--- In cybalist@... s.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@ ...> wrote:
>I'm surprised that the Irish, who were colonized for 800 years (900 if you're a Catholic in Belfast) never came up with an "Out of Ireland" myth for IE. James Joyce certainly could have come up with an entertaining version.
*****
I happen to be in the middle of reading a book on ancient Irish Tradition (Celtic Heritage by Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees 1961) which tells me "Five successive groups of invaders are said to have occupied Ireland before the ancestors of the Gaels eventually settled there" (the followers of Cessair, Partholon, and Nemed, and the Fir Bolg and Tuatha De Danann, if anyone cares).
It would seem autochthony just isn't that big a deal for some nations.
Dan
Read on, kiddo, read on. The point is that IE doesn't arrive till the Gaels c. 1000-500 BCE. The Irish had the good sense not to claim that Ireland was the Urheim of IE, unlike certain fanantics from elsewhere who make preposterous claims. Not that the Irish didn't love good bullshit stories as much as anyone else, their Medieval tales prove them to be masters of that art. Note that ultimately when you get back far enough, Ireland was empty, all the groups were invaders.