Carriers of Freedom

They knew troubadours and love, death and slavery.

700,000 years ago they had already learned lessons of freedom and beauty in what is now southern France.

Free Greeks from what is now Turkey had settled on that Mediterranean shore by about 600 BC. By 300 BC those free Greeks had met free Irish on their 'emerald island.'

From that same land freedom was carried to North and South America. People of what is now Uruguay and southern Brazil benefited. European freedom embraced Gaucho freedom. Giuseppe Garibaldi helped.

If you sit quietly in rooms below the grasshopper in Boston, it is likely that a spirit will stir you. I believe that what will stir you has a direct connection with the spirit that stirred others 700,000 years ago, 800,000 years ago, 900,000 years ago and farther back than I can imagine.

I takes stories, conversation and action to keep whole that spirit of beauty, love, and freedom.

Beginning from words in this post you can begin to appreciate your connection to Persian, Phoenician, and Arab and others. You may see how a well made thread is stitched through the lives of Adam and Adams as it is stitched through yours. It is a living thread of freedom, beauty, and love.

Irish

A killick is a stone anchor in old Irish.

A shebeen is liquor dispensary that hasn't be legitimated by some greater authority. It is in fairly common usage in much of Africa, but seems native to Scotland and Ireland.

West Balt

I'll probably post a bit of the history, recent and long past, of Prussia, Poland, and Germany, as well as of Ireland and the US, should I live long enough. Then again I might just begin to post some semi-curious information about the the Prussians, Poles, Germans, Norwegians, and Irish and leave it at that.

Not all that long ago Prussia disappeared, with the help of Russia and others, into the lands of Poland and Germany. "Prussia" may sound like Russia, but a Prussian is not a Russian, a German or a Pole. Prussians have rarely like Russians, nor the Russians, Prussians.
Some have said that Prussians are really a kind of German. Some, including some Germans, say that the German state began in Prussia, but It bares repeating, a Prussian is not a German.

In very recent years Prussians have begun to show a renewed spirit of unity where once even existence may have been doubted.
Once Prussians traded and fought in dignity with Romans, vikings and Swedes. Later for a time, they found it difficult to maintain their independence in the face of German, Polish, Lithuanian, and Russian onslaughts. At times they found support from Lithuanians and learned from Poles and Germans. Of Course Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians learned from the Prussians. Prussians learned little love for Russians, but very likely share some Slavic cousins with them.

If you can find north-west Europe on your map, you can probably find the Baltic Sea. The people on the eastern shore of that sea were long called West Balts. Prussians came from these people and their lands are still along that same shore.
The Prussian language, like other languages, has changed over time. Languages disappear and Prussian has come very close to doing so. The Old Baltic language of the Prussians is one of the oldest in Europe.

Lebor Gabala Erenn

Did the Welsh priest, Nennius, write his History Brittonum before the Lebor Gabala Erenn was written? He does remind us of a succession of colonizations from Iberia. Timagenes of Alexandria's account of the Gauls in Continental Europe certainly was written before the LGE an little echos his work may be found in the LGE.

Appropriate trust in the Labor Gabala Erenn may tell us more of its writers than of the times of which they write. Still it does contain a history of early Ireland, twisted and distorted as it may be. For centuries before 1700 it was taken by many as the gospel of Irish history.

What did the poets(bards who wrote better than they sang) know? What can we learn from the poems we have of: Eochaid ua Flainn from Armagh, AD 936-1004; Flann Mainistrech of Monesterboice Abby, died Ad 1056; Tainaide, died 1075; Gilla Coemain mac Gilla Shamthainne who wrote about AD 1072?

We can be pretty sure that lots of Irish readers liked the LGE, for they copied and quoted it a lot. Some of the earlist extent works of the Irish go back to the LGE:
The Book of Leinster of about 1150 AD;
The book of Fermoy, 1373 AD;
The Great Book of Lecan;
The Book of Ballymote, 1391 AD.

The LGE was a major source for modern historians such as Geoffery Keating in his history of Ireland, Foras ar Eirinn, and the Annals of the Four Masters.

The biggest fiction in the LGE is the claim that the Gaelic conquest took place about 350 years ago and that the inhabitants of Christian Ireland were descendants of those Gaelic invaders. Ancestors of the Sheehans maintained there non-Gaelic culture until, at least 200 or 300 AD.

Icelandic DNA

A few years ago while in Iceland and speaking of Icelandic history, I was told the the first Norsemen on the island found Irishmen already there. It was said that they were "mostly monks living in caves."

Well, on the radio today I heard part of an investigation recently carried out in Iceland. It seems that the investigation consisted mostly of DNA testing. The Testing included testing DNA found in teeth going back a thousand years.

The upshot is that the DNA of past and present Icelanders is more similar to that of a Scott or Irishman than that of a Dane or Norwegian.

I knew it.

One Fourth Irish

My mother was likely Scott and Prussian; my father Norwegian and Irish. My father once told me that his father said to him, "Remember son, all Irishmen are wits, and you are half Irish."


Given my background you may have the kindness to forgive how I begin this bit of history. I begin with a pure heart and a tear in my eye.

Holy places and powers be.

We are descended from a race of bards and heroes and there was once an age of gold.
Remember.
Let your memory be deep and fine.
No need to remember too sharply the giants, fire, and advancing sea. Better to remember some proper names older than the Dagda. Remember the times before the Tuatha De Danann and let your memories be stirred.
Trust your memories enough for there are finer things there.
Be ready to embrace the truth.

Remember a short time ago to a time just before the viking Norsemen came to North America. Remember the men who came from places we now call Wales, Scotland, Ireland came with pre-Celtic memories moving down the hills of Kentucky.

Now, back again to times before the bright gods of Asgard. Yes, even then your ass was guarded.

Study of pre-Christian North and Western Europe has often been based in the medieval literature of Iceland and Ireland. Still, there are things to be learned from the earlier Romans and Greeks, and earlier yet. From the Greeks come hints of iron bearing Celt coming west as early as a golden age. They were clearer about iron bearing Celt moving west at the end of the bronze age. Some called those later Celt Galatians.

More is prepared.

Gerry's Genealogy

Check out http://gerrysgenealogy.blogspot.com to begin to find out what made it hard for an Irishman to stay at home.

Power in the language.

History Notes Two

My intent is to get at actual happenings. Still, these note will be imperfect.

The ancestors of the Irish came from someplace else. All our ancestors from some other place in time.

It seems good to begin our investigations by looking at a specific area and time. Let's start by drawing and outline which is both broad and within identifiable limits. We may reasonably Begin by suggesting that the Mediterranean and Iranian polities are well thought of as a single historic unit. That is we might benefit by looking at the Achaenid, Parthian, and Sassanid as we have tended to look at classical Greek and Roman. So, we have a starting place.

A way to approach the above historic unit might be from what we know of the great Indo-European Expansion.

The Celts who migrated to the Irish Island where part of that expansion which I'll say began about 6000 years ago. The Celtic part of those migrations, which might be said to include the Celtic-Iberians, and the Hallstat Culture, continued through the Bronze Age of about 3000 BC to past 1000 BC, and on through the Iron Age of, say, about 800 to about 600 BC. My guess is that I had ancestors in Ireland well before 800 BC. In this paragraph we begin to identify the western part of the Indo-European movement.

There were people in Ireland well before 4000 BC. Besides those people in Ireland, the Basques, the Georgians, the Etruscans, as well as Semitic, Hamitic, And Finnish peoples predate, in more or less their present locations, the Indo-European expansion.

The Basque are now largely found in the western Pyrenees. Place-name, blood-group, and now probably, DNA evidence indicates that the Basque occupied not only all of what is now Spain, but also much of what is now France. This distribution corresponds with the historic peoples known as Iberians. The few inscriptions left by the Iberians are usually, and reasonably taken as being ancestral to the Basques. We are still unable to read those inscriptions.
There are mysteries and mys tries in our history.

A Start

My sister and my niece recently got me thinking about history from kind of a family angle. My niece has begun using DNA tests to learn some family history.
My sister has been following our family genealogical paper-trail for some time.
Something my niece told me caused me to brag that I could tell her about Trans-Iberians. She said something like, 'So tell me.'

My surname is Irish, so probably Celtic. I think that the Trans-Iberians are part of the Celtic migrations across the Iberian peninsula to Ireland. I think that those migrations that were part of the great Indo-European expansion that begin about 6000 years ago. That expansion has some relation to ice age movements of men 40,000 years ago. Which is related to the great dying of giants about two-hundred thousand years ago. Which is probably related to my surname.

The fact is, I don't know much. I checked on-line and didn't find anything on Trans-Iberians. I guess a Frenchman heading to Portugal could be called a Trans-Iberian.

One encounters mysteries in history. That which isn't mystery is opinion. The proceeding, and what follows here, is my opinion.

Mystery started out meaning, a kept secret. Those who hear those secrets and kept them were called initiates. By telling you information I have kept to myself, I am making you an initiate.

The words 'story' and 'history' came into Anglo-Norman from the Latin 'historia.' The underlying meaning of 'history' is knowledge. In Greek a 'histor' was a learned man. 'Historia,' meaning knowledge gained by ones enquiries is derived from 'histor.' The Greek word comes from earlier Indo-European for wit, see, and know. By our enquiry here we are making history.