This day in Ireland 938 years ago....

[Catalpa]

Catalpa,thankyou for telling the story so well.

Now I wonder ,do you have the date of birth for Diarmuid ?
It will be interesting for me to know if he had the sign of Leo strong in his chart,that is a Sidereal one .

I don't think we have that.

Nearly always it is the death of a great person that is recorded and even then the actual specific calender date is quite rare.

[Catalpa]

I think even a unified Ireland would have found it difficult to resist the Normans.

The Normans seem to have had the best military equipment and tactics at the time.

They served as mercenaries as far away as Byzantium and the Crusades.

They even captured Sicily from the muslims.

Well a disunified Ireland turned out to be more than they could chew anyway

- they never did fully conquer the Gaels.

So I think we would have had a pretty good chance...

[eoghanacht]

Well I beg to differ.

While of course we will never know I think the likelyhood is that English involvement in Ireland would have been far less if the events of the 1160's & 1170's had never happened.

Its a fact that the interests of the monarchs of England in this Country was minimal after the time of Henry II and King John's Expedition of 1210

- and John came here to tame the Anglo-Irish Lords more than the Gaelic Kings.

After that it was to be almost 200 years before another King of England set foot in Ireland again.

Henry II landing here was the result of circumstances in England due to the Murder of Thomas a Beckett.

If the good Archbishop had not been cut down its quite possible that Henry would not have come to Ireland at all.

We are their westerly neighbour's, they are a war like people, i'm not talking about the annual cattle raid our ancestor's liked to engage in when the crop's were planted, real prolonged war's intent on conquest.

They would have realised at some point that their westerly flank would be their achilles heel. They weren't thick and neither were their continental enemies, sooner or later someone would of launched an invasion.

[eoghanacht]

I've always wondered why people talk about restoring a function for the British monarchy in Irish life, whereas our native dynasties are of almost unparalleled antiquity in Europe.

Hypothetical question (even if you don't support the idea): if Ireland was to become a kingdom which Irish dynasty (the O'Neills, the O'Connors, the O'Briens, the MacMurrough Kavanaghs, the O'Donovans, the O'Donnells etc) would be the most appropriate for enthroning?

It would have come down to the O'Neills or the MC Carthy's

[greenporcupine]

A true king or queen ,as opposed to a bureaucrat must be strongly Leonine,risk taking ,brave ,smart. It is not possible to say at this time[in history] that a name would be 'royal',but a person,individual might be.

[euryalus]

Amid all this talk of "the English" (or, more accurately, the Normans) attacking Ireland, it might be pertinent to mentioned that in 1055 the City of Hereford was sacked and burned by a combined force of Welsh tribesmen, Irishmen and East Anglians. In the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: "They burned the town and the great minster, which the venerable Bishop Athelstan had before caused to be built, that they plundered and bereaved of relics and of vestments and of all things and slew the folk and led some away". In 1056 the Bishop of Hereford, hoping to exact his revenge, led an army into Wales, but he was killed in the ensuing battle and his men were heavily-defeated.

[Riadach]

I think even a unified Ireland would have found it difficult to resist the Normans.

The Normans seem to have had the best military equipment and tactics at the time.

They served as mercenaries as far away as Byzantium and the Crusades.

They even captured Sicily from the muslims.

I think eventually Normans would have settled in Ireland anyway, but perhaps as part of the sort of mercenary force which Diarmuid envisioned. They were the most effective military force on open terrain in North-Western Europe, and would have strengthened an Irish army against any English expansion. There are a few references to 'franc-amhas' frankish mercenary in pre-Norman sources, perhaps indicating they already had.

[Riadach]

It would have come down to the O'Neills or the MC Carthy's

Showing your bias?

[greenporcupine]

Catalpa, do you know if the bones etc of Diarmuid,and any of the main characters are available.
I would like to have D.N.A. testing done.
You maybe know of a man in the South of England [countryside]who found that he had the same exact D.N.A. of a man buried in the church yard more than a thousand years ago .
One way to establish connections with modern family.
Maybe there are people from the past walking around,reincarnated.

[euryalus]

You maybe know of a man in the South of England [countryside]who found that he had the same exact D.N.A. of a man buried in the church yard more than a thousand years ago .
One way to establish connections with modern family.
Maybe there are people from the past walking around,reincarnated.

No. He was not buried in a church yard 1,000 years ago, he was found in a cave at Wookey Hole in Somerset many thousands of years before, thereby proving a link with the pre-Celtic past and demonstrating that the indigenous people of the British Isles are still alive and well in rural Wessex.