This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ... THE INVASION OF IRELAND THE ANGLO-NORMANS. CHAPTER I. WHO THE IRISH WERE. When the first Norman invaders looked out eagerly from their galleys at the south-eastern coast of Ireland, which they were approaching, they beheld the shores low and the country generally level. Ireland, which on her three Atlantic sides rears lofty cliffs against the fury of the ocean, and lifts between it and her great central plain a further broad barrier of mountains or hills, is tame on herLeinster coast, where the districts are with one exception flat, and the margin of the sea only a strand. Leinster appeared to the over sanguine gaze of the followers of Fitz-Stephen, to kneel to England and invite B country, viz. the Fir-Bolg, the Tuatha-Danaan, and the Milesian, the first named must have been Celts, since we have abundant proof that they continued to form the bulk of the population after the arrival of the other two races. They may have come hither from Gaul or Britain, or even Spain, in which country the Celts had early pushed the aboriginal Iberians from some of the northern provinces. From all those countries Ireland was easily accessible even in that remote age. The date of the Fir-Bolg arrival is entirely conjectural, for it is lost in the haze of antiquity; but it may have been some twelve or fourteen centuries before Christ. They were conquered by the Tuatha-Danaan, a race whose civilization excited so much wonder in the people they subdued, that the traditions speak of them as wizards. The story of their arrival, and the description of their leader, display to us at once their skill in arts unknown to a primitive state of society, and the astonishment which such created among the rude aborigines. They approached the shores in a mist raised by...