The barbarians use the swine-array which we have seen before.
Irish people that I have known would be amused by this description of their country:
"Hibernia was a proverb for squalor and backward savagery, full of chanting robed Druids making human sacrifices and tattooed, head-hunting lunatics with lime-bleached hair, still driving war chariots to battle." (p. 220)
(Elsewhere and longer ago, Krishna was Arjuna's charioteer at the Battle of Kurukshetra where He spoke the Bhagavad Gita.)
Artorius is from a country:
"'...west even of Hibernia; they call it America.'" (ibid.)
West and in one other direction. The future is another country.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The druids did perform human sacrifices, and we know from the Andersons THE KING OF YS that Irish chieftains still collected the heads of defeated enemies in the late fourth century AD.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yeah, Christianization did produce some changes in Ireland.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
We see some of those changes in Anderson/Broxon's THE DEMON OF SCATTERY--and the devastation wrought by the Vikings.
It didn't help that Ireland was split up into many small, quarrelsome states.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, Celtic peoples did tend to split up and fight each other a lot. Note that central and southern Germany was originally Celtic --- but not by the 2nd century.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, but not all Celts/Irish were so politically suicidal. King Brian Boru was well on the way to unifying all Ireland into a single kingdom. But the death of both Brian Boru and his tanist (heir) in the very hour of their victory at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 aborted this unification. Ireland reverted to being a welter of quarrelsome states after Clontarf.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yeah, but the quarrelsomeness was inherent. Note that when Norway was unified, it -stayed- unified. Ditto Denmark and Sweden.
Oh, and England, after Alfred the Great's descendants unified it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree Irish Celts had great difficulties developing a stable State and political institutions--which was very unfortunate. Unified kingdom of Ireland by or soon after 1014 would have been much better. It might even have contributed to a lasting unification of the British Isles because a long established Irish State would have been able to bargain on far more even terms with England/Scotland on how that would be done. No persecution of Irish Catholics, no Protestant Ascendancy, no laws crippling Irish commerce and industry, etc.
True, what you said about England, the Viking wars and invasions destroyed six out of seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Except for Wessex, which survived only by the genius and determination of Alfred the Great, who laid the foundations enabling his descendants to unify England.
I agree, what you said about the Scandinavians. Albeit Norway had its own problems, a big one being the troubles caused by the old Germanic custom of all the sons of the king, youngest as well as the eldest, bastards as well as those born of a queen, all having an equal claim to succeed their father.
Ad astra! Sean
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