Catholicism, Anglicanism
and Celtic Beliefs
When the Celts came to Ireland,
they brought with them many of the traditional beliefs, which became lost over
time, and intermingled with the beliefs of Catholicism brought to Ireland several
hundred years later by St. Patrick. When King Henry VIII split from the Catholic
Church to form Anglicanism, and then conquered parts of Ireland, many Irish
converted to Anglicanism, mainly in the northern provinces, while the rest of
the country remained Catholic.
Then, following a surge of Irish nationalism in the 1890s and early 1900s, many
poets-literary men and women-began writing in English about the Celtic tales.
Their poems and literature were intended to feed the intellectual needs of Ireland
by emphasizing its vibrant cultural heritage. Some of these stories and beliefs
had never been given up, but now they flowed all over the country, as De Valera
stirred nationalism in the people. This cultural and literary revival, which
produced the works of William Butler Yeats and Sean O'Casey, is strongly associated
with the struggle for independence. Some Irish began to turn to Celtic beliefs
instead of Catholicism, or to blend the two together in order to be completely
and uniquely Irish.
