The Irish-Scottish World in the Middle Ages

Peter Crooks, David Ditchburn & Seán Duffy, editors

Few countries in Europe boast such long-standing connections as Ireland and Scotland. The very name ‘Scotland’ testifies to this bond: to the Romans, the Scoti were the Irish, from whom the people we now call Scots took their name. Yet no previous book has been devoted entirely to examining this relationship in all its facets – political, cultural and religious. This volume explores that shared Irish–Scottish world across the full span of the Middle Ages, from c.500 to 1500. In the opening chapter, Dauvit Broun returns to the origin-myths of the Irish and Scots. Clare Stancliffe discusses the foundational role of Columcille’s monastery on Iona, while ongoing ecclesiastical associations are studied by Alex Woolf. Iona may have been where the Book of Kells was created, which Bernard Meehan revisits in the context of the early medieval artistic achievement of both countries, while their long-standing literary links are thoughtfully surveyed by Benjamin Hudson. Between Ireland and Scotland lie the Hebrides and Man whose location at the intersection of the Scottish and Irish worlds is the subject of Andrew McDonald’s analysis, while Ulster forms the focus of essays by Robin Frame and Katharine Simms, from which it emerges as both a conduit of contact and a political flashpoint. Perhaps no single episode is more emblematic of this relationship than that moment in 1315 when the Irish invited Robert Bruce’s brother Edward to be their king, its significance from a Scottish perspective considered here by Michael Penman, while Seán Duffy examines the unprecedented breadth of this Great Irish Revolt that lasted until Bruce’s death at Faughart in 1318. Michael Brown contemplates the ongoing political relationship between both countries in the 150 years that followed, and David Ditchburn pieces together the evidence for trade between them, studies boldly complemented by Martin MacGregor’s interpretation of the changing currents of Gaelic culture and identity as the Middle Ages gave way to the modern world.

Peter Crooks and David Ditchburn lecture in the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin. Seán Duffy is professor emeritus of medieval Irish and insular history at Trinity College Dublin and chairman of the Friends of Medieval Dublin.