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IRELAND:
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Mission
Cost : TBA
Application due: TBA
Date of the Project: TBA
Team Members Needed: TBA
HISTORY
The Iron Age warriors called Celts, arrived in
Ireland from Eastern Europe around 300 BC.
Christianity arrived at around the 3rd to 5th
centuries. In the 8th century, the Viking raiders
plundered the Irish coastlines, but eventually
formed an alliance with the native families and
settled down. Dublin was a small Viking town in
10th century. Other settlements bearing Viking
names that remain still today are Wicklow,
Waterford and Wexford. Vikings traded Irish
artifacts made by the farmers along the European
coast, and the trade flourished. The conflicts
continued between the Vikings and many native
Irish. In 1014, at the Battle of Clontarf, Viking
power was finally defeated, and large number of
Vikings married the native Irish and converted to
Christianity.
The Irish King of Leinster, Demort MacMurrough,
and the King of Connaught, Tiernan O’Rourke
were rivals. MacMurrough kidnapped
O’Rourke’s wife, Dervorgilla, in 1152.
MacMurrough went to England for help. In May
1169, the Anglo-Norman force arrived, and
defeated the Irish army. Years later, for fear of
Spain and France to use Ireland as a base to
attack England, Henry VIII sent troops for a full
scale invasion of Ireland, which began centuries
of Anglo-Irish friction and bloodshed. Under
Henry III and Elizabeth I, the English policy of
Plantation was enforced. In 1607, after the
Flight of the Earls (unable to fight off the
English, ninety some nobles escaped the
continent), large scale confiscation and
redistribution of native Irish’s land
occurred. The new English immigrants became
landlords, and the impoverished Irish peasants
became the laborers and had to pay rent for the
land they used to own. Intermarriage was
prohibited by law, and as the result, the
religious and ethnic barrier separated the
"well to do" protestant landowners and
the poor Celtic catholic farmers.
In 1641, Ireland supported Charles I for the
English Civil War, believing that he was
pro-Catholic, but eventually Charles I lost the
war and was executed. The victorious Oliver
Cromwell decided to punish the Irish. In 1649, he
arrived in Ireland with an angry army of 20,000.
Within 3 years of a merciless campaign, 600,000
men, women and children were massacred. Survivors
were driven to Connaught as "To hell of
Connaught" (a poor land on the west of
Ireland) or deported to the Caribbean as slaves.
Scholars, craftsmen, poets, and teachers were
hanged, schools destroyed, and books burned,
making Irish learning extremely difficult.
Potato plants were introduced into Ireland in the
17th century from Europe, and quickly discovered
their true home. Potatoes need rich, moist, peaty
soil; the kind of land that Ireland has enough of
and if famous for. Potatoes need little attention
after being planted, giving the peasants more
time to tend to other crops, which they needed to
pay for rent. As a rule of thumb, a single acre
of potatoes could feed a family of six; they were
the staple food for the poorest.
In 1704, the Protestant gentry passed the Penal
Law. It further degraded the Irish by forbidding
Catholics to buy land, teach their religion,
enter into the army, navy or legal profession.
All Irish culture, music and education were again
banned. In response, the secret worship location
as "mass rock" and illegal outdoor
schools such as "hedge schools"
continued to teach Irish language (Gaelic) and
culture. The Penal Law forced the mass of the
Irish into extreme poverty. No farmer could
"afford shoes or stockings for his
children…. as for their food, it is
notorious, they seldom taste bread or
meat…in summer is potato and sour milk; in
winter…they are still worse, living on the
same root made palatable only by a little salt,
and accompanied with water…"(The
Reformer magazine, by Edmund Burke 1730).
Consequently, many Irish immigrated to the
Americas, during the American War of Independence
(1773-1783). In fact, thirty of Washington’s
generals were Irish.
By late 18th century, raggedly dressed Irish
families started arriving in England. They were
looked down upon by the English. "The
roaming beggars" who were adults as well as
children, begged and lived on the streets. In
1837, Lord John Russell introduced the Poor Law
Bill; the intention was to stop the tide of the
overflow of Irish destitute peasants.
Hunger had been a fact of life for the poor Roman
Catholic Irish. The potato famine in 1845 made
the situation even more devastating. The potato
plants were turned into black slime by a highly
infectious microscopic fungus. The fungus was
carried by the steam boats from Europe, and
Ireland’s climate was very suitable for the
organs to reproduce. Its spores were taken by the
wind to the neighboring plants, and the potato
blight quickly spread to the whole country. It
happened again in 1846, 1848 and 1849. Peasants
searched the fields to find anything edible;
eventually they yielded to starvation and
associated illnesses. Parents saved the merger
food for the children, but even with that, they
were buried one by one. Many parents died first,
and the children were picked up from the fields
to go to the Workhouse in the County. In 1847,
thousands of Irish orphans who survived in the
Workhouse were shipped down to Australia.
For centuries, England’s policy was to
create trade barriers to prevent Ireland’s
economy from developing, and to force the
population to depend on agriculture. Although the
potato crop failed, there were excellent harvests
of other minor crops, like corn, barley and
wheat. But they were the cash crops, strictly for
export to the landlords in England to pay for
rent. Corn and wheat in tons and cattle in droves
were shipped out everyday. The starving Irish
didn’t see a drop of food. Many penniless
and hungry peasant families could not afford the
rent. The evictions were inevitable, and the
ragged families were dragged into the fields, and
their mud cabins destroyed by the landlords.
30,000 homes were leveled in County Meath alone.
The eviction scene was depicted as, "The
speechless agony of men, the piteous wailings of
women, the terror and consternation of the
children, as their mud houses are pulled down,
their homes demolished and themselves set adrift
on the world…a horrible scene that can never
be forgotten…"(Bishop Thomas Nulty,
1846). Most of those who were evicted eventually
died of hunger or the elements.
The famine news gradually showed up in the
London’s newspapers. One drawing described
the emaciated children crying and clinging to the
body of their deceased mother, and the
world’s opinion made it difficult for
England to ignore the magnitude of catastrophe.
The profound, malevolently indifference to the
Irish disaster finally yielded to international
pressure, and the British government started
providing public assistance. But the idea of the
poor not becoming dependant on the state died
hard. The policy turned into organizing relief
projects – building useless and unwanted
bridges and roads, to nowhere. Men, women and
children labored all day for simple corn meals,
but the corn meal soup was not enough to keep one
sustained. Within 5 years, a million people
perished. The "Famine Road" and many
mass gravesites still can be seen in many places
today.
Soon a large exodus occurred again. 1.5 million
people immigrated to America, encouraged by the
U.S. governments’ grants of land. But one
fifth of them did not make the journey across the
Atlantic Ocean because they died in horrible
conditions in ships often called "Coffin
ships". Those who survived and arrived at
the shore of their new home carried with them
bitterness and determination. Irish
American’s wealth eventually found a way
back to finance the independence of " the
old country".
During all those disastrous years, there was
never a shortage of good people appalled by the
situation. Wolfe Tone, an Ulster Protestant
attempted a French assisted landing and uprising
in 1789, and Robert Emmet’ also a
Protestant, staged a rebellion in 1803, but both
revolts failed. Eventually the Irish Republic
Brotherhood (IRB) formed in New York and Dublin
in 1865 and 1867. Charles Stewart Parnell started
a reform movement called "Irish Home
Rule" in Westminster, England. It called for
the establishment of an Irish Parliament in
Dublin. It passed in 1914 but Ireland was still
part of the British Empire, and the ruling was
soon suspended due to World War I. The suspension
was unbearable to Irish people. On East Monday of
1916, men and women from Irish Volunteers (former
Irish Republic Brotherhood) and Irish
Citizen’s Amy attacked and seized 14
strategic buildings in Dublin, used the General
Post office as headquarters, and 20,000 British
troops rushed to demolish the rebellion. After
six days of bitter street fighting, the rebels
lost. The executions made the martyrs of the 15
leaders. This outraged the Irish and began the
full-scale independence movement. The former
Irish Republican Brotherhood renamed the Irish
Republic Army (IRA), mainly financed by American
Irish, created "Flying columns", which
used small groups of armed volunteers for
guerrilla raids on British forces. In reprisals,
the British responded with ransacking and burning
whole towns. A truce, Anglo-Irish Treaty was
signed on December 6, 1921:
6 Protestant (mostly) Ulster Counties as Northern
Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom.
26 southern Catholic (mostly) Counties as
Republic of Ireland, a newly born Irish Free
State.
The Republic of Ireland remained neutral during
World War II. Nazi German bombers used the night
lights of Dublin to pinpoint Belfast, and caused
terrible damage to both Belfast and Derry. The
resentments of the northern Protestants remained
long after the war, and furthered the distrust
between the Protestants and the Catholics.
The partition settlement was only a compromise
and satisfied neither side. The Protestants have
a sense of history that goes back to the 17th
century, where they started the plantation of
Ulster, and Britain felt its obligation to her
citizens in the north of the island also. The
Catholics in Northern Ireland believe they are on
the wrong side of the border. The militant
minority of the IRA, which "Sinn Fein"
(in Gaelic for "Ourselves Alone") is
its political wing, refuse to accept the
non-united Ireland, and caused crashes between
them and the British police forces in the
Northern Ireland. Nevertheless the majority of
the Catholics and nationalists accept the
partition simply saying that "God had made
Ireland an island which was meant to be united
and some day it will be united." The emotion
is displayed in her national tricolor flag,
orange (the protestants), green (the Catholics)
and white in the middle representing hope for
peace between them.
Before the Famine there were 8 million people who
lived on this island, now there are only 5
million. After World War II, Ireland continued
its industrial development, which was missing in
the 19th century, and transformed its backward
economy by growing and modernizing on a fast pace
into a wealthy, booming modern state. Encouraged
by its high quality of education, generous tax
incentives and successful promotion of foreign
investment were given. In 1998, Dublin was
considered as the European’s largest
construction region, next to the city of Berlin.
Ireland’s economy is healthy in every
sector, especially in technology and
pharmaceuticals; it is dubbed the "Celtic
Tiger".
CULTURE
Ireland was a spectacularly woody country, where
many of our childhood stories of small beautiful
fairies lived. Unfortunately, England saw the
forest as a vital raw material for shipbuilding
to support it’s mercantile power. The oak
trees were also chopped down and turned into
charcoal for smelting ores and for tanning and
barrels. As a result, for hundreds of years,
since the 17th century, the vast Irish natural
resources were depleted and shipped over to
England. Only 5.5% of the forest is left today.
Rolling hills without trees to decorate them are
spread around the countryside.
Shannon is the longest river in Ireland. The
western coast is a continuous mountain range with
cliffs and hills. Only along the Shannon Estuary
and Galway Bay are some significant beaches. The
majority of cities and population are
concentrated on the east coast. "A soft
day" refers to something between rain and
fog. It drifts in the air, and is an unique
weather phenomenon that only happens in Ireland;
it certainly helps paint its hills with emerald
green.
Irish speak the most pleasant and pretty accent
in the English spoken world, with their peculiar
flavor and lilt. If you asked an inn keeper in
England, you would receive an affirmative
"Yes, love." or "No vacancy
indeed." In Ireland, it would be "We
have, so." Even with no vacancy, the clerk
would say "Would you be wanting a place for
the night, then?" And he or she may point
the directions to you for the nearby inns. The
language of "Yes" and "No"
apparently disappeared in daily Irish
conservation. A simple affirmation would offend
any ordinary Irish person by giving an impression
that the person is too busy for any further chat,
and the sound of "No" would not be very
respectful. It is also Irish tradition to welcome
strangers. Brehon Law in Medieval time required
every village to keep a guesthouse for passing
travelers, and every courtesy must be shown.
Taxation in Ireland is relative low, many small
farms receive state subsidy as supplement for
their low income of dairy products. Government
incomes are mainly from sales tax and value added
tax (VAT). All creative artists pay no tax; this
explains why there are so many well-known artists
living on the island, at least, that is what the
folks here say.
Young women, who wear a green dress with complex
embroidery, and white socks, perform traditional
Irish dancing. Dancing mainly concentrates on the
footwork, with the hands kept rigidly on the
sides unless forming a circle with others. Each
year, young girls from all over Ireland compete
at national feis for trophies.
Saint Patrick (387-493) was abducted from
Scotland at age 16 by Irish pirates, and sold
into slavery to shepherd the sheep. He perfected
his Celtic tongue during his captivity and came
close to God by praying day and night. Six years
after, he escaped and went to Gaul to study in a
monastery. His heart was set for Irish; so he
went back and traveled through Ireland,
established monasteries throughout the country,
and converted Celtic pagans to Christianity. He
used the shamrock (three-leafed clover) to
explain the Trinity. The day he died, March 17,
became the most important national holiday in
Ireland, it reminded all Irish around the world
of their origin and heritage. People wear green
(national color) in remembrance of Saint
Patrick’s green shamrock and teaching.
The well known Irish last names with a prefix of
"Mac", stands for "Son of".
For instance, MacDonald mean "Son of world
mighty", McCarthy "Son of loving",
Mac Laughlin, as in Gaelic, means "Son of
lake-land". It is said only Irish and Jews
have a special void in their hearts, and it can
only be filled with a visit to their homeland.
When an overseas Irish goes back to where they
have never been, many have said they were
overwhelmed with powerful emotions that they have
never felt. For it is a Celtic land and it is
home.
OUR MISSION
In the famine years, history recorded a young
couple that went to a mass gravesite to bid a
farewell to their children. Their mud cabin was
six miles away and they struggled on the journey
back since the wife had the famine fever. They
reached their cold mud cabin, where the next
morning, neighbors found them both dead, the
husband was holding the wife's cold feet to his
chest in a final effort to give her warmth.
History casts a long shadow in people’s
hearts; the resentments could last for years, and
pass down to generations. It is understandable
for it to not be easy to forget the pain,
suffering and injustice inflicted to the
innocence. But hate can never be ceased by hate.
Hate can only be ceased by love. When that
occurs, it gives birth to forgiveness. This is
the essence of the Bible’s teaching, and God
demonstrates Himself to us through His Son Jesus.
Even with all of our transgressions, He prepared
a place for everyone who accepts Him, where
"…there shall no longer be any
mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things
have passed away" (Rev. 21:4).
Join us and bring His love to the Emerald Isle,
and let the Light shine through the misty cloud
in the hearts of Irish people, under His
promising rainbow, there will be new life, and it
is always green!
It's said that Ireland, once visited, is never
forgotten. An Irish Blessing says:
May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be
always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face, may the
rains fall soft upon your fields
And, when we meet again, may God hold you in the
palm of His hand.
Full country name: Ireland & Northern Ireland
(part of the UK)
Area: 84,421 sq km/52,341 sq mi (70,282 sq
km/43,575 sq mi in the Republic; 14,139 sq
km/8,766 sq mi in the North)
Population: 5.2 million (3.6 million in Ireland;
1.6 million in Northern Ireland)
Capital city: Dublin (population 1.5 million)
People: Irish
Language: English, Irish (around 83,000 native
speakers)
Religion: 95% Roman Catholic, 3.4% Protestant in
the Republic; 60% Protestant, 40% Roman Catholic
in the Northern Ireland
Government: Democracy
Head of state: Mary McAleese (Republic), Queen
Elizabeth II (Northern Ireland)
Prime Minister: Bertie Ahern (Republic), Tony
Blair (Northern Ireland)
GDP: US$67 billion
GDP per head: US$18,600
Annual growth: 10%
Inflation: 2.4%
Major industries: Computer software, information
technology, food products, brewing, textiles,
clothing
Major trading partners: EU (esp. UK, Germany,
France), US
Member of EU: yes
• You may have a tour of England or other
European countries after the project, and
reschedule your airline ticket with the carrier
from Dublin/London to Los Angeles/San
Francisco/Seattle/New York; the International
Travel Insurance will cover three more weeks of
your traveling time. Our sponsoring churches and
affiliated missionaries would be happy to assist
you for information or any special needs.
Source: Lonely Planet & Ireland
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