The Story of the Irish Race: A Popular History of Ireland (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Story of the Irish Race: A Popular History of IrelandThis is an attempt to sketch a rough and ready picture of the more prominent peaks that rise out of Ireland's past - the high spots in the story of our race.The story is developed with the object of interesting and informing the man who can not, or will not, afford the time to read studiously. Yet it is earnestly hoped that it may whet the appetites of many, and stimulate them to go browsing in broader and richer pastures - in anticipation of which there are set down, at ends of chapters or periods, titles of some of the more important books dealing with the subject just treated of.The writer was impelled to the compilation of this story of our race by the woeful lack of knowledge on the subject which he found in the four corners of America, among all classes of people, alike the intelligent and the ordinary. With the vast majority of America's intellectual ones he found Ireland's past as obscure as the past of Borneo. On three occasions he was asked by educated women who were pillars in their Societies, Has Ireland got a history?To a large extent the blame for American ignorance of Ireland's story rests upon the ignorance of our own exiles, and the children of those exiles. Were these possessed of a general knowledge of Ireland's past, and the proper pride that must come of that knowledge, the good Americans around them would catch information by contagion. The writer hopes that even this crude compendium may put some of the necessary knowledge and pride in the minds and hearts of his people - and also the incentive to seek out and study the history of the country that endowed them with the rare riches, spiritual and mental, that characterises the far-wandered children, and children's children, of the Gael.Also it Is to be hoped that many of the general American public, ever sympathetic toward Ireland, may, through the aid of this rough record, graduate from a state of instinctive sympathy and love to the beginning of an intelligent one.In making this compilation, the political narrative common to all Irish histories is given briefly.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.