It is hardly surprising that Irish historians have been reluctant to engage with negative later medieval English perceptions of Ireland (see sidebar below), other than to impugn their veracity. In regard to the English Pale, for instance, studies of interaction between Gaedhil and Gaill have aimed to disprove its status as an international frontier; depictions … Read more
There is a moment in the second part of Shakespeare’s Henry VI when Cardinal Beaufort warns that: ‘The uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms And temper clay with blood of Englishmen: To Ireland will you lead a band of men, Collected choicely, from each county some, And try your hap against the Irishmen?’ More … Read more
Late on a cold January night in 1602 an Ulster boy led four Gaelic soldiers silently through the dark to a cabin somewhere in the rolling borderlands between Tyrone, Derry and Donegal. Inside the cabin lay a servant and kinsman of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, called Tirlough Magnylson [MacNeill’s son]. Curled up beside the … Read more
Divided Gaels: Gaelic cultural identities in Scotland and Ireland c. 1200–c. 1650 Wilson McLeod (Oxford University Press, £50) ISBN 0 199 247226 Ulster and the Isles in the fifteenth century: the lordship of the Clann Domhnaill of Antrim Simon Kingston (Four Courts Press, £55) ISBN 1 851 827293 In the wake of the establishment … Read more
This collection of essays in honour of Professor J.F. Lydon, recently retired Lecky Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, is a worthy tribute to a scholar who has contributed so much to our present understanding of the history of the Anglo-Norman colony, and who has inspired a new generation of historians, many of them … Read more