RE: Its time to stop blaming the English for the Irish Famine
Shillelagh is like a walking stick made out of blackthorn, it's really black and shiny. My grandma on my dad's side and my grandad on my mum's side had one. I don't really know much about them except that they seem pretty iconic as a sort of traditional thing. Also blackthorn is quite a mystic wood, with lots of associations with the faeries and witchs and what-not, for sure it's cos it's a real hard wood that it is used though. They used to smelt coke using fires burning blackthorn cos it burns the hottest, the wood is hard and doesn't split. Normally a stick is chosen that has a natural knob at the top, and sometimes they can twist and gnarl in really interesting aesthetically pleasing shapes.
Re all the above information, that's very interesting. Recently I've been feeling like I'd like to revisit a bit of Irish history as I have a ropey grasp. I'd already heard about the genetic pool not being anything like what the popular imaginative is, he he. Although it never seems as though anyone has any response as regards how the basque came to scatter their genetic seeds so profusely! There's also a very strong Iberian influence as regards the biodiversity, with much of the vegetation having somehow come from Spain/Portugal. Were sailors such avid horticulturalists as a side-line?? I'd love to travel back in time and do a couple of ethnobotanic interviews with some Basque sailors!!!!
Yes an irish person who has heard of a Shillelagh, I think the knob is a rootball.
I have a wicked book about the basque coming to north america and visiting a chinese city in new brunswick I think, Its called Seven cities I think(non-fiction).
The thing about the british isles is the basque were the first inhabitants and still make up 74% of the genetic heritage, 80% in Ireland. Red hair is a basque thing.
Have you heard of the black Irish(another Irish thing I learned about in school, The Donnelly's.....MURDERED!!) plus I know a family of them the Collins, they look lebanese.
Hmmm. You've lost me on the black and Lebanese Irish!
The Black Irish look lebanese, the most common explanation for them is the spanish armada shipwrecks but I prefer the explanation Uriel's Machine puts forward; The Tuatha de denann were the jewish tribe of Dan coming to learn at the crystal house. Uriel's Machine is the best book I've read about Henges.
Ahhhh....Black Irish....there's quite a few in Donegal actually! Have a proper Spanish sort of look to them. My favourite beach (in the whole wide world) is called the Murder Hole, on the Rosguill peninsula, one of the stories goes that a ship from the Armada sunk off it and all the poor sailors had there heads taken for rewards from the English. Although if you see how remote the peninsula is and think about what transportation options were in those days, and then I put my self in the place of an Irish woman living there, I'd totally be more interested in the good looking Mediterraneans as material for husbands than some short term monetary reward! Although maybe that would give the Irish lads all the more reason to be murderous!