There is one overriding and rather obvious dissimilarity between Ireland and Scotland: Ireland is an island. Throughout its early history, at least until the arrival of the Vikings at the end of the eighth century, Ireland was inhabited by a people who spoke a common language and who thereby could convince themselves that they were … Read more
While the title under review hints at a book of limited focus, suggesting a curious blend of archaeology and dilettante history, what we have is an in-depth study more comprehensive than any other work to date. It could be given several titles: ‘a social and economic history of Gaelic Ireland’; ‘law and society in early … Read more
In the course of a review of Douglas Hyde’s The Story of Early Gaelic Literature (1895), Frederick York Powell drew attention to the dearth of published texts in the Irish language: Is it too much to hope for the establishment of an Irish Text Society? It should publish in handy, clear-printed form the unpublished texts … Read more
The editors have set out to place County Donegal in its local, national and European contexts by combining the work of archaeologists, medievalists, Celtic scholars, geographers, place name scholars and historians of economics, culture and politics. The result is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary study ever undertaken of Donegal. The geographical entity we know today as … Read more
At the second Burren Law School in Ballyvaughan, County Clare (31 March-2 April 1995), on the theme Crime and punishment, Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin gave background information on the judicial system in the Brehon law period from the eighth to the twelfth centuries where the offences common today also existed. She claimed the system was more … Read more