Irish

The Irish are Gaelic people of Ireland, divided into kin-based túatha under Brehon law; bardic schools and missionaries made Ireland a land of saints and scholars. Viking longphorts from the ninth century grew into Dublin and spawned the Norse-Gaels, until Brian Bóruma's Clontarf victory in 1014 broke Norse power.

The Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169 opened eight centuries of English involvement, but Gaelic resurgence left the Crown little beyond the Pale around Dublin; the Tudors launched a full conquest from 1536; Henry VIII took the Irish crown in 1541. The Irish kept Catholicism through plantations, defeat at Kinsale in 1601 and the Flight of the Earls in 1607, ending the old Gaelic order.

The Confederate wars of 1641, Cromwell's 1649 campaign and the Williamite victory at the Boyne in 1690 entrenched Protestant Ascendancy and Penal Laws stripping the Catholic majority of land and office; after the 1798 United Irishmen rising, the 1800 Acts of Union closed the Dublin parliament, and Catholic emancipation followed in 1829. Migrants carried Gaelic and English to the American colonies.