I grew up in a very Irish household and assumed that the Irish had always been Christian, but of course, that’s not true. Until the 6th century most Irish people were pagans, worshipping a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses that controlled everything in the natural world, including their harvests. Their gods had served them well for thousands of years, so why did the Irish abandon them? In the book In Search of Ancient Ireland by Carmel MacCaffrey and Leo Eaton it states.
“When Patrick died 492 – or 496, depending on whichever version of the annals one prefers – he had been spreading Christianity among the Irish for more than sixty years. But Ireland had not changed much over that time. Pockets of Christianity existed around royal courts and local centres of power, where Patrick and other early missionaries had been successful, but the vast majority of the country was still pagan.” I suppose we have to look at it from their point of view. Would you give up on the gods that were making your harvests plentiful? Of course not, you’d stick with what works. I know everyone thinks Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity in the 5th century, but the Cult of St. Patrick wasn’t developed until the 7th century with the goal of making the church in Armagh the central church of Celtic Christianity. Why did the monks of Armagh choose Patrick? I’m not entirely sure, but it could be because of his writings. His autobiography is called The Confession. When you read his words you get the impression that he was a very humble man, a sinner, like the rest of us, someone with which the common man could relate. “My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae”
So if it wasn’t St Patrick and the other missionaries, what forced the Irish people to adopt this new religion? It seems that the answer lies in Central America. Around 536 AD a volcano under Lake Ilopango erupted causing a catastrophic global event. It spewed ash and dust in the atmosphere cooling the climate. This in turn caused widespread famine and disease, and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. Recently, scientists have compared Ice core samples from the Greenland Ice sheet Project with the Irish Annals
The Annals are sparsely written and hardly ever mention women, children, or peasants, just noblemen and notable events. Here are the entries following the Lake Ilopango eruption.
Annals of Ulster: “536AD Failure of bread” Annals of Inisfallen: “537AD Failure of bread” The plague that swept through Europe after the famine is also mentioned: Chronicon Scotorum: “541AD A great mortality which is called Belefeth, in which Mobhi Clairinech, whose name is Bercan, 'prorectano poetae', perished.” Even though the entries are meagre, for me, they put a human face on the suffering. The Irish starved. Their crops failed and their animals died, and then came the plague. They believed their gods had deserted them and converted to Christianity. It is after this period that the great monasteries are built and we see a flowering of Irish culture. This conversion wasn’t as big a leap as you might expect. The Celtic Church adopted many of the pagan practices, and monks in this period were married men with families. Scholars today believe that the Celtic Church with its monasteries that coveted the written word came into being because of a volcano in Central America. Join my blog tour and visit the other stops for more chances to win $20 Amazon gift card.Today I'm celebrating the release of my latest story, which is set in early medieval Ireland. I thought it might be nice to give you a quick look at Fianna and Connell’s world. A brief Overview of Early Medieval IrelandPerched on the western edge of Europe and never conquered by the Romans, ninth century Ireland had its own distinct culture. You might be forgiven for thinking the Irish were a primitive people. After all, they had no towns or cities. They lived in clans or túath that occupied ringed hillforts with circular homes of wattle and daub. They had no monetary system; instead their wealth was measured in cattle. Clothing was basic with both men and women wearing a long dress-like garment called a léine. The woman’s léine reached her ankles, whereas a man’s came to the knees. But this was a rich culture with a strong tradition of scholarship and literacy, including a Celtic form of Christianity, and a native system of laws known as Brehon law, which recognized divorce and equal rights between genders. Marriage in ancient Ireland was not regarded in the same way as today. It was a legal contract between clans rather than the unbreakable bond between man and wife. Once a marriage contract was arranged the groom paid a dowry or bride-price to the bride’s father. Each year after the marriage the groom paid a settlement to the bride’s clan. After the first year the bride kept a portion of the payment that added to her wealth. The amount diminished each year until the twenty-first year when it ceased. Celtic Christianity didn’t frown on divorce. The Celts were much more practical, concentrating instead on writing the laws governing separation. This could be because a husband never owned his wife. When she married all her property and wealth stayed in her control, and in the event of estrangement she retained her possessions. Although Ireland was a male-dominated society, women were allowed greater freedom, independence, and property rights than in other European societies of the time. Women were able to become poets, healers, and brehons (lawyers). And under the right conditions, with the backing of her male relatives, a woman could become queen of her people, as is the case for Fianna in A Woman of Courage. I first heard about Dunmore Cave in County Kilkenny, Ireland two years ago while watching an episode of Cities of the Underworld on the History Channel. The fact that stuck in my head was that 1000 people were believed to have been massacred in the cave, in 928AD or 930AD depending on which version of the Irish annals you read. Gothfrith, grandson of Ímar, with the foreigners of Áth Cliath, razed Derc Ferna—something unheard of from ancient times - From the Annals of Ulster The besieging of Derc Ferna and its taking in which one thousand men die. – From the Chronicon Scotorum (Derc Ferna is the ancient name for Dunmore Cave.) Now I have to wonder what the archeological evidence says. I mean if a thousand men were slaughtered there would be some material left behind; bones fragments, axe heads, or a chunk broken from a sword blade. There would be something as it's almost impossible, especially in the early medieval period to eradicate the mess made by slaughtering a thousand people. So what does the evidence tell us? It seems that the cave is littered with bones. Some are animal bones and many of the animals were believed to have been eaten by other animals. Cut marks and burns on the remainder of the animal bones point to their being butchered by humans. Proof that people lived and ate in the cave. And what of the bodies? In 1973 the remains forty-four people were discovered within the cave most of them women and children. There are no signs of violence on any of the skeletons. So what killed them? It’s believed they hid in the cave during the attack. The Vikings then lit fires at the entrance to the cave and suffocated them. But a new look at the evidence is questioning this belief. Most of the objects found in the cave have been of Viking origin. In their paper: Recent Archeological Discoveries in Dunmore Cave, County Kilkenny: Further Questions Regarding Viking Activity at the Site Authors Marion A. Dowd, Linda G. Lynch and Margaret McCarthy list some of the finds: A collection of Viking material, including nine silver coins dating to around 930 AD, were found during excavations in the cave in 1973 (Drew and Huddart 1980, 17). In 1999, a second collection of Viking material - though of later 10th century date - was discovered at the site including 14 Anglo-Saxon silver pennies, a silver penannular arm-ring, hack silver, strap tags and 16 conical-shaped objects woven from silver wire. Of particular interest to me are the silver coins because the native Irish didn’t use coins to trade. Coins were used by the Vikings. Could this be a Viking grave and were the objects recovered grave goods. I don’t know that that answers the whole question, because if that was the case then where are all the men? There have been suggestions that the Vikings lost their silver and coins when they attacked, but there is no evidence of violence in the remains so that can’t be the whole answer either. But there obviously can’t have been a thousand people killed within the walls of the cave. So where did that number come from? It seems that there were two ringforts nearby and the massacre took place there with survivors fleeing to the cave. (At this time I’ve been unable to discover the name or exact location of the forts. If you have some information about them I’d love to hear it.) It’s unfortunate that science has not provided us with any definitive answers when it comes to what actually occurred in the cave and the origins of it’s inhabitants. Perhaps archeologist of the future can discover more about the identities of the bodies in Dunmore Cave. Do you have a history mystery? If you do I’d love to hear about it. |
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