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I picked up a copy of Ancient Ireland: The User’s Guide for five euro when I was visiting in 2016, although our trip wasn’t particularly focused on ancient stuff. Ireland has a lot of history and we could only get so much of it in in 10 days.
One issue I keep running into with material about very ancient Ireland is that the audience is usually either academics or New Agey types. I don’t have any academic background in this stuff so the serious academic writings are all a bit over my head, but the familiarity I’m interested in developing is more academic in nature than it is New Agey, so I get put off by the stuff that’s stripped down to be accessible specifically for people who want to incorporate the Wisdom of the Ancients into their lives, especially because that stuff is then usually written by people who have their own opinions about the Wisdom of the Ancients that they’re trying to evangelize. This book, unfortunately, is no different–it’s not a really serious academic study of Ancient Ireland, which is fine, but the accessible-to-non-experts stuff in it is peppered with the author’s somewhat generically cranky Old Guy Opinions about everything wrong with the modern world. This is especially awkward given that the book itself was written in the early ‘90s so even some of the cranky old guy opinions that could have sort of held up in 1992, like that the murder rate in New York City is pretty high, have now aged poorly even by cranky old guy opinion standards.
The material that is in fact on topic is pretty easy-to-read and interesting. We get a nice grab bag of ancient monuments and places, and some of the accompanying mythology. We are introduced to the various ancient peoples of Ireland and how they ascended into mythology. There are some pictures, although they are in black and white. It definitely makes me want to go back to Ireland and do a trip with a focus on visiting ancient sites, though hopefully I could find some more historical and less New-Agey tours and materials on it.
One issue I keep running into with material about very ancient Ireland is that the audience is usually either academics or New Agey types. I don’t have any academic background in this stuff so the serious academic writings are all a bit over my head, but the familiarity I’m interested in developing is more academic in nature than it is New Agey, so I get put off by the stuff that’s stripped down to be accessible specifically for people who want to incorporate the Wisdom of the Ancients into their lives, especially because that stuff is then usually written by people who have their own opinions about the Wisdom of the Ancients that they’re trying to evangelize. This book, unfortunately, is no different–it’s not a really serious academic study of Ancient Ireland, which is fine, but the accessible-to-non-experts stuff in it is peppered with the author’s somewhat generically cranky Old Guy Opinions about everything wrong with the modern world. This is especially awkward given that the book itself was written in the early ‘90s so even some of the cranky old guy opinions that could have sort of held up in 1992, like that the murder rate in New York City is pretty high, have now aged poorly even by cranky old guy opinion standards.
The material that is in fact on topic is pretty easy-to-read and interesting. We get a nice grab bag of ancient monuments and places, and some of the accompanying mythology. We are introduced to the various ancient peoples of Ireland and how they ascended into mythology. There are some pictures, although they are in black and white. It definitely makes me want to go back to Ireland and do a trip with a focus on visiting ancient sites, though hopefully I could find some more historical and less New-Agey tours and materials on it.