Daily Life in the Middle Ages: Worse Than You Think [Listener Favourite]
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Why does the host replay this medieval episode while recovering from pneumonia?
Hello and welcome to the Irish History Podcast. My name is Finn Dwar. Now, today's episode is a listener favourite, originally broadcast over two years ago. And there's a somewhat unusual backstory as to why I'm reposting it today. So I'm actually off sick at the moment with pneumonia. I've been feeling a bit run down for the last few weeks, and to make a long story short, basically last week I ended up in hospital feeling like death warmed up. I was running a really high fever and felt awful. Anyway, after they ran various And identified it as pneumonia, I was given a shot of penicillin and I immediately started to feel better. And weirdly, this episode that you're about to hear right now is what I started to think about as I spent the following few hours in the hospital.
It's an insight into what medieval life was really like with Dr. Eileen Murphy. And while it's a fascinating exploration of the medieval world, it also gives you an appreciation for. many things that we take for granted, not least modern medicine. Now, my guest on the episode is, as I say, Dr. Eileen Murphy. She works in Queen's University Belfast. Eileen is an archaeologist, and a few years ago she published her findings after she analyzed the remains of hundreds of bodies excavated from a graveyard at Ranla in County Ross Common. She used the latest technology, including genetic analysis, and she was able to reconstruct what life was really like in the early Middle Ages, and it is pretty shocking. In a nutshell, it was probably not as violent as.
as you might think, but far more difficult in every other way imaginable. Over the course of the next 40 minutes or so, Eileen talks you through how people lived and the many, many ways in which they died. Now this show is always worth a re-listen and if you haven't heard it before, you're in for a treat. I should say though, it's probably not suitable for younger listeners. And before we start, I want to flag that there'll be no Brothers in Pain. That's the series on the global history of the Irish Revolution that comes out on Fridays. That won't be out this Friday, but I am hoping normal service will be restored next week. And finally, before we start, I do want to say thank you so much to everyone.
on Patreon for the kind words when I mentioned I was in hospital. Sound on the episode is by Kate Dunley. Now this episode explores what life in the Middle Ages was like, but that word the Middle Ages can mean very different things to different people. So I began my conversation with Eileen by asking her to define what we mean when we say the Middle Ages.
The early medieval period is really from when Christianity started in Ireland. So it would be kind of from the fifth century, you know, from sort of early fifth century, and it would last up until the arrival of the Anglo Normans. So in the early twelfth century. So at this time I suppose that the landscape would would have been dominated by sort of different dynasties. They would have lived in what are called Tuatha. People who would have been living in ring forts or wraths, which we see dotted around the countryside. You know, these are one of the most sort of common monuments that we see on the landscape. But sites like Ranela seem to maybe have started off as an ordinary wrath type site, but then kind of evolved.
into something that was more like an assembly site or a communal type site, you know, used by lots of people.
Eileen is going to share a lot of detail about day-to-day life based around an excavation at Ranla outside Roscommon Town. Now this site had been lost for centuries, but archaeologists uncovered it during road works. Eileen explains now how it was rediscovered.
In terms of the the actual archaeological site at Ranala, it had disappeared from history and it was only really when the road schemes started that that's when it was rediscovered. So basically what seems to have happened was that there's a very dangerous bend in the road. So they set out to straighten that road and there was no no idea that there was, you know, a major archaeological site at this location.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does the host replay this medieval episode while recovering from pneumonia?
0:07–4:53
2
How does Eileen Murphy define the time span of the early Middle Ages in Ireland?
4:53–10:29
3
What led to the rediscovery of the Ranala burial site during modern road works?
10:29–15:28
4
What do the skeletal remains reveal about diet, nutrition and childhood health at Ranala?
15:28–19:58
5
How did genome analysis reconstruct the physical appearance of Ranala’s medieval population?
19:58–25:03
6
How common was violent death at Ranala and what forms did the injuries take?
25:03–29:28
7
What burial practices show care, emotion and family connections among the Ranala dead?
29:28–33:43
8
What broader conclusions does the study draw about daily life and survival in early medieval Ireland?
33:43–38:32