Invoking Ireland: Ailiu Iath n-Herend

In this new anthology of myth, history and religion, Moriarty takes Ireland's past - its megalithic times, its Celtic times, its Christian times, its modern times - and mirrors it in the psychic geography of the 21st century. He assembles a Tarot pack of myths, folktales, stories, symbols and images, plundering literary and historical texts - a prismatic, illuminating guide for those grappling with a complex, fragmented world of vying philosophies and creeds. Here in Ireland's most ancient texts, oral and written in the 8th and 9th centuries, is an audacity of speculation and creation animating traditional stories. Moriarty brings them home for the contemporary reader in time-attested landscapes - Loughcrew, Tara, the Boyne, Newgrange, Keshcorran, Moyvane, Uisneach - among lakes, mountains, caves, rivers and woods. Tales of kings, priests, warriors and musicians, goddesses and scaldcrows reveal the heartbeat or the ordinary in the extraordinary, the flight of the mind, the eye of the imagination, continuing where Synge, Yeats and Lady Gregory left off a century ago. This rich mother-lode of material falls under the following headings: Iath nAnnan/ Tailtiu Revisited/ Dolmen Love/ Fintan Mac Bochra/Ollamh Fodhla/ Fir Flath-emon/ Enflaith/ A Christian Orpheus / Our Song of Ascent into Ireland / Scelec/ Wolf-Time/ Amhairgin's Fourteenth I Am: His Tragodia, His Goatsong / Changed Utterly / Shaman.Instead of inventing Ireland, it is discovered and uncovered, invoking in these potent pages our own deep histories. Philosopher, poet, writer and broadcaster John Moriary challenges, inspires and delights in lyric, reflective language, as he ventures beyond Irish paganism and European Christianity to the shores of world religions and thought systems to encompass man and animal nature in a journey towards understanding and conciliation.