Talk:Áed Sláine

Death date

I got 604 from Byrne, Charles-Edwards and Irwin. Reading McCarthy's stuff, it looks like this is because the historians are indeed using a crudely corrected Annals of Ulster date (603+1). My suggestion would be to put in a note or other mention of the dating problems. If it's a longer article, include it in a mention of the sources and background. This is what was done in Penda of Mercia. Shaky chronology is routine in most places the 7th century, indeed if you look at Eardwulf of Northumbria you'll see that a year or two is no big deal: a two-decade (!) revision has been proposed for 9th century Northumbrian regnal dates. Angus McLellan (Talk) 11:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

OK Angus - in my nasty little articles I have him expiring in 602 and 604. What is the best date to pin it on; we can write footnotes to explain the uncertainty but it is confusing to find different (apparently definitive) years quoted in different Wiki articles. We need a Date Controller. Sarah777 (talk) 16:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you heard of Ševčenko's law? One hundred and fifty years, or more, of "serious" history and good old Dan's dog is the first to pick this tree.

From what I understood of it, and it's rather over my head, Mc Carthy has a point. However, it would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to adopt his dates before anyone else does. It means that every date in a book needs to be Mc Carthy-ised.

And even then I have very serious doubts about the accuracy of the results. Mc Carthy's method may give accurate AD dates, but I suspect there are problems. Take 763. He's content to put Domnall Midi's death in that year, just as the historians are, but why does AD 763 start with an event dated to 20 November? Fair enough, that could just be a glitch from the compilation, but it could also be that whatever the source was, its years did not start on 1 January or March 25 but instead on 1 September. Adding that to an article would be WP:OR, so we won't do that - we do when it's Bede's years because people have discussed it in print, but this they haven't - but we can take it into consideration here when deciding what to do.

The Chronicle of Ireland was compiled from lots of sources and it would be a reasonable bet that even if most or nearly all of them started the year on 1 January, some would have done so on 25 December, some on 1 September, and some on 25 March. Even if Mc Carthy's system is perfect, you can only be entirely confident about the year if the event falls between 25 March and 31 August.

If we can date events to within a year either way, that's good, if we can date events in the 7th century to within 2 or 3 years, that's marvellous. If it were me, I'd go with "historian" dates, i.e. what Byrne, Charles-Edwards and the rest say, and add Mc Carthy's corrections in a footnote, which is what is done with Penda of Mercia and other C7th Anglo-Saxons where there is a similar, but smaller, problem. We can ask for outside opinions, people like User:Ealdgyth, User:Srnec, User:Deacon of Pndapetzim‎ for a start, if you think it's worth doing. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

With regards to dates, I admit I'm partial to McCarthy but his dates only really apply up tp 665 and then the annals of ulster are synchronized anyhow. seems like the Annals of Tigernach may have more reliable dates prior to 665 as a primary source. Any article I write after 665 will avoid mentioning McCarthy and when there is a conflict of dates, I usually footnote both the Ulster and Tigernach annals, so hopefully this will help readers. Regarding the dating of Domnall Midi in 763, Byrne makes a point that the entries may have not been in proper chronological order-see page 150 regarding the events in leinster in 738. I'm going to work a bit on being more expanatory with dating in my articles. The years in the annals start with the Kalends of January and yes they could be off, but i have to pick a date, so I do. If I take it too seriously, i'll just smash my head a gainst a rock like Creide lamenting Cano mac Gartnait. Timelinefrog (talk) 04:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Reference for Finnian's prophecy

I'm looking for a reference for Finnian's prophecy, that Áed:

"will surpass his brethren and more kings will come from him than from the sons of others".

Thanks

Marcas.oduinn (talk) 09:08, 23 August 2020 (UTC)