Stories from Gaelic Ireland

Microhistories from the sixteenth-century Irish annals

Bernadette Cunningham & Raymond Gillespie

This important book breaks new ground in the study of Gaelic Ireland by exploiting the rich source material contained in the sixteenth-century Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Loch Cé (geographically located around north Connacht and south Ulster). While attention has previously been paid to poetry in Irish as a source for the history of the 16th century, the richness of the prose sources has not been exploited by historians. The annals contain a series of short accounts of events arranged by year.

The storytelling of the annalists provides the openings into the past that are the key to this book, which uses seven of their longer stories to examine, at micro level, aspects of Gaelic society that created them. The significance of each story is illuminated by reference to other contemporary evidence, including the genealogies and the poetry.

Bernadette Cunningham, Deputy Librarian at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, is the author of The World of Geoffrey Keating (FCP, 2000, 2004 pbk). Raymond Gillespie is senior lecturer in history, NUIM and the editor of numerous volumes on early modern Ireland.