8,000 YEARS OF HISTORY. For well on 8,000 years the rugged landscape of Ireland has been shaped by the hand of both invader and inhabitant. Once known as Inis na Bhfiodhbui, the Wooded Isle, in earliest times as the entire island was virtually a huge primeval forest, it later became known as Oilean Iathghlas, the Emerald Isle, because of the large and fertile plains created by the "slash and burn" agricultural practices of the ancient Stone Age and Neolithic tribal farmers. It was said that the forests of early Ireland covered the island so densely that a red squirrel could have travelled the length and breadth of the land without once ever setting a paw on the ground! This hardwood forest of oak and elm was so dense and forbidding- even the bright daylight of midsummer could not penetrate the towering roof of foliage to reach the forest floor- that these early hunter-gatherers and farmers held them in awe and fear and rarely penetrated their inner depths where, it was said, the Elder Races practiced their savage and arcane rituals and dedicated their human sacrifices to the great Horned God Kernun (Cernunnos).

From Early to Late Stone Age, through Iron and Bronze Age, these ancient inhabitants cleared what mythology refers to as "the nine great plains." They slashed and ringed the bark to stop these powerful trees putting out leaves and when the 1000-year old oaks and elms were withered and dead they put them to the torch. In their place they planted crops and farmed their shaggy-haired long horned cattle.The fertile plains they created they cultivated and over thousands of years they slowly shaped the land to their liking and commorated their great deeds and victories over earthly obstacles and foreign foes with huge stone monuments that stand to this day. Their religious rituals and beliefs they sang of in symphonies of carved and raised stone. Wooden totems flourished also but failed the test of time- we can only guess at their beauty ! Royal Tara itself was an exotic hilltop island of carved and painted wooden palaces but nothing remains today except bare earthen banks and a few forlorn mounds topped with a dreadfully tacky statue of a very dreary Saint Patrick which does scant justice to either Tara of the Kings or the saintly Patricius. But I digress...