Page:Foras feasa ar Éirinn - Keating; Comyn, Dinneen.djvu/33

THE ORIGINS OF IRISH HISTORY.

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INTRODUCTION.

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

I.

Whosoever proposes to trace and follow up the ancient history and origin of any country ought to determine on setting down plainly the method which reveals most clearly the truth of the state of the country, and the condition of the people who inhabit it: and forasmuch as I have undertaken to investigate the groundwork of Irish historical knowledge, I have thought at the outset of deploring some part of her affliction and of her unequal contest; especially the unfairness which continues to be practised on her inhabitants, alike the old foreigners^[1] who are in possession more than four hundred years from the Norman invasion down, as well as the native Irish^[2] who have had possession during almost three thousand years. For there is no historian of all those who have written on Ireland from that epoch that has not continuously sought to cast reproach and blame both on the old foreign settlers and on the native Irish.

Whereof the testimony given by Cambrensis, Spenser,

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1. Sean-Ghaill: i.e. the first Norman invaders of Ireland in the twelfth century and their descendants: distinguished carefully by Keating from the Nua-Ghaill, i.e. the more recent English settlers, and the planters of his own time.
2. Gaedhil: i.e. the Gael, the native inhabitants of Ireland.

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after trí. Sic C: bliaḋoin, F; bliaġain, H. o ṡin alle, C. alle, F. 14. Gaoiḋiolaiḃ, C: Gaoḋalaiḃ, H.

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