Talk:Gaelic warfare

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 January 2020 and 8 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Loganmass.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:59, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Suspect ?
Unless there are bibliographic references for this information, I consider much of it suspect. Gaelicmichael 19:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, but I don't see the point of it myself. On the other hand, the obvious places to merge or redirect to are rubbish as well. Medieval warfare is a case in point. (A useful pointer is to see how soon these things mention stirrups. The greater the prominence, the less the authors know about the subject as a whole. Medieval warfare manages to mention them in the first sentence of the first paragraph of the main article.) A real article on Gaelic warfare would deal with cattle raiding and cattle killing and arson, the three main aspects of warfare. Oh, and there was the occasional battle. It really spend its time on tedious matters like "How was an army raised ?", "How was it fed on campaign ?", "Why did people fight wars and what did they expect to achieve ?" and such like, the sort of things you'll find in books and articles by the likes of Verbruggen, Bacharach, Lynn and so on, rather than the wargamery, toy soldier collection, LARP/reenactment nonsense which informs the majority of writing on the web and usenet. I think most people have a fair grasp of what an axe is, and how to whack somebody with one, so that the usual thud and blunder style, while it reads well, doesn't really inform. "What, me with a bee in my bonnet ?" You could be right. Angus McLellan (Talk) 18:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok this article is a shambles, i have some background in Irish history, so I'll try put this in order as soon as i get a chance PreachanStoirm 09:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The article is probably unsalvageable as it stands, as it is based on the mistaken assumption that "warfare" is somehow specific to a nation or ethnicity regardless of historical period. It is perfectly arbitrary to conflate the discussion of warfare of the sub-Roman, medieval, early modern and modern period just because the people involved happened to speak one or another variety of Gaelic. --dab (𒁳) 16:29, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * probably unsalvageable indeed... Some examples: "These customs [of human sacrifice] continued even after the advent of Christianity into Ireland. Take, for example, the Viking Thorgest, who was said to have been drowned by the Christian Irish."

and "The Dal Riada, for example, after colonizing the west of Scotland and becoming a maritime power, became an army composed completely of archers." I'm sorry, but this seems like utter nonsense to me. I don't feel like adding 50 citation needed, so what to do with this? Finn Rindahl (talk) 23:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Let's remove the unsourced bits, or does that amount to deleting the entire article? Oh well, Angus already hit the nail on its head (regardless of the date of his post), but nothing has happened since. A couple of useful articles on Irish warfare and cattle-raiding do spring to mind, so it would be possible to start from scratch. If only anyone had the time and interest (not me at the m). A new stub then? Cavila (talk) 12:57, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Corrected the nomenclature of the Gallowglass weapons to be longswords from the anachronistic broadswords. 51.7.196.198 (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2020 (UTC)