Today is going to be very quote-ful.

Well, that explains a lot:

1808 list of textbooks for reading from a school in Clare, Ireland:
"In History: Annals of Irish Rogues and Rapparees
In Biography - Memoirs of Jack the Bachelor, a notorious smuggle, and of Freeny, a celebrated highwayman
In Theology - Pastorini's Prophecies, and the Miracles of Prince Hohenloe
In Poetry - Ovid's Art of Love, and Paddy's Resource (a collection of revolutionary ballads)
In Romance Reading - Don Belianis of Greece, Moll Flanders, &c, &c." --Dutton, Statistical Survey of the County of Clare, 1808.

Apparently, there simply weren't a lot of books available in poor Irish schools, so to teach literacy they used what they had. Still, it seems unsurprising that with a list like this, certain values might be, um, incompatible with those of their insular neighbor.

I love documents like this; they're why I'm a historian, not that I get this much detail most of the time regarding the ancient world. Sometimes I wish I was an early modernist.

Apparently, there was also a hedge-school teacher named Eoghan O' Suillibhean known for telling stories of the Trojan War to entertain fellow laborers. It's all too easy to imagine him as an ancestor of redhound.