A Kingdom Unique to Itself?

Geoffrey Keating’s lasting achievement is his monumental Foras Feasa ar Eirinn (‘Foundation of Knowledge on Ireland’), compiled around 1634, one of the aims of which was to refute what he regarded as the long-standing denigration of Ireland by foreign, mainly English commentators, and to assert its right to sovereign status. Ireland is, he says, a ‘kingdom unique to itself, like a little world’.1 However sincerely he may have held that view, Keating’s analysis, which has been shared by many others down through the centuries, has only served to perpetuate the notion that there was something immutable and archaic about early Irish society, an ‘enduring tradition’ (to borrow from the title of one recent work on the subject),2 which merited preservation in its own right, and which prevailed in spite of the country’s repeated subjection to external assault. This view does not do justice to its subject, in that it fails to recognize that Irish society was an evolving entity which was not only responsive to external stimulus but had within itself the capacity to change.