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Ancient History The History of Ireland began with the first known human settlement in Ireland around 8000 BC, when hunter-gatherers arrived from Great Britain and continental Europe, probably via a land bridge. Few archaeological traces remain of this group, but their descendants and later Neolithic arrivals, particularly from the Iberian Peninsula, were responsible for major Neolithic sites such as Newgrange. Following the arrival of Saint Patrick and other Christian missionaries in the early to mid-5th century A.D., around 800 A.D., Christianity subsumed the indigenous pagan religion by the year 600. The majority of the histories begin with the classic procession of Celts, Romans, Goths‌ Or that our previous procession diminishes to the crucifix and to the Celts first and to the Vikings behind. Between the classic historical ones also there is that one of which the Roman Empire was the one that expanded the Christian religion, or, originally of the Christianity the Romans were chasing it and then they go and expand it. Nevertheless as the beginning of Ireland they aren’t very classic; they did not need from the Romans. From more than a century of Viking invasions brought havoc upon the monastic culture and on the island's various regional dynasties, yet both of these institutions proved strong enough to survive and assimilate the invaders. The coming of Cambro-Norman mercenaries under Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, nicknamed Strongbow, in 1169 marked the beginning of more than 700 years of direct Norman and, later, English involvement in Ireland. The English crown did not begin asserting full control of the island until after the English Reformation, when questions over the loyalty of Irish vassals provided the initial impetus for a series of military campaigns between 1534 and 1691. This period was also marked by an English policy of plantation which led to the arrival of thousands of English and Scottish Protestant settlers. As the military and political defeat of Gaelic Ireland became more clear in the early seventeenth century, the role of religion as a new division in Ireland became more pronounced. From this period on, sectarian conflict became a recurrent theme in Irish history. n 1536 while the Irishes continue with his. To sing, Enrique VIII of England gets furious with the woman and one wants to get divorced from her, and that Enrique did? Since he said: "Since I am the King if with the Catholic religion I cannot divorce myself, I invent my one in which if it could ". This way so this year in his traditional speech of Christmas Eve said: " English men and Englishwomen now you are all Protestants " Initially this him was all the same to the Irishes since they continued being Catholics, and as this it is liked neither by Enrique VIII nor to his succesor Isabel I, they facilitate that the colonists Ingleses they agree Protestants in Ireland. The overthrow, in 1613, of the Catholic majority in the Irish parliament was realised principally through the creation of numerous new boroughs, all of which were Protestantdominated. By the end of the seventeenth century all Catholics, representing some 85% of Ireland's population then, were banned from the Irish parliament. Political power rested entirely in the hands of a British settler-colonial, and more specifically Anglican, minority while the Catholic population suffered severe political and economic privations. In 1801, this colonial parliament was abolished and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. Catholics were still banned from sitting in that new parliament until Catholic Emancipation was attained in 2
1829, the principal condition of which was the removal of the poorer, and thus more radical, Irish freeholders from the franchise. During the S XVI and the XVII the Government puppet of Ireland is giving more and more power to the Protestants, even a law is extracted of the sleeve to take the land from the Catholics, who obviously are getting furious increasingly and therefore mounting riots, in an untidy and this class of things that the people do when they are protested. 1800, and the dominant (Protestant) class becomes oppressed in such a way that it decides to sign the Record of Union, by means of which his parliament disappears and they happen to be Governed from the London parliament, of newly founded United Kingdom. It continued advancing the S XIX and in 1846 the time is very wrong and many crops of potatoes get lost, at in principle this can seem that it is not so serious but turns out to be: · Ireland was a fundamentally agricultural country. · The lands were of very small size (for having be I divide often between the children of the different generations) and scarcely they were giving to feed to a family.´ · Due to The cold and humid climate of the country what more was cultivated were potatoes. So that it produce to him a great famine that forced to emigrate heaps of Irishes, especially to England and to the United States. But of the famine also there went out peasants' groups that fought for a more just distribution of the lands, since to part of the small areas that the majority of the families had, there were big large estates that scarcely were exploited. The Irish Parliamentary Party strove from the 1880s to attain Home Rule selfgovernment through the parliamentary constitutional movement eventually winning the Home Rule Act 1914, though suspended on the outbreak of World War I. In 1922, after the Irish War of Independence, the southern twenty-six counties of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom (UK) to become the independent Irish Free State — and after 1948, the Republic of Ireland. The remaining six north eastern counties, known as Northern Ireland, remained part of the UK. The history of Northern Ireland has been dominated by sporadic sectarian conflict between (mainly Catholic) Nationalists and (mainly Protestant) Unionists. This conflict erupted into the Troubles in the late 1960s, until an uneasy peace thirty years later. Northern Ireland has been for many years the site of a violent and bitter ethnopolitical conflict between those claiming to represent Nationalists, who are predominantly Roman Catholic, and those claiming to represent Unionists, who are predominantly Protestant. In general, Nationalists want Northern Ireland to be unified with the Republic of Ireland, and Unionists want it to remain part of the United Kingdom. Unionists are in the majority in Northern Ireland, though Nationalists represent a significant minority. In general, Protestants consider themselves British and Catholics see themselves as Irish but there are some who see themselves as both British and Irish. People from Northern Ireland are entitled to both British and Irish citizenship (see Citizenship and identity). The campaigns of violence have become known popularly as The Troubles. The majority of both sides of the community have had no direct involvement in the violent campaigns waged. Since the signing of the Belfast Agreement (also known as the Good Friday 3
Agreement or the G.F.A.) in 1998, many of the major paramilitary campaigns have either been on ceasefire or have declared their war to be over. Bombings in Great Britain tended to have had more publicity, since attacks there were comparatively rare (in the context of the troubles); indeed 93% of killings happened in Northern Ireland. Republican paramilitaries have contributed to nearly 60% (2056) of these. Loyalists have killed nearly 28% (1020) while the security forces have killed just over 11% (362), with 9% of the total (296) attributed to the British Army. Civilians account for the highest death toll at 53% or 1798 fatalities. Loyalist paramilitaries account for a higher proportion of civilian deaths (those with no military or paramilitary connection) according to figures published in Malcolm Sutton’s book, “Bear in Mind These Dead: An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland 1969 - 1993�. According to research undertaken by the CAIN organisation, based on Sutton's work, 85.6% (873) of Loyalist killings, 52.9% (190) by the security forces and 35.9% (738) of all killings by Republican paramilitaries took the lives of civilians between 1969 and 2001. The disparity of a relatively high civilian death toll yet low Republican percentage is explained by the fact that they also had a high combatants' death toll. Republican paramilitaries account for a higher proportion of combatants killed (those within paramilitaries or the military) Again from Malcolm Sutton's research, Republicans killed 1318 combatants, the security forces killed 192 and the Loyalists killed 147. Both Republicans and Loyalists killed more of their own than each other, over twice as many for Loyalists and nearly four times as many for Republicans. 80 people, mainly civilians, have died without any organisation claiming responsibility. The British Army has also lost 14 soldiers to Loyalists while the security forces overall in the Republic have lost 10 to Republicans. According to a submission by Marie Smith to the Northern Ireland Commission on Victims, 40,000 people have also been injured, though she believes that to be a conservative figure.
Modern History The bloody repercussions of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin added impetus to the push for Irish independence and in Britain's 1918 general election the Irish republicans won a large majority of the Irish seats. They declared Ireland independent and formed the first Dail Eireann (Irish assembly or lower house), under the leadership of Eamon de Valera, a surviving hero of the Easter Rising. This provoked the Anglo-Irish war, which lasted from 1919 to the middle of 1921. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 gave independence to 26 Irish counties, and allowed six, largely Protestant Ulster counties the choice of opting out. The Northern Ireland parliament came into being, with James Craig as its first prime minister. The politics of the North became increasingly divided on religious grounds, and discrimination against Catholics was rife in politics, housing, employment and social welfare. The south of Ireland was finally declared a republic in 1948, and left the British Commonwealth in 1949. Instability in the North began to reveal itself in the 1960s and when a peaceful civil rights march in 1968 was violently broken up by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the troubles were under way. British troops were sent to Derry and Belfast in August 1969; they were initially welcomed by the Catholics, but it soon became clear that they were the tool of the Protestant majority. Peaceful measures had clearly failed and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had fought the British during the Anglo-Irish war, re4
surfaced. The upheaval was punctuated by seemingly endless tit-for-tat killings on both sides, an array of everchanging acronyms, the massacre of civilians by troops, the internment of IRA sympathisers without trial, the death by hunger strike of the imprisoned and the introduction of terrorism to mainland Britain. Northern Ireland lost its vestige of parliamentary independence and was ruled from London for most of the next 30 years. The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 gave the Dublin government an official consultative role in Northern Ireland's affairs for the first time. The jubilantly received ceasefire of 1994 was undermined by further murders, the reoccurrence of terrorism in Britain and the perceived intransigence of the British government in Whitehall. The mood shifted again with the election of Tony Blair in 1997 with a huge Labour majority to support him. The two sides resumed discussions and, in 1998, formulated a peace plan that offered a degree of self-government for Northern Ireland and the formulation of a North-South Council that would ultimately be able to implement allIreland policies if agreed to by the governments in Belfast and Dublin. As part of the plan, which was fully endorsed by a referendum, the South gave up its constitutional claim to the North. However, the peace process continued to wobble, with trust remaining the main sticking point. Recent History By the late 1990s the Republic's booming economy led it to being monikered the Celtic Tiger. This was mainly thanks to an injection of investment funds from the EU, which helped renovate the country's infrastructure. It's been said that Ireland has skipped straight from an agricultural economy to a post-industrial one, as large computer and telecommunications firms moved in, bringing jobs and investment. The economy did slow down between 2000 and 2003, when unemployment grew and the already high cost of living continued to rise. But the twice re-elected (most recently in May 2007) coalition government led by Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern has steered the nation back into the black and Ireland's economy is once more amongst the healthiest in the EU. Economic growth has created challenges such as increased immigration and pressure on Ireland's welfare and transport infrastructure but overall the Celtic Tiger is purring like a kitten once more . After years of tortuous negotiations, setbacks and mistrust, Northern Ireland seems to have finally reached the end of the 'Troubles'. Following years of equivocating on the issues of de-commissioning its arsenal and renouncing violence, the IRA turned in its guns and ended its armed campaign in mid-2005. Five years of direct rule from London ended when elections for the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly government were successfully held in March 2007. Despite the electorate being drawn away from the moderate Republican and Unionist parties towards the more hard-line policies of Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a power-sharing agreement was successfully instituted in May 2007. The sight of long-time adversaries the DUP's Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, standing together at Stormont to be sworn in as first minister and deputy was the most definitive indication yet that peace was at last a possibility in the North.
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The aim of this composition is to present the conflict between Ireland and England in the XXth century. From 1801 to 1922 Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. Ireland wanted the independence and they provoked the war. There was a battle between Ireland and the UK. There was a very bloody combat: there were many people killed and the provisional Irish government decided to give Northern Ireland to the English people to finish the violent war. The south of Ireland was finally declared a Republic in 1948. Nowadays, in Northern Ireland there is a part of the population who want to be independent and another part who want to be English. The Anglo-Irish Treaty (Irish: An Conradh Angla-Éireannach), officially called the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was a treaty between the Government of the United Kingdom and representatives of the de facto Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of Independence. It established an autonomous dominion, known as the Irish Free State, within the British Empire and provided Northern Ireland, which had been created by the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, an option to opt out of the Irish Free State, which it exercised. The treaty was signed in London by representatives of the British government, (which included David Lloyd George who was head of the British delegates) and envoys plenipotentiary of the Irish Republic (i.e., negotiators empowered to sign a treaty without reference back to their superiors) (which would include Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith) on December 6, 1921. Threefold ratification of the treaty by Dáil Éireann, the House of Commons of Southern Ireland and the British Parliament was required. The Irish side was split on the Treaty, and it was only narrowly ratified in the Dáil. Though the treaty was duly enacted, the split led to the Irish Civil War, which was ultimately won by the protreaty side. The Irish Free State created by the Treaty came into force on 6 December 1922 by royal proclamation after its constitution had been enacted by the Third Dáil and the British parliament. This is a chronology of Irish War of Independence (or the Anglo Irish War) of 1919–1921. The Irish War of Independence was a guerrilla conflict and most of the fighting was conducted on a small scale by the standards of conventional warfare. Although there were some large scale encounters between the Irish Republican Army and the British state forces (Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police paramilitary Police units - the Black and Tans and the Auxiliary Division - and the regular British Army), most of the casualties were inflicted in assassinations and reprisals on either side. The war began with an unauthorized ambush by IRA men Dan Breen and Seán Treacy at Soloheadbeg in 1919 and officially ended with a truce agreed in July 1921. However, violence continued, particularly in the disputed territory of Northern Ireland until mid 1922. In the south of 6
Ireland, the war of Independence was immediately followed by the Irish Civil War between supporters and opponents of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Irish independence Ireland was in war with Great Britain from 1919 to 1921, because it wanted the independence. This war was known like the Irish War of Independence. It was ended by the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It was a treaty between the Government of the United Kingdom and the some representatives of Irish Republic. It was signed in London but a part of the population didn’t agree with it and another war was started amongst the Irish population itself. Finally the war was won by the people who were in favour of the treaty. The treaty was established the 6th of December of 1922 and the independence was won in Ireland. The problem sthen was that Northem Ireland was still British and this caused terrorism all through the 20th century. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) (Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann[1]) was a military organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers, established 25 November 1913 and who in April 1916 staged the Easter Rising.[2] The Irish Volunteers were recognised in 1919 by Dáil Éireann (its elected assembly) as the legitimate army of the unilaterally declared Irish Republic, the Irish state proclaimed at Easter in 1916 and reaffirmed by the Dáil in January 1919. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, members of the IRA who supported the Treaty formed the nucleus of the National Army founded by IRA leader Michael Collins in 1922. Opposed to the Treaty were a number of deputies, a high proportion of the IRA and the majority of Cumann na Mban. While the anti-Treaty IRA on the 26 March held an Army Convention attended by 223 delegates, which adopted a new constitution.[3][4] Physical force Irish republicanism as an ideology had a long history, from the United Irishmen of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions, to the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 and the Irish Republican Brotherhood rebellion of 1867. In addition, the methods of the IRA were to some extent inspired by the traditions of militant agrarian Irish secret societies like the Defenders, the Ribbonmen and the supporters of the Irish Land League. The acronym IRA was first used by the IRB organization in America (also known as the Fenian Brotherhood). This "Irish Republican Army" of the 1860s comprised the American Fenians' paramilitary forces, organized into a number of regiments. Fenian soldiers wearing IRA insignia fought at the Battle of Ridgeway on 2 June 1866. However the term Irish Republican Army in its modern sense was first used in the second decade of the 20th century for the rebel forces of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizens Army during the Easter Rising. It was subsequently, and most commonly, used for those Volunteers who fought a guerrilla campaign in 1919–1921 in support of the Irish Republic declared in 1919.
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James Connolly The political violence that broke out in Ireland between 1916 and 1923 had its origins in Irish nationalist demands for Home Rule within the UK and British Empire and unionist resistance to these demands. By 1914, this issue was at an impasse, with the British government prepared to concede Home Rule or self government to Ireland. This led to the formation of unionist and nationalist armed militias, respectively, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Irish Volunteers. The Government of Ireland Act 1914, more generally known as the Third Home Rule Act, was an Act of Parliament passed by the British Parliament in May 1914 which sought to give Ireland regional self-government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Although it received Royal Assent in September 1914, its implementation was postponed until after the First World War, amid fears that opposition to home rule by Irish Unionists and illegal gun-running by the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Irish Volunteers would lead to civil war. The standoff was temporarily averted by the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. The Irish Volunteers split. The National Volunteers, with over 100,000 members led by Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond were prepared to accept British promises to deliver Home Rule and about 20,000 of them served in the war in the British Army. However about 12,000 Volunteers, led by Eoin MacNeill and dominated by the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood, refused to join the British war effort and kept the name Irish Volunteers. Whereas MacNeill intended to use force only to resist the imposition of conscription on Ireland, the IRB men intended to launch an armed rebellion in pursuit of Irish independence. A smaller organisation, the Irish Citizen Army—originally a worker's defence association under socialist James Connolly—independently planned their own rebellion. To avoid confusion, the IRB co-opted Connolly onto their supreme council in 1915. McNeill, however was never told of the planned insurrection. 8
IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY Ireland was formed by 26 states, 22 were poor and the other 4 were rich. Those 4 states wanted to be part of England, but the other 22 didn’t want that. They wanted to be Irish. Irish volunteers created the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1913. The army’s objective was to fight against Great Britain, Irish volunteers wanted the independence of Ireland. Irish volunteers fought agains British soldiers, for many years. Finally the Irish volunteers surrended, and part of Irish island became part of the United Kingdom. The 19th and early 20th century saw the rise of Irish nationalism among the Roman Catholic population. Daniel O'Connell led a successful campaign for Catholic Emancipation, which was passed by the United Kingdom parliament. A subsequent campaign for repeal of the Act of Union failed. Later in the century Charles Stewart Parnell and others campaigned for self-government within the Union or "home rule". Protestants, largely concentrated in Ulster, who considered themselves to be British as well as Irish, were strongly opposed to home rule, under which they would be dominated by Catholic and Southern interests. To prevent home rule the Ulster Volunteers were formed in 1913 under the leadership of Lord Carson, and to impose home rule the Irish Volunteers were formed in the South in 1914 under John Redmond. Armed rebellions, such as the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Irish War of Independence of 1919, occurred in this period. In 1921, a treaty was concluded between the British Government and the leaders of the Irish Republic. The Treaty recognised the two-state solution created in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Northern Ireland was presumed to form a home rule state within the new Irish Free State unless it opted out. Northern Ireland had a majority Protestant population and opted out as expected, choosing to remain part of the United Kingdom, incorporating, however, within its border a significant Catholic and nationalist minority. A Boundary Commission was set up to decide on the boundaries between the two Irish states, though it was subsequently abandoned after it recommended only minor adjustments to the border. Disagreements over some provisions of the treaty led to a split in the nationalist movement and subsequently to the Irish Civil War. The Civil War ended in 1923 with the defeat of the anti-treaty forces. 9
Religion Ireland has an explicitly Christian constitution but the state is forbidden from endowing any particular religion. Approximately 86.8% of the population are Roman Catholic, and the country has one of the highest rates of regular and weekly church attendance in the Western World. However, there has been a major decline in this attendance among Irish Catholics in the course of the past 30 years. Between 1996 and 2001, regular Mass attendance, declined further from 60% to 48% (it had been above 90% before 1973), and all but two of its sacerdotal seminaries have closed (St Patrick's College, Maynooth and St Malachy's College, Belfast). A number of theological colleges continue to educate both ordained and lay people. The second largest Christian denomination, the Church of Ireland (Anglican), having been declining in number for most of the twentieth century, but has more recently experienced an increase in membership, according to the 2002 census, as have other small Christian denominations, and Hinduism. The largest other Protestant denominations are the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, followed by the Methodist Church in Ireland. The very small Jewish community in Ireland also recorded a marginal increase (see History of the Jews in Ireland) in the same period. The patron saints of Ireland are Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget. According to the 2006 census, the number of people who described themselves as having "no religion" was 186,318 (4.4%). An additional 1,515 people described themselves as agnostic and 929 as atheist instead of ticking the "no religion" box. This brings the total nonreligious within the state to 4.5% of the population. A further 70,322 (1.7%) did not state a religion.
Demographics Genetic research suggests that the first settlers of Ireland, and parts of North-Western Europe, came through migrations from Iberia following the end of the most recent ice age. After the Mesolithic, the Neolithic and Bronze Age migrants introduced Celtic culture and languages to Ireland. These later migrants from the Neolithic to Bronze Age still represent a minority of the genetic heritage of Irish people. ("Origins of the British", Stephen Oppenheimer, 2006) Culture spread throughout the island, and the Gaelic tradition became the dominant form in Ireland. Today, Irish people are mainly of Gaelic ancestry, and although some of the population is also of Norse, Anglo-Norman, English, Scottish, French and Welsh ancestry, these groups have been assimilated and do not form distinct minority groups. Gaelic culture and language forms an important part of national identity. In the UK, Irish Travellers are a recognised ethnic minority group, politically (but not ethnically) linked with mainland European Roma and Gypsy groups, although in Ireland, they are not, instead they are classified as a "social group�. Ireland, as of 2007, contains the fastest growing population in Europe. The growth rate in 2006 was 2.5%, the third year in a row it has been above 2%. This rapid growth can be said to be due to falling death rates, rising birth rates and high immigration rates.
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Languages The official languages are Irish and English. Teaching of the Irish and English languages is compulsory in the primary and secondary level schools that receive money and recognition from the state. Some students may be exempt from the requirement to receive instruction in either language. English is by far the predominant language spoken throughout the country. People living in predominantly Irish-speaking communities, Gaeltacht regions, are limited to the low tens of thousands in isolated pockets largely on the western seaboard. Road signs are usually bilingual, except in Gaeltacht regions, where they are in Irish only. The legal status of place names has recently been the subject of controversy, with an order made in 2005 under the Official Languages Act changing the official name of certain locations from English back to Irish (e.g. Dingle had its name changed to An Daingean despite local opposition and a local plebiscite requesting that the name be changed to a bilingual version: Dingle Daingean Ui Chuis. Most public notices are only in English, as are most of the print media. Most Government publications and forms are available in both English and Irish, and citizens have the right to deal with the state in Irish if they so wish. National media in Irish exist on TV (TG4), radio (e.g. Raidió na Gaeltachta), and in print (e.g. Lá Nua and Foinse). According to the 2006 census, 1,656,790 people (or 39%) in the Republic regard themselves as competent in Irish; though no figures are available for English-speakers, it is thought to be almost 100%. The Polish language is one of the most widely-spoken languages in Ireland after English and Irish: there are over 63,000 Poles resident in Ireland according to the 2006 census. Other languages spoken in Ireland include Shelta, spoken by the Irish Traveller population and a dialect of Scots is spoken by the descendents of Scottish settlers in Ulster.
Music and dance The Irish tradition of folk music and dance is also widely known. In the middle years of the 20th century, as Irish society was attempting to modernise, traditional music tended to fall out of favour, especially in urban areas. During the 1960s, and inspired by the American folk music movement, there was a revival of interest in the Irish tradition. This revival was led by such groups as The Dubliners, The Chieftains, The Wolfe Tones, the Clancy Brothers, Sweeney's Men, and individuals like Seán Ó Riada and Christy Moore. Irish and Scottish traditional music share some similar characteristics. Before too long, groups and musicians including Horslips, Van Morrison, and Thin Lizzy were incorporating elements of traditional music into a rock idiom to form a unique new sound. During the 1970s and 1980s, the distinction between traditional and rock musicians became blurred, with many individuals regularly crossing over between these styles of playing as a matter of course. This trend can be seen more recently in the work of artists like U2, Enya, Flogging Molly, Moya Brennan, The Saw Doctors, Bell X1, Damien Rice, The Corrs, Aslan, Sinéad O'Connor, Clannad, The Cranberries, Rory Gallagher, Westlife, B*witched, BoyZone, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Black 47, VNV Nation, Wolfe Tones, Ash, The Thrills, Stars of Heaven, Something Happens, A House, Sharon Shannon, Damien Dempsey, Declan O' Rourke, The Frames and The Pogues.During the 1990s, a subgenre of folk metal emerged in Ireland that fused heavy metal music with Irish and Celtic music. The pioneers of this subgenre were Cruachan, Primordial and Waylander. Irish music has shown an immense inflation of popularity with many attempting to return to their roots. 11