On This Day 1607: The Flight of the Earls. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone & Red O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell and their followers leave Ulster for mainland Europe. They sailed out of Rathmullan, Lough Swilly for Spain, never to return. It was the end of Gaelic Ireland.

James Connolly denouncing Irish politicians who agree with partition parliaments functioning in Ireland.

Irish traveller(gypsy) family by the roadside, County Kerry, 1954.

Fishermen from the Aran Islands dress up in their Sunday best 'for the photographer' John Hinde. Ireland, 1969.

'A free nation is one which possesses absolute control over all its own internal resources and powers...Is that the case of Ireland? - James Connolly

'Ireland is in the throes of a new invasion..It is a new plantation, this time with the blessing and connivance of the Parliamentary leaders of the Irish race'.

- James Connolly speaking against the influx of foreign workers into Ireland, March 1916.

Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge and street as seen from Westmoreland Street in the 1940s.

St James' Walk in Rialto, Dublin, 1950's.

This part of the Grand Canal once led to the Guinness barge harbour, supplying the brewery with grain and hops. Today it's a Luas Tram Line.

The word Gael, or 'Gaelic' is derived from meaning ‘forest people'.

Irish people were always noted their high regard for trees: Forested areas once covered the whole country; they were religious centres, providers of food/fuel, & protected by Brehon law. Part of Irish identity.

" A people without a language of its own is only half a nation.
A nation should guard its language more than its territories — 'tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river. "

Thomas Davis in his essay Our National Language, 1st of April 1843

Henry II famously attacked Ireland’s forests and bogs ‘as barriers to conquest and repositories of rebellion’. Throughout the land, forests were used as bases for resistance and as bastions against colonisation. For this reason Elizabeth I 'declared war' on the wilds of Ireland.

The Kern was the original Irish 'forest fighter'. These lightly armed warriors lived in the deep forest & employed tactics to wear down their foe. The Elizabethans called them 'woodkerne' - a hated symbol of an unconquered land made up of wolves and Irishmen.