The Medieval Irish History Podcast

In addition to our regular episode (on St Brigid abroad with Prof. Jean-Michel Picard) we have a little extra treat! Starring Prof. David Stifter performing some gorgeous early Irish poetry praising St Brigit. Interpolated with the English translations recited by Dr Niamh Wycherley. Big thanks to Tiago Veloso Silva for editing and co-writing the intro.
You can find our regular full length episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Bl4kPloLBBPIZyteEjsBY?si=epXhUJXlRomyBe-xAItDyw

Suggested reading:
'How Brigit continues to inspire poets, writers and artists' https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/research/spotlight-research/how-brigit-continues-inspire-poets-writers-and-artists

The poetry has been edited and translated by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan (eds), Thesaurus palaeohibernicus, a collection of Old-Irish glosses, scholia, prose, and verse, ii (Cambridge, 1903), pp 325-349: https://archive.org/details/thesauruspalaeoh02stokuoft/page/324/mode/2up

Bethu Brigte edited and translated by Donncha Ó hAodha (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978) https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T201002/

Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)
Email: [email protected]
Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva
Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.
Views expressed are the speakers' own.
Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa
Music: Lexin_Music

Happy St Brigit's day! This year's celebration of Ireland's most beloved female icon comes a bit earlier to the podcast, but keep tuned as we have prepared a surprise for you to be published this weekend!
This week we are joined by the amazing linguist and historian Jean-Michel Picard, Professor Emeritus at University College Dublin, whose work has inspired generations of scholars studying medieval Ireland and Irish saints. In this episode, Prof. Picard tells us all about the transmission of the cult of St Brigit to the Continent, the various sources containing a wealth of information about the saint. Prof. Picard also shares the difficulties of tracking down manuscripts before the internet and offers us a glimpse of medieval Irish scholarship in Ireland in the 1980s.

Suggested Readings:
Connolly, Sean, and J.-M. Picard. 'Cogitosus’s ‘Life of St Brigit’ Content and Value', The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , 117 (1987), pp 5-27. Freely available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25508920.
Picard, J.M. Aquitaine and Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 1995).
Picard, J.-M. 'In platea monasterii: the layout of ecclesiastical settlements in early medieval Ireland (7th-9th C.)', in Flavia De Rubeis & Federico Marazzi (eds). Monasteri in Europa occidentale (secoli VIII-XI): topografia e strutture (Rome, 2008), pp.67-82.
Picard, J.-M. 'Omnes sancti chori Hiberniae sanctorum orate pro nobis: Manuscript Evidence for the Cult of Irish Saints in Medieval Europe', in Ann Buckley Music, Liturgy, and the Veneration of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a European Context (2017), pp. 67-77.

Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)
Email: [email protected]
Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva
Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.
Views expressed are the speakers' own.
Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa
Music: Lexin_Music

On the podcast this week we explore Niamh's favourite primary source material: hagiography! We are joined by the multilingual Dr Sarah Waidler, of Glucksman Ireland House, NYU, expert in medieval Celtic languages including Irish and Welsh. Sarah guides us through these fascinating religious texts which were arguably the most popular literary genre in the 'European' Middle Ages and how Irish hagiography fits into this wider community. From warring saints to moving house miracles we learn what these texts can tell us about medieval people and society.
Suggested reading:
James Palmer,  Early Medieval Hagiography (Amsterdam University Press, 2018).
S. Waidler (ed.), Defining the Boundaries of Hagiography in the Celtic World and Beyond: Textual Sources Outside Saints’ Lives and Martyrologies (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, forthcoming 2025)
S. Waidler, ‘Sanctity and Intertextuality in Medieval Munster: The Unusual Life of Findchú of Brí Gobann’, Peritia 30 (2019), pp. 215–34

Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)
Email: [email protected]
Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva
Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.
Views expressed are the speakers' own.
Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa
Music: Lexin_Music

** 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 224-243
Sparky Booker, ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 113c (2013), pp 219-250
Sparky 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 81-98
Ellis, Stephen G. (1998). Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (2nd ed.). Routledge
Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)
Email: [email protected]
Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva
Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.
Views expressed are the speakers' own.
Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa
Music: 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]
Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva
Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.
Views expressed are the speakers' own.
Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa
Music: Lexin_Music