The old world in all its green and youthful beauty

I could fly from one side of Ireland to the other and I’d hear nothing but the rush of the wind, the running of the rivers and the wild creatures of the forests. There were no machines, no engines, no metal birds roaring through the sky. No roads and railways. No concrete buildings and smoking chimneys. No bellowing and rumbling of the industry of man. Just the old world in all its green and youthful beauty. Oh how I long for those days to return.

From The Cry of the Sebac, a novel by Anthony Murphy. Available on Amazon Kindle and coming to print soon.

https://www.amazon.com/Cry-Sebac-Anthony-Murphy-Journalist-ebook/dp/B01DE75Z50/

Quote about the Celt from Irish poet W.B. Yeats

A lovely quote from the Irish poet W.B. Yeats about Celtic people. This is from the introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, which was published in London in 1888.

Pledge to the king: unless the sky shall fall with its showers of stars on the ground, we shall not give ground

The fighting Irish . . . this is a quote from the famous Irish mythical epic Táin Bó Cuailnge. The Ulster heroes declare this to king Conchubhar when he calls upon them to leave a battle in order to meet an attack in another part of the field.

Heaven is above us,
and earth beneath us,
and the sea is round about us.
Unless the sky shall fall with its showers of stars on the
ground where we are camped,
or unless the earth shall be
rent by an earthquake,
or unless the waves of the blue sea
come over the forests of the living world,
we shall not give ground.

Read the entire Táin Bó Cuailnge here.

A quote from Land of the Ever-Living Ones

A quote from the forthcoming Land of the Ever-Living Ones, by Anthony Murphy. Feel free to share.
Read more about the book here: http://www.mythicalireland.com/landoftheeverlivingones/land-of-the-ever-living-ones.html

Quote of the Day: Ireland and Europe

That constant refusal of the Irish to fall in with the rapid torrent of European thought and progress, as it is called, is the strangest phenomenon in their history, and gives them at first an outlandish look, which many have not hesitated to call barbarism. We hope thoroughly to vindicate their character from such a foul aspersion, and to show this phenomenon as the secret cause of their final success, which is now all but secured; . . . there is no doubt that the Irish is the most ancient nationality of Western Europe; and although, as in the case of the Chinese, the advantage of going up to the very cradle of mankind is not sufficient to impart interest to frigid annals, when that prerogative is united to a vivid life and an exuberant individuality, nothing contributes more to render a nation worthy of study than hoariness of age, and its derivation from a certain and definite primitive stock.

Rev. Augustus Thebaud, Irish Race in the Past and Present, 19th century