January 2017 – Red Branch Chronicles

Chicken Liver Curry

I know, I know, maybe the idea of organ meats doesn’t appeal to everyone but I can assure you that this simple recipe, which can be whipped up in less than 30 minutes, is a complete stunner.

Completely different to calf or lamb liver – delicious in their own way with creamy mashed potatoes, bacon and onions – (which I could get my kids to eat by telling them it was exotoc goanna tongue!) this chicken liver curry is in a class of its own.

I was shown this recipe on 28 February 1991 when I was living in S. E. Asia but amazingly it was not an Asian who introduced me to the rich, velvety texture of this luscious dish but a good friend from Poland! Thanks K. Anyway, here is the recipe I learned more that a quarter of a century – gulp! – ago.

500g chicken livers 2 Tbs oil 1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped 2 Tbs grated ginger, 2 ripe tomatoes, chopped

1/2 tsp turmeric 1 tsp chilli powder 2 tsp ground cumin

3 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp garam masala 1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Wash and drain the livers. Cut each in half and discard any yucky bits.

Heat the oil and fry the chopped onions, garlic and ginger until the onion is soft and golden.

Add the ground turmeric, chilli, coriander and cumin and fry, stirring for about 2 minutes.

Add the garam masala, tomato and salt and cook, covered until the tomatoes are pulpy. Mash them with the back of a fork if necessary.

Add the chicken livers, stir well, sprinkle with the black pepper and cook, covered again, for about 15 minutes. Serve with steamed rice or warmed flat bread or deep fried tofu chunks or even baked potatoes. Gorgeous!

Oops – just realisedI have no photos to show even though I cooked this dish tonight, the last day of January. Honestly, it took me less than half an hour and it hadn’t occurred to me to put this on the blog until I had almost finished eating it (with the firm, deep fried tofu chunks I mentioned above!) Sorry – photos next time

Prologue

I haven’t done an audio recording of Raiding Cooley for a while – and it would feel a bit too strange to do a video recording of me reading, so I think I’ll give that a miss for now.

Anyway, trying to decide what to read – whether to begin at the beginning or just pick a point at random, like I’ve done before.

OK, the very, very, very beginning.

The Prologue outlines the reasons why the Triple Goddess of War cursed the warriors of the Ulaidh Kingdom in Celtic Ireland, thereby setting the scene for the future consequences of the curse, and, incidentally, the beginning of the story proper, about 450 years later. Imperial Rome is still occupied with subduing the Celts in Gaul and Teutonics in northern Rhineland in 57 BCE but Caesar is already planning the first invasion of Britain. Ireland, while sharing extensive linguistic, cultural and extensive trade links with both Britain and Europe, remains a land of mystery, remote from Roman rule.

Iron Age Hero Traits

Along with the rise of the hill forts circa 1000 BCE, and the emphasis on items both as weapons and ornamentation, the stratification of society, into chieftains or kings surrounded by nobles and warriors supported by priests or druids interceding for farmers, craft-workers and slaves, was firmly established. This hierarchy inevitably involved the notion of the hero or champion and was marked by a leader able to distribute gifts and largesse while, at the same time, host feasts and celebrations where warriors would vie with each other for the favour of their liege. Such restrained power necessitated the rise of the heroic warrior, the hero, to stand alone and unbeaten. No doubt the flowering of literature of the twelfth century French Romance and Mallory’s later Arthurian romances must all have stemmed from the Iron Age concept.

Not everyone would – or could – be a hero. While all young boys played fierce physical games with wooden sticks – a proto Hurley? – before weapons could be handled, a hero was always set apart. Never having recognised parents and a mysterious background, Arthur is fostered at an early age just as Oedipus is brought up in ignorance of his parents and Lancelot of Arthurian legend is raised by the shadowy Lady of the Lake while Cú Chulainn’s birth is similarly shrouded in mystery.

Not obvious parentage means the hero has no name and must acquire one through his own actions – Sétanta kills the forge hound and becomes Cú Chulainn, while later Celtic heroes, Finn and the Welsh, Gwion, gain their later names of brilliance and light. The significance of having no family means a concomitant feeling of standing alone – the hero can expect no aid in his quest for glory but at the same time no limits are placed on his ambitions for his name to live on, forever, on the lips of men.

Never accepted in his own country, the Iron Age hero must leave his comfort zone, undergoing training at the hands of learned druids or experienced warriors. Tests of physical prowess, – ability to jump or vault over a stick their own height, run barefoot through a forest without breaking a twig underfoot, defend against 9 men throwing spears, remove a thorn from his foot while running – must be passed, but the hero must also be erudite and knowledgeable about poetry. Strangers approaching the territory of a chieftain had to undergo single combat or compose a poem on the spot.

Cú Chulainn trained under the tutelage of the warrior woman, Scáthach, who presented the fearsome gae bolga to the hero, along with a warning of its consequent use. Beowulf sought out sea monsters before going on to defeating Grendel and its mother, Arthur trained under the venerable Sir Ector de Maris, all to achieve the fame they sought. Beowulf leaves for the court of Denmark; Tristan of Arthurian legend travels to Ireland from his native Cornwall.

Nowhere in the manuscripts is it ever suggested that Cú Chulainn is not from the kingdom of the Ulaidh (modern day Ulster in Northern Ireland) nevertheless, when all the fighting age men of the area are stricken with an ancient curse, Cú Chulainn alone is exempt. Like all his fellow outsiders, having no ties to hamper his actions, the hero inevitably becomes a force for disruption, change and catastrophe.

Heroes must claim their weapons forcibly or obtain them from supernatural forces – Lancelot receives his sword from the Lady of the lake, Beowulf discovers a sword in the lair beneath the lake, and Cú Chulainn smashes King Conor’s armoury before the king himself presented the nascent hero with his very own weapons while the youthful Arthur plucks the sword from the stone.

A tipping point occurs in all the lives of the heroes when the focus on honour and glory supersedes the needs or bonds of their society. Achilles rejects his mother’s help and chooses to die before the walls of Troy. Cú Chulainn hears the druid’s prophecy of bloody and glory but still chooses to seek the latter. This tipping point influences the remaining portion of the heroes’ life. Every further irrevocable action with the umbrella-like spear, the gae bolga, that Cú Chulainn accepts from the hands of Scáthach maintains or furthers the glorification of his name. Chulainn, in his killing fury, is just as prepared to slaughter his enemies as his compatriots once his battle fury descends upon him.

Mortal enemies of the heroes often involve demonic or supernatural forces as human weapons have little effect upon them, Achilles is dipped in the pool of immortality, Arthur is protected by the power of Excalibur and Cú Chulainn is unassailable when he is in his battle fury. The inevitable downfall of the hero is, therefore, always linked with the breaking of a vow or the forsaking of an oath. Arthur is killed at the hands of his illegitimate son, Cú Chulainn dies alone after breaking the taboos that ruled his life, Beowulf meets his demise by neglecting his role of kingship and acting as if he were still the hero.

European Peace Walk

I recently received the European Peace Walk (EPW) guidebook for 2017. I know I mentioned ages ago that I was going to do this Walk – a 500+K walking trail through six European countries – Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Italy – over three weeks. It seems a bit daunting, given the current state of my overall fitness. Some days involve 30K hike between sleepovers and the most I’ve done so far is about 16k or so. Anyway, I don’t begin until mid summer – July 04, – so I still have a few months to get up to speed.

I’m really looking forward to this – it is going to be both an adventure and a bit of a learning curve – grappling with languages I don’t know – I only have a smattering of German and Italian, spoken, respectively, at the start and end of the journey, and no idea of the cultures, history, topography, everything.

Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia didn’t exist as separate entities when I was in school and when the Balkans began its tragic breakup after the death of Marshall Tito, I was no longer living in Europe and the events passed me by, for the most part. Since its debut in 2014, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War, the EPW now passes through Slavic, Teutonic & Romantic cultures, a route only made possible by the geo-political collapse of the region’s former Democratic, Communist and Socialist political allegiances. As recently as 1989, the EPW would not have been feasible, as Europe was still divided into the above contrasting ideologies and its borders and peoples were firmly closed. Now, it is possible to have breakfast in Hungary, lunch in Slovenia and sleep that night in Croatia! So an exciting learning curve there, getting to grips with the tangled histories of the region – I think Bismarck once referred to the Balkans as “the sick man of Europe” – and that, along with the dourness I associated with the former Iron Curtain countries may have contributed to my former lack of interest in the area. But now? Rolling countryside, originally populated by Celts before they (were?) moved on in their endless migrations and then there is the wine and food of the different regions. Can’t wait!

It’s kind of exciting to know that I will have to be totally alone, solely responsible for my own safety and enjoyment in exciting and new environments. I think the whole journey will be a mixture of ‘down-time” and reflection – perhaps not as spiritually reflective as on the Camino, – as well as a physical challenge (in between wines, beers and exciting food) as well as meeting and communicating with locals along the way as well as the 9 other walkers who begin on the same day I do. I suppose both the EPW and the Camino bring people together to share common experiences as well as to learn about each other’s differences and I think this might well embody the ‘Peace’ aspect of the EPW.

Anyway, I have already started planning and preparing,and that’s half the fun, isn’t it?. I bought a new 30 litre capacity backpack, a good pair of walking shoes – not boots – shirts and jackets and pants made of modern textiles which “wick” the sweat away from the skin while at the same time keeping me warm in cold weather and cool in hot. We’ll see. I want to travel really light, total weight, including my bag, should be no more than 10Kg. I’ll have to start carrying the bag when I walk soon. So, that is my current curve – start walking more in this Perth summer heat and build up to at least 20 – 25 k a day so that when July rolls around I will be in some type of fit condition to actually enjoy the walk and the surroundings. Wish me luck!

http://www.facebook.com/european.peacewalk

http://www.peacewalk.eu

Ceviche

I mentioned in a previous post somewhere that I had been looking forward to trying a Peruvian national dish, cuy al horno – roast guinea pig – but overall, I’d have to say I prefer the dish more commonly eaten down on the coast – ceviche. Chunks of white fish in a spicy lime marinade – tiger’s milk – served with an variety of corn kernels and chopped veg. Absolutely gorgeous and so perfect for a hot summer’s day.

Here’s my take on it. For this particular serving, this is exactly what I used: 320g of firm white grouper fillet, two tomatoes, 1/2 a red, 1/2 green capsicum, one small Lebanese cucumber and 1/4 of a red onion, three limes and one lemon with 1/4 teaspoon of coarse sea salt crystals and one chopped red chili, corn chips and popcorn

The basic ingredients, which remained the same as far down as Santiago in Chile, are:

Any firm, white fish with ½ cup of lime juice for each 500g or pound of fish.

Red onion, chopped and as much seeded capsicum (any colour), toms, red onion and cucumber as you like, lime juice, salt and a red chili, coriander or mint or both, corn chips or popcorn and sliced avocados.

Check the fillet for skin, bones and the dark red bloodline, if any. Depending on thickness, cut the fish into large, even chunks or slice into thin pieces and put into a glass or ceramic dish along with enough lime juice, (approx. 1/2 cup per 500g fish), sea salt and finely chopped chilies to completely cover. Set aside and chill.

I put the chopped veg in a separate dish, sprinkled with olive oil and a dash of freshly ground pepper. I didn’t want to put the veg and fish in the same dish so as the veg can keep their colour and not blanch in the lime marinade.

When the fish becomes translucent, whiter in color and opaque, drain off the marinade and mix the fish gently with the chopped veg.

I gave the fish about 90 minutes and then straining it and reserving the marinade. A thick chunk of fish was cooked through to the consistency of medium rare meat. If you like it more well done, give it up to four hours in the lime marinade.

I spooned some of the veg mixture into a bowl, ladled a scoop of the drained fish on top, and sprinkled with chopped coriander and popcorn, with corn chips around the dish. I forgot the avocado!

I suppose some might be put off by the amount of limejuice – too acidic, I can hear people say. However, limes and lemons while acidic of course, somehow become alkaline when consumed and besides use only as much of the strained marinade – tiger milk – as you feel comfortable with.

Cuba and beyond – Part 3

Peru

Arrived in Peru on a very comfortable overnight bus from Cuenca that took me down to Tumbes, Ecuador’s border post with Peru. Before I go any further, I have to clarify here what I mean by a bus. I have travelled on Greyhounds across the US back in the 70’s and on long distance buses through Western Australia since then but I have never come across such luxurious bus travel as I have done so far in South America. First off, most of the buses – excuse me, coaches – are modern, sleek, two storey jobs with plush, airline style seats. Unlike most airline seats however, all of the seats here recline from a minimum of comfortably back to completely back, i.e., 180 degrees or “Executivo” class, each seat fully contained and separate with its personal TV screen while the on-board loo would not be out of place on Airforce One. I digress.

Minor delays to exit Ecuador and enter Peru – a bit like going from Saigon to Cambodia, – and then back on the bus until a beach resort called Mancora before dawn. I could have gotten a room right away but the night porter obligingly suggested that I wait until 6:00 AM as, that way, I wouldn’t have to pay for the previous night! I waited outside the gated resort at a small kiosk drinking beer and waiting for daybreak with the local desperadoes and long term ex-pat exiles, Patrick and Giorgio. The latter, a wrinkled veteran, hinted the upscale resort was pretending to be a backpacker place before offering me tours to watch whales or deep-sea fishing, treks to hot springs and mud baths.
I’ve always enjoyed beach holidays – in fact up until my late teens or early twenties, they were the only type of holiday I had ever had – and this was the Pacific, rolling in along an endless flat coastline as far as the eye could see in either direction, while Stuka winged birds swooped in
a stormy sky but the season here was coming to an end and there was never any pepper in the restaurants, the coffee was crap and long Pacific waves rolled in constant curls and I ended up being the only person staying on an isolated beach strip.

On down the west coast from Piura, a small northern town on a “Super-executivo” to Lima. It was like flying business class. My seat was called a suite and reclined all the way back to a flat bed. Two meals and drinks were served by a pretty little hostess, just like on a plane, and the loo was twice the size found there as well. The approach to the capital was along sand-blasted looking cliffs while a sullen slate-grey Pacific rolled relentlessly against the shore where an immense grey city, perpetually wrapped in a silver sea mist or fog, sprawled.

It is always such a fantastic thing to go somewhere and then indulge with the national dishes and one of Peru’s national dishes is roasted guinea pig – I bet it tastes like chicken! Of course the other national essentials are ceviche and pisco sours – rum, lime, sugar and egg white whipped up in a blender.

Down on the Malecon I felt dwarfed by the magnitude of the leaden expanse of the Pacific stretching endlessly away, awed by an ocean too vast for me to get a handle on.

Another super executivo inland then, along with a few cocoa leaves to chew, to Cusco, an old Inca Indian capital, somewhere around 3400 metres. High in the mountains in Peru, the old Inca capital, at about 3600 metres above sea level means difficulty breathing – but not for the Incas who built the city more than 500 years ago. The Spanish came then and raped the city, stole the gold and used the blocks of stone from the Inca temples to build their own churches and buildings. An amazing, solid city high in the mountains – a Siam Reap or an Ayutthaya alive with their original inhabitants, along with the tourists. Churches and squares everywhere instead of temples and pagodas – atmospheric and bewildering, warm during the day and then freezing at night. The steep climb between my hostel and Paddy’s Bar, the highest 100% Irish owned bar in S. America at 11156 feet, was an exhausting and panting effort! Machu Pichu become unattractive to me at an even higher altitude and I headed to the lower altitude city of Arequipa, surrounded by snow capped mountains and guarded by three active volcanoes – the last eruption only a dozen years or so ago.

To compensate for missing out one of the wonders of the world, I had my first roast guinea pig for dinner. I thought it would just be like chicken but it was more like rabbit or quail. Not a lot of eating on a guinea pig I have to say and I was glad I hadn’t ordered the fillet but instead had the whole beast, head, tail, claws, the works.

Before I had left Lima, a friendly bar-tender had given me a handful of cocoa leaves, for the altitude she had insisted and I decided to go to Cusco’s local wet market where I was sure to find more. For a few cents a withered crone stuffed a bag the size of a pillow case with the bitter leaves and then threw in a few sticks of some grey resin, stevia it turned out, to offset the bitterness of the leaves when chewed. There was the most incredible variety and abundance in the market, fresh squeezed juices, fruits and vegetables, most of them totally unknown to me, piled high in gleaming mounds. Potatoes ranged in size from peanuts to cabbage size and in colour from black to purple and yellow while the market itself was spotless, bright and airy. Corn was everywhere and in every size too from tiny kernels to knobs as big as my little finger joint.

Squat Inca women, all wrapped in heavy, embroidered shawls, colourful duster-like arrangements on their heads, sat in the main square, their legs straight in front of them, doing traditional weaving or selling local handicrafts. Smiling girls in elaborate costumes decorated with silver coins and outlandish headdresses cuddled baby alpacas in their laps and posed against the massive stone blocks of an imposing church for tourist photographs but I was more interested in food.

Picanterias – local, family run small enterprise restaurants – serve traditional stews of beans and corn, stewed endlessly and served with meat barbecued on a cast iron parilla and I wanted llama. Although everyone seemed to know about picanterias, nobody seemed able to direct me to one so in desperation I took a taxi and told him to take me to his recommendation of a picanteria. After a moment or two of goggling at me uncomprehendingly, he slammed the car into gear and we roared out of the town centre up a gravelled road to a large, whitewashed building climbing the steep hillside. No llama, they assured me but ‘same-same but better” alpaca cooked on the parilla. The slab of meat was too much for me and I was glad of the extended stroll back into the city centre when the picanteria unceremoniously shut down in the early afternoon. Maybe a picanteria where the guinea pigs run around in the kitchen instead, feeding off scraps, would be more my size!

Fatigued from both the altitude and the culture overload about cities I had never before heard of, and their extraordinary churches, convents and castles – all built at the behest of a handful of Spanish (less than 180 men) who invaded in 1530 or so and conquered the ruling Inca tribes and their vast empire stretching almost the length of the continent, I moved on to Puno, the stopover point for Lake Titicaca, the highest and one of the largest lakes in the world, making Lake Argyle in the Kimberley in West Australia look like a puddle.

I remember reading about the extraordinarily strong convictions of Thor Heyerdahl and his Kon-Tiki expedition and thinking how exciting to venture on such a trip on a balsa-wood raft. But for the small communities on the border between Peru and Bolivia who lived on massive floating reed islands showed just how buoyant their floating homes were. Their high prowed reed boats provide both a security and a living on the immense lake. A bit like the old Celtic habit, I suppose, of building fortified, enclosed homes on brushwood platforms over water or bogs – the Crannóg.

Those reed boats now seem mainly for the tourists but at the same time I was rather relieved when my bus drove onto a sturdy wooden raft powered by a tiny outboard motor before attempting the border crossing into Bolivia. I warily climbed, with the other punters, into a tiny speedboat to make the same crossing in a fraction of the time it took our bus! The road would endlessly and sinuously up and up, it seemed into the snow-capped mountains and the high altitude began to affect my breathing again long before we seemed to make a circuitous descent into La Paz.

So far I’ve covered the length of the continent from Quito in Ecuador down to the tail end of Peru and thank God for loads of things like hot, sunny days and cold nights and heavy warm duvets on the beds, I mused, as I sipped a small bottle of good rum I had thoughtfully provided myself with against the cold.

Who are the Irish and Where did their Language come from? Part Three

Ireland was a different story – relatively untouched by Rome, society there did not change dramatically until the advent of Christianity 500 years later. Groups of Celtic speaking people continued to arrive and leave, bringing with them La Tène styles and influences. Iron Age Celts thus survived in Ireland long after it had been wiped out elsewhere.

Linguists refer to the languages spoken in Britain and Ireland as Insular Celtic which can be further subdivided into Brittonic or P-Celtic and Goidelic or Q-Celtic, as in the table below.

Insular Celtic
Brittonic or P-Celtic				Goidelic or Q-Celtic,
Ancient British	Welsh	Cornish	Breton	Irish	Scots	Manx

Whether the ancient Celts can be identified with the Gauls that Caesar defeated, the Insular Celtic languages are closely related to one another and to the other Celtic languages of Europe, now sadly extinct. Although the earliest record of what is now known as Irish dates from the 5th century A.D. in the form of a simple inscription, there is no doubt that Irish is a branch of Celtic which is a branch of Indo-European and Irish cannot have arrived in Ireland before the spread of the Indo European languages.

Despite the similarities and inter-relationships between the Celtic languages, it is not possible to pinpoint the exact origin of Irish. Linguistically speaking, the more similar two languages are to each other, the less time they have spent apart and the languages of Ireland, Britain and Gaul are remarkably similar and related to Proto Celtic.

Obviously, languages like French, Spanish and Italian bear striking similarities, so much so that they can be viewed as cousins, with their parent language being Latin, as spoken during the Roman Empire.

Similarly, Irish can be seen as cousin to Welsh, Cornish and Breton on one hand and to Scots Gaelic and Manx on the other and the original parent language would have been Common Celtic.

A subset of the Proto- Indo European Family of Languages
Celtic	Italic	Germanic	Slavonic	Greek
Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Scots Gaelic & Manx	Latin, French, Spanish, Italian etc.	English, German, Scandinavian languages	Russian

The shared vocabulary of all Indo European languages, including Celtic, indicates there could have been no separation of the Celtic group into divergent dialects before the development of farming soon after the end of the Stone Age as the ancestors of Indo European flood in from Eastern Europe and Western Asia in four main Language groups – Graeco-Latin along the Mediterranean, the Germanic around the Baltic, the Slavonic in the east and the Celtic in the centre and west. It is impossible to see “Irish” arriving during the Neolithic period as that would postulate a physical split between the earliest speakers of Irish, British and Gaulish back to 4000 BCE.

Equally, it is next to impossible to imagine a Celtic language entering Ireland much before 1000 BCE. Although Ireland was in contact with Britain and Europe for nearly a thousands years prior to this, as seen through the distribution of ceramics, polished stone axes and megalithic tombs, and that link continued throughout the Bronze Age, with the exchange of weapons and ornaments, but again there is no direct evidence for Irish having been introduced as a “trade” language or as a “lingua franca”. Neither Irish nor any other Celtic language have the aspect of a pidgin or trade language nor are they simplified in any way while their respective grammars and vocabularies retain the full range of their Proto-Indo European ancestor.

By 300 BCE, archaeological evidence indicates the spread of La Tène culture and the arrival of small groups or bands but no sign of a major settlement of a foreign population. Nevertheless, the evidence of tribal names suggests that Celtic speakers, both Goidelic and Brittonic with the former gradually subsuming the latter, occupied large areas.

So, if the accounts in the Book of Invasions are discounted as to the origins of the Irish and their language and Irish was not a trade language introduced during the Bronze Age, what is left?

Although multiple opportunities for a language shift in Ireland have been postulated, the one most likely to have been the direct ancestor of Irish aligns itself with the rise of the hill forts from 1000 BCE as the sites assumed significant religious and ceremonial features. The spread of regional centres in areas of Ireland – Crúachan in the west, Eamhain Macha in the north, Dún Ailinne in the east, Cashel in the south and Tara in the middle – might also herald the arrival of a new language.

So, although Irish was not native to Ireland, there would have been Celtic predecessors brought in multiple times by small groups from similar areas of the Atlantic seaboard and Britain who introduced their language, not through warfare but more likely, through having a more productive economy or just by simply outnumbering the sparse native population and whose identity became subsumed under a continuing influx of Celtic people. Bi-lingualism is the first stage when two languages meet and the native Irelanders would have adopted Proto Irish if it had been in their interests to do so.

Languages represent social phenomena with no language being intrinsically superior or inferior to another. Instead, language is used to fulfil essential social contacts in areas such as religion, law, sport, trade, literature and so on. Linguists refer to these social contexts as “language domains”. The new or target language is often linked with specific domains and, in the case of a “proto Irish” arriving in Ireland, the new language must have either filled in an existing domain or else created a need for a new one so that the native inhabitants would have thought it worth their while to embrace the new language.

So, the most probably reason for the adaptation of a “proto-Irish” by native Irelanders was that the new language offered the people access to something they did not have before – perhaps it was a tighter form of social organisation,

based on stratification, feasting, gift giving or some type of social prestige – a warrior elite or a new religion. Traditionally, the spread of world religions often carried with it a new language, Islam and Arabic, for example or Christianity and Latin.

The spread of hill forts and the regional centres they controlled, along with the rise of iron weaponry, leading to a warrior elite such as the Red Branch (Craobh Ruadh), with society forming clearly delineated stratification lines between tribal chiefs, religious leaders or druids, the warrior elites and the trade and craft people all tended to attract the native Irelanders to a new social system and the language that came with it. The overall result might have caused the native “Irelanders” to identify with and behave like the early speakers of “proto Irish”.

So, on the basis of archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence, it seems most likely that from 1000 BCE, “proto Irish” would have arrived with different Celtic groups, pushed to the fringes of Europe from the inhabited La Tène lands into Britain and then further west into Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Certainly by 100 AD, a Celtic language, the predecessor to the modern Irish language, was in place. Linguistically, Old Irish was a monolithic language, meaning that, if it had been in Ireland for millennia, it would have developed dialects, which it did not do until more recent times.

In conclusion, it seems that the language known today as Irish arrived in Ireland sometime between 1000 – 100 BCE with evidence for both Brittonic and Goidelic groups establishing central foci for existing communities and ultimately providing a means of dividing Ireland up into different social groups, tribes and clans. Nevertheless, it would be nonsense to think of the people then as an Irish nation, the first reference to which only occurred nearly 1800 years later!