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Medieval Irish history at the end of the twentieth century: unfinished work*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Edel Bhreathnach
Edel Bhreathnach*
Affiliation:
Department of Old Irish, National University of Ireland, Galway
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Abstract

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Type
Review article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 126 , November 2000 , pp. 260 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2000

Footnotes

*

Early medieval Ireland, 400-1200. By Dáibhí Ó Cróinín. Pp xvi, 379. London & New York: Longman. 1995. £55 hardback; £19.99 paperback. (Longman History of Ireland)

Ireland and her neighbours in the seventh century. By Michael Richter. Pp 220. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 1999. IR£35.

Ireland in the middle ages. By Seán Duffy. Pp xiv, 216. London: Macmillan. 1997. £20 hardback; £12.50 paperback. (British History in Perspective); reissue, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. 1997. IR£13.40 paperback.

Britain and Ireland, 900-1300: insular responses to medieval European change. Edited by Brendan Smith. Pp xv, 300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999. £35.

Ireland and Britain, 1170-1450. By Robin Frame. Pp xix, 352, illus. London & Rio Grande: Hambledon Press. 1998. £38.

Ancient Ireland: life before the Celts. By Laurence Flanagan. Pp viii, 272, illus. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. 1998. IR£16.99 hardback; IR£9.99 paperback.

References

1 Leerssen, Joep, Remembrance and imagination: patterns in the historical and literary representation of Ireland in the nineteenth century (Cork, 1996)Google Scholar.

2 MacNeill, Eoin, Celtic Ireland (Dublin, 1981 ed.), pp xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar.

3 Klindt-Jensen, Ole, A history of Scandinavian archaeology (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Henry, David (ed.), Viking Ireland: Jens Worsaae’s accounts of his visit to Ireland, 1846-7 (Angus, 1995)Google Scholar.

4 McCone, Kim, ‘Prehistoric, Old and Middle Irish’ in McCone, Kim and Simms, Katharine (eds), Progress in medieval Irish studies (Maynooth, 1996), pp 7–53Google Scholar.

5 An exception to this reluctance is the detailed account of MacNeill’s life and contribution to scholarship in Martin, F.X. and Byrne, F.J. (eds), The scholar revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867-1945, and the making of the new Ireland (Shannon, 1973)Google Scholar.

6 MacNeill, Eoin, Phases of Irish history (Dublin, 1919)Google Scholar; idem, Celtic Ireland (Dublin, 1921); Orpen, G.H., Ireland under the Normans, 1169-1333 (4 vols, Oxford, 1911-20), i, 5–11Google Scholar.

7 Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, pp xi-xii.

8 Richter, Ireland & her neighbours, p. 11.

9 I acknowledge here the positive contribution made by Connolly, S.J. (ed.), The Oxford companion to Irish history (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar and by the quarterly publication History Ireland.

10 These will be made available through the website CELT based in University College Cork.

11 Frame, Ireland & Britain, p. 251.

12 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, pp 87-8.

13 Ghiollamhaith, Aoife Nic, ‘Kings and vassals in later medieval Ireland: the UÍ Bhriain and the MicConmara in the fourteenth century’ in Barry, T.B., Frame, Robin and Simms, Katharine (eds), Colony and frontier in medieval Ireland: essays presented to J. F. Lydon (London & Rio Grande, 1995), pp 201-16Google Scholar.

14 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, p. 125.

15 Frame, Ireland & Britain, p. 4: ‘Nevertheless, Sweetman’s work had what may seem today an important drawback. In the original records the Irish matter lies mingled with all the king’s other business, concerning England, Wales and the Angevin lands in France, as well as diplomatic relations with external powers. The act of assembling it under separate covers involved abstracting it from its context.’

16 Richter, Ireland & her neighbours, p. 54.

17 Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, p. 59.

18 McCarthy, D.P., ‘The chronology of the Irish annals’ in R.I.A Proc., xcviii (1998), sect. C, pp 203-55Google Scholar.

19 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, pp 154-78.

20 Ibid., pp 199-239.

21 Frame, Ireland & Britain, pp 31-57.

22 The first volume of this project is Pohl, Walter and Reimitz, Helmut (eds), Strategies of distinction: the construction of ethnic communities, 300-800 (Leiden, Boston & Cologne, 1998)Google Scholar.

23 Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, p. 11.

24 E.g. Cotter, Claireet al., ‘Cahercommaun Fort, Co. Clare: a reassessment of its cultural context’ in Discovery Programme Reports, no. 5 (1999), pp 41–95Google Scholar.

25 Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, pp 9-10.

26 Milis, L.J.R. (ed.), The pagan middle ages (Woodbridge, 1998)Google Scholar, translated by Guest, Tanis from De heidense Middeleeuwen (Brussels & Rome, 1991)Google Scholar.

27 Richter, Ireland & her neighbours, p. 18.

28 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, p. 25.

29 Brink, Stefan, ‘Social order in the early Scandinavian landscape’ in Fabech, Charlotte and Ringtved, Jytte (eds), Settlement and landscape: proceedings of a conference in Århus, Denmark, May 4-7, 1998 (Moesgård, 1999), pp 423-39Google Scholar.

30 On this general topic see Webster, Leslie and Brown, Michelle (eds), The transformation of the Roman world, A.D. 400-900 (London, 1997)Google Scholar.

31 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, p. 116.

32 Ibid., pp 83-6.

33 ‘Let them not despise the publication of deeds that are profitable, and that have not been accomplished without the help of God, on account of some unfamiliar words of the Irish tongue, a poor language, designations of men, or names of tribes and places; words that, I suppose, are held to be of no value, among other different tongues of foreign peoples’ (Adomnán’s Life of Columba, ed. and trans. Anderson, A.O. and Anderson, M.O. (revised ed., Oxford, 1991), pp 2–3)Google Scholar.

34 Sims-Williams, Patrick, ‘Genetics, linguistics, and prehistory: thinking big and thinking straight’ in Antiquity, lxxii (1998), pp 505-27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, pp 87-97, 135-53. Herbert, Máire continues to deal with this theme in ‘Rí Éirenn, rí Alban, kingship and identity in the ninth and tenth centuries’ in Taylor, Simon (ed.), Kings, clerics and chronicles in Scotland, 500-1297: essays in honour of Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday (Dublin, 2000), pp 62–72Google Scholar.

36 Duffy, Ireland in the middle ages, pp 135-6.

37 These matters have been discussed in detail in Davies, R.R. (ed.), The British Isles, 1100-1500: comparisons, contrasts and connections (Edinburgh, 1988)Google Scholar; idem, Domination and conquest: the experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100-1300 (Cambridge, 1990).

38 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, p. 112.

39 Richter, Ireland & her neighbours, pp 48-53.

40 Richard Sharpe, ‘The thriving of Dalriada’ in Taylor (ed.), Kings, clerics & chronicles, pp 47-61.

41 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, pp 154-78.

42 Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, pp 36-40.

43 Smith (ed.), Britain & Ireland, pp 179-98.

44 Ó Cróinín, Early medieval Ireland, p. 69.

45 Wolfram, Hervig, ‘Origo et religio: ethnic traditions and literature in early medieval texts’ in Early Medieval Europe, iii, 1 (1994), pp 19–38Google Scholar.

46 Frame, Ireland & Britain, pp 266-7.