I've been reading some lovely Irish-y things while I've been here, so thought I'd share a few of them with you between my usual blog posts over the next few days ... Here's the first:
"Geographically, then, and topographically it [Ireland] was no doubt in much the same state as teh greater part of it remained up to the middle or end of the sixteenth century, a wild, tangled, roadless land, that is to say, shaggy with forests, abounding in streams, abounding, too, in lakes - far more, doubtless, than at present, drainage and other causes having greatly reduced their number - with rivers bearing the never-failing tribute of the skies to the sea, yet not so thoroughly as to hinder enormous districts from remaining in a swamped and saturated condition, given up to the bogs, which even at the present time are said to cover nearly one-sixth of its surface." - The Story of Ireland, by Emily Lawless