In Ireland the game took root very gradually, but in Ulster, owing doubtless to constant intercourse with Scotland, such clubs as have been founded are strong in numbers and play.
But the system never took root.
Some took root in the strange lands, and, as later popular stories indicate, evidently reached high positions; others, retaining a more vivid tradition of the land of their fathers, cherished the ideal of a restored Jerusalem.
It took root and spread in spite of opposition until 1864, when an anti-foreign outbreak exterminated it.
Such art as continued was almost wholly religious; for in the wilderness of the times the churches formed oases of comparative prosperity and peace, and, even in the darkest times, wherever such oases existed there the seeds of art took root.
