A Guide to Dark Ages Irish Politics

welcome back everyone this is history filbert's here and today I'm gonna be taking a look at Irish politics now if you thought that modern Irish politics was difficult with the northern six counties of Ireland belonging to the United Kingdom and the other counties in South belong to the independent Republic of Ireland well just wait until you have a look at Dark Ages Ireland there were already people living in Ireland around 400 BC but it's around this time that a certain group of people comes into Ireland and they were called the Celts now the Celts is a bit of a misdemeanor and it's really a linguistic label rather than an ethnic or a cultural label and the specific group of people who came to Ireland this celtic group were called the Galle which is where we get today's Gaelic from the gale formed several different kingdoms which were very small and these were called TOA in irish as the centuries went by several of these two were formed together in very loose coalitions in the north you had the connector and in the south they are hinata I'm probably butchering this Irish I do apologize now these weren't like kingdoms or even especially they weren't like nations they were simply loose coalitions of these various kingdoms which were themselves loose coalitions of various clans which were themselves whose coalition's of various families so you can see that you know applying these terms isn't like applying them to a country say I don't know Ireland or United Kingdom or the Netherlands so you have this important family in the north who are called the e Neil and the email come from this guy called Niall and he was called Niall of the Nine Hostages now the email actually means the sons or more correctly the grandsons of this guy and it's thought that he had an awful lot of children possibly even more than nine and that these were very important for the history of Ireland because they settled large parts of the north of the island so you had within the e Neil you had the northern a nearly and the southern aney and the northern a love were essentially the sons of Niall who settled in the north and the southern ones were the ones who settled more towards the south in the area just north of Dublin now another important thing for the history and the early politics of Ireland is the coming of Christendom which was around 400 AD which was brought over by st. Patrick probably a Welshman who was captured by Irish slavers in the wake of the Romans leaving Britain and then he returned back to Ireland after he'd I think he escaped or he was bought his freedom and he converted the Irish now when as I converted the Irish the Christendom in Ireland was a bit of a combination between generic Christendom and paganism it was very much a slow thing it wasn't they woke up one day and they said Jesus and the next day they said look it wasn't like that at all there were it was a very slow transition period you had a lot of pagan rites and things still going on as you will see later on and I thought make more videos about that in the future now if we skip ahead a few hundred years you get this a lot of generic idea of the kingdoms of Ireland and these included the four divisions of Ulster Munster Leinster and Connaught now an interesting fact is that three of these end in turn and turn actually comes from the Irish tear and tear in Irish meant land so the land of the fairies in Irish is tear and uh nog I just thought that was interesting now when we get to around 800 as I said although this is the generic picture of what Ireland looked like in actual fact it was a lot more complicated now these four kingdoms also date back a lot further this will have mythical kingdoms but we're fairly certain that around this time there were far more and smaller various kingdoms around Ireland like years of the eighth century the first Viking raids start to occur on the coastlines of Ireland now over the next century the Vikings would have several things to do with the island they would raid several places and even settle in a few others it's in the second Viking Age however which was starting around 914 AD which is when they left their largest impact by founding settlements such as Dublin Limerick Waterford Wexford and Cork although these weren't really Kingdom's although technically they were they were just very small enclaves surrounding a long fort which was when the essentially where they put their ships up in a defensive location and these over the centuries became more advanced with larger sort of essentially they were the first towns in Ireland they would build up so that people could trade with them and things like that now at this backdrop we then need to look at a people called the doll - and the doll gosh are a very small tor clan from the kingdom of Munster which was very much in the south and these guys filled a power vacuum that was left when the various Norse factions attacked remember there were far more Norseman in the south of Ireland than the north the O'Neill were very good at dealing with the Vikings worse in the south they were able to settle and the dull gash rise as an important player on the Irish scene and the most famous person of the duel gosh family is Brian Peru and Brian Boru was the third son of the king of the doll gosh so it wasn't likely that he was going to rise to the throne but all of his brothers were killed before him so he did actually become king of the doll gosh and it's under Brian Boru he becomes the first real High King of Ireland the a nail have been claiming kingship over all of Ireland for a long time because antara which is why they claim the kingship this mystical place that relates back to Irish mythology however really the a nail were only important in the of ireland brian boru however he defeats moil sec name he was the northern king of a neil and he becomes the high king of all of Ireland for the first time Brian Boru is very famous because he fought and died at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 which is now a suburb of Dublin defeating a coalition of mill mortar and the Viking c3 er which was citric silk beard however it wasn't really an Irish on Viking thing as is often portrayed nowadays it was a more complicated affair but Brian Boru certainly did change Irish politics forever leaving his kinsmen the dominant faction in Ireland and today we get the O'Briens from obviously from Brian Boru and the O'Neill's from the O'Neill so you say that this history is still very much important today alright so thank you very much for watching I just thought I'd make this quick video about a simple guide to dog aged Irish politics now as you can tell possibly from the video I've been having quite a few issues with my recording software and various other things which has been a real pain in the foot so I'm trying to get things sorted but I'm gonna be uploading an update video to sort of explain some other things that have been going on and as well as some other things like banner competition finally gonna get sword with that as well as possibly channel survey and more interesting videos of course so thank you very much for watching I'm history with Hilbert's and don't forget to tune in again next time and check out any other videos comment in the comment section below and don't forget to hit the subscribe button

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 81,702

Rating: 4.8911753 out of 5

Keywords: Irish, Ireland, Dark Ages, Early Medieval Period, Irish History, Brian Boru, History, History of Ireland, Ireland History, Documentary, Munster, Leinster, Connacht, Dublin, Vikings, Irish Vikings, Vikings Ireland, Norse, Irish Norse, Viking Ireland, Norse Dublin, Viking Age, Mael Seachnaill, Niall of the Nine Hostages

Id: akWnkpzNfAc

Length: 7min 41sec (461 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/GerzoMcc]

Surely the part where he mentions that Ulster, Leinster and Munster all end in "ter" because the Irish word for land is "Tír" can't be right because none of them have "ter" when spelt in Irish. Or maybe I've missed something?

[u/Sotex]

First 20 seconds he describes the term celts as not being a cultural label, didn't they share a somewhat pan celtic culture with regards to gods,customs the role of women etc?

Also land of the fairies haha

[u/tadcan]

The most interesting part for me was that the arrival of the settlement of the Norse caused the power vacuum made a space for the rise of Brian Boru, since he used viking mercenaries to supplement his own forces and rise to the position of high king.

[u/Space_Ganondorf]

Connachta in the north? That must be wrong?

[u/_bangalore]

Id dispute that clontarf resulted in any long term power for the Dal gCais or Munster. Brians heirs also died at clontarf and the high kingship revertef back to Maolshechnaill of the Ui neil. From there it only lasted about another 150 years mainly being swapped between Leinster and the Ui neils