ABC Wednesday
March 16th, 2011

The letter this week is I and I stands for a country of great beauty,  romance and oft times great hardship, begorra.......to Irish the world over the wonderfully nostalgic homeland of  Ireland
with its ancient history, its music and its culture, all ties that tug at her children wherever they may roam.

From this Link I offer this very condensed version of the story of the Irish race.

It is said that the genuine Irish (Celtic) people of today are descended from Milesius of Spain, whose sons invaded and possessed themselves of Ireland a thousand years before Christ, and brought a powerful aristocracy to add to the Firbolg and the Tuatha De Danann peoples who populated Ireland at that time..  the Fibbolgs having been forced into partial serfdom by the Tuatha De Dannan,  a capable and cultured, highly civilized people, skilled in arts and crafts to such an extent that the Firblogs and the later Milesius created a mythology around them, and named then necromancers.

In a raging four day battle on the Mayo-Galway border the Tuatha De Dannann overthrew the Firblogs, but so bravely did the Firblogs fight that the De Dannann left that quarter of the Island wherein they fought to the Firblogs, - the province now called Connaught.

The struggle is commemorated by many cairns and pillars strewn on the great battle plain in Sligo.

Scotia was one of the earliest names of Ireland and the people were commonly called Scots.  One of its ancient titles was Hibernia, mostly traced from Eber or Heber, the first Milesian king, just as the much later name, Ireland, is by some traced from Ir, whose family were in the northeaster corner of the island.  Its own inhabitants called it Eire, - hence Eireland - Ireland.

"This Isle is sacred named by all the ancients,

From times remotest in the womb of Chronos,

This Isle which rises over the waves of ocean,

Is covered with a sod of rich luxuriance,

And peopled far and wide by the Hiberni"

by Rufus Avienus, written at the beginning of the fourth century.

And, of course, we all know that it is the land of the "Little People" - the Pots of Gold, the Fairies and those of the general population who have that slightly 'fey' look, as if they had ' just had breakfast with a Leprechaun'.

Charles and I both have Irish ancestry, - his from the Border country of Tipperary and County Clare....
the land of the Shamrock and the forty shades of green

and from whence his O'Callaghan ancestors came to Canada with the Peter Robinson Settlers,
By 1840 James O'Callaghan (C's great great grandfather) had purchased land
in Emily Township, in Upper Canada

and mine from Antrim, where my emigrant Scots ancestors settled in the early 18th century

and where they became part of the MasThamais native Gaelic Sept of County Cavan, and anglicized the name to Thompson, instead of MacCavish

John Thompson's reasons for coming to Canada have not yet become apparent, but his arrival at the time of the American Revolution indicate he may have come to serve in the British Army, and his eventual settlement on granted Clergy land in Stormont  County strengthens this suggestion.

He married an emigrant lass from Kincardinshire whose name, of course, was Arbuthnot.

Here is a charming touristy video about Ireland,  - do listen and you might become enchanted.....

For more takes on the letter I visit here at ABC Wednesday, with thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt

 and her crew of kindly helpers.