Quotes from Carmel McCaffrey

Chemical properties in the peat stop anything from rotting, so bogs are the "bank vaults" of Irish history, protecting whatever is put in them. A bog-cutter recently described finding a slab of butter, still edible after more than a hundred years.

Today the Book of Kells is housed in Trinity College, Dublin, where it is displayed to tourists in its own interpretive center at the university. The book is in a protective glass case, and a new page is turned each day.

When we view these enormous stone monuments today we see them in gray stone, but this is not how they once were.

Ireland has the oldest literature in Europe in a native language.

In forts built for war, defensive ditches are always on the outside to stop enemies getting in. At religious sites, ditches are placed inside the banks to stop supernatural powers within the circle getting out.