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Sling in Old Irish literature (Read 11910 times)
Thearos
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Sling in Old Irish literature
Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:47pm
 
There is an online database, called CELT, for Old Irish literature. The search function gives some results-- here are some, of interest.
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Thearos
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #1 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:47pm
 
G. Keating, History of Ireland, 35

When Oilill had been slain by Conall Cearnach, Meadhbh went to Inis Clothrann on Lough Ribh to live; and while she resided there, she was under an obligation to bathe every morning in the well which was at the entrance to the island. And when Forbuidhe son of Conchubhar heard this, he visited the well one day alone, and with a line measured from the brink of the well to the other side of the lake, and took the measure with him to Ulster, and practised thus: he inserted two poles in the ground, and tied an end of the line to each pole, and placed an apple on one of the poles, and stood himself at the other pole, and kept constantly firing from his sling at the apple that was on the top of the pole till he struck it. This exercise he practised until he had grown so dexterous that he would miss no aim at the apple. Soon after this there was a meeting of the people of Ulster and Connaught at both sides of the Shannon at Inis Clothrann; and Forbuidhe came there from the east with the Ulster gathering. And one morning while he was there, he saw Meadhbh bathing, as was her wont, in the fore-mentioned well; and with that he fixed a stone in his sling and hurled it at her, and struck her in the forehead, so that she died on the spot, having been ninety-eight years on the throne of Connaught, as we have said above.
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Thearos
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #2 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:49pm
 
Keating, 36

at the end of that year Chuchulainn happened to be on Beanna Boirche and he saw a large flock of black birds coming southwards from the surface of the ocean; and when they reached land he pursued them, and slew with his sling, by the exercise called taithbheim or ‘return-stroke’, a bird out of each country
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Thearos
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #3 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:50pm
 
Sling in Tain Bo Cuailnge

http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/T301035/text008.html

(e.g.

O Cú Chulainn renowned in song, ward off from us your sling.)
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Thearos
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #4 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:53pm
 
Metrical Dindshenchas, no. 16

I brought the sling of Mac Da Des —
50] perfect the work, only for death;
there is not between earth and heaven
one fit to praise him, pure of soul
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Thearos
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #5 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:56pm
 
Book of Clanranald

He was accidentally killed by his own servant man with a stone, while they were at play, shooting with a sling at Strome, Lochcarron

(C16th century family history, I think)
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Thearos
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #6 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:57pm
 
(I do not mention Lug's killing Balor with the sling).
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #7 - Sep 20th, 2014 at 5:43am
 
Two things struck me: Cu Chulainn's "sling-staff" (not staff-sling ?), and his "exercise called taithbheim or ‘return-stroke’. What could the latter be ?
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #8 - Sep 20th, 2014 at 8:22am
 
Age is no guarantee of accuracy.

Quote:
The mythology of pre-Christian Ireland did not entirely survive the conversion to Christianity. However, much of it was preserved in medieval Irish literature, though it was shorn of its religious meanings. This literature represents the most extensive and best preserved of all the branches of Celtic mythology. Although many of the manuscripts have not survived and much more material was probably never committed to writing, there is enough remaining to enable the identification of distinct, if overlapping, cycles: the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle and the Historical Cycle. There are also a number of extant mythological texts that do not fit into any of the cycles. Additionally, there are a large number of recorded folk tales that, while not strictly mythological, feature personages from one or more of these four cycles.


Quote:
The Sources
The three main manuscript sources for Irish mythology are the late 11th/early 12th century Lebor na hUidre which is in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, the early 12th century Book of Leinster in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and the Rawlinson manuscript B 502 (Rawl.), housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Despite the dates of these sources, most of the material they contain predates their composition. The earliest of the prose can be dated on linguistic grounds to the 8th century, and some of the verse may be as old as the 6th century.

Other important sources include a group of four manuscripts originating in the west of Ireland in the late 14th or early 15th century: The Yellow Book of Lecan, The Great Book of Lecan, The Book of Hy Many,[1] and The Book of Ballymote. The first of these contains part of the earliest known version of the Táin Bó Cúailnge ("The Driving-off of Cattle of Cooley") and is housed in Trinity College. The other three are in the Royal Academy. Other 15th-century manuscripts, such as The Book of Fermoy also contain interesting materials, as do such later syncretic works such as Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (The History of Ireland) (ca. 1640), particularly as these later compilers and writers may have had access to manuscript sources that have since disappeared.

When using these sources, it is, as always, important to question the impact of the circumstances in which they were produced. Most of the manuscripts were created by Christian monks, who may well have been torn between the desire to record their native culture and their religious hostility to pagan beliefs resulting in some of the gods being euhemerised. Many of the later sources may also have formed part of a propaganda effort designed to create a history for the people of Ireland that could bear comparison with the mythological descent of their British invaders from the founders of Rome that was promulgated by Geoffrey of Monmouth and others. There was also a tendency to rework Irish genealogies to fit into the known schema of Greek or Biblical genealogy.

It was once unquestioned that medieval Irish literature preserved truly ancient traditions in a form virtually unchanged through centuries of oral tradition back to the ancient Celts of Europe. Kenneth Jackson famously described the Ulster Cycle as a "window on the Iron Age", and Garret Olmsted has attempted to draw parallels between Táin Bó Cuailnge, the Ulster Cycle epic, and the iconography of the Gundestrup Cauldron. However, this "nativist" position has been challenged by "revisionist" scholars who believe that much of it was created in Christian times in deliberate imitation of the epics of classical literature that came with Latin learning. The revisionists would indicate passages apparently influenced by the Iliad in Táin Bó Cuailnge, and the existence of Togail Troí, an Irish adaptation of Dares Phrygius' De excidio Troiae historia, found in the Book of Leinster, and note that the material culture of the stories is generally closer to the time of the stories' composition than to the distant past. A consensus has emerged which encourages the critical reading of the material.
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JAG
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #9 - Sep 20th, 2014 at 8:34am
 
Thearos wrote on Sep 20th, 2014 at 5:43am:
Two things struck me: Cu Chulainn's "sling-staff" (not staff-sling ?), and his "exercise called taithbheim or ‘return-stroke’. What could the latter be ?

You where struck by Cu Chulainn's "sling-staff" but you don't know what it is?

I'd help you but I don't want  to.

Keep quoting medieval Christianised lies and propaganda texts as primary sources. Its hilarious  Grin
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #10 - Sep 20th, 2014 at 12:54pm
 
Thearos, you keep using eight posts when one will do.  Are you trying to drive up your post count or have you simply not not noticed the MODIFY button on the upper-right area of your post?
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Sorry, but it's a pet peeve of mine:  'Yea' isn't the word you want.  It's 'yeah'.  'Yea' is an anachronistic word you see in the King James bible. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Spellcheck, I shall fear no misspellings for thou art with me.  Thy dictionary and thy thesaurus, they comfort me.
 
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #11 - Sep 21st, 2014 at 3:45am
 
Oxnate wrote on Sep 20th, 2014 at 12:54pm:
Thearos, you keep using eight posts when one will do.  Are you trying to drive up your post count or have you simply not not noticed the MODIFY button on the upper-right area of your post?


Thearos Sling in Old Irish literature - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:47pm
Thearos Re: Sling in Old... Reply #1 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:47pm
Thearos Re: Sling in Old... Reply #2 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:49pm
Thearos Re: Sling in Old... Reply #3 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:50pm
Thearos Re: Sling in Old... Reply #4 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:53pm
Thearos Re: Sling in Old... Reply #5 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:56pm
Thearos Re: Sling in Old... Reply #6 - Sep 19th, 2014 at 8:57pm
Thearos Re: Sling in Old... Reply #7 - Yesterday at 5:43am

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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #12 - Sep 21st, 2014 at 6:27am
 
Gerald of Wales mentions the Irish and slings in a couple of his books the first one is Expunganation Hibernica, or the Conquest of Ireland in 1169 A.D.  In it, the English, led by Richard Strongbow were forced to use archers in battle, as they were the only ones able to counter the Irish slingers.
  " Richard, with his men, went strongly to assail town, and set bowmen for to war to fight of the battlments, and harried the weaponed men to to fill ditches,they defended them with sling and stake.
  The other comes from the History and Topography of Ireland in 1195 A.D. The use of missiles are  mentioned, but slings are not mentioned specifically.
  "They are quicker and more expert than any other people in throwing, when all else fails, stones and missiles, and do great damage."
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #13 - Sep 21st, 2014 at 10:09am
 
I think I am starting to notice a common historical thread…

Whenever a historian mentions slingers, they always say they are "the best" at it.

Yes, I guess it is that impressive…  Wink
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My daughters can figure-8...
 
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Thearos
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Re: Sling in Old Irish literature
Reply #14 - Sep 22nd, 2014 at 12:25pm
 
I wonder if the "return-stroke" of Cu Chulainn isn't a good description of "fig-8"-- the back-swing and forward snap. The taithbheim or ‘return-stroke’ (does anyone here know Gaelic ?)-- would be a nice name for fig-8. Or, indeed, Cú Chulainn-style ! A worthy name for those who like to sling this way.
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