A Distant Mirror: Ireland
Ireland is not a united land. It has no king, no ruler. It is a divided land, with many claimants to rulership, and many feuds and wars among its peoples.
It is a heavily forested island, except on the west coast where the Pantholesians live. Elsewhere towns and villages huddle amid great forests pierced only by Irelands few major rivers. Only along the coast and rivers can any sign of civilization be seen.
Ireland is divided between the following peoples:
The Pantholesians
The Pantholesians are the oldest of the Irish. They are a short, stocky people with dark hair and medium fair skin. They live exclusively on the western coast, rarely entering the great central forest. They cultivate potatoes (gained from Hunnish merchants from America), herd cattle and sheep, and fish. Since a seal might be a neighbor they hold the animal sacrosanct.and hunt it not.
The first sign of Pantholesian occupation of Ireland is dated back to the period between the 3rd and 4th (final) ice age. The Pantholesians are believed to be a pre-Cro Magnon people. Possibly pushed out of their homeland by the more aggressive new comers. They lack skeletal features that first appeared among the Cro magnon, while retaining others that disappeared with the latter.
They pretty much had Ireland to themselves, except for the occasional family immigrating from Britain or Europe itself, until the coming of the Formorians around 500BC. During all this time the Pantholesians were hunter-gatherers, living off what they could find in the dense Irish forests. They worked in stone, leather, and wood, and venerated the great Irish Elk. Even today a number of Pantholesian thorps and hamlets still proudly display hoary old antlers, supposedly gained during some sort of spirit quest or deadly combat with one of the animals. Though the great majority were simply picked up off the ground after being shed.
The Pantholesians have no kings, not even chiefs or headmen. Their leaders are usually the most respected member of a thorp or hamlet, and a change in leadership is often frequent and good natured. Each community is independent of any other. Pantholesians aren’t even socially advanced enough to have clans or tribes.
Clothing is often made of wool, with cotton a close second. Most of the cotton they use in their clothing comes from the Toltecs of Mesoamerica via Hunnish and Hunquinase merchants. Indeed, the Pantholesians have more contact with America than they do with their more immediate neighbors on Ireland. More and more children with Hunnish or American Indian features are being born among them every year.
To them Fir Bolg, Kelts, and Goths are creatures out of myth. While the Tuatha de Danan and Milesians are legends and the Formorians are demons from a distant Hell. Other than merchants from America their only real contact is with the Milesians, and that because the Milesians are allies against the Formorians.
At present the Pantholesians are left pretty much alone. Except for a few Christian and Jewish missionaries out to bring them into the civilized world. Efforts the Pantholesians pretty much ignore, except when they hassle the Jews by offering them shellfish and other unclean foods. (They show an even crueler humor to Christian missionaries.)
Current conditions are not expected to change anytime in the near future.
The Formorians
The Formorians came to Ireland as refugees. For centuries their ancestors were being pushed steadily up the Norwegian coast, until they came in contact with ogres and trolls migrating south. Caught between two enemies they faced imminent extinction, unless they took a perilous course.
Most didn’t, and so left no heirs. But a few Formorian clans took to the sea in primitive longboats to try their luck south.
But no matter how far south they went, or how agreeable they tried to make themselves seem, no one would let them settle. The years passed, their numbers grew less, and hope waned.
They came to southern end of the Scandinavian Penninsula. Some turned east to follow the coast line. Nothing is known of their fate. Others kept on going south, rowing their now ancient craft across the gap between southernmost Norway and the Frisian coast.
By now they had noticed how more advanced the natives were becoming. Ever more capable in war and craft and culture. And still very hostile to newcomers.
The last of the Formorians had a decision to make. Continue south along Europe’s Atlantic coast in the hopes of finding any sort of hospitality, even as slaves, or strike out into the great ocean in the hopes of finding someplace they could call their own.
Refugees they were, and dying refugees at that, but they were still Formorians. A people who had fought for centuries against overwhelming odds. And while in no manner triumphant, had managed to preserve their ways against all odds. Not the life of slaves for them.
So they turned west, heading for a land they heard might be inhabited by a people more hospitable than those they had met before. Or, if not hospitable, less able to defend themselves against Formorian spears and arrows.
But a storm arose that drove them further west than they had planned on going. So it was they missed the forbidding shores of Northern Scotland entirely, coming to land in Northern Ireland.
The last remnants of the Formorians found a people, the Pantholesians, who knew nothing of the bow. Nor of settlements, agriculture, or even animal husbandry. The Formorians also found a land dense with forests and teeming with animals to hunt and plants to gather. Best of all, while the Pantholesian bands they first encountered were largely hostile, there was nobody capable of putting up anything like an effective resistance. The Formorians were in heaven.
Thus it was at a time when the Romans were unifying the Italian Penninsula and the Persians were reestablishing their empire after the Macedonian Interregnum the Pleistocene finally came to an end in Ireland.
To be continued.
Ireland is not a united land. It has no king, no ruler. It is a divided land, with many claimants to rulership, and many feuds and wars among its peoples.
It is a heavily forested island, except on the west coast where the Pantholesians live. Elsewhere towns and villages huddle amid great forests pierced only by Irelands few major rivers. Only along the coast and rivers can any sign of civilization be seen.
Ireland is divided between the following peoples:
The Pantholesians
The Pantholesians are the oldest of the Irish. They are a short, stocky people with dark hair and medium fair skin. They live exclusively on the western coast, rarely entering the great central forest. They cultivate potatoes (gained from Hunnish merchants from America), herd cattle and sheep, and fish. Since a seal might be a neighbor they hold the animal sacrosanct.and hunt it not.
The first sign of Pantholesian occupation of Ireland is dated back to the period between the 3rd and 4th (final) ice age. The Pantholesians are believed to be a pre-Cro Magnon people. Possibly pushed out of their homeland by the more aggressive new comers. They lack skeletal features that first appeared among the Cro magnon, while retaining others that disappeared with the latter.
They pretty much had Ireland to themselves, except for the occasional family immigrating from Britain or Europe itself, until the coming of the Formorians around 500BC. During all this time the Pantholesians were hunter-gatherers, living off what they could find in the dense Irish forests. They worked in stone, leather, and wood, and venerated the great Irish Elk. Even today a number of Pantholesian thorps and hamlets still proudly display hoary old antlers, supposedly gained during some sort of spirit quest or deadly combat with one of the animals. Though the great majority were simply picked up off the ground after being shed.
The Pantholesians have no kings, not even chiefs or headmen. Their leaders are usually the most respected member of a thorp or hamlet, and a change in leadership is often frequent and good natured. Each community is independent of any other. Pantholesians aren’t even socially advanced enough to have clans or tribes.
Clothing is often made of wool, with cotton a close second. Most of the cotton they use in their clothing comes from the Toltecs of Mesoamerica via Hunnish and Hunquinase merchants. Indeed, the Pantholesians have more contact with America than they do with their more immediate neighbors on Ireland. More and more children with Hunnish or American Indian features are being born among them every year.
To them Fir Bolg, Kelts, and Goths are creatures out of myth. While the Tuatha de Danan and Milesians are legends and the Formorians are demons from a distant Hell. Other than merchants from America their only real contact is with the Milesians, and that because the Milesians are allies against the Formorians.
At present the Pantholesians are left pretty much alone. Except for a few Christian and Jewish missionaries out to bring them into the civilized world. Efforts the Pantholesians pretty much ignore, except when they hassle the Jews by offering them shellfish and other unclean foods. (They show an even crueler humor to Christian missionaries.)
Current conditions are not expected to change anytime in the near future.
The Formorians
The Formorians came to Ireland as refugees. For centuries their ancestors were being pushed steadily up the Norwegian coast, until they came in contact with ogres and trolls migrating south. Caught between two enemies they faced imminent extinction, unless they took a perilous course.
Most didn’t, and so left no heirs. But a few Formorian clans took to the sea in primitive longboats to try their luck south.
But no matter how far south they went, or how agreeable they tried to make themselves seem, no one would let them settle. The years passed, their numbers grew less, and hope waned.
They came to southern end of the Scandinavian Penninsula. Some turned east to follow the coast line. Nothing is known of their fate. Others kept on going south, rowing their now ancient craft across the gap between southernmost Norway and the Frisian coast.
By now they had noticed how more advanced the natives were becoming. Ever more capable in war and craft and culture. And still very hostile to newcomers.
The last of the Formorians had a decision to make. Continue south along Europe’s Atlantic coast in the hopes of finding any sort of hospitality, even as slaves, or strike out into the great ocean in the hopes of finding someplace they could call their own.
Refugees they were, and dying refugees at that, but they were still Formorians. A people who had fought for centuries against overwhelming odds. And while in no manner triumphant, had managed to preserve their ways against all odds. Not the life of slaves for them.
So they turned west, heading for a land they heard might be inhabited by a people more hospitable than those they had met before. Or, if not hospitable, less able to defend themselves against Formorian spears and arrows.
But a storm arose that drove them further west than they had planned on going. So it was they missed the forbidding shores of Northern Scotland entirely, coming to land in Northern Ireland.
The last remnants of the Formorians found a people, the Pantholesians, who knew nothing of the bow. Nor of settlements, agriculture, or even animal husbandry. The Formorians also found a land dense with forests and teeming with animals to hunt and plants to gather. Best of all, while the Pantholesian bands they first encountered were largely hostile, there was nobody capable of putting up anything like an effective resistance. The Formorians were in heaven.
Thus it was at a time when the Romans were unifying the Italian Penninsula and the Persians were reestablishing their empire after the Macedonian Interregnum the Pleistocene finally came to an end in Ireland.
To be continued.
