** We are taking a week off and will be back January 16th!** Happy Stephen’s Day and Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a very lovely Christmas break. This week we are joined by the incredible Dr Sparky Booker, Assistant Professor in Medieval Irish History, Trinity College Dublin. Sparky enlightens us on the legal systems in force in 14th and 15th century Ireland, how to keep your land and why Elizabeth Le Veele married King of Leinster, Art McMurrough. She also discusses how the prevalence of intermarriage in the so-called 'four obedient shires' indicates that the English and Irish interacted far more peaceably and amicably than the often belligerent attitudes displayed toward the Irish in records from the colony would indicate, and that the attempts made by the Irish parliament to distance the English of Ireland from their Irish neighbours were largely unsuccessful.

Suggested reading:

Sparky Booker, Cultural Exchange and Identity in late medieval Ireland: the English and Irish of the Four Obedient Shires, Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Series (Cambridge, 2018)

Sparky Booker, ‘Women and legal history: the case of late medieval English Ireland and the challenges of studying ‘women’’, Irish Historical Studies, 46:170 (2022), pp 224-243

Sparky Booker, ‘Intermarriage in fifteenth-century Ireland: the English and Irish in the ‘four obedient shires’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 113c (2013), pp 219-250

Sparky Booker, ‘Widowhood and attainder in medieval Ireland: the case of Margaret Nugent’ in Deborah Youngs and Teresa Phipps (eds), Litigating women: gender and justice in Europe, c.1300-c.1800 (Abingdon, 2022), pp 81-98

Ellis, Stephen G. (1998). Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447-1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (2nd ed.). RoutledgeRegular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)

Email: medievalirishhistory@gmail.com

Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva

Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.

Views expressed are the speakers' own.

Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa

Music: Lexin_Music

We have a special episode today with recent Maynooth graduate Emily Little winner of the NUI Mansion House prize for her BA in Irish history. Emily is currently a secondary school teacher and studying for her Professional Masters in Education and makes an inspiring appeal for a reevaluation of the junior cert History curriculum. Recent reforms in historiographical approaches and archival practices have allowed for the rescuing of women from historical obscurity and it is clear that women who exercised political or social influence were not necessarily 'exceptional' or rare. Joan Fitzgerald, Countess of Ormond, Desmond and Ossory and Gráinne Ní Mháille, AKA Grace O’Malley, the so-called Pirate Queen, are two such women whose legacies have benefitted from the increased scholarship on women's history. Though active during different political periods of the 16th century and having contrasting experiences of English colonisation in Ireland, the lives of these two women provide many points of comparison, and are linked by their relationships with Queen Elizabeth I.

Suggested reading:

Frances Nolan and Bronagh McShane, ‘Introduction: A New Agenda for Women's and Gender History in Ireland' in Irish Historical Studies, xlvi (2022), pp. 207–216

Ciarán Brady, ‘Political Women and Reform in Tudor Ireland’ in Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O'Dowd (eds), Women in Early Modern Ireland (Edinburgh, 1991)

Karen Ann Holland, ‘Joan Desmond, Ormond and Ossory: The World of a Countess in Sixteenth Century Ireland’ (PhD thesis, Providence College, Rhode Island, 1995)

Damien Duffy, Aristocratic Women in Ireland 1450-1660 (Woodbridge, 2021)

Anne Chambers, Granuaile: the life and times of Grace O’Malley c.1530-1603 (Portmarnock, 2003)

Brendan Kane and Valerie McGowan-Doyle (eds), Elizabeth I and Ireland (Cambridge, 2014)

Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)

Email: medievalirishhistory@gmail.com

Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva

Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.

Views expressed are the speakers' own.

Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa

Music: Lexin_Music

This week we welcome back Prof. Alex Woolf (University of St. Andrews) to the podcast to question whether ‘the Vikings’ is a useful concept that helps us understand history. We explore why certain people left Scandinavia in the late 8th century and what they were called in the various places they raided and eventually settled. Alex warns us against the telescoping of medieval history and argues for more nuance and specificity when dealing with the Scandinavian diaspora in so-called 'Viking Age Ireland'. He explains that the variety of activities by people we refer to as 'vikings' across the centuries in places like Ireland, England, Scotland and Francia cannot be reduced to one simple narrative.

Suggested reading:

Alex Woolf, 'The Viking Paradigm in Early Medieval History' Early Medieval England and its Neighbours. 2025;51:e2. doi:10.1017/ean.2024.3

Colmán Etchingham, Vikings in Early Medieval Ireland: Church-Raiding, Politics and Kingship (Boydell Press, 2025)

Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday)

Email: medievalirishhistory@gmail.com

Producer: Tiago Veloso Silva

Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University & Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.

Views expressed are the speakers' own.

Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa

Music: Lexin_Music