Daily Medieval

In yesterday's post about the Ardagh Hoard it was compared to the Book of Kells  as prime examples of early Irish art, but then mention...

Whether Brigid of Kildare was an early Irish saint or a pre-Christian goddess , her legend says that her mother was a slave baptized by St....

Ireland has three national saints. Besides St. Patrick and St. Columba there is St. Brigid of Ireland, also called Brigid of Kildare. Kild...

I'm not referencing the novel based on the "Nun's Priest's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales  by Geoffrey Chaucer writt...

Congal Cáech was a king of the Irish province of Ulaid (on the north east coast) in the early 7th century. Cáech means  "squinting...

Early Irish Brehon Law, so-called because it was administered by Brehons (from Old Irish breithem ("judge"), was more interested ...

Early Irish law was called Brehon Law, a system of civil (not criminal) rules, some of which survived until the 17th century when they were ...

The first mass arrival of Normans in Ireland was actually by invitation of Diarmait Mac Murchada, King of Leinster until he was deposed by t...

The illustration is a 19th century portrayal of King Henry II of England in Waterford, greeting the Irish delegates whom he intended to plac...

Prince John (24 December 1166 - 19 October 1216) had been made Lord of Ireland by his father, Henry II, in the 1177 Council of Oxford. He to...

The Topography of Ireland by Gerald of Wales seems to have been designed to paint the Irish as an ungovernable, crude people in need of co...

This title is a joke, since Gerald of Wales ' Topographia Hibernica ("Topography of Ireland") was mostly history.* It did inc...

Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis, c.1146 - 1223) was a priest and a writer of history. That could be the introduction for many of the fo...

See Parts one and two . The outcome of the trial was dire for Alice, her maid Petronilla, and her stepson William Outlaw. There were others...

The 9th century  Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) tells of three invasions of Ireland from the Iberian Peninsula. The Partholón ...

The Tuatha Dé Danann, or "the folk of the goddess Danu," are a cornerstone of early Irish literature and mythology. Arriving from ...

The Lebor Gabála Érenn or the Book of the Taking of Ireland , also known as The Book of Invasions , is a compilation of Christian and Irish...

Between 1151 and 1224 CE a manuscript was compiled, probably in what is now Terryglass in County Tipperary, by the abbot of a Terryglass mon...

Prophetic death is a staple of mythology and legend. One classic trope is the "threefold death" in which a prophecy claims three d...

There were two significant designations for kings in Ireland. Of the several different kingdoms on the Emerald Isle, only one of them had po...