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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2019 8:25:10 GMT -5
Yes indeed. Toirdelbach ua Briain was a grandson of Brian Boru and Muirchertach Ua Briain was Toirdelbach's son. Toirdelbach and Muirchertach are both reckoned among the kings of Ireland. Toirdelbach in particular was addressed with that title in a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Incidentally, the conventions is that 'ua', the ancestor of 'Ó', meaning grandson, is rendered in lowercase when the man is literally a grandson and capitalised when it is used as a surname. You are of course quite correct - the Uí Bhriain history 'Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib' presents Brian as the man who drove the foreigners out of Ireland, but in his time and after the foreigners were active on at least one side of many conflicts. This later became true of the next batch of foreigners to arrive in Ireland - the English - who, like the Norse, aside from their own political structures, often advanced themselves personally by serving as mercenaries with the Irish kings. See the mention of Ua Máel Doraidh above, who brought Englishmen with him in a raid on the kingdom of Fir Manach or Lough Erne. Thanks general as that pretty much puts that particular entry into some kind of context. The Scottish experience of the Normans was quite different from that of Irelands. King David I (1124-1153), who was Norman by instinct and habit if not by birth, had spent much of his youth at the court of Henry II and quickly recognised the existential threat posed by the Normans to his Kingdom. His solution was to invite them in and give them land. This served the double purpose of binding them to him personally while providing the crown with a first rate cavalry force. Very astute move I think. Here is a video by Professor Robert Bartlett which addresses the question of the Normans in Scotland and Ireland from the 38th minute to the end : |
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Post by Rex Monoculus Midiensis on Sept 20, 2019 8:06:16 GMT -5
Robert Bartlett is a great and very readable historian - very much enjoyed his 'England under the Norman and Angevin kings'.
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Post by Rex Monoculus Midiensis on Sept 20, 2019 8:15:29 GMT -5
Annals of the Four Masters 1054.10 & Annals of Tigernach 1054.2:
"A steeple of fire was seen in the air over Ros-Deala, on the Sunday of the festival of George, for the space of five hours; innumerable black birds passing into and out of it, and one large bird in the middle of them; and the little birds went under his wings, when they went into the steeple. They came out, and raised up a greyhound, that was in the middle of the town, aloft in the air, and let it drop down again, so that it died immediately; and they took up three cloaks and two shirts, and let them drop down in the same manner. The wood on which these birds perched fell under them; and the oak tree upon which they perched shook with its roots in the earth."
This is thought to be one of very few contemporary European records of the Supernova of 1054, a remnant of which, The Crab Nebula, is still visible today.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2019 12:58:06 GMT -5
Annals of the Four Masters 1054.10 & Annals of Tigernach 1054.2:
"A steeple of fire was seen in the air over Ros-Deala, on the Sunday of the festival of George, for the space of five hours; innumerable black birds passing into and out of it, and one large bird in the middle of them; and the little birds went under his wings, when they went into the steeple. They came out, and raised up a greyhound, that was in the middle of the town, aloft in the air, and let it drop down again, so that it died immediately; and they took up three cloaks and two shirts, and let them drop down in the same manner. The wood on which these birds perched fell under them; and the oak tree upon which they perched shook with its roots in the earth."
This is thought to be one of very few contemporary European records of the Supernova of 1054, a remnant of which, The Crab Nebula, is still visible today.
There seems to be some debate as to whether or not it was the Supernova of 1054 that the source refers to. I found this on Wiki: "The date of the event corresponds to 24 April: (Saint George's Day is 23 April and fell on a Saturday in 1054. Thus the mention of the "Sunday of Saint George's Day" corresponds to the next day, 24 April) long before the sighting noted by the Chinese. The astronomical nature of the account remains very uncertain, and interpretation as a solar halo or aurora seems at least as probable. " It does seem a helluva coincidence though and I have no doubt they witnessed a Celestial event of some significance, particularly given the apocalyptic type events the chronicler associates with the sighting. Another fascinating entry though General. |
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Post by Rex Monoculus Midiensis on Sept 21, 2019 6:16:23 GMT -5
Yes indeed VR, well spotted. Some interesting discussion of this in the Journal of the Pacific Astronomical Society from 1999 might be worth considering here:
George W. Collins II, William P. Claspy and John C. Martin, 'A Reinterpretation of Historical References to the Supernova of A.D. 1054', in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 111, No. 761 (July 1999), pp. 871-880 at p. 878:
"We can now suggest the following sequence of events,which minimizes conflict between and within the historical references in a manner that is consistent with known astronomical constraints. In April or early May of A.D. 1054, the supernova that has given rise to the Crab Nebula exploded.The rise time to maximum brightness for a Type I super-nova is poorly known, but is expected to be about several weeks, while that for Type II is even longer, ranging to months. If one takes the error limits to their extreme, it is possible that the supernova exploded in early April, which would make Brecher et al.'s (1978) correction to the date given by the Iraqi physician Ibn Butlan unnecessary, since the supernova would have just appeared at the end of the Hegira year of 445. This appears to be the view of Guidoboni et al. (1992), who take April 11 as the first sighting of the supernova. A somewhat later explosion would still have been early enough for the supernova to have provided a heavenly sign for the canonization of Pope Saint Leo IX with only minimal poetic license. It even allows for the date of the feast of Saint George (April 24) given in the Irish annals of the extremely metaphorical report discussed by McCarthy & Breen (1997) to be accommodated."
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2019 16:24:52 GMT -5
It can only ever be speculation I suppose based on the few historical sources available and the scientific opinion, but I am willing to concede the Irish scribes are describing the Supernova of 1054 in their own unique fashion.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2019 5:43:14 GMT -5
I dug this out from the Annals of Tigernach. It is a short commentary on the battle of Dun Nechtan (Nechtansmere) for which the Annals give a date of 684, but the date 685 given by Bede is generally accepted by Scottish historians.
T686.4
The battle of Dún Nechtain was carried out on the twentieth day of the month of May, a Sunday, in which Ecfrith son of Osu, king of the Saxons, in the 15th year of his rule completed, with magna caterua of his soldiers was killed by Bruide son of Bile king of Fortriu.
This battle is highly significant in terms of the Scottish mainland as the slaughter of Ecgfrith and his army by the Pictish King Brude, either in Forfar or further North in Speyside, destroyed Bernician Anglo-Saxon power and removed any real threat from the South until the time of Athelstan over 200 years later. This is how Bede describes it :
"The hopes and strength of the English power began to ebb and fall away, for the Picts recovered their own land which the English had held, and the Gaels who were in Britain (and some part of the Britons) recovered their liberty"
Brude son of Bili saviour of both Pictavia and the Gaels of Dalriada thoroughly deserves an honoured place in history.
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Post by Rex Monoculus Midiensis on Sept 23, 2019 12:29:09 GMT -5
I dug this out from the Annals of Tigernach. It is a short commentary on the battle of Dun Nechtan (Nechtansmere) for which the Annals give a date of 684, but the date 685 given by Bede is generally accepted by Scottish historians. T686.4 The battle of Dún Nechtain was carried out on the twentieth day of the month of May, a Sunday, in which Ecfrith son of Osu, king of the Saxons, in the 15th year of his rule completed, with magna caterua of his soldiers was killed by Bruide son of Bile king of Fortriu. This battle is highly significant in terms of the Scottish mainland as the slaughter of Ecgfrith and his army by the Pictish King Brude, either in Forfar or further North in Speyside, destroyed Bernician Anglo-Saxon power and removed any real threat from the South until the time of Athelstan over 200 years later. This is how Bede describes it : "The hopes and strength of the English power began to ebb and fall away, for the Picts recovered their own land which the English had held, and the Gaels who were in Britain (and some part of the Britons) recovered their liberty" Brude son of Bili saviour of both Pictavia and the Gaels of Dalriada thoroughly deserves an honoured place in history.
Very interesting - there are plenty of entries concerning Scotland in the Irish annals and it might be worthwhile to get your views on some of them in this thread VR. My sense is that there are more in the earlier period than the later, but I couldn't say with any certainty that was the case.
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Post by Rex Monoculus Midiensis on Sept 23, 2019 12:30:18 GMT -5
This one may interest you VR, if you haven't seen it before!
Annals of Inisfallen 1105.7:
"In the above year a camel, an animal of remarkable size, was brought from the king of Alba to Muirchertach Ua Briain."
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2019 14:28:30 GMT -5
This one may interest you VR, if you haven't seen it before! Annals of Inisfallen 1105.7:"In the above year a camel, an animal of remarkable size, was brought from the king of Alba to Muirchertach Ua Briain." Some historians, for some reason known only to themselves, insist it was an elephant, but as the literal translation from the entry is camel, then camel it was. It could have came to the King of Scots either from a Scot retuning from Crusade or more likely as a gift from Henry the First's menagerie to King Edgar and then on to Muirchertach King of Munster. The reasons behind the diplomatic gift are much more complex and involve a four way struggle for control of the Western Isles, the Isle of Man and Orkney between Henry I, Magnus Barelegs and his successor, Muirchertach Ua Briain and King Edgar. Basically The King of England feared a Norwegian invasion of his Western dominions coming from the Western seaboard and to some extent may have been using the Scots and Irish as proxies to prevent this. Nothing new there then! It is all quite confusing, but there is a chapter called 'The Reign of King Edgar, 1097-1107' from the book 'Dominion and Lordship Scotland 1070-1230' by Richard Oram which analyses the situation in detail. It is heavy going though and a dram is recommended on completion. |
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