Tim Coates

The Irish Book of Death and Flying Ships

From Chronicles of Ancient Ireland

London 2002

Stron 163

Papier kredowy.

51 kolorowych całostronicowych ilustracji.

Książka jest nowa

'Ships, with their sailors, were seen in the air over Gonmacnoise ... Ireland, at this time, felt another scourge besides that of the Danes, for it was destroyed by strange worms - having six feet and two teeth harder than stones - which consumed all that was green in the land ... A strange thing fell out this year, which was two suns had their courses together throughout the space of one day ... Evil signs, too; the heavens seemed to glow with comets, a flame of fire arose ... A bolt of fire passed, and it killed 1,000 persons and flocks ... There came not in Ireland since it was discovered, and there never will come till the day of judgement, a vengeance like it ... Maelduin Mac Garmaic (who had profaned the effigy of the Lady Mary) killed by the disease that killeth cattle ..." Extracted from a Table of cosmical phenomena, epizootics, famines and pestilences in Ireland' (included in The Census of Ireland for the Year /85/),the monastic and other annals quoted here cover the earliest time to which tradition refers (as transmitted by the bards) and up to the end of the I Ith century AD.The history of the early plagues shows that people tried to account for sudden outbursts of disease, either by the direct and miraculous interposition of Providence, or by some peculiar atmospheric condition.