Talk:Chronicle of Ireland

A note on the current article

The current edit is, for the most part, a precis of the introduction to the reference work listed at the bottom. T.M. Charles-Edwards' new, annotated translation opens with about 60 pages of background on the Chronicle's history and on scholars' ongoing attempts to piece it together from extant sources. I've attempted to extract and reassemble the information which is most likely to be of interest to general readers. Dppowell 17:50, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

jreferee Chronicle of Ireland edits

Hi there...I'm not the one who reverted your changes, but I thought I'd try to offer some insights into why the reversion was probably made. First, wikifying all dates, years, etc. is generally frowned upon unless something about the date is crucial to a wider understanding of the article's topic. Second, it's standard practice to only wikify the first instance of a term in an article; "Ireland" doesn't need to be linked every time it comes up in History of Ireland, and so forth. Good luck with your continued contributions. Dppowell 19:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

No, it was me. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) guideline says:

There is consensus among editors that bare month and day names should not be linked unless there is a specific reason that the link will help the reader to understand the article. There is less agreement about links to years. Some editors believe that links to years are generally useful to establish context for the article. Others believe that links to years are rarely useful to the reader and reduce the readability of the text.

I am very firmly in the camp that believes that superfluous year links are a Bad Thing and that overlinking damages readability. In Irish contexts the term annals or annal is usually applied rather than chronicle, so a link to chronicle is not necessarily helpful. Annals explains the link between these an Easter tables (which in turn explains why some events are sometimes grossly misdated). Trust this makes sense, Angus McLellan (Talk) 20:07, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• I wasn't happy seeing all my edits deleted. However, after reading the above, I kept two of my edits and removed the rest.--Jreferee 02:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Attribution of the kalends+ferial system to Rufinus of Aquileia

The attribution to Rufinus of the kalends+ferial system for indicating years in the Irish annals is due to a hypothesis of Daniel Mc Carthy, and shouldn't be presented as a fact. I quote from Mc Carthy's website:

"Hence, as a working hypothesis it has been proposed that Rufinus compiled a chronicle in the first decade of the fifth century, which travelled to Ireland with the 84-year Paschal table of Sulpicius Severus, whence it was used in Iona in the mid-sixth century as the basis for the Iona Chronicle."

It would be more appropriate to consider the kalends ianuarius ferials as originating in an Easter table such as the 84-year Padua latercus, rather than this conjectured chronicle of Rufinus, which may or may not have existed! In fact, for some of the Irish texts, it looks more likely that their dating system derived from a 532-year Victorian Easter table (e.g. the Annals of Ulster; and very minimally in the Annals of Inisfallen, where the occasional statement of ferial + luna is evident).

The "Chronicle's witness to world history prior to 400" is due to authors such as Eusebius and Isidore, as explicitly stated in the annals (e.g. Annals of Tigernach Annals T608.4 and T616.2), but the former may have been known to the Irish through the medium of Rufinus' translation and continuation of the Ecclesiastical History.

Henrywgc (talk) 15:19, 23 October 2010 (UTC)