101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History Quotes

“You can’t swing a cat in Ireland without hitting a saint.”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“Bean sídhe (banshee)—a female spirit associated with the ancestors of old Irish families, who wails terribly whenever someone in the family dies.”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“The Irish mingled their Christianity with folk beliefs in fairies and changelings.”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“One of the most important functions of monasteries was as schools. Monastic schools were well attended (mostly by boys). Some of the students were treated as foster children by the monks, living in the care of another family until they were ready to return to their homes and adult responsibilities. Many noble warrior fathers seem to have thought that their sons would be safer in a monastery than at home. Students had to find and prepare food for the monks and help out with the business of running the monastery. But most of their time was spent studying and working.”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“Cattle and metal treasure were the main forms of wealth in ancient Ireland—metal because it was rare, and cattle because they were useful. Cattle provided milk to drink and to make into cheese, and hide and meat after they were dead. If a king demanded tribute from his subjects, it would probably be in the form of cattle—in fact, a wealthy farmer was called a bóiare, or “lord of cows.” In the famous poem Táin Bó Cuailnge, a major war starts because Queen Mebd discovers that her husband has one more bull than she does. Celtic chieftains spent quite a bit of their energy stealing cattle from one another. They even had a special word for this activity, táin. (Cattle raiding wasn’t just an amusement for the ancient Irish; modern Irish people were stealing one another’s cattle well into the twentieth century.)”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“Interestingly, some of the worst anti-Irish discrimination came from the Scotch-Irish, who wanted to make clear that they were a different group from the impoverished newcomers.”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“Most of the first voluntary Irish immigrants came from Ulster in the north of Ireland. These immigrants were generally, although not exclusively, Protestants. They were known as “Scotch-Irish” or “Scots Irish,”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“Irish demographics reveal two startling facts: There are around 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish descent, and Ireland today has barely half the population that it had 160 years ago, a decline unmatched in the modern world. These facts are explained and connected by the undeniable social reality of nineteenth-century Ireland—emigration.”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle

“Ireland was a different place after the famine. The population was drastically reduced—an island of 8.2 million people in 1841 was reduced to 6 million in 1851. At least 1 million of those people had died. The rest fled the country, hoping for a new life in another land.”
― Ryan Hackney, 101 Things You Didn't Know About Irish History: The People, Places, Culture, and Tradition of the Emerald Isle