corrections, dates

Hi --a quick couple of corrections. Many of the things we are reading contradict each other, especially in terms of historical dates. I had read two dates for the arrival (invasion) of Normans in Ireland. One was 1069, which would be only 3 years after the Norman Conquest of Britain, and the other was 100 years later, in 1169. For a while, I had believed the 1169 one, since it made more sense to me, and had rejected the sources that said 1069. But I was reading, online, a Masters Thesis on Celtic place names in County Waterford (it was a fascinating paper from the field of geography, and was about how the process of mapping is used as a political --and oppressive--tool by colonizers, as they erase the local indigenous place-names and replace them with their own), and in it, the author repeated the 1069 date. I made the mistake of thinking that because it was an academic paper, subject to copy-editing, etc, by professors, it must be the correct date. However, it is not. The correct date IS 1169 (it seems Prince john arrived in 1169 and left in 1172).

Secondly, in Ardmore, there were historical signs and pamphlets saying that Declan arrived decades before Patrick, and giving Patrick's arrival as the 470s. however, that is also incorrect (I remember being really frustrated when I was here 30 years ago with Morwen, at the lackadaisical attitude toward history and historical artifacts, even in the National museum, which had objects from hundreds of years apart placed cheek by jowl, without dates or provenance. I think that the local historical writers have axes to grind and points to make, and cannot always be trusted!

One last thing: the plantation system differs from the feudal system in that within feudal society, both the serfs and the lords owed each other. Serfs worked for the lords, but lords owed protection and recognized the rights of the serfs to the soil. The plantation system was like the American Southern plantation system: the lord owned the land and the productive labor and produce of the workers, but owed nothing to the workers. The Irish workers were the equivalent of slaves in that sense, and had no rights to the land when the owners decided to evict them in favor of enclosure and herding animals.

Tomorrow we will write about our day today, which we spent mostly in Cashel, the seat of the Irish kings of Munster (Southern Ireland) and an important ecclesiastical seat (and the arch-bishops were the same thing as kings, and just as in the rest of Europe, typically came from landed wealthy and powerful families).