snappy epilogue or a lengthy prologue.See also McNeill, "Archaeology", "The 150 years before 1200 have been lost, between the assumptions that life was a continuation of the fifth through eighth-century world and that the incursion of English lords marked a fundamental change throughout Ireland." In trying to interpret the history of early Ireland, one of the most frequently asked questions addressed by historians is how early it is possible to speak of an Irish nation encompassing the whole island of Ireland. Early poet-historians like Flann Mainistrech constructed a history of a monarchy of all Ireland going back to and beyond St Patrick. Only a hundred years after Mainistrech, Gerald of Wales described the Irish society in his Topographia Hibernica as utterly primitive and savage. At the beginning of modern scholarly interpretation of Irish history, Eoin MacNeill and G.H. Orpen came to opposite conclusions analyzing the same period. Orpen saw an anarchic country still in 'a tribal state'; he could see no nation, no wider community in Ireland than the tribe. MacNeill stressed the reality of the high-kingship of Ireland and the existence of many of those institutions of government which Orpen found wanting, and claimed that Irish law had a national character. Nature of the written sources A large body of contemporary and near-contemporary material on early medieval Ireland has survived. From the titles of works mentioned in these sources, it is clear that a great deal of additional material has now been lost. The surviving materials usually exist in the form of much later copies, and it is only from comparison of the various texts that the original documents can be reconstructed. Extant Irish annals are ultimately derived from the now-lost Chronicle of Ireland which was probably being compiled in the midlands of Ireland by around 800. All include material derived from other sources, or added at a later date. The Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Innisfallen cover most of this period, but have a gap between 1132 and 1155. The Annals of Clonmacnoise survive only in an eccentric 17th-century English translation, and the Annals of Tigernach for this period are lost with Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh's abbreviated copy known as the Chronicon Scotorum supplying only part of the missing material. The Annals of the Four Masters are late, and include some material of doubtful origin. While the annals provide a considerable amount of information, they are generally