英語聽力：愛爾蘭的故事—3

-I remember one kid said, “Sir, that doesn't make any sense?” I said, “How do you mean it doesn't make any sense?” I said, “Carson wanted the union of Ireland and Britain, he wanted what, for him, was the best thing for Ireland. Now can you say that he is not a patriot because he doesn't agree with you?” I was trying to do that kind of thing.

-And telling the true history is key to that, isn't it?

-It is. But you see, you come back then, “what's truth”.

Walking the streets of Cork now, I find the city proud of its links with the world beyond and willing to acknowledge a history made of many influences in which Irishness embraced different allegiances.

Our story of Ireland begins by going back through a landscape marked by the change of centuries, through the scattering of tribes, the rise and fall of kings, through prosperity and war, and a revolution of faith.

The first waves of settlers are thought to have come from Europe about 10,000 years ago. This ancient burial site at Newgrange is the oldest known building in Ireland.

Across the ancient world, men built monuments to their dead. But this structure at Newgrange predates some of the most famous. It was built 500 years before the Pyramids of Giza, a thousand years before Stonehenge. But what can it tell us about the lives of some of the earliest inhabitants of this island?

People first came into Ireland about 8,000 B.C., after the end of Ice Age. Farming comes into Ireland about 4,000 B.C., and Newgrange is built in the centuries just about 3,000 B.C.