SNIPPET: The past is never very far away for the Irish. In fact, some people have said that the Irish are haunted by the past. One look at the landscape dotted with powerful reminders of history, from the huge stone "tables" of the ancient portal dolmen graves, to the ring forts, and standing stones with their primitive Ogham script, to the High Crosses and Round Towers, to the crumbling monastery and castle ruins, confirms the place of history in the Irish consciousness. The land itself is very much part of Irish history. Although the literary tradition did not begin until about the 8th century, the sagas then chronicled are actually the myths and legends of pre-literate, pagan Ireland - legends which survived for hundreds of years through a strong oral tradition. It is through these ancient sagas, tales that had flourished through the art of the storyteller, that we learn of Celtic life. There was no one definitive book we can turn to, to find the sagas because they are contained in several manuscripts including the "Book of the Dun Cow," the "Yellow Book of Lecan," and the "Book of Leinster." Early Irish legends describe the brave deeds of mythic heroic figures. One example - In the Celtic agrarian society cattle were the chief form of wealth, and cattle raids were the means to add to one's wealth. According to Irish legend, Queen Maeve's armies invade Ulster to capture and bring home to Connacht the magnificent brown bull of Cooley to satisfy the Queen's need to have more possessions than her husband. Although the story itself is improbable, we learn about the rich and powerful warrior life in ancient Ireland. The Celts were a warrior society; they were fierce fighters with a strong sense of justice. They were also rich in the arts and civilized life. Celtic society was rigidly stratified as the Brehon law tracts indicate, but the poets and storytellers were as revered as the aristocratic warriors. The clearest picture of the cultivation and imagination of the Celts can be seen in the richly ornamented metalwork of the La Tene style. When the first Christian missionaries came to Ireland is not known, but in the 5th century St. Patrick introduced Latin, writing, and the Christian creed to the Irish. A selection from his "Confession" recounts his wish to return to Ireland (he had been taken as a captive several years before and spent six years tending sheep in Antrim) as a Christian missionary after having a dream in which he was given a letter and heard the "voice of the Irish" ask him to "come and walk among us once more." "The confession," from his last years, is one of only two written works left by St. Patrick. Over the next five centuries the Irish developed many monasteries that flourished as centers of learning. These monasteries influenced all of Ireland, and the missionaries sent from them brought classical learning to the European countries. Monasteries that dotted the countryside such as Glendalough, Clonmacnoise, Kells, Armagh, were not only respected centers of learning, but producers of extraordinary art including illuminated manuscripts and liturgical objects in intricately-designed metalwork. Monasteries became large and important centers of wealth and cultural activity. The period is chiefly marked by the splendor of its religious art, of manuscript illumination (The "Book of Kells" and the "Book of Durrow")and stone sculpture (South Cross at Clonmacnoise and Muiredach's Cross at Monasterboice), and by the magnificence of its metal-working which captures three-dimensionally the heavily-decorated manuscript pages (Ardagh Chalice, Tara Brooch, many book shrines and reliquaries). Artistic achievement was given a new purpose by linking it to religious practice. In the monasteries, the very act of writing became a form of prayer. These scribes became the masters of Christian scholarship and their artwork became one of the greatest glories of Irish monasticism. As the monasteries grew, so did the demand for manuscripts. The production of manuscripts became important and large-scale. The earliest Irish manuscript, the "Cathach" of St. Columba, is a fragmentary liturgical book with simple initial decorations. This form found its highest expression in the extraordinary illuminated manuscript of the "Book of Kells," a masterpiece of the finest calligraphy and painting. In contrast to these busy, flourishing, scholarly centers were the small bands of self-exiled monks who sought the isolation and asceticism of life on a craggy island or mountaintop far away from the world and its problems. The monastic village perched atop the lonely rock of Skellig Michael in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Kerry is the site of six small beehive stone huts which have survived along with a small oratory where the monks gathered for prayer, and the ruins of a small church and a few tombstones. This was certainly a lonely and difficult way to worship God, but it also freed the monks from worldly interruptions and constraints and temptation. The illiterate, pagan Viking raiders who disrupted Irish manuscript production and monastic life in the 9th and 10th centuries were interested in the valuable, precious metals used for the book shrines and liturgical objects. The Irish response to the attacks was one of terror; the Vikings came to conquer. But these invaders were also sea-faring merchants who established the town of Dublin, and other coastal towns of Waterford, Wexford, Limerick and Cork. By the middle of the 10th century, these towns were thriving centers of trade with the rest of Europe. -- Excerpts, "The Irish, A Treasury of Art and Literature," ed. Leslie Conron Carola (1993).