In the Celtic world, as elsewhere, canines were admired for their senses of sight, smell and hearing. Dogs were used on hunting expeditions and to guard homes, as domestic pets and as a source of food. They abound in surviving mythology and folk tradition and are well represented in religion, where they are often associated … Read more
In Ireland we pride ourselves on our historical awareness. The Irish are interested in history, and in their own history in particular. This is obvious at a personal level in, for example, our collective excited engagement with the 1901 and 1911 censuses when they were made available to us on-line in recent years. At a … Read more
The basic fare was two properly baked loaves of bread daily. Other foods were prescribed at different times of year but varied according to the rank of the injured person. Nobles were to have salt-meat daily from New Year’s Eve to the beginning of Lent, garden herbs only during Lent, salt-meat twice a week from … Read more
The first edition of the Atlas of the Irish rural landscape (1997) was immediately hailed as a classic. For its time it was a ground-breaking publication, featuring a previously unsurpassed array of maps, aerial photographs and detailed explanatory text combining broad overviews of Irish rural settlement with detailed treatments of individual regions. Perhaps unavoidably, the … Read more
The wolf is as rich an image in literature as it is a reality—albeit a persecuted one—in natural history. Invariably featured as a menace in mythology and folklore, the wolf, demon or hero, is a strange and glamorous creature, the enigmatic ancestor of our domestic dog, and still roams Russian Asia, Canada and Alaska.Anyone with … Read more