On Jul 21, 10:56 pm, "Tom" comcast.net> wrote:

Yes, Searles, Ireland suffered a mighty blow to its spirituality in
the seventeenth century, commencing with the Flight of the Earls,
O'Neill and O'Donnell. But Filidh such as my ancestor "An Sugan
Mongaire" (The Sweet Pedlar) Andrias MacCraith of Thomond, lived on.
William Makepiece Thackeray on his tour of Ireland just before the
Famine in 1840 writes of Midsummer Day festivals still being held here
out in the countryside. Alas, all that was gone with the Famine, the
penultimate blow to Druidic Ireland: A Filidh, starving to death of
the hunger, wrote this immortal last lines, "The Spire of Maynooth is
the dagger through Ireland's heart". Maynooth, of course, in County
Kildare, is the University and Headquarters of the Catholic Church in
Ireland - which received massive grants from the same British
Government that presided over that Great Famine ! The ancient spirit
of the country was wiped out, and a couple of million who made it to
America in the "coffin ships" across the Atlantic served to bolster up
the Catholic Church in the USA !

Our own Clan, the Clanna Bui of the MacCraith survived because they
had never had anything to do with the Catholic Church throughout
history - except to rob Bishops etc as they crossed their territories
of the Decies in Waterford where they were feared.

The Clanna Bui also served as Officers in the British Army, so the
Army would not move against us ! That they did right up to the Dublin
1916 Rising, in the aftermath of which they joined and even led,
thanks to their Army training, whole battalions of rebels in the Irish
War of Independence.

The Army and the Police turned a blind eye to the Clan who famously
had the Walshes (from Wales), the Powers (old Normans) and the Kellys
( the Wild Irish) behind them in what was in effect a massive Irish
Army out in the wilderness and the mountain fastnesses of the
Comeraghs stretching right across into the Knockmealdowns, all sworn
not to interfere with the Civil Administration.

In fact the Government came to depend on the Clanna Bui as
businessmen, traders and providers, we were the greatest wheeler
dealers of all time in Ireland, and that's the bare bones of how we
survived all across the centuries, independent of the Church, in fact
actively opposed to and robbing it - after all we were only getting
our own back !

Not too spiritual, Searles, but it had to be done. Old Myler McGrath
had sweetened Elizabeth the Great well for us in her Royal bed ! And
she is still called "The Virgin Queen" in history - we in Ireland know
better !!!

Thus the Drui and Fili of the Clanna Bui survived all down the
centuries into our time.