And a tip o’ the hat to all for St. Patrick’s day 2026.

Padraig (Patrick) is, of course, the patron saint of Ireland. And an official saint of the Roman Catholic Church, which claims him for Rome as the first bishop of Ireland. That is, of course, one of the many legends about Irish history that we know today to be wrong. (No, that isn’t him in the picture!)

Irish history is lost in the infamous mists of time (so Irish) and buried under the bright green of the island’s sod (again, so Irish). Popular history speaks of Celts as being the “indigenous” people of an Eire (Ireland) who were colonized and disinherited by evil Norman and English invaders (aided by their minion warriors and settlers of Scotland).

It is much more complicated, of course. The history of Eire is indeed very much like that of North America (Turtle Island): a constant series of invasions, occupation, colonization, and war. The first known humans to occupy the island, probably still connected to Britain and the continent at the time are called “mesolithic” (middle stone age) hunters and gatherers. These people, and perhaps those who settled among them later and called megalithic builders and farmers, are perhaps remembered as the Fir Bolg, a face of giants defeated by the invading Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology.

These first several groups of people are believed to have moved up the western coast of Europe, originating in the Mediterranean and Iberia. No empires or real kingdoms: just tribes (clans) and perhaps small city states. But they are not the ancestors of modern Irish people.

Enter the Celts: a people who apparently spread out of somewhere in central or eastern Europe, perhaps the Danube basin. And spread out, invading and taking control of a vast arc of Europe, from Iberia to Anatolia, and including the British Isles.

But though Celtic (Gaelic) culture is the heart of culture of both the Irish Republic and the principality of Northern Ireland, the story does not end there. The Norse, the Vikings who raided and invaded, and settled all along the coasts of Britain and Europe, had even a greater impact on Ireland: driving the “native” Celts deep into the fens and hills, seizing crowns and power as well as land. Much of the physical nature of modern Irish lads and lasses is the gift of Scandinavian ancestors.

So when the Normans, following William’s conquest of England, began to spread into Ireland? They were just the latest wave of “furriners” from the North (by a few generations) to invade and rule Ireland. This thus officially ended the powers of the clans and the five or six kingdoms: Ireland was finally “united.” And in the same way, the Normans and Saxons of the Kingdom of England continued to occupy the island. Of course, those worthies were now called “English” or soon (gasp) British! Come the brief rise of the Commonwealth (a republic, but hardly democratic) and its torture of Ireland, as well as the establishment of the Plantations? We see the large-scale settlement (“colonization”) of the six counties of Northern Ireland by Scots (themselves a mixture and result of invasion, conquest, more invasion, and soon to be “united” with England and Wales). And the first serious challenge to the Roman Catholicism which had supplanted the more ancient Celtic (and even possibly New Testament) Christianity of Ireland.

The Irish rebellions and ultimately the winning of Independence by the south from the United Kingdom was not Celtic tribes (clans) regaining independence from colonizers. Indeed, the leaders of that effort and those often in power today in the Republic trace ancestry and culture back to Norse and Norman, Scot and Welsh, Celtic and even French, roots.

Today, there are still many Americans of Irish descent (and others) who are demanding the equal of the Lakota “Landback” effort: the forced unification of Northern Ireland with Ireland but outside the United Kingdom. But if Northern Ireland is to be severed from its ties to London, who should really get it? Modern Irish mongrels? Pure-blood who? Scandinavian waterborne warriors? Norman lords and ladies? Gaelic clan chiefs and tanists? Just who?

Just as in North America, or virtually any other continent or region, trying to figure who first occupied previously truly empty land (when someone first really “discovered” Ireland) is impossible. We do know that (as in North America and elsewhere) land has been “stolen” (conquered, occupied) over and over again. Almost always by force of arms. That does not make it “right” but it is what it is. Trying to undo things that happened 500, 1000, 1500, or more years very seldom works, and very seldom is truly just. Much less honorable.

About Patrick (Padraig) “of Ireland”

Back briefly to Padraig, the “patron saint” of Ireland, honored today. He was actually from northern Britain, possibly near Hadrian’s wall. The SPQR still ruled Britain when he was born about AD 380: his ancestry was British but he was culturally a Roman! And a christian; almost surely a Celtic one, rejecting the authority of a pope in Rome and the developing Roman Catholic Church. Imperial troops (the Legions) were withdrawn from Britain in AD 410, but some time before that, Padraig was kidnapped and enslaved by raider from Ireland. Later escaping and returning to what is now England, his growing faith and conviction that God had plans for him led him to study and return to Ireland to preach the Gospel. A few centuries later (late 500s), Roman Catholic prelates won over monarchs in both Britain and Ireland and forced wholesale acceptance of Catholicism by both pagans and Celtic christians. By that time, the Roman Catholic Church was both a “religion” and government in more and more places. Thus did church and state combine to take away liberty in both Britain and Ireland.