The Vikings weren’t particularly anti-Christian and their own religious ideas were pretty tolerant, but they weren’t stupid either. That idea goes back no further than the 1870s when horned helmets appeared in the staging of some Wagner operas in Germany. There are hundreds of drawings of Vikings and thousands of descriptions, and on one thing they are absolutely consistent – there is no mention whatsoever of them hving horns on their helmets. The Vikings arrived in Ireland in the year 795 when they attacked a monastery on Lambay Island, off Skerries. They established territories in north Monaghan which they called Ui Méith Tire near Keady in Armagh which they called Ui Méith Macha and eventually, probably in the 900s, along the coast of Cooley which they called Ui Méith Mara. One of the tribes of the Clann Colla was the Ui Méith, descendants of Muiredhach the Fat. Around the year 332 these invaders broke through the protective embankment at Dorsey in South Armagh and captured the Ulster capital at Emhain Macha, led by brothers known as the Three Collas. Cooley was part of the kingdom of Ulster, of the people known as the Clann Rudhraidhe, and in the early centuries of the Christian era they came under relentless pressure from invaders from the south and west: these are the was reflected in the story of the Táin Bó Cúailgne (Cattle Raid of Cooley). For research on the annals we are grateful to An tAthar Lorcán Ua Muireadhaigh (Fr Laurence Murray), who ran the Irish College in Omeath in the 1920s. The earliest inhabitants known from the historical annals, the records written up centuries later by monks, were known as Aigneacha, while Carlingford Lough was called Cuan Aigneacha, or Loch Lir. They dug up a series of stone tools – cutters and scrapers – of a type indicating that this was more of a camp than a village. In 2014 archaeologists preparing for the bridge at Narrowwater found what they described as a late Mesolithic habitation site dating to about 6000BC near the Round Tower. People have been living in Omeath for a very long time. They were Stone Age hunter-gatherers who collected a great deal of their food on sea-shore or river bank, and they first settled near the mouth of the River Bann almost 10,000 years ago. Archaeologists are still arguing about whether the first humans came to Ireland in a boat or walked. The Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago, the ice melted and sea levels rose gradually over several centuries. At that time the ice cap over Ireland was up to a kilometre deep, covering Slieve Foye. In France, cave paintings have been found which are 35,000 years old, while Spain has even older evidence of human activity. Thank you to Seamus Murphy for all this wonderful History of Omeath.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |