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As the 20th century drew near in Ireland, a new nationalist cultural revival stirred. It would come to be known as the Irish literary renaissance and would change modern Irish history, but first it had to make sense of the Irish past. In 1878 Standish James O’Grady, considered by his contemporaries the “father” of this revival, published History of Ireland: The Heroic Period. More a fantasia than a history, it nonetheless introduced a new generation of nationalists to the myths and legends of early Irish history. This Gaelic past would ballast the rising nationalist movement, providing it with subject matter ...(100 of 10874 words)