In general it may be said that the two stood on much the same level of mentality, but that they had specialised on different subjects, the Normans on war and politics, the Irish on culture.

Of the many writers who help us to reconstruct the period we ought to signalise one, Mrs A.S.Green, who to a rare scholarship adds something rarer, the genius of common sense.

This is not the place in which to recall the whole substance of her "Making of Ireland and its Undoing" and her "Irish Nationality"; but from borrowings thence and elsewhere we can piece together a plain tale of that first chapter of the Irish Question..