ABSTRACT
It was a woman who founded, or found, Ireland, according to the earliest legend contained in the lost manuscript, The Book of Druim Snechta.1 Banba was there while Noah was building his ark, and the Flood did not reach the top of her chosen peak. But another tradition credits Cessair, supposedly a different woman, with peopling the place. She did so because she and her group of fifty women and three men were all turned away by Noah, who regarded them as a motley collection of thieves, not to be trusted on board his vessel. However, few Irish citizens seem aware of these primordial, mainly female settlers. Such has been the unconscious and conscious selection process leading to the curriculum of Irish patriotism that different heroines have been remembered. Ask an Irish boy or girl who has passed through the Republic’s educational system to name the first woman who has influenced the story of his or her nation, and Queen Maeve2 (Medb) will invariably be mentioned.
