Native Irish Skies

Sadly, these are Arabic or Greek star-names, translated into Irish as far as I can see, though I only checked three or four pages worth.

Daniel P. McCarthy (Trinity College Dublin) is the worlds leading expert in this. (I've put this up before, but it's interesting anyway.)

See his site:

www.cs.tcd.ie/Dan.McCarthy/


Also the Irish colony of St. Gallen, from where the 1006 Supernova was described

europeforvisitors.com/switzaustria/articles/st_gallen.htm

And the description:

celestialdelights.info/pub/SN1006_1.htm

The Irish monks described all their old pagan gods and wrote down their legends.
Significantly,they did not suppress the memory of the pagan past.

(The pagan legend of the Tain for instance: vassun.vassar.edu/~sttaylor/Cooley/detail.html )

So I wouldn't be surprised if old Irish star and constellation names are buried in those manuscripts somewhere as well.

McCarthy is the man to ask !

Peter.

You've probably come across this already in your research but 'Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland' by Clive Ruggles is worth getting your hands on if you are interested in archeoastronomy. Its a refreshing scientific look at what the people of these islands were actually able to determine and what they were not, and is thankfully free from the usual waffle that is written about passage graves and stone circles.

I see that he has also edited a book called 'Songs from the Sky: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World'.This appears to delve more into folklore which may be of interest for your star naming perhaps.

His website is www.le.ac.uk/ar/rug/ he is now Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester.

These are fine sites. Thanks. I should have picked up the second, since it is actually Vols 12 & 13 of Archaeoastronomy.

Anyone care to hear what I dig up?

(I hope I may meet some of you at meetings in a year or two.)

T
Anyone care to hear what I dig up?

Absolutely! I find all this stuff fascinating!

Bart.

Diane,
if you are able to, you might even consider (in your Oz-twanged Irish accent) doing an audio piece of a couple minutes that we can add to one of our monthly Podcasts!



How are your nerves now?

S.