The Annals of Tigernach by Whitley Stokes

None of even the oldest Irish manuscripts preserved to us is anything like as ancient as these lapidary inscriptions. Thus, four cuts to the right of the line stand for S, to the left of the line they mean C, and if they pass through the line they mean E. This ogham script, as it is called, consists of lines, straight or slanting, long or short, drawn either over, under, or through a given straight line, which straight line is in lapidary inscriptions usually formed by the angular edge of a rectangular upright stone. Whoever the early Irish may have been who first discovered letters, whether from intercourse with Britain or with Gaul, they did not apparently bring either the Latin or the Greek alphabet back with them to Ireland, but they invented an entirely new one of their own, founded with considerable skill upon the Latin this was used in very early times by the Irish Celts for inscriptions upon pillars and gravestones. The Italian alphabet, however, was not the first to be employed in Ireland. It may have been through direct commerce with Gaul, but it is more probable, as McNeill has shown in his study of Irish oghams, that it was from the Romanized Britons that they first learned the art of writing. It is uncertain at what period and in what manner the Irish discovered the use of letters. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99. 2005.Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download.

Hudson, Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in the North Atlantic.

^ Seán Duffy, ' Irishmen and Islesmen in the Kingdom of Dublin and Man 1052–1171', in Ériu 43 (1992): 93–133.

: CS1 maint: postscript ( link) Edition and translation. He is regarded by scholars either as a descendant of Ivar of Waterford, or of Gofraid mac Arailt, but since both had children named Ragnall and both dynasties were in alliance with the Dál Cais, Cacht's father need not be identical with his. Of Norse-Irish descent, Cacht almost certainly belonged to the dynasty of the Uí Ímair, and is usually assumed to have been a sister of Donnchad's ally Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, whose precise parentage is uncertain.

That her style is superior to his presents an obviously strange situation in medieval Gaelic Ireland's male-dominated politics. Her husband himself, though King of Munster, is not widely regarded as having been High King of Ireland and so the extent of Cacht's influence is uncertain.

Cacht ingen Ragnaill was the queen of Donnchad mac Briain, from their marriage in 1032 to her death in 1054, when she is styled Queen of Ireland in the Irish annals of the Clonmacnoise group: the Annals of Tigernach and Chronicon Scotorum.

The Annals of Tigernach by Whitley Stokes