I still maintain that there is a prehistory before the RC takeover in Ireland. I don't agree that every Irishman is beholden to the RC religion. I think this may be one reason that James Joyce had to depart. I also wonder about W.B. Yeats.

One of the clues is in the music. There is a dynamic early form of Irish music that sounds nothing like the liturgical musical elements of the RC, a wild passionate folk like sound predicated on the dance, a freewheeling, not staid, but abandoned cascade of tunes and notes that undoubtably was co-opted by the religious, but retains its roots in the Celtic culture which was peripatetic and assimilated the music of other cultures such as from Galicia, Spain.

Every culture has a bent toward hierarchy but one of the things that defines certain elements of Irish culture is its unwillingness to conform.