Where the Middle Ages Begin
The British Museum just opened its latest exhibit, Celts: Art and Identity this past Thursday, covering 2,500 years of Celtic history. The exhibit explores Celtic identity and how it eveolved from the time of the Ancient Greeks to the present through art, culture, daily life, religion and politics.
This paper examines part of that future: late medieval and early modern Gaelic Irish devotion to the early Christian martyrs as evidenced in the vernacular manuscript tradition.
This thesis explores these ambitions and relationships. It looks at the complex, sometimes violent, relationships between the earls of Desmond and local gentry, neighbouring magnates, absentee landholders, the royal government and the English crown as well as with the Irish.
Although few specifics are known about the historical daily patterns of interaction between ON speakers and Gaelic speakers in the Highlands and Western/Hebrides Islands of what is present-day Scotland, it is clear neverthe- less that the groups lived more or less side by side in that region over a period of several centuries.
The image of the Virgo Lactans orMaria Lactans (the image of the Virgin Mary suckling the Child Jesus), which occurs as early as the third century in the catacomb of Priscilla inRome, later spread ing across Europe, is found in a number of Irish sources.
The medieval kingdom of Scotland was a rich amalgam of diverse ethnic elements which reflected the turbulent history of the first millennium of its development.
This project seeks to identify the processes at work in Scandinavian and Anglo- Norman colonialism in Ireland, and their interaction with the landscape, by examining the impact of each phase of activity on the settlement pattern in two representative case-study regions. The successes, failures, similarities and differences of Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman settlement and society in Ireland are examined and compared in this project in terms of three sub-phases of the overall process, namely expansion, consolidation and domination, within an overall developmental diachronic framework.
My intent in the following paper is to make a case for the usefulness of comparative analysis in a narrower and more specific context, that is, in examining two fascinating but often marginalized medieval works: the Irish Cogadh Gáedel re Gallaib (modern Irish Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh [“The Battle of the Gaels and the Foreigners”]) and the Icelandic/Orcadian Orkneyinga saga (“The Saga of the Orcadians”).
The project of the Irish translator of the Aeneid was strikingly different from that of a modern translator, of Virgil or of any other author: Whereas the modern translator will strive to convey in a different language both the substance and the form of his source (although there are always problems with metrical texts), the medieval translator, particularly of secular narratives, was primarily interested in ‘acceptability (to the recipients) rather than adequacy (to the original)’ .
This paper examined the role of Medb and Fedelm, the seer in the Táin. It focuses on this conversation between the seer and Medb.
The subject of Tynwald and its history, origins and symbolism have occupied the interest of academics and others over the years.
This document is intended as an orientation for students of the Lebor Gabála Érenn (LGE), a refresher for those who have read it in the
past, and a rapid reference in relation to the genealogy of persons mentioned in the LGE.
Classical ‘Common’ Gaelic, also known as Early Modern Irish or Classical Irish (the names favoured in Ireland), are the terms used to describe written Gaelic between c.1200 and c.1650 in Ireland, and also in Scotland.
This paper focused on the daughter houses of Furness Abbey.
In this paper, Luke McInerney examines the late 16th century bardic poem Créd fá seachnaim síol Aodha? composed by Domhnall Ó Maoilchonaire for his patron Seán Mac Conmara, Lord of West Clann Chuiléin.
Attitudes of Gall to Gaedhel in Scotland before John of Fordun Broun, Dauvit Mìorun Mòr nan Gall, ‘The Great Ill-Will of the Lowlander’? Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands, Medieval and Modern (2007) Abstract It is generally held that the idea of Scotland’s division between Gaelic ‘Highlands’ and Scots or English ‘Lowlands’ can be traced no […]
Gaelic Barbarity and Scottish Identity in the Later Middle Ages MacGregor, Martin Mìorun Mòr nan Gall, ‘The Great Ill-Will of the Lowlander’? Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands, Medieval and Modern (2007) Abstract One point of reasonably clear consensus among Scottish historians during the twentieth century was that a ‘Highland/Lowland divide’ came into being in the […]
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