The Norman king, Henry II, came to Ireland in the 12th century with the intention of converting the Irish to the True Faith . What type of society had he come to convert? The outside accepted view was that Irish people were near-savages and that their marriage customs caused them to be regarded as incestuous, so that the invasion, in the eyes of the invaders, was in the nature of God’s work, to redeem the people from their abominations and iniquities. This book endeavours to throw some light on the attitudes of the native pre-Christian and early-Christian society to sex and marriage. Patrick C. Power is the author of The Book of Irish Curses and History of South Tipperary .