» HISTORY OF IRELAND
boat in which Irish people traded with Britain and western Europe, bringing back not only goods but also ideas, technologies and fashions. It was contained in a hoard of gold objects found in what had once been a salt-marsh on the shore at Lough Foyle, in Broighter, Co Derry. Apart from the delight of the boat
itself, what is striking is that the gold objects found with it are mostly imports, including two neck chains that come from the eastern Mediterranean, possibly from Roman Egypt. Ireland, which had previously been the
great producer of goldwork in western Europe, is now bringing it in from the outside. Whatever shifts of power were taking
place within Ireland, the beauty of the Broighter boat and the care lavished on its creation suggest that trade with the world beyond its shores was one of the drivers of change.”
22. ST PATRICK’S CONFESSIO, C AD460–90 “Ego Patricius, peccator rusticissimus et minimus omnium fi delium et contemptibilis sum apud plurimos… ‘My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a
simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many…’ These artfully humble words mark
three immense moments in the development of Irish culture. First, along with Patrick’s Letter to Coroticus, it is the oldest surviving piece of prose writing done in Ireland, and so signals one immense change: the arrival of literacy. Second, Patrick is the fi rst person in Ireland who can, through these texts, be positively identifi ed as an individual with a known life story. This, in other words, is the moment when prehistory ends and Irish history begins. Third, of course, Patrick’s ‘Confession’
speaks to us of one of the most paradoxical but profound developments in that Irish history. On the one hand, it is a dramatic narrative of the collapse of the Roman Empire. On the other, just as Roman power is vanishing, Patrick brings it to Ireland in another form: Christianity. Pictured is the earliest surviving manuscript copy, made around 807 by
74 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 7 Autumn/Winter 2013 the scribe Ferdomnach in Armagh.”
25. SPRINGMOUNT WAX TABLETS, LATE-SIXTH CENTURY “In 1913 a man cutting turf in Springmount bog in Ballyhutherland, Co. Antrim, found this set of six yew tablets, held together by leather straps. The inner tablets are hollowed out on
both sides, forming the pages of a small wooden book. These inner surfaces are fi lled with wax, on which someone wrote, or rather literally inscribed with a pointed stylus, a biblical text. This is the earliest extant Irish manuscript. Someone, a monk or a scholar at a monastic school, has written onto the wax in a beautifully precise hand parts of Psalms 30 and 31 from the Old Testament. What is fascinating is that the style of writing is already a distinctively Irish form (‘Irish majuscule’), one which survived into modern times. In a manner typical of Irish culture, it combines elements of existing scripts in a new way.
Literacy may be a cultural import from
the post-Roman world, but from very early on it is being rooted in the local.”
26. BALLINDERRY BROOCH, C AD600
“Found in the 1930s in a crannóg (lake dwelling) on the south side of Ballinderry Lough in Co Offaly, this is one of the most startlingly complex objects ever discovered in Ireland. It arose from a richly sophisticated and cosmopolitan culture in which pre-Christian forms are being subtly reshaped to elaborate Christian theology. It tells us that Irish art was both absorbing very complex iconography from as far away as Palestine and enriching it with older pagan symbolism. The brooch is zoomorphic (animal-shaped) and penannular (there is
a gap in the ring); this is a style developed in Roman Britain but popular in Ireland between the fi fth and seventh centuries. This is the most elaborate ever found.”
28. BOOK OF KELLS, C 800
“It has been called the Irish equivalent of the Sistine Chapel, and the analogy is not ridiculous. The Book of Kells is not merely the greatest work of Irish visual art, it belongs among the great creations of Western art. One big difference between the Book
of Kells and the Sistine Chapel, however, is that the manuscript is also funny and playful and combines its grand religious vision with a homely humanity. Everywhere there are touches of comedy: a letter extended to form a monk’s tonsure, a word broken in two by the paw of a cat. This is not to say that the task of making the book was anything but serious. It required the skin of 185 calves to make the vellum pages. The range of pigments used for its colours—orpiment, vermilion, verdigris, woad and, perhaps, folium—is far greater than that of other contemporary books. The consensus is that it was probably
made on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, whose heavily Irish monastery was founded by St Colmcille in 563. It may well have been intended to honour his memory: from early on it was known as ‘the great book of Columcille’. Iona was raided by Vikings in 802 and 806, and many of its monks retreated
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