Westward Ho!

I won't lie to you. I thoroughly enjoyed Nicholas Crane's Britannia series.

A long time ago, back in the Elizabethan times, Ireland was part of Britain. It wanted to be part of Spain but Britain said "No Way" and the nine years war settled the matter for a good few hundred more [1].

When the BBC heard this news they were jubilant. "We can include Ireland in a programme about Britain!", they cried. Of course they do this as a matter of course anyway but normally there's a bit of shoehorning going on [2].

Anyway, Crane retraced the journey taken by 16th-century author William Camden and last night he was in Ireland (or Éire as he called it [3]). He was on Inisheer hearing stories about faeries who look just like you and me. That's the worrying thing about these boys apparently. They don't even have the decency to look like faeries.

But back in those days the Irish didn't have any concept of heaven being up there and hell down there like we educated people do today. Apparently, back then, and don't laugh too much - they were only simple folks, they used to believe that when you died your soul followed the setting sun. You headed Westward. Can you imagine! What fantasy!

[1] This could all be wrong.

[2] I note with interest that Oz and James "Drink to Britain" series visits Dublin next week.

[3] This may have been a mistake as Éire has recently been adopted as a unionist term denoting "Fenian savages"