Happy Christmas everyone! In today's episode, Professor Liam Breatnach (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), one of Ireland's leading experts on the Old/Middle Irish language, medieval Irish law (so-called Brehon Law), poets and the Irish language, explains what the law tracts can tell us about medieval Irish society, the intellectual networks and frameworks that influenced and were influenced by the large corpus of legal material, and how the highly stratified Irish society understood itself in legal terms. We chat cats, what people ate in medieval Ireland, the Senchas Már, lost texts, polygamy, zombie concepts and much more!

Suggested reading: Breatnach, Liam, ‘On Old Irish Collective and Abstract Nouns, the Meaning of cétmuinter, and Marriage in Early Mediaeval Ireland’, Ériu 66 (2016).

‘The Early Irish Law Text Senchas Már and the Question of its Date’. E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lectures 13 (Cambridge 2011)

Breatnach, Liam, A Companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici, Early Irish Law Series 5 (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 2005)

Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday).

Email: medievalirishhistory@gmail.com

X (formerly Twitter): @EarlyIrishPod

Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University, & Taighde Éireann (formerly Science Foundation Ireland/Irish Research Council).

Views expressed are the speakers' own.

Production: Tiago de Oliveira Veloso Silva.

Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa

Music: Lexin_Music