Sassanachs

Damn....
I just mentioned Sassanachs and [Black] Irish, and today the Derry Marchers have been exonerated. For Pete's sake! Give Ireland back to the Irish. Just do it.

"Well it was Sunday bloody Sunday
When they shot the people there
The cries of thirteen martyrs
Filled the Free Derry air
Is there any one amongst you
Dare to blame it on the kids?
Not a soldier boy was bleeding
When they nailed the coffin lids!"

- John Lennon

Wendy-Poo!

D'ya know she has a button nose? Very, very cute. Very Irish, ya know? Her dad says they are "Black Irish" and I had an idea what that meant. Kinda right and kinda wide right! hahaha Sorry, Coach Bowden. Anyway, back in the mid-Nineteenth Century, misguided folks thought that the broad features of some Irish people harkened a close kinship with Negroid peoples (as a means of looking down on both sets of people). Poor scholarship as it were and not at all true, and besides, no reason to look down on anybody. We're all brothers, right? (Aye, even those Sassanach bastards ;-)

Well, another thought had been in the back of my mind - the Great Armada and 1588 and Drake and Hawkins and how the smaller English ships harried the Spanish behemoths and the storm forced them north, through the North Sea, where some wrecked upside Scotland and Ireland. Dark-haired fellows, for the most part. Betcha not all were killed upon landing. Ya know - some Celts are from the north part of Spain, even to this day...

Then again, some Irish chieftains employed Spanish mercenaries, and I would not bet against some intermarriage from that as well. Lately, some scholars have been looking at Iberian movements toward Eire as early as several thousand years ago. Many choices, and my bet is that a little of all the above is true.

Oh, and button-nosed Black Irish lass? She's blonde, with blue eyes. Pretty girl ;-)