Dr Gillian Kenny

No pressure.

How long have you got?

So presumably everyone knows where Ireland is.

We just start with that one.

It's just over to the left, the one that looks like a teddy bear.

So it does go a little bit longer.

It goes into the 16th and 17th centuries because Gaelic Ireland, which was the predominant culture on the island, spread into there.

It was sadly destroyed in the 16th and 17th centuries, but we won't talk about that today.

It's a comedy show.

Who described it?

A Welsh might understand it.

Any Welsh in the audience?

No.

Anyway, today...

So today we'll talk mostly about Ireland after the conversion to Christianity in the 5th century, as that's where we start to get most of our literary sources.

And this conversion brought the huge economic, social and intellectual changes.

But we do have some idea about what happened in pre-Christian Ireland.

There's some historical sources, but we use archaeology as well.

There's certainly an idea that there was a kind of a nature worship around forests and wells.

Of course, there's the Druids, which people will, of course...