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Foras Feasa ar Éirinn – literally 'Foundation of Knowledge on Ireland', but most often known in English as 'The History of Ireland'^[1] – is a narrative history of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating, written in Irish and completed c. 1634.^[2]

Outline

It begins with a preface in which Keating defends the honour of Ireland against the denigrations of writers such as Giraldus Cambrensis,^[3] followed by a narrative history in two parts: part one, from the creation of the world to the arrival of Christianity in the 5th century, and part two, from the 5th century to the coming of the Normans during the 12th century.^[4]

It depicts Ireland as an autonomous, unitary kingdom of great antiquity. The early part of the work is largely mythical, depicting the history of Ireland as a succession of invasions and settlements, and derives primarily from medieval writings such as the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Dindsenchas, royal genealogies and stories of heroic kings. The later part depicts the Normans as the latest of this series of settlers.^[3] Keating, a Catholic priest of Hiberno-Norman ancestry, gave Irish people of both Gaelic and Norman ancestry credit for the development of the nation,^[4] and emphasised the role of the Church as a unifying factor in Irish culture.^[3]

The work was extremely popular, surviving in a large number of manuscripts,^[5] and its prose style became the standard followed by generations of Irish-language writers.^[6] It has been said that it had "an influence on Irish language and literature as significant as Shakespeare's role in relation to English" .^[7]

However, it was received critically from the start by some with Sir Richard Cox (1650..1733), a Protestant lawyer of English descent, describing it in the 1680s as "an ill-digested heap of very silly fictions".^[3] Modern scholars consider in the context of the antiquarian tendency of Renaissance humanism, with Keating expounding on ancient Irish sources, whose authority he defends, to provide "an origin-legend for Counter-Reformation Catholic Ireland."^[5]

References

^ "Describing the Battle - Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éireann (1643), Battle of Clontarf, Trinity College Dublin, retrieved 17 September 2015
^ Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Keating, Geoffrey [Seathrún Céitinn] (b. c.1580, d. in or before 1644)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 17 Sept 2015
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Bernadette Cunningham, "Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn", History Ireland Vol. 9 issue 1, Spring 2001, retrieved 17 September 2015
^ ^a ^b Library: Foras Feasa ar Éirinn Archived 2022-12-15 at the Wayback Machine, Royal Irish Academy, retrieved 11 January 2023
^ ^a ^b Brendan Bradshaw, Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley, Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534-1660, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 166-168
^ Diarmuid Ó Murchadha (2005) "A review of some placename material from Foras Feasa ar Éirinn", Éigse, A Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 35, p. 81, National University of Ireland
^ Cunningham, Bernadette (2000). The World of Geoffrey Keating: History, Myth and Religion in Seventeenth-century Ireland. Four Courts Press. ISBN 978-1-85182-533-2.