Just now...

Daughter: Aren't the Irish known for drinking?

Me: Yes. They're also known for fighting.

Daughter: I want to be Irish.

Great movie.

It’s my understanding that the Irish died in great numbers of yellow fever while manually digging the Irish Channel in New Orleans.

Black slaves were far too valuable to use and risk losing so,,,the Irish got the jobs.

The Irish have been invaded over and over for over 1000 years. The Vikings only got so far. The English lasted 800 years until they'd finally had enough bullshit and after a two year guerilla styled war kicked at the time arguably the worlds strongest military dafuq out of their country in 1921. And England is only a short boat ride away.

We went to Ireland last year I really got off on the history which is right there in front of you if it hasn't been blowed up in the past. They're happy and very warm people and yes they love to drink. But do not back an Irishman in to a corner they will only be pushed so far.

You guys are completely missing the point. My daughter is hilarious. She's 9.

That was comical.
Out of the mouths of babes, no less.

The Irishman
The savage loves his native shore,
Though rude the soil and chill the air;
Then well may Erin's sons adore
Their isle which nature formed so fair,
What flood reflects a shore so sweet
As Shannon great or pastoral Bann?
Or who a friend or foe can meet
So generous as an Irishman?

His hand is rash, his heart is warm,
But honesty is still his guide;
None more repents a deed of harm,
And none forgives with nobler pride;
He may be duped, but won't be dared--
More fit to practise than to plan;
He dearly earns his poor reward,
And spends it like an Irishman.

If strange or poor, for you he'll pay,
And guide to where you safe may be;
If you're his guest, while e'er you stay,
His cottage holds a jubilee.
His inmost soul he will unlock,
And if he may _your_ secrets scan,
Your confidence he scorns to mock,
For faithful is an Irishman.

By honor bound in woe or weal,
Whate'er she bids he dares to do;
Try him with bribes--they won't prevail;
Prove him in fire--you'll find him true.
He seeks not safety, let his post
Be where it ought in danger's van;
And if the field of fame be lost,
It won't be by an Irishman.

Erin! loved land! from age to age,
Be thou more great, more famed, and free,
May peace be thine, or shouldst thou wage
Defensive war, cheap victory.
May plenty bloom in every field
Which gentle breezes softly fan,
And cheerful smiles serenely gild
The home of every Irishman.

James Orr

This always hung in my uncle's kitchen, it was his eulogy when he passed last year.

Only one beer, honey...ok, you want to fight about it??

Was going to ask how old.
She’s adorable.
Tell her on behalf of the Irish, we’d love to have her.

The Irish family dynamic

Funniests parts for me, the IRA guy hiding in the trunk and at the end, that fife and drum music in the background is a Protestant Orange Order parade passing by through a Catholic neighborhood. Marching season.

All of this is just anti-Irish racism.

WE WAS SLAVES! 😡

I demand reparations......

I was told the Butte Montana area had a large Irish population, due to mining.

I’ll ‘fess up, I love this series and I don’t even have a TV

A WHOLE lot closer to the truth than the usual twaddle.....

Grandfathers last name was Ireland. I guess he took that name when he came over here!

I'll fight any man that calls the Irish a bunch of drunks. Soon as I finish my breakfast beer.

Yep, we was, and were farther down the social Totem Pole than blacks.


Still, I don't get all butt hurt when someone calls me a " Mick"


And I haven't asked for reparations...yet.

We do need reparations! We need beer money!

And Whiskey

Least we all forget our Irish ancestors had no value unlike some pigmented types who came here with a value. No one protected their Irish investment when it came to the Irish, there'd be another boatload shortly

The only reason nobody "conquered" Ireland was there was nothing there worth the effort, except raiding for slaves. It's really that simple.

This never happens^^^^Laffin 😂

High, you’re right, your daughter is hilarious.

😎

Hey Mick...go draw another stout and STFU!


with all due respect...

For the English, an unconquered Ireland, like an independent Scotland, was a knife at their back, forever making alliances with France and Spain.

The Irish themselves remained splendidly retrograde, successive English invaders invaded, married into the local warring clans, and went native, “more Irish than the Irish”, over generations. Elizabethan armies found themselves facing the sort of combatants the Romans could have faced 1,500 years earlier including horsemen without stirrups hurling javelins.

Throughout all this time more Irish were killed by other Irish than by the English.

Bringing in Prods to settle the land from the adjoining Scottish lowlands changed all that, dispossessing the Native Catholic Irish beginning with Ulster.

The Republic of Ireland won independence the same way the subject peoples across the rest of the Empire did; in a large part due to the restraint of the increasingly decent Brits, using British laws and principles against them. If a people voted themselves free under British Law, England was powerless to stop them.

The clueless here used to chant “England Out of Ireland” on St Paddy’s Day. Worse, they gave money to the scum that were the IRA. From what I saw England would have LOVED to get out of Ireland, but could not because of a million-plus Ulster Prods who would NEVER vote themselves and Ulster out of the United Kingdom.

But, the former despised Ulster Catholic minority is now becoming the majority, many of whom also want to stay British also.

The EU diffused a lot of the tension, all border barriers dismantled, and the Republic for better or worse is no longer under the thumb of the Catholic Church, it has now gone, like Scotland, far Progressive Leftist.

Ironically, the Ulster Prods, staunchly Pro-Life, have found themselves allied with the Catholic Church on that issue when the Republic legalized abortion on demand.

Another issue was Brexit, membership in the EU benefitted both Northern Ireland and the Republic, neither entity wants a return to hard borders and separate currencies.

As for myself, I’m glad I don’t have to have a dog in that fight. Of course I value my Irish Catholic roots, is who I am, I also am enormously impressed by the Prods, possibly the toughest people in the world.

Ulster Prods emigrated to our Frontier and gave us the American culture we here treasure.

I'm half Irish, but I don't drink. My older family members did it, and I learned from their mistakes. We must have a gene that likes booze way too much. I do know how to fight though!

Know what a 7- course meal is in Ireland???


Scroll down.......




























A sixpack of beer and a baked potato...




And yes - I'm half Irish...

Family tree littered with alcoholics here, but the city I live in has the highest rate of DWI arrests in the nation and us Irish actually ain’t in the majority. I have long heard that Russia is drinking itself to death too. Then of course there’s that whole Rez thing.

Prob’ly ain’t just the Irish.

"Prods" is hate-speech.

Mostly a mix of Black Irish and Blackfoot Sioux

Phil

Its also easy to type.

What about Sassenach?

I've been saying that for years. Doubt Perfidious Albion will ever come through though. They are after perfidious.

Níl imní orm faoi labhairt cac ar agus fu ck ing sassenach.

The O'Birdy's, or at least my O'Birdy's, were from Southwest Cork, one of the poorest regions in Ireland and hard hit by the famine. Near as we can gather we were established as Merchant Marine in Queenstown (Cork Harbor) by that time, tho throngs of the starving and desperate showed up there.

A million died in the famine, the other seven million people in Ireland at that time did not. I do wonder what hard choices my ancestors had to make to stay alive during those years.

That reminds me that I wrote a paper on the Potato Famine for a history course in college. Seems like the blame lay on The Corn Laws. Wonder where that paper could be.

All my life I figured my DNA was predominately Irish because of my reddish hair and very light complexion,...which obviously came from my Paternal grandmother.

A DNA test indicated that I was about 20% Irish and 70% english.

I would have thought those percentages reversed.

Please define "black Irish"

All in fun. Well, mostly.

Ulster Scots?

Apperently several used throughout history. I was curious about what Phils was.

If you get a chance to view it, watch the movie “Black 47”.

Please forgive! Understood! 😉

Black Irish:

When the whole Spanish Armada set out to destroy England they feel into a vicious storm in the Irish Sea and the Armada, as a threatening force, was no more.

Spaniards who managed to survive the storm mostly washed ashore off the coast of Ireland. As the Irish hated the English, they took in the Spanish survivors who intermarried within the Irish culture producing some of the most beautiful women the world has ever known having jet black hair and blue/green eyes.

Proof that the American Indians phhuuccckkked buffalo.

Going on four years back now I bicycled through this place, Abbeystrowry just outside of Skibbereen, County Cork. It was a Wednesday evening and, as luck would have it, there was an outdoor Catholic Mass about to start.

I swear, all the congregation looked like my blood kin, and the kindly grey-haired Irish Priest was straight out of Central Casting.

He gave a pretty interesting sermon. First off, a million plus suddenly without food would be hard to deal with even today, let alone in the UK in the 1840's. Then he went on at length to describe the many charitable organizations that began, in England and elsewhere, to raise funds and send food to the worst-hit areas (heck, here in the US even the Choctaws sent money). In particular, he singled out a group of British University students who were extraordinarily effective.

I think the moral of his story was that history written simplistically in black and white is usually wrong.

The famine? I blame a fungus.

The potato blight came from Mexico to Ireland.

The famine? I blame the Mexicans.

Groid.

Have you ever been to Ireland?

The idea wasn't that The Corn Laws caused the famine, but that they prevented its mitigation.

I've been to Ireland and he's somewhat correct. Ireland is extremely poor in natural resources. That's why they burnt peat for heat. No coal, no metallic ores, not great farming land. etc.

Not sure if conquered is the correct word or not, but the Scandinavians had a strong presence in Ireland for centuries. A lot of those red-haired Irish lasses probably
inherited more of their features from some scruffy Danish pig thief than they did from any Celtic princess.

We found some oil in the Irish Sea. I don’t think anything has been developed to date. It was dicey as to being declared Commercial but I don’t know if further delineation was ever done to prove or disprove it as such. The arrangement was called “Tight Hole”. Some here know what that means. It relates to the sharing of information about the activities.

They have mined coal for eons. They are almost out though but so is coal.
They've been the bread basket of the region for a long time they still are. I was reading a newspaper over there last year and England for one relies on them a lot. Yes there's a lot of barren rocky ground on the north and west sides but there's some of the best farm land going otherwise. For most of their time they've had excellent fisheries inshore and off shore.

Anyways the Vikings and the Brits thought the place was OK they both invaded. They were under siege by the Brits for 800 years and the Vikings before. No one invaded because they were already invaded. They were though never conquered. And recently they had one of the best economic runs that side of the Atlantic ever in the 2000s known as "The Celtic Tiger"

The Vikings did a few things right.

Several major industries set up shop there for the tax benefits that Ireland offers,,,,,,,,kinda like Trump has done.

A few decades back I recall reading something about alcohol consumption per capita in Europe. Ireland was quite low compared to most other European countries. I remember that because it went against the hard drinking stereotypical Irish image. Any truth to that or could it have been fake news ?

I would guess Irish then and Irish now, two different animals. I will say that, maybe even more than England, the local pub is a social/cultural center. And best keep your mouth shut on political issues because in Ulster especially there’s “ahem”.... British pubs and Republican pubs. And outside of Ulster Republican pubs. Be content to be a clueless American, ergo neutral, because for them it ain’t just idle talk. Anyways that was my experience.

Far from it, I expect by the numbers the Spanish Armada theory is a bit far fetched. Cork Harbor is an incredibly good harbor; narrow entrance, large sheltered bay, short passage up the broad River Lee to a large loch.

From what I have read the harbor really didn’t take off as a major port until the Napoleonic Wars, second decade of the 1800’s, then it became a major seaport employing thousands of locals like my kin as sailors. Some of these brung back wives from the Mediterranean Nations, fellow Catholics. I recall reading too of an Italian Tailor setting up shop in Queenstown (present day Cobh). So when the port went International, so did the population to some extent.

That’s my guess.

Wonderful farm land, moderate temperatures and constant rain courtesy of the Gulf Stream, part of the reason why two acres of potatoes could feed a family of ten.

Was told about the wreck of the Armada fleet and subsequent comingling by folks in Ireland while in the country and took them at their word.

As you said, the truth is most likely somewhere in between.

And yet if DNA is to believed, the Vikings left very little of themselves in Ireland, certainly much less than is apparent today in parts of Scotland and Northern England. However the Irish left a lot of themselves in Iceland.

What did Ireland have that Rome needed that was worth the effort?

Now extrapolate that out.

The women they took from the island you mean. Sure as hell wasn't raiding Irishmen spreading the seed lololol

The Romans stopped along about Hadrian’s Wall. Their furthest north outpost was East Gate located in the quaint town of Lincoln, England. The East Gate Hotel sits atop the ruins.

My son and I took in the Isle of Man TT Races in 2016 Camping next to us were some trendy young folk from Dublin. JFC talk about a victim mentality! Wearing it on their sleeve as an excuse to be downright rude to their English neighbors.

I visited and called ‘em on it, pointed out that they were indeed privileged compared to myself and our English Working Class neighbors of forty years earlier and by blood I was as Irish Catholic as them. Boy did they get PO’d, screamed at me and everything Unfortunately we had to leave to get the ferry early the next morning.

I would have loved to PO them some more. I despise a victim mentality, and rudeness.

Birdie,,,,were you not a victim of their ire ? Pot/kettle ?

Grins

I’m Irish!!!!........of course I can patch drywall!!!!

And yet IIRC St Patric hisself first arrived in Ireland as a slave taken by Irish pirates.

Again IIRC Iceland was a pioneer colony founded mostly by younger Vikings of fewer prospects living on the fringes of that class-bound society. Pop history has them dragging off Irish girls and yet strangely enough all these captive Irish girls don’t seem to show up elsewhere.

OK, even given that some or even many were taken as spoils of war, who runs things in your household?

Meanwhile, in Ireland, the supposedly invincible Vikings, unlike everywhere else they landed, are restricted to the ports, eventually vassals to the surrounding Irish, fulfilling a useful purpose in the import/export trade and, as noted, apparently leaving little trace of their DNA, which is a puzzle.

Well now it’s on you to post an example of me as a victim, ever.

The Irish slavery comment was tongue in cheek, that whole Irish slavery thing is historical twaddle, and even if it were true how could I complain, I get to be an American

Britannia was enough drain on Roman resources
the idea of more of the same would be silly.
Rome seemed largely content to conduct trade
with the 'Hibernians'.... archeology at Drumanagh
has uncovered coins dating to reigns of:
Titus (AD 74-81), Trajan (AD 98-117) and Hadrian
(AD 117-138), Roman brooches and copper ingots.

WITH THE Romans it was not about 'can we or can't we?'...
but more about... 'should we?'... Agricola considered it,
but Rome was already extented and had issues like
soldier revolts and task of maintaining higher priorities
in the far more rewarding east empire provinces...Plus
the dynamics of politics in Rome.

We both did. As Warren Buffett explained when asked about financial disparities in the USA, he said, “when I was born, I had an approximately one in sixty thousand chance of being born in this great country at the time of my birth.. If you’re here, don’t waste that opportunity “.

Hot damn, now I'm gonna play the lottery again!

I'll take that as a no. lol

They called Ireland Hibernia and considered it part of their Empire by some maps. What they did or didn't take all those 2000 years ago I don't know. But I suspect it was little if anything being about as far from Rome as you could get. And Ireland wasn't all gaga about gold and silver like England for instance.

A real puzzle to me is why and how the population of the poorest in Ireland exploded the way it did in the sixty years prior to the famine.

Was it an imposed Pax Brittanica that squelched tribal warfare?

Or maybe the poor and dispossessed in every time and place fall back on breeding in the absence of any other prospects.

In common with others of similar ancestry my first Ancestry.com results were really specific; Cork Headlands, extreme SW Ireland, which proximity to the sea would explain the sailor thing.

It has become common knowledge since that this Irish specifity as to location came about through widespread inbreeding; cousin marriage. In an impoverished setting with little means or freedom to travel, one could easily have fifty first cousins in the neighborhood, and even more second cousins.

Apparently folks are offended by this, since then Ancestry.com has amended the results to include more of SW Ireland 🙄

Everybody knows Hadrian’s Wall, most everyone overlooks the Antonine Wall, built a generation later.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall

Deleted.

You couldn't tax as many traders or keep check
on people movements through the Antonine like
they could Hadrians.

Hill/alpine tribes be they in Gaul, Iberia or Caledonia
were typically more of a challenge to the Romans,
Some say because they were more 'savage' but probably more due to the fact that Roman tactics
worked best in open ground set-piece battles.

Rome eventually subdued the alpine tribes in Gaul
and Iberia, but didn't bother with the hill tribe
Scots/Caledonians, cause like Hibernia, it was not
deemed worth the effort.

You're probably related to my wife Birdie. It was pretty much a roots trip over there for her last year, me tagging along cause if I don't travel at least somewhere once every few years she gets pissy. She loves to travel.

Anyways, here great grandmother came from Skibbereen, potato famine central although somehow they didn't leave until after. They must have been slightly more well off or lucky than the rest. As you know absolute hoards of people left there, most coming to north America. We went there and checked out the museum next to an old building where many many people died. I had to GTF out of there it was creeping me out.

Cork is cool we had a good time there. Took a boat downstream to Cobh right on the coast, where the Titanic left from actually. Very beautiful area out there. Dublin I would give a bit fat pass if I ever went back. Not that there's anything overly wrong with it but its just a big crowded city with all the big crowded city problems. Up the west coast was nice too. Gallway was cool and then we went way up the west coast and at some point all the sudden no one's speaking English and all the signs are in Irish (Celtic I guess). And they speak a mix of that and English when they see you're a tourist. Fug.... that took a few days to have a clue wtf was going on..

A good chunk of my family were Ulster Scots. We have talked about going over there someday, I would like to see it.

For equal time....

An Orange Order parade through a Catholic town, Maghera, Ulster, July 2016.



Celebrating the Protestant victory at the Battle of the Boyne, 7/1/1690. The Prods did this through Catholic areas just to rub it in, things are different now the Catholics are gaining ground in numbers on the Protestants, but they still do it. Only parade I've seen where no-one was smiling, just muttered curses or stony silence. A heavy police presence.

The orange comes from William of Orange, or King Billy as they refer to him, the Dutch guy who became King of England, laying to rest any possibility of a Catholic ascendancy.



Same parade going away, seemed sorta desolate, its like they're being overwhelmed and I gotta feel for 'em now that the Irish flag is sometimes flown in the Government places in Belfast. Must be like a slap in the face.



But the seeds of hatred on both sides were sown way early, and the Protestants did treat the Catholics in Ulster like crap for generations. There once was a time when these parades were just mean.

On a brighter note; this is the Presbyterian Church in Tobermore, not three miles down the road from Maghera, and clearly a Protestant neighborhood.

Soon as I saw it it struck me how familiar it looked. "We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord."



Take away that Union Jack and substitute Old Glory and that photo coulda been taken anywhere across our Southern States.

Roots

There's a lot of theories on it. There are (or were) a significant number of Irish that had dark hair and eyes. DNA tests have shown that the founding stock of Ireland in prehistoric times is closest related to modern people of the Basque region of northern Spain and southwest France who do tend to be darker. Ancient Irish folklore tells stories of the early settlement of Ireland by the "Sons of Mil" which is often attributed to people from Iberia. It's all prehistoric oral tradition so probably not very reliable, but interestingly an Iberian connection does seem to be shown through the DNA studies. Here's a wikipedia link about Mil Espaine: Mil Espaine

That the original Irish would be darker isn't surprising, DNA studies have shown that most early celtic inhabitants of what's now England were darker too. The blue eyes and blond hair came to England with the later Germanic and Viking invasions. In the case of the Irish I think the red & blond hair and blue eyes probably did come later too. Dublin was settled by the Vikings and a few hundred years later the Normans arrived with Strongbow's invasion. The Normans were just Vikings that stopped in France and England for a bit. Just like the Angle/Saxon/Jute invasions of what would become England, the Normans were invited into Ireland by local chieftains who wanted their help killing their rival chieftains. They didn't just one day decide to show up and move in, the local infighting resulted in their recruitment to come help one side over another. I think there's a lot more viking/norman DNA in Ireland than many think.

https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/genealogy/irish-viking-norman-dna

Also, ironically there was plenty of food in Ireland during the potato famine, Ireland was exporting food to Britain the whole time. Ireland was essentially one big plantation dedicated to growing food for England and any decent farmland was owned by either English or Anglo-Irish landlords. The English weren't so benevolent in those days and didn't give one whit whether the natives starved while they exported grain and beef to England. The natives were left the poorest land and their mainstay crop was potatoes. When the potato blight hit they were left to starve while the English landowners happily shipped the profitable crops and cattle to England. Welfare wasn't much of a thing then and the landlords didn't feel any particular need to feed those around them that were starving, they pretty much said tough luck while they shipped off their crops to the English markets.

That She is. She tickled me when She was in the bowling pin shoot at Quemado, and lost out. I was keeping score, and She came over and asked me what She had to do, to get back in. miles

You’d enjoy the movie, Black 47.
Some of what you’ve posted is a part of the story.

That’s too cute!

Hey thanks for that link, it will be interesting to see what they can work out from the genetics in modern-day Ireland, another puzzle being why the traces of the Vikings and Normans should be so different in Ireland than they are in England. maybe ten years ago when the book "The Blood of the Isles" came out IIRC there was much to do about an identifiable "Viking Y" chromosome vs a "Celtic Y', the Celtic version as expected IIRC being found in the Basques, the Bretons and Ireland, I'm not sure about Wales and Cornwall.




Just for the sake of argument, and to add context..

1) Did those same English landowners not have bills to pay, loan obligations to meet and employees needing salaries?

2) Who besides the Catholic Irish were to blame for them breeding themselves in to a state of absolute squalor and deprivation over the three or four generations prior to the famine?

3) How many of the poor over in England ordinarily died of malnutrition and other poverty-related causes every year?

4) If all that food had stayed in Ireland, how many of those in need would have any means at all with which to buy it? even at a much reduced price? Or were people to just give it away? (an exactly similar issue prevails globally today).

5) How many of us Americans today, citizens of the greatest and one of the wealthiest Nations per capita in the world willingly donate major proportions of our income (as British landowners would have had to do) to support the world's poor?


Anyhow, here's a pretty good take on the politics of the famine years, and note that Ireland was a net importer of grain before, during and after the famine years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml

Hey thanks for the heads-up...





A nice touch that they're still using flintlocks in this backwater in '47.

This here is at the top of the Caha Pass, at the line between South Kerry and West Cork. I camped overnight there (down in the 40's in July!)



Come to find out this long, winding narrow track originated as a famine road: a public works project designed by the Brits to bring relief to Ireland's poor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R574_road_(Ireland)

I have in fact not been to the green island, though I'd like to maybe one day. But that said, that has nothing to do with the conversation. What natural or strategic resources did Ireland have that the rest of the world needed? The answer is none. Rome could've destroyed the local populace without a second thought. But it simply wasn't worth the effort. Same going forward, until quite late in modern history. Folks get awful emotional when their notions of historical badassery don't really pan out.

Wasn't gaga over gold and silver? What does that even mean. There was quite a bit of gold used in their trinkets, and jewelry. They certainly liked the shiny stuff at least as much as anyone else. They were a crude tribal society, and that in part kept them from any real historical significance.

What then led the Vikings to establish kingdoms in England but not Ireland?

The land WAS the root of prosperity, and Ireland was exceedingly productive.

I'm currently reading an excellent book; "Medieval Warfare: The Rise and Fall of English Supremacy at Arms, 1314-1485." by a retired British General and former Head of the Royal Amored Corps. The book covers the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses. Briefly, British supremacy originates with the longbow and professional (as opposed to feudal) men at arms, and ends with improved armor becoming increasingly arrow-proof and more than anything with the rise of field artillery. By 1450 the French had standardized gunpowder production, standardized-caliber iron cannonball production, and field artillery with a range of 800 yards.

Relevant to this thread, the ravages wrought by raiding English armies in the field in France made anything the Vikings did in their day look like a girl scout troop, and more than anything those armies cost the English money, lots of it, raised by taxation. In particular English national fortunes in that era rose and fell with the volume of the wool trade, them exporting raw wool to the Flemish.

Are you suggesting you couldn't produce wool in Ireland?

Miles: Thanks. She sure enjoyed that bowling pin shoot and I'd say she acquitted herself quite well, especially since that was her first time to shoot a pistol - with only about a half hour of practice beforehand!

Just look at what she started here. That little gal has some real potential !!

Now don't be intentionally dense Birdman. It's a beautiful island populated by an interesting and robust people. I'm just saying what it had to offer wasn't worth the effort to subdue it. Not because of the quality of arms and soldiers.

Gruff, it was in its day a breadbasket. You don’t scchitt in your oatmeal. The history is there.

Indeed she does! Thanks.

Relatively late history. Prior to England's dominance what role did it play? Did Rome staff it's auxilliary legions with hibernians? That'd be a neat paper or book I'd love to read if it's out there. Great Britain had tin, coal, etc and was evidently worth the effort.

Prior to Englands dominance was Ireland a great exporter of foodstuffs?

Years ago you recommended Winter's Bone as a movie for me to see. It was indeed very good. It might make my top 100 of all-time. This one looks good as well.

Thinking you’ll really enjoy it. The central character was made for the part. Comeuppances and thorough revenge are a large part of the story.

Not being intentionally dense at all, merely pointing out that Ireland was as about as potentially lucrative to an invader as anywhere else.

Here's other possibilities as to why Ireland's Celtic way of doing things persisted almost into the modern era.

#1) The Irish Sea. The English Channel saved England many times, most recently in 1940 There was yet a second moat in the way to get to Ireland.

#2) To refer back to that Medieval Warfare book for a second: One thing it itemizes is the enormous cost of sending armies from England to France, said costs raised by taxation.

Wait a minute, to levy taxation you had to have a legion of literate tax collectors, accountants, security guards, a whole stable taxation infrastructure in place. Equally to be taxed you had to have stable and known tenants, established on the land, paying taxes for generation after generation. In short, tho we think of people of the Middle Ages as weird unwashed folks who dressed funny, what you had to have in England is an established COUNTRY, still in place generation after generation, mostly irrespective of which faction of nobility is calling themselves King.

1066 was the last time England was successfully invaded, by William the Bastard (he prob'ly preferred "the Conquerer" ). He invades a nation of close to two million Saxons et al. with just 10,000 men, beats King Harald by a fluke, and this changes English history.

First thing is, after beating a few more local forces this French-speaking intruder gets himself crowned King of ENGLAND, implying there already was an England to be King of, complete with the aforementioned existing infrastructure. In fact almost the first thing William I does is compile the famous Domesday Book, essentially an updated tax roll of the whole country.

I dunno exactly how many times Ireland was invaded over the centuries, but I'd guess at least one of those invasion forces numbered as many as 10,000 men, and Ireland's population prob'ly always less than a million.

But when guys did invade and set up shop was there a functioning "Kingdom of Ireland" to take over? All set and ready to go? Nope, relative anarchy, between eternally warring minor "kingdoms". Like herding cats.

The Vikings came and went, never really getting a foothold beyond the ports. The Normans established the Pale, a small holding around Dublin where English custom and law was imposed, meanwhile everything else was chaos as usual, as was said... "beyond the Pale". Eventually Ireland creeped back in, the Normans all went native and hence we get all those Fitzgeralds and Fitzsimmons as Irish surnames.

It took actually displacing the Irish across most of Ireland by force, and bringing in your own people in the form of the Lowland Scots to provide local manpower to get the conquering done.

Just a theory.

lol

That means they didn't have much gold and silver.

Look, no country has resources that the rest of the world needs. But quite a few have resources that other countries want. And Irelands one of the richer countries in the region as far as what others wanted. That's why they WERE invaded and held as share croppers in their own land for 1000 years prior to 1921. I have no romantic anything about Ireland or any other country over there. Just disagreeing with your statement that they had nothing of value and that's why 'they weren't invaded'.

My wife and I went with a group to Ireland last May. Everyone of us, and others I have talked to since who have been there, would go back in a heartbeat. For the most part great people and so friendly. Like you said the history is right there for you to see. An ancestor immigrated from their to Canada in the 1820s as I recall. Then to MN. So it was very interesting to see where part of me came from.

There is an island village there that was looking for expats and Irish descendent to move there since there village population is dwindling. Everyone of us thought about it. Sadly no elk or gun rights.

Never said they weren't invaded. I said they weren't subjugated and brought into the fold.

You did not put forth the following statement, but I have read it and heard it many times before. On this very site in fact, is that the Irish were so badass nobody could conquer them. It's a laughable position is all. When it became useful, Britain invaded and made them their bitch. Had the resources been worth it the Romans, and later the Anglo-Saxons would've done the same. A lot of that is of course geographic location, and they were left to their own devices largely because of the remote location in addition to the other points I made prior.

Forgive me for paring down your post to these couple sentences. The first is patently false. Had it been as lucrative as Britain it would have been taken. Period. If your contention is that it was, then why wasn't it taken? Because it wasn't worth it. Yes herding cats is a good analogy, but it's not as if they were cats that were any more dangerous than others that were brought to heel. In fact the numbers you site would argue otherwise.

You are over simplifying the whole 1066 timeline. It's a FASCINATING year full of events that shaped our modern world. Would love to visit on it further, but it's beautiful out and I got the forge going.

I love a good argument that is bereft of insults and poo slinging.

Imperial Rome wisely adapted and took on a range of
Foreign skill military forces, Batavian cavalry,
Germanic cavalry etc, as auxiliaries,mercenaries,
and/or as allied client Kingdom forces.

Batavian Aux. cav. was highly valued by Rome as were
Germanic cav..for elite strike force applications.
Emperors even selecting such germanics as personal
security alongside the Praetorian Guard.... in fact when
the corrupt Praetorian killed an emperor, it was the
German bodyguard group that remained fiercely loyal
and avenged such actions.

Now the Romans found the task of conquering the
wild more unregulated germania tribes more difficult
- requiring too much risk and effort for little gain,
but still extracted some selective uses for them.

If Hibernians had anything good to offer in that regard
I'd imagine Romans would have pressed them into
service one way or another.

Halfwit myth-folklore means a lot to some.
Hibernians were nothing much more
than oportunistic inbred inter-tribal rival brigants.

Roman military campaigns revolved around
harvest seasons in enemy territory...
Eg: CAESAR timed such to be able to feed his army in the field
in his Gallic wars...Caesar and Vercingetorix both used
scorched earth policies to try and cripple each other's forces
through lack of grain.
Caesars ventures into Germania were limited in part
due fact that Germanic tribes east of Rhine, were not
big on agriculture.

Armies do not march or fight very well on empty
stomachs.... did the Hibernians have extensive
agriculture and large stores of grain that Romans
could sieze?

The daily tonnage of grain needed to feed a number
of Legions, Auxilaries, non~combatant camp helpers,
Fodder for several thousand horse and mules, etc.
was a huge logistic if you had to drag/supply it all yourself.
and it became harder if it all had to be carted overland
without roads and much harder again if there were no
suitably located rivers for bulk shipment to logistical
locations.

In regards to Roman Empire conquests that
is simply not true, since more wealthy and
established regions of the empire payed for
expensive campaigns into other areas with
little or no real financial reward or a net loss
for the coffers of Rome.

Hadrian drew the line at the Rhine and Tiberius allowed Germanicus
a few campaigns over the Rhine, but finally said no more due to there
being no gains for Rome...seems the efforts of Germanicus were
more about avenging Varus/ lost legions of 9 A.D.
and having destroyed Arminius forces and razed
everything German for 50 miles around and recovering
two legionary standards, it seems his task was accomplished.


Also the driving forces/agendas for Roman campaigns
were different in the Republic with personally competitive
Triumvirate arrangements (like Caesar, Pompey and Crassus)
vs the new Imperial system under an Emperor.

Caesar briefly invaded Britannia twice for his own
reasons (and he operated in Gaul for a combination
of his own reasons and the requirement of the senate
to defend Gallic allies).. but left Britannia behind cause
he had higher priorities in Gaul.

EARLIER in the piece, Rome was not much interested in
the bulk of Gaul, but got involved to protect its land trade
routes to colonies in Iberia, which were being threatened
by Gauls that were raiding Greek trading posts...
And together with the fact Rome had an allied
contract with the Greeks, so came to their defence.

After that, ambitious Republic Romans saw military
campaigns in Gaul, Germania and Britannia as means
of advancing their political careers.

The Roman people loved and celebrated winners..
when Caesar defeated Vercingetorix at Alesia,
Roman senate declared 20 days of thanksgiving.
Even when Caesar crossed the Rhine for only
18 days to burn down villages and destroy food
stores of Germanic tribes and not really engage in combat,
(since Germanics fled and hid in the forest)
He still got a great reception in Rome for his
Pioneering efforts..

You are correct, She did very well, and She is a delight to be around. miles

Thankyousir.

Tks for the info Starman.

OK, so its down to the Italians vs. the Mongols with the Vikings as possible runner up for the title of baddest boys on the block.

Meanwhile back to the 'grasping inbred clans' of Ireland......

A hundred years after taking England the Normans, after being sorta checkmated by the indigenous Welsh, are invited into Ireland and initially cut a wide swathe, like a hot knife through butter, construct a bunch of castles, but then stall out and over time, become Irish. Irish language and law creeping back into Norman areas. Its gonna be 300 years between the Normans and the time when the Tudors get serious about Ireland.

The Irish meanwhile remain stubbornly tribal, and individualistic, fighting barefoot, and with spears. Clearly a different mindset. From Wiki we get Irish Kerns operating in France during the 100 years war, of "ferocious reputation", riding bareback and taking the severed heads of their opponents.

Braveheart is fiction very loosely based on fact of course, I do believe they got the mindset about right tho, worth noting that most of the filming and almost all the "Scots" in the battle scenes were Irish, along with the bagpipes in thhe soundtrack




"Sigh", now I suppose I'm obliged to wade into the morass that is Irish history.

Romans were not really bad unless you defied them
or betrayed them.., even then Rome may still extend
an olive branch [to some extent] if they still valued
you enough, as they did with the germanic Areovistus
and the allied Gallic Aedui who at one point went
with the gallic revolt, which Rome forgave them
(but not others) for....but If you had no value to them
and pissed them off, every living soul in one's tribe
could be obliterated in extreme cases.

Submitting to the Roman system could be very beneficial
for some tribes and clans as a number of Spanish, Britannic,
Gallic, Germanics, etc, discovered.

Just think, you could become a powerful client king
of Rome, or be a mercenary force with the Romans,
or part of auxiliary forces attached to legions.
any or all of that could really help you get it over
your traditional rival clans/tribes.

IF you allied with Rome it was in their interests to
also protect you and their interests..thus you could
have Roman legions intervening to deal with large
powerful rival or invading tribes that you could not
handle alone... Some Gauls were real glad to have
Rome drive back large masses of uninvited Germanics.

Even within the brief time Caesar was in Britain,
Some tribes that had had enough of a tyrant leader
in charge of banded together tribes, started assisting
Caesar... Natives allying with or assisting Romans
happened in every region of the empire, I suspect some
barefoot Hibernians would have taken the same options
had Rome set foot there with plans to stay.

Seriously bummed out here, can't find my Bayeux Tapestry pics, that seriously long (100ft?) work of art commissioned by William hisself to document and justify his victory.

Still got the other photos in the series, including Bayeux Cathedral, which survived June of 1944 intact by some miracle...



Seeing the Bayeux Tapestry was an uber bucket list item since I was a kid in England, heck I remember the 900 year anniversary. Here's a small section lifted from the 'net.



Note the overhand thing they got going on with them javelins and spears at that time, so maybe the Irish weren't quite so out of date after all.

Sorta related, having seen the Bayeux Cathedral I passed up on stopping in at Salisbury Cathedral the following week, I mean, seen one magnificent Gothic cathedral seen 'em all, just rode right on by........



Came to find out later they have an ORIGINAL COPY OF THE FRIGGIN' MAGNA CARTA in that church, and I rode right on by.....

But.... I did find the spot at Bosworth Field where Richard III bought the farm, after coming within a sword's length of taking out Henry Tudor after that magnificent charge right before being betrayed by the Stanleys. There it is, that low spot that was a mire 535 years ago where his horse bogged down, right on the other side of that intersection.




Meanwhile, up in the north of England, earlier on that same trip, a section of prob'ly the oldest surviving wall ever commissioned by a flaming homosexual....

Looking east, Scotland to the left......

The Limes Germanicus defence was comissioned
much earlier by Augustus and dwarfed the Antonine
and Hadrian walls in length... When Hadrian came
along he also commissioned work on the Limes.

Orig. plans for Hadrians were that sections would
be stone and others earth rampart with ditch,.. then
with time they got carried away and it became an
Enormous resource/cost blowout project.
.. and plans further changed along the way where
stone walls orig. to be 3 meters were reduced to being
built at 2 meters.

Hadrians wall also had fort locations miles out to the
north and south of it, cause real threats still existed
within its boundary, but you gotta sensibly draw the line
somewhere?... when you want to consolidate and
manage your territorial gains.

My people (the Murrays) are from County Cavan.

I like beer as much as the next man.




P

Some distance east of there, maybe 15-20 miles southwest of Tobermore. Took this pic while cycling across the Sperrin Mountains (really "uplands"), prettiest place I saw in Ulster. Dunno what the shelter was for, school bus?

Turns out that during the war for Independence the Sperrins were a Republican stronghold. Ya gotta look at things on their scale, over here 15-20 miles is/was nothing, over there 15 - 20 miles was a long way, as it was to me growing up over in England.

Typical Irish weather; right before this I had been riding into heavy rain and a brutal headwind all day.

Wow, that's a beautiful place. My people were supposedly centered around Dromore and Ballycross, small towns near Belfast I think. Were you ever in that area?

Egad Sir, I own ya an apology..... this is where I crossed into the Republic, the village of Swalinbar, County Cavan, under the EU no Border checks at all anymore. I had my passport handy and everything, didn't need it, wasn't even sure I had crossed into the Republic until I asked right there in town, which I gather is now pretty much a bedroom community for folks that work across the Border in Eniskillen....





No offense intended, but much of the interior of Ireland that I saw was sorta nondescript. It is glaciated terrain, drumlin country, to that end it reminded me very much of parts of Upstate New York. I had come that morning from a late breakfast in Irvinestown on the far side of Lough Earne and was pushing hard to make the final thirty miles to Carrick-on-Shannon. So that afternoon heading SSW down through County Cavan I only stopped to take photos here.... a peat cutting..... from a bog behind the trees....




Turns out in Ireland they get all nostalgic about peat, and go out of their way to burn it on purpose when they want to get back to their roots, they even sell it outside of convenience store the same way we do firewood.....

You can tell who's burning it because it makes a yellow smoke.




And Holy Crap! I just realized something, back in Ulster, first day I came in, far northeast corner at Ballycastle, serious Prod territory, when THEY wanna get all nostalgic they burn COAL. I thought this was so odd when I first saw it I took a picture.

When I was a little kid in England we heated our whole house from the living room fireplace, had no hot water unless we had a fire, everybody burned coal, we even lived right next to the railyard where even in the 60's lots of trains STILL burned coal (ah, the Luddite glory of Government regulation combined with Union labor ). Us kids got filthy playing on piles of coal and grimy vacant steam engines. The scent of coal smoke takes me right back, but I dunno I'd go out of my way to burn it again.

Anyhoo... in that photo they also sell kindling to get the coal started, a sign of the times or maybe the location, back in the old days we used newspaper as kindling of course like everybody else, the newspaper we didn't use to wrap the fish and chips in our shop that is.




...and while I'm at it a bit more cultural realization, ain't no kindling alongside that peat, maybe because in the Republic they're still all about newspapers, cell phones notwithstanding, newspapers full of eloquent, opinionated, lengthy editorials all about most everything.....






Plainly, news from American sends 'em into a tizzy, us being so violent and all......

In that picture of the turf Birdwatcher posted the turf is "clamped". It is part of the process of drying it to bring home and burn. Much like Birdwatcher I have had my foot in all 3 worlds, born in the west of Ireland, 3 years in an English town during the troubles as an Irish kid and then America. I definitely choose America in that mix.
I think what is lost in this discussion if people are actually interested in the Irish is the relationship with England. That defines us but not them. Hundreds of years and yes we were conquered. Penal laws, all the children between 10 and 14 being rounded up and sold into slavery in the West Indies, the black and tans, etc. .
I will give a family story my mother told me as an example. She is a Murray from East Galway. It is mostly a Scottish name. When her grandmother was dying in the house and my mom as the oldest was attending to her she was told about two uncles she never had heard of. Her grandmother was broken and crying telling her about her own sons. One of them lived only a couple of miles away. They were disowned by the family for joining the British army during world war one. Now they might of only done it because there was no other job but they were disowned by their family. The Irish truly hate informers and traitors. I don't see the same hardness here in America. Interesting to note that the most Irish deaths in war are in world war one followed by the American Civil War. I personally don't blame my great uncles but I didn't live through what my Great Grandparents did.

The Irish are predisposed to drinking and fighting, they just like it the same way a lab wants to fetch. Never heard anyone claiming to be "Badass" when I was growing up.

Hell ancestors were here long before the Revolutionary War, fluctuating between Canada and Michigan... and yes we liked to drink and fight. Hell prior to the war the Irish amounted to some 1/4 to 1/3 of the early American population. Had it not been for the Irish, might be you all would be speaking more of a British slang than you do. Freedom, it wasn't the British aristocrats that were interested in American freedom.

Phil

Celt, thanks for the insight. You are more Irish than me.

My great Uncle Patrick was a originally a sailor, joined the Royal Munster Fusiliers before the Great War, his brother, my Grandfather hated the Brits but not his brother. They were from Queenstown, now Cobh, seems like anti-British sentiment weren't so strong in that town, maybe because so many made a living off of English shipping.

Great Uncle Patrick died at Gallipoli, mentioned in dispatches. Grandpa O'Birdy died before I was born, he messed up his lungs through an attack of the bends when he worked salvage diving in the Caribbean, moved to Brooklyn, married an Irish girl. She died giving birth to their fifth child. My grandma had stayed on in Ireland until her thirties, an old maid, stayed back to look after her elderly parents. Her marriage to my grandpa was almost arranged; she was alone, he needed someone to help raise the children. They had four more kids, one of whom was my dad. My dad weren't much on hate, he never did set foot in Ireland, grew up hunting and trapping during the depression in rural NY State. Whatever negative sentiments he may have learned were blown away by his experiences with the Sixth Marines on Okinawa, I think that made all else sorta irrelevant, Plus the love of his life became an English girl.

My mom'd dad, who I grew up around, was the son of an English Catholic (related to the Old Lancashire Martyrs) who had married an Irish girl in Manchester. That guy drank their fortune away so my grandpa had to raise himself up from nothing, becoming a prosperous hotelier on the Chamber of Commerce. He was a fireman during the Blitz My mom's mom was brung to Manchester by her County Cork parents. Her dad took a ship to New Zealand, telling no one, just didn't come home one day, abandoning his wife and two young daughters. So my mom's mom grew up in poverty, in England, little cause to be enamored of anything Irish. My mom was raised Catholic English, the defining experience of Her childhood was getting bombed out of her house by the Luftwaffe. She was sent to Canada, met my dad in Brooklyn right after the war, he followed her back to England and married her there.

We were in Blackpool through the sixties, can't say I had any reason to complain, I grew up with English friends. Us O'Birdy kids did go to a Catholic school taught by the Irish Christian Brothers (only two of the fifteen were homosexual pedophiles), but they soft-pedaled Nationalism in that setting. Of course I was aware of the troubles, Bernadette Devlin and Ian Paisely were on the telly most every night. Mostly we were glad we weren't a part of it.

I think there's a Celtic predisposition for getting PO'd we all inherit, I'm personally familiar with the hatreds on both sides, I understand it, cuts close, still glad I don't gotta be a part of it.


Only thing in your post I might take issue with, EVERYONE I knew in the working classes over there was prone to drinking and fighting

Scots Irish, Protestant for the most part. Big difference.

True on everyone doing the drinking and fighting in the working classes Birdwatcher. I never had the hatred of the English, easier for my cousins who never lived there. When kids were showing up in my neighborhood in Yorksire to fight the paddy and i was more experienced my english friends always enjoyed the show. Once again my experiences are different,. when I was only a baby my dad would go to London in the summer to work. One summer he was bringing my mother and leaving me in Galway..Trying to find a place to rent . All the signs said no coloureds or Irish. I never dealt with that.

double post

This explains the difference better.... 🙂

Sorry about the delay, when I did this trip June/July/August 2016 Photobucket was up and running, I'm reclaiming my photos from there, but sometimes they ain't available.

My son and I went to see the Isle of Man TT, after he left I had 40 days to do a 1,500 mile loop on a bicycle - North of England - Scotland - Ireland - France - back to the start up England. Took me ten days up England and through Glasgow and down the Kyntire Peninsula to Campbeltown. Ended up spending fourteen days in Ireland,: In through the far Northeast corner at Ballycastle, then made a beeline southwest through Ulster and the Republic to the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast at Doolin, from there south to Killarney, then County Cork, then Cobh to look for my grandpa's house.

This was in a Saturday morning on the dock at Campbeltown, Scotland, before 6am. Used to be this woulda been BFE, but time and the internet has united everybody. Paul McCartney famously has a country place just outside of town. The morning before about halfway down that peninsula I stopped at a little store, the guy working the counter was a huge NFL fan thanks to ESPN, and him and his buddies were due to fly out to Vegas, wanted to know how far it was to the Grand Canyon. That's how small the world has become.

Campbeltown_zps8bsll22q

Just fifteen miles of open water between Campbeltown and Ballycastle, once a week passenger service, foot traffic only, last view of Scotland.....





First view of Ireland, Rathlin Island, four miles long, just off the coast of Ulster. Not to start out morbid or anything but back in the 16th and 17th Century hundreds of women and kids were tossed of those cliffs, twice, for the crime of being MacDonalds, both massacres perpetrated by the Campbells. Bonnie Scotland and all that....



First view of Ulster proper, this was a big moment for me, I was finally gonna set foot on Mother Ireland....



Ballycastle Harbor.....



One thing the whole British Isles does really well is big, greasy breakfasts, perfect if you're gonna be riding a bike all day (turns out French breakfasts suck in that regard). It was raining of course, and still early, so I got breakfast at a little place right by the harbor.



That'll do for now, I got a few more Ulster pics to post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4atNBYCr0Y

A great Celtic song about crossing the Irish Sea. O Ro Song of the Sea by Sean Nua with Antoinette McKenna.