The Medieval Irish History Podcast

** We are taking a week off and will be back January 16th!** Happy Stephen’s Day and Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a very lovely Christmas break. This week we are joined by the incredible Dr Sparky Booker, Assistant Professor in Medieval Irish History, Trinity College Dublin. Sparky enlightens us on the legal systems in force in 14th and 15th century Ireland, how to keep your land and why Elizabeth Le Veele married King of Leinster, Art McMurrough. She also discusses how the prevalence of intermarriage in the so-called 'four obedient shires' indicates that the English and Irish interacted far more peaceably and amicably than the often belligerent attitudes displayed toward the Irish in records from the colony would indicate, and that the attempts made by the Irish parliament to distance the English of Ireland from their Irish neighbours were largely unsuccessful.Suggested reading:Sparky Booker, Cultural Exchange and Identity in late medieval Ireland: the English and Irish of the Four Obedient Shires, Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Series (Cambridge, 2018)Sparky Booker, ‘Women and legal history: the case of late medieval English Ireland and the challenges of studying ‘women’’, Irish Historical Studies, 46:170 (2022), pp 224-243Sparky Booker, ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 113c (2013), pp 219-250Sparky Booker, ‘Widowhood and attainder in medieval Ireland: the case of Margaret Nugent’ in Deborah Youngs and Teresa Phipps (eds), Litigating women: gender and justice in Europe, c.1300-c.1800 (Abingdon, 2022), pp 81-98Ellis, Stephen G. (1998). Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (2nd ed.). RoutledgeRegular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)Email: [email protected]: Tiago Veloso SilvaSupported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.Views expressed are the speakers' own.Logo design: Matheus de Paula CostaMusic: Lexin_Music

We have a special episode today with recent Maynooth graduate Emily Little winner of the NUI Mansion House prize for her BA in Irish history. Emily is currently a secondary school teacher and studying for her Professional Masters in Education and makes an inspiring appeal for a reevaluation of the junior cert History curriculum. Recent reforms in historiographical approaches and archival practices have allowed for the rescuing of women from historical obscurity and it is clear that women who exercised political or social influence were not necessarily 'exceptional' or rare. Joan Fitzgerald, Countess of Ormond, Desmond and Ossory and Gráinne Ní Mháille, AKA Grace O’Malley, the so-called Pirate Queen, are two such women whose legacies have benefitted from the increased scholarship on women's history. Though active during different political periods of the 16th century and having contrasting experiences of English colonisation in Ireland, the lives of these two women provide many points of comparison, and are linked by their relationships with Queen Elizabeth I. Suggested reading:Frances Nolan and Bronagh McShane, ‘Introduction: A New Agenda for Women's and Gender History in Ireland' in Irish Historical Studies, xlvi (2022), pp. 207–216 Ciarán Brady, ‘Political Women and Reform in Tudor Ireland’ in Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O'Dowd (eds), Women in Early Modern Ireland (Edinburgh, 1991)Karen Ann Holland, ‘Joan Desmond, Ormond and Ossory: The World of a Countess in Sixteenth Century Ireland’ (PhD thesis, Providence College, Rhode Island, 1995)Damien Duffy, Aristocratic Women in Ireland 1450-1660 (Woodbridge, 2021)Anne Chambers, Granuaile: the life and times of Grace O’Malley c.1530-1603 (Portmarnock, 2003)Brendan Kane and Valerie McGowan-Doyle (eds), Elizabeth I and Ireland (Cambridge, 2014)Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)Email: [email protected]: Tiago Veloso SilvaSupported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.Views expressed are the speakers' own.Logo design: Matheus de Paula CostaMusic: Lexin_Music

This week we welcome back Prof. Alex Woolf (University of St. Andrews) to the podcast to question whether ‘the Vikings’ is a useful concept that helps us understand history. We explore why certain people left Scandinavia in the late 8th century and what they were called in the various places they raided and eventually settled. Alex warns us against the telescoping of medieval history and argues for more nuance and specificity when dealing with the Scandinavian diaspora in so-called 'Viking Age Ireland'. He explains that the variety of activities by people we refer to as 'vikings' across the centuries in places like Ireland, England, Scotland and Francia cannot be reduced to one simple narrative.Suggested reading:Alex Woolf, 'The Viking Paradigm in Early Medieval History' Early Medieval England and its Neighbours. 2025;51:e2. doi:10.1017/ean.2024.3Colmán Etchingham, Vikings in Early Medieval Ireland: Church-Raiding, Politics and Kingship (Boydell Press, 2025)Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)Email: [email protected]: Tiago Veloso SilvaSupported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.Views expressed are the speakers' own.Logo design: Matheus de Paula CostaMusic: Lexin_Music

Who were the Scotti? The Féni? The Gaels? We were delighted to get Dr Patrick Wadden, from DCU and Belmont Abbey College, NC, USA on the podcast this week to explore the evidence for the existence of the Irish nation as a concept in the early medieval period. Dr Wadden guides us through a variety of texts, in both Latin and the vernacular, which depict the people of Ireland as a community of birth, language, law, religion and, sometimes, politics, from Columbanus, Adomnán and Auraicept na n-Éces the whole way through to Lebor gabála Érenn and the Sex Aetates Mundi. We discuss the role of the Irish language in expressions of Irish identity in the Middle Ages and Wadden reminds us to note the difference between modern scholars identifying something as being key to medieval identity and people at the time seeing it as significant.Suggested reading:Patrick Wadden, 'Church, Apostle and People in early Ireland', Medieval Worlds 5 (2017), pp. 143–169 Kane, Brendan, and Patrick Wadden, eds, An Eoraip: Gaelic Ireland in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2025)Wadden, P., ‘Theories of National Identity in Early Medieval Ireland’ https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:49c662b9-4e14-41b3-972e-ed8475f324c5Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)Email: [email protected]: Tiago Veloso SilvaSupported by the Arts & Humanities Institute, Maynooth University, the Dept of Early Irish, & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.Views expressed are the speakers' own.Logo design: Matheus de Paula CostaMusic: Lexin_Music

"Great was the darkness of that night and its horror, and demons would appear on that night always."Oíche shamhna shona daoibh go léir! Happy Hallowe'en! To accompany you on any trick or treating or early morning/late night wakenings this weekend we bring you our spooky Samhain special! Dr Hannah Mac Auliffe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Maynooth University, explains how the festival of Samhain appears in medieval Irish literature as a time for feasting and merriment, with the High King’s Feast of Tara taking place on Halloween in several medieval stories. And just as we gather together and tell stories of demons and ghouls each October 31st, so too did the people of medieval Ireland. We hear of everything from zombies, threefold deaths and beheadings to werewolves, witches and kidnappings by the fairy armies of the sídhe. Be careful out there!Recommended reading:Hannah Mac Auliffe, 'Great was the darkness': Spooky stories from medieval Ireland, RTÉ Brainstorm: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2023/1023/1412430-ghost-stories-medieval-ireland-folklore-halloween-samhain/Lára Ní Mhaoláin, 'Preserving Samhain - Halloween in the Schools’ Collection of Irish folklore': https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/research/spotlight-research/preserving-samhain-halloween-schools-collection-irish-folkloreElizabeth Boyle, 'How authors in medieval Ireland made Samhain a good read': https://blogafragments.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/how-authors-in-medieval-ireland-made-samhain-a-good-read/Primary sources mentioned (thanks Hannah for the references!):ECHTRA CORMAIC: https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T302000.htmlStokes, Whitley (ed. and tr.), ‘The Irish ordeals, Cormac's adventure in the Land of Promise, and the decision as to Cormac's sword’ in Windisch, Ernst, and Whitley Stokes (eds), Irische Texte mit Wörterbuch, vol. 3:1 (1891) pp 183-221.TOCHMARC EMIRE: https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T301021.htmlMeyer, Kuno (ed. and tr.), ‘The Wooing of Emer’, Archaeological Review 1 (1888), pp 68-75; 150-155; 231-235; 298-07.ECHTRA NERAI: https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/seanmeanghaeilge/cdi/texts/Meyer-Echtra-Nerai.pdfMeyer, Kuno (ed. and tr.), 'Echtra Nerai (The Adventures of Nera)', Revue Celtique 10 (1889), pp 212-228.MACGNÍMARTHA FIND: https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T303023/index.htmlMeyer, Kuno (ed. and tr.), ‘Macgnimartha Find’, Ériu 1 (1901), pp 180-190.TOGAIL BRUIDNE DÁ DERGA: https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T301017A/Stokes, Whitley (ed. and tr.), ‘The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel’, Revue Celtique 22 (1901), pp 9-61, 165-215, 282-329, 390-437.METRICAL DINDSHENCHAS: https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T106500D/Gwynn, Edward (ed. and tr.), The Metrical Dindshenchas, Volume 4; Second reprint (Dublin, 1991) (first published 1906) (reprinted 1941).Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)Email: [email protected]: Tiago Veloso SilvaSupported by Maynooth University, the Dept of Early Irish, the Dept of Music, the Dept of History, & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.Views expressed are the speakers' own.Logo design: Matheus de Paula CostaMusic by: Sascha Ende