Obelisk #7

May 11, 2024 by Sailoil

Most tourists in Rome are drawn to the Piazza Navona for the fountains. I remember sitting in the shade on a doorstep with my wife and the three kids, eating some lunch in the shade around 2005. When you have visited as many hippodromes and circuses as I have you have an instinct for how they morph into long narrow plazas. It came as no surprise to me that this was once the Circus Argonalis, a sports arena constructed in the 1st Century AD by Emperor Domitian. The obelisk should also be a dead giveaway as they are such a popular installation on the spina of the chariot track. But in this case it seems the obelisk was never associated with the stadium.

The Piazza lies between the Pantheon and the Tiber not far from the Elephant and Obelisk also associated with Domitian. But while the obelisk on the elephant is a real Egyptian obelisk the obelisk in the Piazza Navona, which I will call the Obelisk of Domitian, is a fake. It is not an ancient-ancient obelisk like all the other Egyptian pillars in Rome. It is only an ancient obelisk. Domitian commissioned it himself. He had it constructed in Egypt and inscribed with Hieroglyphs with dedications to Vespasian, Titus and to himself.

It was Jean Francois Champollion, translator of the Rosetta Stone who decoded the text. Some scholars simply see this as Domitian attempting to legitimise the Flavians as many Romans would never see them as “proper” Emperors. The Julio-Claudian line was still in living memory in this era so the Flavians could easily be seen as jumped up usurpers.

Personally I think that the production of this obelisk shows something deeper in Domitian. He was a 17 year old boy in the year of the four emperors. While his father Vespasian and brother Titus were in the East Domitian was in Rome when hostilities broke out. Vitellius had him placed under house arrest and he was in real danger of being executed. He had no illusions about the fact that he was a hostage. This must have been a deeply traumatising event in the young mans life.

When he became Emperor Domitian began to sign documents with Dominus et Deus (Lord and God). He was no longer content to be a Princeps, a first among equals. But also he assumed godhood, an honour often granted to Roman Emperors, but generally after their death. These are the acts of a deeply insecure person. He was paranoid, and was right to be. He ended up being stabbed to death.

As a result I interpret the creation of this obelisk as a crutch, Domitian trying to associate himself with an Egyptian legitimacy far far older than the Roman Senate. The obelisk was not installed in the hippodrome he built, but was more likely located in the temple of Isis or the Temple of Gens Flavia dedicated to his family.

It was moved out of Rome in the 4th Century by Emperor Maxentius who is most famous as the loser at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge which made Constantine the Great Emperor. Maxentius built the Circus of Maxentius three miles outside Rome on the Appian Way. There it ultimately collapsed, broke and sank into the ground. Pope Sixtus V was aware of its existence but chose not to restore it. It was in 1649 that Pope Innocent X restored it and had it erected in front of his own mansion in the Piazza Navona. It forms the centrepiece of the Fountain of Four Rivers which was designed and contructed by Bernini. Documents from the construction of the fountain incorrectly attribute the obelisk to Caracalla.

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Obelisk #5

May 10, 2024 by Sailoil

Obelisk 1 is in Egypt, 2,3 and 4 are all in Rome so it is time for a change of city and country. For Obelisk 5 we are relocating to … the Vatican City. Although it is an enclave within the City of Rome the Vatican is not Rome. It is a different city and a different state outside of Italy, while also being inside of Italy.

The Vatican Obelisk commands a magnificent position in the centre of St Peter’s Square (which is more of a circle) and stands right in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. But of course it was not always thus.

Carved of red granite it is clean of decorations, a model of zen simplicity. According to Pliny the Elder it was originally erected by Nuncoreus, a son of Pharaoh Sesostris I (or Kheperkare Senusret I) a Pharaoh of Middle Kingdom 12th Dynasty in Heliopolis in Egypt. If you are an ancient history scholar you will know that the tour guides who gave facts to historians were as big liars in ancient times as they are today. The material Herodotus provides on Egypt is fanciful and we can assume that Pliny fared no better in seeking the truth. Some scholars believe Pliny leaned on Herodotus, and perhaps a little too much. His story is not supported by the archeological record. Senusret did indeed erect obelisks in the 12th Dynasty and one of his is the oldest remaining obelisk in Egypt.

Because it is uncarved we don’t know who erected it, or even if it had been erected. Perhaps it had been transported to Heliopolis where final carving was to take place, and for some reason it remained unfinished. It may have been a very late creation, perhaps from the 26th Dynasty before the invasion of Persia.

What is very tantalizing is a discovery of an inscription which indicates that from 30 BC to 37 AD it was installed in the Julian Forum of Alexandria. If those dates do not set off alarm bells allow me to remind you that the Battle of Actium, where Octavian defeated Mark Anthony and Cleopatra was 31 BC. In 30 BC both Anthony and Cleopatra committed suicide and Octavian took Alexandria. He installed Gaius Cornelius Gallus as the first Roman prefect of Egypt. It was this prefect who erected the obelisk in Alex. As we know Octavian transported two Obelisks from Egypt to Rome between 13 and 10 BC, leaving the Vatican Obelisk in situ in Alexandria.

After the death of Tiberius when Caligula was acclaimed Imperator in 37 AD he began his reign with energy and positivity and the love of the people. The Romans loved Germanicus who restored the pride of Rome by recovering the Eagles lost in the Teutoberg Forest of Germany. The four year old Gaius Julius Caesar, son of Germanicus, was the mascot of the legions. They nicknamed him “little boot” or Caligula. In 37 AD when the new young emperor fell ill the people of Rome thronged the public places to pray for his recovery. He was the very opposite of the bitter old Tiberius and Rome heralded him as ushering in a Golden age. We know that Caligula loved chariot racing. One of his most outrageous acts was to build a bridge of boats across the bay of Naples and drive chariots over it, a horrendously expensive project that fell apart at the first sniff of a storm.

One of his first official acts was to commission a new chariot racing stadium across the Tiber in the area now known as the Vatican. Originally it was called Caligula’s Hippodrome. The Vatican obelisk was shipped from Alexandria to adorn the spina of the racetrack. After the fall of Caligula it became the private racetrack of Emperor Nero. It was renamed the Circus of Gaius and Nero and the emperor was another afficionado of the sport. Well known for burning Christians and Rome but did you know Nero won the olympic games? Indulging his passions in a way you can see today in North Korea Nero won every category he entered.

When the four horse chariot race was lining up Nero approached the starting line in a chariot drawn by ten horses. The farcical arrangement was impossible to control and Nero crashed and almost killed himself. Although unable to finish he was still proclaimed winner of the event.

Nero used the hippodrome built by Caligula as a private entertainment space. After he died the hippodrome became known as the Vatican circus. As Rome declined the Vatican Circus fell into disrepair but the Obelisk remained standing. It is the only Obelisk that never collapsed.

At this stage in the obelisk thread we know that Pope Sixtus V is a hero of obelisk restoration. In 1586 Sixtus had the Vatican Obelisk moved 800 metres in a single day to align it with the Old St. Peters Basilica. At the time this was seen as a great symbolic triumph of Christianity over Paganism. To this day it remains in the same positon. The new St. Peters and the square in front of it have evolved around the Vatican Obelisk.

When it was moved it was topped by a globe of the world. The globe was replaced by a cross and was moved to the Capitoline Museum. Superstitions say that the globe holds the ashes of Julius Caesar, or of St. Peter. That’s the tour guides at work again.

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Obelisk #3

May 8, 2024 by Sailoil

It was Octavian in the guise of Gaius Julius Caesar, later to become Augustus, who began the fashion for using obelisks as political statements. After he defeated Mark Anthony and Queen Cleopatra he emerged from the decades of Roman Civil Wars as the first man in Rome, Princeps, the first citizen. He was Master of the both West and East Rome, including the fabulous wealth of Egypt.

After Cleopatra responded to his request to return to Rome in chains as his Royal captive and symbol of his victory by commiting suicide Octavian was forced to seek a different symbol of his victory. What could be better than to steal the phallic symbols of the Promethian God Geb, stripping the manhood from Egypt and erecting it in Rome?

The Flaminio obelisk was one of a pair removed by Octavian from Egypt in 13 BC. This particular obelisk was commissioned in the 19th Dynasty by Seti I and was completed and erected in Heliopolis by his son Ramesses II (The Great) approx 1250 BC.

Special ships were commissioned by the Romans to transport the obelisk in an unusual manner. Two rectangular ships were bound side to side by huge timber beams strung across their decks. The obelisk was tied beneath the beams, resting in the water to reduce the weight on the ships. A third ship was placed in front of the two holding the obelisk, and was tied to them. The forward ship acted as a steering system for the transporter. The entire thing was powered by a combination of oars and sails.

It reached Rome in 10 BC and the obelisk was erected on the spina of the Circus Maximus. There, in the middle of the chariot races sponsored by their Emperor, the plebs of Rome could appreciate the largesse that entertained them with bread and circuses. Three centuries later it was joined on the spina by the Lateran obelisk. Along with the Lateran it collapsed in the 5th Century and was buried in the mud of the ruined Circus, smashed in three. A symbol now of the fall of the Roman Empire.

Pope Sixtus V had it excavated along with the Lateran, repaired and Christianised with a cross by the architect Domenico Fontana and erected in its current location in the Piazza del Poppolo in 1589 AD. The fountain and Egyptian style lions on step pyramids at its base were later 19th Century additions.

The fashion for obelisks established by Emperor Augustus was to become a badge of success for successive emperors, and successor nations.

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Obelisk #2

May 7, 2024 by Sailoil

In the City of Rome you will find the Lateran Obelisk. This is the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world. It was commissioned in the reign of Thutmose III who succeeded in beating his aunt Hatshepsut who’s huge erection cracked in the quarry and was never installed. Thutmose III never got it up, because it was incomplete when he died. His grandson Thutmose IV completed and erected it at the temple of Amun in Karnak. The inscription on the obelisk says it lay on its side for 35 years before it was completed.

Originally called Tekhen Waty it was installed at Karnak around 1400 BC during the 18th Dynasty or the first dynasty of the New Kingdom.

Emperor Constantius II had it moved in the 4th century AD, originally to Alexandria, but then to Rome. He had custom made obelisk transporting barges constructed to move the monuments up the Nile. It was originally bound for Constantinople where it was to be one of a pair with the Obelisk of Theodosius but it never made it to the capital. Instead they erected the Masonry Obelisk to balance out the granite one from Egypt.

Constantius had the taller obelisk shipped to Rome for his one and only visit there in 357 AD and it was installed in the spina of the Circus Maximus, ancient Rome’s Chariot Racing stadium. There it formed a pair with the Flaminio, an obelisk shipped to Rome by Augustus in 10 BC. But this was Rome in decline after Constantine the Great had already moved his capital to the New Rome that became Constantinople. Rome OG was now a backwater in imperial affairs and Western Emperors preferred to locate their capitals in modern day Lyon or Milan.

By the 5th Century the Circus Maximus was a ruin and the great Egyptian obelisk collapsed, broke into a number of pieces and was buried in mud, which luckily preserved it from passing masons. Rediscovered in the 16th Century it was excavated by order of Pope Sixtus V. It was restored, Christianised with the addition of a cross and erected in its current location near the Lateran palace. In the process of collapse and re-erection it lost 4 metres of its height.

The Lateran is the last of 8 known Ancient Egyptian Obelisks to be erected in Rome.

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Flying the flag(s)

May 4, 2024 by Sailoil

Live from the five star luxury of the Irish Pavillion we have a photo of the two Knights of Munster who are representing Ireland at the IMCF world championships in the Valle di Silencio, Mexico.

There are three established clubs in Ireland. The Knights of Munster are obviously in Munster, which is based in Cork but with members from as far afield as Waterford and Laois. Connacht is represented by the 1316 Medieval Fight Club who are based in Athenry, County Galway. The Leinster contingent are Fragarach Armoured Combat and the three clubs are aligned under the National club Medieval Armoured Combat Ireland. Tentative moves are afoot to establish an Ulster club and let’s hope we can revive the Knights of the Red Branch. Long ago that was Cúchulainn’s club.

Fragarach take their name from a famous Irish sword, the blade of Nuada the legendary first high king of Ireland. It had magical qualities and on top of smashing through shield walls and inflcting mortal wounds if held to a man’s throat he could neither move nor tell a lie. The word fragarach translates as whisperer or answerer.

The Athenry team take their name from the second bloodiest battle fought on Irish soil.

There are no friends you make that compare to those friendships forged in combat. I joined Knight’s of Munster after the Claregalway Shield and the last eight months have been a blast. I am less fat and more fit, have a motivation to train and a hunger to fight. Wherever you live in the world I guarantee there is an armoured fighting club training not too far from you. Reach out and we will embrace you with our metal arms.

Sonnet 8; by John Milton

Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,
whose chance on these defenceless doors may sieze,
if ever deed of honour did thee please,
guard them, and him within protect from harms,
he can requite thee, for he knows the charms
that call Fame on such gentle acts as these,
and he can spread thy Name o’re Lands and Seas,
whatever clime the Suns bright circle warms.

Lift not thy spear against the Muses’ Bower,
the great Emathian Conqueror bid spare
the house of Pindarus, when Temple and Tower
went to the ground: and the repeated air
of sad Electra’s Poet had the power
to save th’ Athenian Walls from ruin bare.

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The obelisk of many names.

April 21, 2024 by Sailoil

Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul was originally the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Chariots raced up and down the length of the “Square” round the spina, the central barrier of the racing track. The three columns in the photo above are still visible in the modern park.

Nearest in the photo is the Obelisk of Theodosius, which is a genuine Egyptian obelisk carved from a single piece of red granite. It was damaged at a the base when it was removed and transported to Istanbul, and it sits now on four bronze cubes. It dates from at least 1450 BC, as it commemorates Pharaoh Thutmose III, it was originally erected near the Great Temple of Karnak in Luxor. Roman Emperor Constantius II had it shipped to Alexandria in 357 AD to celebrate 20 years of his rule. Emperor Theodosius shipped it from Alexandria to Constantinople in 390 AD.

The slender spiral column between the two obelisks is the Serpentine column.

The obelisk in the distance is called the Walled Obelisk or the Masonry Obelisk. I chose this photo because it captures the obelisk in a period of decay. Unlike the Egyptian obelisks, those constructed of small stones are prone to weathering and decay. They can end up turning into huge and very dangerous Jenga towers. This one has been restored a number of times. The date of it’s original construction is unknown. The hippodrome itself predates the foundation of Constantinople. It was constructed by Emperor Septimus Severus in 203 AD when this was the provincial town of Byzantium.

The Masonry Obelisk may have been added during the Theodosian renovation in 390 AD, to mirror the Circus Maximus in Rome which also had two obelisks. But we don’t know.

It is sometimes called Constantine’s obelisk, but not because it had anything to do with Constantine the Great. It was restored in the 10th Century by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Constantine covered the masonry obelisk with a skin of gilded bronze plates on which were depicted the victories of Basil I, his grandfather. Over time the gilding corroded and by the 11th Century some writers were calling it the tower of brass.

The bronze plates were removed in 1204 by the fourth crusade, and melted down for cash. They undoubtedly did damage to the mortar in this removal. After the Ottomans took over in 1453 the Janissaries set up a barracks nearby between Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi palace. Young Janissaries were said to prove their bravery by climbing the masonry tower.

By the 13th century the tower was degraded to the point that it shifted in the wind. Visitors to Istanbul could crack wallnuts by inserting them between the stones on a windy day. In 1895 during the rule of the last truly empowered Turkish Sultan Abdulhamid II, the masonry tower was restored again.

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The Crusader Clancy

April 16, 2024 by Sailoil

As I am pulling together a fighting kit I thought it would be a good idea to pick an era so that I can pull together a historically accurate set of arms and armour. So to do this I felt I should give my knight a story. He is Irish, a Clancy as you can tell from the arms, two lions gules on a field argent, regardant passant.

He was born in 1200 AD and at the age of 7 he was fostered to a McNamara family. The McNamara’s were the military arm of the Dalcassian Sept, and the Clancy’s were hereditary Brehons to the O’Brien clan, the senior clan of the sept. Fostering was a common practice in medieval Ireland which helped build relationships between clans. George R. R. Martin captures this culture in Game of Thrones. King Robert and Ned Stark build their friendship when they are fostered to Jon Arryn in the Eyrie.

My knight’s foster father has just returned from the disaster that was the 4th Crusade. He was held prisoner on an island in the Lido in Venice while the Venetians sought to squeeze the crusaders for every penny they could raise. When the money was not enough Doge Dandolo used the crusaders to raid Christian Cities, culminating in the sack of the Queen of Cities, Constantinople.

John McNamara returns from Constantinople a bitter and disillusioned man with a lifelong hatred of Venetians. He believes the only way to shrive himself of the sins committed by the 4th crusade is to return to Outremer on a proper crusade. He will only sail with the Knightly orders or the Genoese, never on a Venetian galley.

In 1218 John takes the 18 year old Donal on the 5th crusade as his squire. John is no knight, he serves as man at arms but takes vows with the Templars. When they reach Acre they join the fleet on its way to Damietta in Egypt. At the siege of Damietta it looks like the crusaders are going to be defeated by the well defended walls. But the John tells the Templar Knights how the Franks breached the walls of Constantinople by building ramps on the mastheads of ships and lowering them across the city towers. At Damietta the Crusaders modify the technique by tying two ships together and constructing a siege tower across their mastheads. The city is taken and John is fêted for bringing the winning strategy.

The young squire has a knack for languages and picks up enough Arabic to negotiate with the local traders. He gains a reputation for getting a better deal in the markets that serve the camp and gains some good friends as a result.

As the year drags on sickness strikes the camp in Damietta and sadly John McNamara becomes victim to a bloody flux. After his funeral Pierre de Montagut, Grand Master of the Templars, arranges for Donal to be knighted and he is presented with a fine set of arms and armour. Never personally under vows he is released to return to Ireland.

Nine years later, when the sixth crusade is being assembled Clancy is living in Clare, and is married with two children. He has modest lands and a run of bad luck finds him in debt to the monastery in Kilcarragh which is a Hospitaller house. The abbot proposes that Clancy join the crusade in exchange for his debts being pardoned. So he boards a hospitaller ship which brings a mixed group of hospitaller knights, freelance knights like Clancy and men at arms to the assembly point at Brindisi. There they meet up with a large group of English Knights in the companies of the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester. They sail together to Cyprus and on to Acre.

The sixth crusade is marked as a success of negotiations rather than battles, and makes up for the disasters of the fourth and fifth crusades. Clancy with the rustiness taken off his Arabic, has impressed the Bishop of Exeter, William Briwere as a translator and negotiator and is taken into his household guard. His clothing, arms and armour are upgraded. He secures enough funds to purchase silks and spices which, when sold back in Ireland, make him a modestly wealthy man.

Back in Ireland he extends his power by enlarging and enriching his lands. He invests in local businesses and they tend to do quite well. If a customer is slow to pay their debts the arrival of a fully armed and armoured knight backed up by a couple of sergeants and a half dozen kerns has a lubricating effect on tight purse strings.

Bishop Briwere commends Clancy to Richard, the Earl of Cornwall, the richest man in Western Europe. When Richard declares his intention to join the Barons’ Crusade in 1240 Clancy is offered a position as Banneret Knight in charge of a company. His experience of two crusades and his seniority work in his favour. He brings his second son, Gavin, now 14 years old, to train him as a squire. His older son Jeremiah remains home to hold the fort for his father’s return. Richard Cornwall leads yet another crusade of negotiation. Prisoner exchanges and the reconstruction of defences make it another successful crusade. With almost fluent Arabic and a good knowledge of Islamic customs, gift giving and outright bribery the Banneret Knight builds himself a tidy nest egg.

Clancy returns to County Clare, now a very wealthy Knight. He is able to expand his lands and construct a secure fortified house in the Norman style. He retires to a quiet life and from time to time dresses up in his knightly garb and entertains American tourists in Bunratty Castle with tales of his knightly exploits.

Authentic great helms were introduced early in the 13th Century and by 1240 it was common to have a rounded top which better deflects a blow. Also the piercing of the face plate became more common, helping knights to breathe in the heat of summer in the Holy Land. The two crosses at the bottom of the face plate identify the wearer as a Christian knight.

I will do further research on the kit of a knight assembled between 1227 and 1240 and make sure my other pieces sit in this time period.

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Athenry 1316

April 14, 2024 by Sailoil

After Robert the Bruce won the freedom of Scotland back from the English in 1314 he had a vision of expanding Scotland and possibly of encircling the English by bringing the Irish and Welsh to his side. He sent his brother Edward to Ireland and he was proclaimed King in 1315 and crowned in 1316.

In Connacht and Munster the locals were unhappy with the expansion of Norman power to the West. When the Normans built a keep in Athenry in the 13th century the Connacht nobles besieged the castle in 1249, but were unable to take it. Those Normans really knew how to build castles!

When the Bruce brothers defeated the Norman English at Bannockburn the native Irish felt there was an opportunity to turn the tide in their favour. The Connacht and Munster clans rose to give battle in the Second Battle of Athenry on August 10th in 1316. The result was the second bloodiest battle in Irish History. The first place goes to the Battle of Clontarf. The Second Battle of Athenry is poorly recorded, but one account references that 1,000 losing warriors were decapitated. The Lordship of Ireland forces under Rickard de Bermingham and William Burke were triumphant and they were aligned with the English Norman hierarchy. The O’Connors, O’Kellys, O’Briens and O’Rourkes were not simply defeated. They were annihilated and the ruling families were wiped out an replaced by lesser rivals.

The heads of King Fedlimid of Connacht and King Tadhg of Uí Maine were mounted over the town’s main gate. This image remains the coat of arms of Athenry today. The events of 1316 are commemorated today by the Medieval Armoured Fighting Club of Athenry, the 1316 Club. Last night we held a Fight Knight event and it was my first competitive fighting in full armour.

Knights of Munster, tired and sweaty but that’s a lot of happy smiles. The bat on a stick was my weapon for the whacky final All v All melee using alternative weapons. And below is Daryl giving me tips between rounds in the Longsword.

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Why Russia will lose in Ukraine

April 7, 2024 by Sailoil

Abstract from “Why Big Nations lose Small Wars” by Andrew Mack, 1975.

The Vietnam and Algerian wars have demonstrated that the overwhelming conventional military superiority of major powers is no guarantee against their defeat in wars against small nations. For external powers such wars are necessarily “limited,” which constrains escalation above certain levels. With no direct survival interest at stake, fighting the war does not take automatic priority over the pursuit of other social, political, and economic objectives. Prosecuting the war consumes resources–economic, human, and political–which are thus not available for the pursuit of these other objectives. In the absence of a quick victory this creates the potential for those political divisions which historically have shifted the balance of forces in the metropolis in favor of withdrawal. For the insurgents, the fact of invasion and occupation generates cohesion, minimizes constraints on mobilization, and maximizes the willingness to incur costs. Precisely the opposite effects tend to characterize the war effort of the external power.

Vladimir Putin rose to power during the Chechen war, and secured his tenure as leader of the country by “winning” that war in 2000. This victory was followed by a decade of brutal guerilla warfare before insurgency largely petered out in 2009 amid widespread accusations of torture, rape and brutality on all sides.

The success of the annexation of Crimea in 2014 led Vladimir Putin to believe he could repeat the process in Donbas and annex a broad swathe of southern and eastern Ukraine. He has fallen into the trap experienced by the French in Algeria and Vietnam, the British in Ireland, India, Malaysia and Kenya and by the Americans in Vietnam and Afghanistan. It was the same trap Napoleon fell into in Spain when the concept of the little war, la Guerilla, was invented.

Putin got away with Chechnya because he was dealing with an enclave within former Soviet territories, with no border conflicts with other nations. He was also dealing with Islamic separatists at a time when the western world had no sympathy whatever for radical Islamism. Chechens are probably seen by most Europeans as an Asian race, although they are actualy Caucasian. They literally live in the Caucasus mountains.

In Ukraine he is fighting a nation who are identifyable as white Christian Europeans. A nation that has borders with Russia and Belarus, but also with Poland, Sovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. This makes the conflict both an EU matter and a NATO matter. It impacts on the Eurovision Song Contest and on sporting events. It is also a matter for Human Rights NGO’s such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, MSF, UNICEF and many many more.

The political trend experienced by large nations involved in long, drawn out conflicts where they are the aggressors is falling support accross the board. In the modern world of social media, satellite phones and private VPNs centralized message control has become very difficult for governments. Economic sanctions that are initially seen as a minor annoyance become more and more wearing on the people. Draft dodging becomes not merely accepted but expected, as an act of patriotism. Political divisions widen and the cracks begin to show everywhere in the administration. The distance between Putin and his advisors grows not only psychologically, but physically, as he fears for his life.

The contrast with Zelensky is very telling. The lack of movement in the hot war on the ground in Ukraine may make it seem that the Russian Bear need only squeeze harder and they will eventually win. But think about this. France held Vietnam in the years before WW2 with a force of only 15,000 men. By 1954 they could not hold the country with 200,000 men deployed. The USA thought they could do it with half a million men. See how that worked out?

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The Irish Hare

March 30, 2024 by Sailoil

Archeological evidence places the Hare in Ireland over 30,000 years ago and it looks like the Hare arrived on this island with the first humans. For a long time the earliest evidence of humans was only 8,000 years ago and that is when the large scale settlement probably occured. The point being that for the earliest Irish the Hare was part of their landscape.

Rabbits and Hedgehogs only arrived in Ireland in the 12th Century when the Normans brought them as a food source from England or Normandy. As a result they arrived in this country only long after Christianity. There is no deep pre-christian mythology surrounding either the rabbit or the hedgehog.

The Hare on the other hand was a semi-magical animal in pre-Christian lore. Although Julius Caesar never got to Ireland he did note that the British had a taboo on eating hares. In much of Germanic Europe the hare is associated with spring, fertility and the goddess Eostre. As a result much of the Christian symbology for Easter is borrowed from these traditions.

In Ireland hares were a preferred shape for fairies to change into when they visited the ordinary world. One tale from the Leinster cycle tells of how Oisín of na Fianna injured a hare with a throwing dart. He followed the blood trail into a deep thicket and found himself in a dún, a fairy fort. Descending into the fort he found himself in a beautiful luxurious hall where a lady sat with a wound on her thigh. Oisín promised the fairy lady that he would never eat hares again.

With the arrival of protestantism the legend of the hare took on a distinctly negative and misogynistic slant. Anglo-Saxon protestants greatly resented the freedom of Irish women, their protections under Brehon laws and their general tendancy to mouth off at stupid men. In protestant England a woman was a chattel of her husband or father, and was to be seen and not heard. The shapeshifting women became witches, and used their disguise as a hare to bewitch cattle and worry sheep. Colonization is a process of erasing native mythology and replacing it with cash crops.

By rebranding the hare as an evil spirit the protestant English settlers in Ireland were able to remove the taboo on the hunting and eating of the animal. Hare coursing was probably introduced into Britain by the Romans, who practiced it as a sport. Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk, published the “Laws of the Leash”, the first rules of the modern sport, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was the English nobility who introduced the sport to Ireland in the 17th Century. It was only in the 19th Century that the sport crossed the class divide and became a pursuit of the working classes. The Irish Coursing Club was only founded in 1916.

Many people today are opposed to coursing as a cruel blood sport. Proponents claim tradition and heritage as reasons for keeping the sport alive, but as I have shown it is not Irish tradition and it is not Irish heritage. Let’s give it back to the English.

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Mindship

Category Archives: Sport

Obelisk #7

Obelisk #5

Obelisk #3

Obelisk #2

Flying the flag(s)

Sonnet 8; by John Milton

The obelisk of many names.

The Crusader Clancy

Athenry 1316

Why Russia will lose in Ukraine

Abstract from “Why Big Nations lose Small Wars” by Andrew Mack, 1975.

The Irish Hare