Ireland Read Online Free PDF

religious ceremonies and celebrations? First, a great fire is lit to give both light and heat. The whole tribe, men, women and children then gather in a ring around the fire. Drums begin to beat and the druids dance around the blazing fire, the leaping flames casting their shadows on the glowing faces of those watching them. The druids are probably naked, their bodies dyed with woad, a blue dye obtained from a plant. They begin to chant, their voices echoing out in the darkness beyond the fire’s glow. Others begin to play whistles and then bronze horns are sounded, like the deep baying of some gigantic animal.
    The druids’ dance becomes more frenzied and their chanting grows louder. Bigger drums begin to boom and mingled with all those sounds is the droning of the horns. The druids are offering prayers to the gods in thanksgiving for the bountiful supply of food and for the continued good health of the people. They are asking the gods to grant them good weather when spring comes so that their people can plant their seeds. They pray, too, for a bumper crop at harvest time so that the tribe will again have sufficient food for the winter.
    Now the druids offer up a sacrifice to the gods. An animal is killed and its blood sprinkled on the earth, or even on the people gathered around the fire. A terrible thing – something we would not want to think about too much – is that sometimes a human sacrifice was made to the gods. Two male bodies, known as Clonycavan Man and Old Croghan Man, were found preserved in bogs in recent times. Both are thought to have been sacrificed to the gods. I’m glad to say that these sacrifices only took place on rare occasions, maybe when a new chief took over leadership of the tribe. The druids also buried valuable objects, or threw them into lakes as offerings to the gods. This is why we have found so many of these objects, which have helped us to understand our ancestors and their beliefs and how they lived.
    Because the people believed that the druids could persuade the gods to send sunshine or rain as required, they were revered and regarded with awe. Even the chiefs of the community feared and respected them. The chiefs would consult the druids before making any major decision, and so those men possessed great powers and privileges within their communities. Another group who held great power and privilege was the poets, or
filí
in Gaelic. They kept alive the stories and traditions and history of the people, and were held in great esteem.
    The arrival of the Celts changed Ireland forever. It became a Celtic nation and within 500 years the Celtic language, religion and customs were a normal part of everyday life. But warfare between different tribes also became a part of Irish life, and this violence brought great changes to the way people lived.

7
The Coming of Kings
    W hen the first people came to Ireland they would have belonged to one family or tribe. One man would have been the leader and would have made all the important decisions. If he had a son, then he became the leader when his father got too old or died. As the family got bigger, that leader gained more power. He now had more people to look after and to make decisions for.
    If a tribe was attacked and conquered then the members of that tribe became slaves for their conquerors. This gave the conquerors even more power, for now they had men, women and even children to work on their behalf. They could produce more food and goods, which they could then swap for things they needed. This swapping of goods is called barter. There was no money back then and so people had to barter what they possessed for what they needed. If a tribe had access to copper and tin and was good at making bronze axes, they could barter them with a tribe who made objects from leather, or that made pottery.
    When the Celts arrived, they were more powerful than the people already living in Ireland. They conquered these native people and became richer and even