of 20th century Ireland.
The first post-war election of 1948 saw the defeat of Eamon de Valera's Funerfall government.
In its place came the inter-party government led by John A. Costellan.
It was he who made the final break with England and the Commonwealth when he declared the 26 counties of Ireland a republic in 1949.
And so was born the modern, free and independent state of the Republic of Ireland.
Blood, they say, is thicker than water, and that's very true. Why else would so many try to trace their ancestry years and even centuries after their ancestors have left these shores?
Roots are something we all need. They are our own raison d'etre, adding new meaning to our very existence.
Ireland, more than most countries, is both intrigued and disturbed by its past. Perhaps it's the fact that its people have been scattered to the four corners of the world,
blown there by the ill winds of famine, religious persecution and political instability.
Emigration to North America has been traditionally linked with the famine era, but emigration goes back much further.
When Columbus first set foot on the shores of the New World, he had with him William Eris, a native of County Galway.
Little did William know that this was to be an historic trip. Soon others were to follow, among them the first pioneers and explorers.
Indeed, prior to 1700, 100,000 Irish travelled to the colonies of North America.
In fact, the Irish were to play a significant role in the birth of the American nation. The only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence was one Charles Carroll,
whose family had settled in Maryland in 1688, and there was a large Irish contingent in Washington's army during the War of Independence.
America was not the only fortunate recipient of Ireland's talented youth. The flight of the Earls and the Wild Geese during the 17th century
had sent many Irish chieftains fleeing to the continent. Others went as far as South America.
Today, a number of Argentina's famed ranchers can claim Irish descent.
During the 1800s, there occurred the phenomenon of transportation. Many Irish were transported in chains to Australia for petty crimes
such as stealing a loaf of bread, a fact of which most modern-day Australians are proud.
Canada, New Zealand and South Africa also feature prominently in the unfinished catalogue of Irish emigration.
But let's not forget Britain's role in Ireland's sorry tale of mass emigration.
Many Irish exiles built a new life for themselves in cities like London, Liverpool and Manchester.
Generally, the Irish abroad have overcome the twin obstacles of poverty and prejudice to become valued citizens of their adopted land.
Few can forget their past, a love of Ireland and a sense of its unique history. Many travel to Ireland each summer in search of their ancestry.
If someone is interested in doing their ancestry, I think the most important thing to do is not to start with research in Ireland.
You have to take your generations step by step, working from your own generation back to your parents.
The important things are always birth, marriages and death in family records.
For example, say if you know that your grandfather was born in Ireland, say County Cork, you don't want research to start there.
You want to find out exactly what his relevant ages were. Find out as much information you can in your home country first.
Now, there are several sources people can check in their countries.
It could be a census material, baptismal records, birth certificates, graveyards and family stories are often very interesting and full of information that
a person when they start the research they might not think is important but it turns out being very important.
Then once you have your information to the last person or the first person to arrive in your home country, then you make the jump into Ireland and Irish sources.
Now, Irish genealogy is important but there's a common misconception that Irish records were one all burnt in 1922 during the Trouble
or that the proper records don't exist or the proper genealogy doesn't exist in Ireland.
There were a lot of records destroyed in 1922 in the Four Courts there was a fire there but basically most people can work around those sources.
A lot depends on first of all where the family was located.
Different areas of the country have records that go back to a different period.
Cities obviously the records go back further than some areas of the country and then also depends on the family itself.
Generally speaking though most people are not interested in going back to the year 1400, 1500.
Most people are interested in establishing the place of residence of the family.
Because they realize that Irish people are, they live by an oral tradition.
The written records only go back to a certain time period anyway.
What they want to do is establish that my family was say in Ballet Purine in the 1700s in County Tipperary.
And so when they come over to visit Ireland they can go down and visit that area.
And they can sort of assume that the family was there for several hundred years prior to that even though there would be no written records for it.
Well, Hiberian research can do two things for people.
First of all we can hopefully in advance before people make their trip to Ireland we can do background research.
Sort of narrow their investigations to tell them what parish the family came from in Ireland.
So when they come over to do their visit to Ireland they can actually go down to the relevant area.
For example when we did President Reagan's ancestry he didn't know anything about it.
But in the end we pinpointed in Ballet Purine he came over to Ireland, went down to visit the parish and saw the relevant records.
We've done the Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulrooney.
We also have done John McEnroe's family.
Now he's a good example also because his family left Ireland relatively recently in about 1911.
And all four of his grandparents came from Ireland.
And then someone like Patrick Duffy we also did his ancestry.
If on the other hand people are interested in doing some research themselves what we can do is when they arrive in Ireland they can contact Hiberian research.
And we can advise them of where to start doing their research work.
A lot of people are interested in actually working through the archives themselves.
This is half the attraction of genealogy is that people like to get in there and do some work in the archives, the manuscripts, and sort of do their own family.
We can advise them step by step when they come to Ireland so they can just ring us or contact us in advance and let us know that they're coming.
And people should just make sure that they realize that it isn't always just the Irish sounding names that are Irish.
We get examples all the time.
We have just completed James Wright's ancestry.
He was the speaker of the House of Representatives in America.
We've done his family.
And the names are Wright on one side and Hannington on the other.
It's not a particularly Irish sounding name.
But you don't necessarily have to have an Irish sounding name to be of Irish ancestry.
Ireland also has a policy where if you can prove your grandparents were born here that you can claim dual nationality.
So a lot of, say, international businessmen who have to travel from country to country or particularly come to Europe,
which is involved with the EEC, European Economic Community,
they can claim an Irish passport if they can prove that their grandparents were born here.
Now that's quite prevalent with a lot of people.
If you would like to discover more about your Irish ancestors, there are two sources which may help you in your initial research.
Boardfulture, Ireland's tourist board, have published an information leaflet on tracing your family's roots.
And, of course, Tom and his staff at Hibernian Research would be glad to assist you in your search.
I hope our program has awakened in you a sense of pride in your heritage
and perhaps a hunger to know more about your own family's roots.
Why not come and visit the land of your forefathers, the Emerald Isle, the island of the Caden the Porteous?
The Emerald Isle
The Emerald Isle
The Emerald Isle