Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Popular History of Ireland, Vol. 1 of 2: From the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics
In former times, Ireland was as well wooded as watered, though hardly a tree of the primitive forest now remains. One of the earliest names applied to it was the wooded Island, and the export of timber and staves, as Well as of the furs of wild animals, continued, until the beginning of the seventeenth cen tury, to be a thriving branch of trade. But in a succession of civil and religious wars, the axe and the torch have done their work of destruction, so that the age of most of the wood now standing does not date above two or three generations back.
Who were the first inhabitants of this Island, it is impossible to say, but we know it was inhabited at a very early period of the world's lifetime - probably as early as the time when Solo mon, the Wise, sat in Jerusalem on the throne of his father David. As we should not altogether reject, though neither are we bound to believe, the wild and uncertain traditions of which we have neither documentary nor monumental evidence, we will glance over rapidly what the old Bards and Story-tellers have handed down to us, concerning Ireland before it became 'christian.
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