The Kingship and Landscape of Tara

**This review was first published in Air n-Aithesc Volume II, Issue II.

Editor: Edel Bhreathnach

Publisher: Four Court Press for The Discovery Programme

Published: 2005

ISBN: 9781851829545

Synopsis: (From the Four Courts Press Website)

This volume is the culmination of an inter-disciplinary project undertaken as part of the Discovery Programme involving archaeologists, historians, linguists and place-name experts. It includes prosopographies of the kings and queens of Tara from mythology to the eighth century; a re-assessment of the nature of the kingship of Tara; legal aspects of the kingship of Tara; the origin and extent of the place name Temair; Tara and the supernatural; the archaeology and topography of the kingdom of Brega; editions of two of the earliest texts relating to the kingship of Tara.

Review:

This book is one of the projects in The Discovery Programme called Tara Research Project. The project was made up of two parts: a non-invasive archaeological survey; and an inter-disciplinary approach that included anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, literary criticism, and onomastics. The aim of this project was to deal with the complex issue of Tara.

The volume is made up of two parts: kingship and landscape. The two parts together are made up of fourteen essays, which examine Tara from late prehistory to the eighth century BCE. The book ends with five indexes and an extensive bibliography. It also has pictures and maps from pages 383 to 409.

The fourteen essays in this book discuss these main themes: Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig and the Airgialle charter poem; prosopography1 of the kings and queens associated with them mentioned in the above two texts; a discussion of the landscape of Tara and Brega; and the special status of Tara.

The essays are all really interesting though sometimes they were hard to take in one sitting so maybe read as much or as little as your brain can take. I know I’ve had to split some of these essays into small chunks to be able to get through them and soak up all the information presented. In some cases, I felt like more citations were needed, or more information on where to read more should one feel interested. On the whole though the essays were solid.

There was one essay that really caught my attention and that was “PROSOPOGRAPHY II: A Prosopography of the Early Queens of Tara”. It is the longest essay in the book and it only discusses the women associated with the persons mentioned in the Baile Chuinn Chétchathaig and the Airgialle charter poem, but at least they were discussed. There isn’t a lot written on women in the Celtic world so that was a good essay to read.

Another essay that I really liked was John Carey’s essay called “Tara and the Supernatural”. In this essay Carey discusses how Tara was not linked to the síd, like Emain Macha for example, but its kingship is still the focus of supernatural threat in some stories because it was identified with the Kingship of Ireland.

I think this book is a very important but I also think that people should read other hypotheses and interpretations about the kingship of Tara. This is but ONE interpretation among many.