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  The accidental baby – a medieval Irish sex mystery   In medieval Ireland two lesbians conceived a baby and it was a mystery that was eventually solved by a king. But really, this tale needs no intro – have a read and then let’s discuss it. This version translated by David Greene is a favourite [1] “There was a fine, firm, righteous, generous princely king ruling over Ireland, Níall Frassach, son of Fergal. Ireland was prosperous during his reign. There was fruit and fatness, corn and milk in his time, and he had everyone settled on his own land. He called a great assembly in Tailtiu once, and had the cream of the men of Ireland around him. Great kings and wide-eyed queens and the chiefs and nobles of the territories were ranged on the stately seats of the assembly. There were boys and jesters and the heroes of the Irish in strong eager bands racing their horses in the assembly. While they were there, a woman came to the king carrying a boy child, and put him into the king’s ar
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 The Girl in the Grave My adult life has been wrapped up with reading, writing or speaking about women in medieval Ireland. I explain (across various media) of how difficult life could be for them, of the often war-torn and unsettled conditions of life for both them and their children. I have cited massacres of them and been appalled sometimes by what they lived through. My concern though has been academic because, after all, how could I really relate? I know VAWG has been perpetrated since time began and sometimes what I have read has hit hard and stopped me in my tracks for a while but, gradually, while the empathy lingers the sharp feeling which engendered it slowly disappears. I push the sadness to one side. I get on, with being a mum and a wife and everything else. I keep busy, the mind moves on to new shores. But I recently read about a young woman in late medieval/early modern Ireland and both she and the story of her death has stuck with me since. Why her? Hard to tell. Perhaps
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  It is leading up to Christmas in a difficult year and so I wanted to write a little bit about fear and darkness and the path back to the light as well as the hope that things can be fixed and that life can and will get better. So, I thought about stories I know that reflect that and one which I am very fond of sprang to mind. It involves some of my favourite things (ghosts and chatting) and is a strange but uplifting little medieval Irish story of the undead, unselfishness and the power of hope and kindness. I hope this speaks to you as it has often done to me. When the abbot met the ghost  The Irish annals are an important historical source for medieval Ireland. A record of wars, deaths, marriages and major events in Ireland over many hundreds of years. Much of the material included in them is what you might expect – deaths, raids, the rise and fall of kings etc etc -   but some of it deals with events that are somewhat stranger… In the year 899 according to the Annals of the
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