Atlantean Irish

The Irish identity is best approached by sea. For 8000 years the island has been a haven for intrepid navigators and a trading-post absorbing goods and people from all points of the compass. The reduction of the Irish to the fanciful title of "Celts" has persisted for 300 years too many and is here dismissed. No classical author ever called the Irish "Celts" and until quite recently neither did the Irish so describe themselves. These islanders are an amalgam of peoples, their culture and language are shaped as much by Middle Eastern civilizations as they are by Europe. The Gaelic language itself is non-European, forged over thousands of years of endless trading up and down the Atlantic seaways. Over the past 20 years Bob Quinn has traced these archaelogical, linguistic, religious and economic connections from Newgrange to Morocco, from Arann to Tatarstan, from Carraroe to Cairo. He has demonstrated the similarity between Connamara sean-nos singing and its Middle Eastern equivalents, and championed the North African linguistic stratum beneath an indigenous Gaelic tongue. This is a revised, expanded and newly illustrated edition of the text, originally published in 1986, following the famous "Atlantean Trilogy" of films.