Brian’s origins and the kingdom of North Munster

In the early thirteenth-century Accallam na Senórach (‘Tales of the Elders of Ireland’) the ultimate ancestor of Brian Boru is said to have met his death in the parish of […]

Ireland in the Viking Age

We should not underrate the very real power of the Norse, and their physical and psychological impact upon the Irish people. Scholarship on the Vikings in Ireland, impressed (as we […]

Technology

The Irish had borrowed much from the Romans—brooches, pins, barrel padlocks, sickles, ploughshares, the furnace and eventually the watermill. Such borrowing was not passive. Recent excavations throw light on this. […]

What the sources say

The contemporary Annals of Ulster, recording the Battle of Tara in 980, state that ‘The battle of Temair was won by Máel Sechnaill son of Domnall against the foreigners of […]

Neutrality

Sir,—With regard to Brendan Ó Cathaoir’s letter about Britain’s offer of unification in 1940 (HI 21.6, Nov./Dec. 2013), he seems to suggest that de Valera’s decision to reject it was […]