Dr Gillian Kenny

Let's take the festival, Sean.

Let's do it.

But anyway, what happened was in 1166, the King of Leinster, Dermot McMurray, had been exiled and he approached Henry II asking for help to get back his kingdom of Leinster.

And Henry said, yes, of course, because he quite fancied getting a foothold in Ireland.

What I think we might nicely term a whole load of back and forth.

over the medieval period and afterwards.

But after the English arrived, there's a whole shifting pattern of territory controlled by the English king.

It becomes a real mishmash of different kind of cultures.

By the early 16th century, about 60% of the island is controlled or influenced by Gaelic lords, so it's very heavily Gaelic.

What's interesting is that this consistent Gaelic identity spread across the island.

It was very consistent.

They used the same language, same system of laws, and that even spread up into Scotland, into what's widely called the Gaeltacht.

So it was a whole outward-looking Irish-speaking world, which was kind of very active and very vibrant by that stage.

Yeah, it does involve some of that.

But mostly Irish magic is about influencing material reality through words.

So words quite literally transform reality in the Irish system, whether because of its inherent power in the words themselves or thanks to the intervention of a supernatural being.

You make a supplication.

So, words of power have three uses in the Irish system.

It's healing, harming and protection.

We also see the importance of words in things like place names, which were often associated with mystical and mythical beings.