In Ireland, someone said, the inevitable never happens

and the unexpected usually does. The one constant is that part of the population is always irate with another part. It certainly was so on Monday, April 24, 1916. The Easter Rising caught Dublin unawares. Ninety years ago this week the violence was in progress. The nationalist rebels patriots, if you prefer surrendered by the weekend. Within a month 16 men had been tried and executed for their conspiracy. Among them were its leaders - Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, Sean MacDermott, James Connolly, Thomas Clarke and Eamon Ceannt.

Willliam L.Koyle of the Town of Mono has a drop or two of Celtic blood in him. He monitors historic events in what the Anglo-Irish Bernard Shaw called "John Bull's other island". It now (most of it, that is) flaunts its independence by using euro currency and by celebrating its freedom from domination by "the strangers". It is full of other kinds of "strangers" who, nevertheless, work rather than rule there. Bill Koyle sent us the supplement from The Irish Times that recounts the story of the Rising and carries pictures of Dublin's gutted city centre nine decades ago.

Let's admit the trauma of Irish history and its effect on the often lovable Irish character. The island was too inaccessible to have been conquered either by the Romans or by the Anglo Saxons who succeeded them in Britain. Many Celtic traditions that disappeared elsewhere survived in what the Romans had called Hibernia, Land of Winter. They never knew its benevolent climate and the greenness that is evident even by flying over it.

As every Canadian schoolchild once knew, the Norman French invaded England in 1066. Within a century their iron grasp had reached the Scottish lowlands. Meanwhile, in Ireland, four petty kingdoms had emerged: Connaught, Leinster, Munster and Ulster. After hotly contested fights, one of the kings became the "high king" until the next contest. The thing they all had in common was the success of Patrick's Fifth Century Christian mission. They, of course, did not let religion interfere with dynastic and regional rivalry.

Enter King Henry II (reigned 1154-89) of England. His father had hammered the Scots. The son, as a Hibernian history teacher once told us, was determined to screw the Irish. That was the same autocrat implicated in the murder of his former friend, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his cathedral in 1170. In 1169 Henry was glad to accept the invitation of an Irish "king" to help him widen his borders. The Anglo Normans arrived and did not leave until the 20th Century. Irish Roman Catholics should note that Pope Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman ever to be Bishop of Rome) supported Henry's take-over of Ireland, reportedly on condition that the stubborn survival of Patrick's Celtic Christianity be progressively replaced by Roman customs and by papal authority. Both before and after that change the monasteries of Ireland were havens of peaceful scholarship in a violent feudal world.

By 1532 England's Henry VIII had made himself Supreme Governor of the Church of England, then, as the old Celtic Church had been, independent of Rome. His authority was tempered only by the flexible phrase "insofar as the law of God allows". In 1541 Henry claimed that he was king of all Ireland as well. The papacy then became the defender of Irish Catholics against the English "ascendancy". The old national struggle took on a dogmatic, religious aspect. An early challenge came from the O'Neills and their Celtic partisans but, as for most of the remaining Second Millennium, British power prevailed.

During the English Civil War (1642-9) and its aftermath the Irish supported the losing

Stuart kings. They incurred the wrath of the Puritan dictator, Oliver Cromwell. His scourge of Ireland was terrible. He directed Protestant emigration to Northern Ireland. Especially in Ulster the native Irish became an under-class. After the Restoration of the monarchy and its passing to German Protestant princes who had little interest even in England, and especially after the parliamentary union of England and Scotland in 1707, Ireland became the neglected fiefdom of absentee British landlords. The century-end efforts to give Ireland its own parliament were shelved when the Napoleonic threat necessitated tight military occupation there. Finally, in 1800 AngloIrish members were elected to Parliament at Westminster. In 1803 Robert Emmet was executed for leading a July rebellion.

In 1829 "Catholic Emancipation" allowed Irish and other Roman Catholics a part in British political life. The fear of "papists" diminished. But the 1840s Irish crop failures brought starvation and massive Irish emigration to North America. Some benevolent Irish aristocrats such as Lord Dufferin were sympathetic and helpful, others were not. They became the targets of festering resentment. Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone fought for Irish Home Rule but his plans were three times defeated in the House of Lords.

As the maritime and colonial rivalry between Great Britain and Germany increased during late19th and early 20th Centuries, Irish dissidents saw an opportunity. Roger Casement, a civil servant, intrigued to smuggle in German weapons for the use of nationalist cadres. When war came in 1914 and Britons, including thousands of Irish volunteers, were engaged in France plans for the Easter1916 Rising were laid. When it struck, civil authorities were caught off guard. Public opinion was at first outraged but after the war support for Irish autonomy increased, financed by prospering Sinn Fein ('Ourselves alone') supporters abroad.

The Easter Rising was quelled but an illegal 'provisional government' was formed by Eamon deValera, supported by an Irish Republican Army led by Michael Collins. In 1921 the Anglo-Irish Treaty proclaimed the Irish Free State, an independent dominion within the Commonwealth. In 1932 deValera refused the oath of allegiance to the Crown. In 1937 the Free State took the name Eire and in 1949 it defected from the Commonwealth.

Despite its celebrated beauty, its fascinating political and cultural history and the wonderful Irish folk one has known, I have flown over and sailed past it but never visited the Emerald Isle where unexpected violence has often been to be expected. But where is that not so nowadays?