ABSTRACT
In various parts of Ireland the traveller may observe what remains of the homesteads of former inhabitants. Grain was grown, but its cultivation was subsidiary to the main business of stock raising; and since Ireland has a mild climate and rich natural pasture, it may be that on the whole the rich were better fed and the poor less worn down by toil than in many other contemporary societies. Ireland had its schools of law, and its literary schools where students learned the stories, poems, and genealogies of their people. Giraldus Cambrensis, a critic of Ireland during the twelfth century, remarked on the handsome physique and the natural indolence of the inhabitants, who, ‘given only to leisure and devoted only to laziness, think that the greatest pleasure is not to work, and the greatest wealth is to enjoy liberty’. Irish smiths and sculptors never adopted imperial Roman tastes, and never copied the realistic naturalism of Roman art.
