Cacht ingen Ragnaill

Cacht ingen Ragnaill was the queen of Donnchad mac Briain, from their marriage in 1032 [1] to her death in 1054, when she is styled Queen of Ireland in the Irish annals of the Clonmacnoise group: the Annals of Tigernach and Chronicon Scotorum.[2][3] Her husband himself, though King of Munster, is not widely regarded as having been High King of Ireland and so the extent of Cacht's influence is uncertain. That her style is superior to his presents an obviously strange situation in medieval Gaelic Ireland's male-dominated politics.

Of Norse-Irish descent, Cacht almost certainly belonged to the dynasty of the Uí Ímair, and is usually assumed to have been a sister of Donnchad's ally Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, whose precise parentage is uncertain. He is regarded by scholars either as a descendant of Ivar of Waterford,[4] or of Gofraid mac Arailt,[5] but since both had children named Ragnall and both dynasties were in alliance with the Dál Cais, Cacht's father need not be identical with his.

Issue

References and notes

  1. ^ Seán Mac Airt, ed. (1944). The Annals of Inisfallen (MS. Rawlinson B. 503). Translated by Mac Airt. Dublin: DIAS. Edition and translation available from CELT.
  2. ^ Annals of Tigernach, ed. & partial trans. by Whitley Stokes (1895–1897). "The Annals of Tigernach". Revue Celtique. 16–18. (= Vol. 16 (1895), p. 374-419; 17 (1896), p. 6-33, 116-263, 337-420; 18 (1897), p. 9-59, 150-197, 267-303, 390-391). Edition available from CELT and Full PDF at Internet Archive. Full translation by Gearóid Mac Niocaill (2010), The Annals of Tigernach. Unpublished electronic file ed. by Emer Purcell and Donnchadh Ó Corráin for UCC.
  3. ^ Gearóid Mac Niocaill, ed. (2003). Chronicon Scotorum. Translated by Gearóid Mac Niocaill. Unpublished manuscript made available to UCC – via CELT: The Corpus of Electronic Texts. Edition and translation.
  4. ^ Seán Duffy, "Irishmen and Islesmen in the Kingdom of Dublin and Man 1052–1171", in Ériu 43 (1992): 93–133.
  5. ^ Benjamin T. Hudson, Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in the North Atlantic. Oxford University Press. 2005.


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