FORAS FEASA AR EIRINN Le SEATHRUN CEITINN
[The History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating]
Translated by Edward Comyn and Patrick S. Dineen
EDITOR'S PREFACE.
GEOFFREY KEATING stands alone among Gaelic writers: he has had neither
precursor nor successor, nor, in his own domain, either equal or
second. His works show the fullest development of the language, and
his historical treatise, with which we are here concerned, marks an
epoch in our literature, a complete departure from the conventional
usage of the annalists. From the last and greatest of these, even from
his illustrious contemporaries, the Four Masters, he is, in his style
and mode of using his materials, as far removed as is Gibbon from
earlier English writers on European affairs. The period, however, with
which the English author deals is one for the history of which ample
authentic materials existed, and nothing remained for the writer but
to select and present the facts in his own style to the reader. But
our author has to give an account of a country apart from the general
development of European civilization, and to treat chiefly of remote
ages without the support of contemporary documents or monuments. In
this respect his field of inquiry resembles somewhat that of the
portion of Dr. Liddell's work relating to the Kings and early Consuls
of Rome, where the author, in a pleasing style, does his best with
scanty and unsatisfactory materials, not altogether throwing aside,
like the German critics, all data which cannot be confirmed by
inscriptions or authentic records, yet skilfully exercising his
discretion in the use of legend and tradition which had by earlier
writers been received as trustworthy evidence. It will be seen, in the
course of this work, that Keating, though often accused of being
weakly credulous, and though he was perhaps inclined to attach undue
importance to records which he believed to be of extreme antiquity,
while carrying on his narrative by their help (he had no other), yet
shows as much discrimination as writers on the history of other
countries in his time. He recounts the story, in his own happy manner,
as it was handed down in annals and poems, leaving selection and
criticism to come after, when they have a 'basis of knowledge' to work
upon. By this term he accurately indicates the contents of his
principal work, in which not merely history, but mythology,
archæology, geography, statistics, genealogy, bardic chronicles,
ancient poetry, romance, and tradition are all made to subserve the
purpose of his account of Ireland, and to increase the reader's
