What's New For
March 2001
by
Ken Goonan
Well, I gotta tell ya... I had to go looking at the statistics for the website. Yikes!!! I was totally dumbstruck. There was over 8000 hits in February. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
The reason I had to look is because Random House Publishing asked me to. They wanted to know how many hits the site gets on average per month. The reason for that is, I asked them to reprint material from their recently published book, "The Wars of the Irish Kings", in which is the best account of the "Battle of Clontarf" I have read to date. I want to put it on the site for you to read. I want to do it legally and get copyright permission. I'm sure you understand. I don't want to end up like the Napster dudes.
Anyways... so far, I have permission to post copyrighted material from the Celt Project at the University of Cork in Cork, Ireland. I will be posting selections from the "Annals of the Four Masters", and selections from the "Ulster Annals". These are historical accounts of the happenings during the life of Brian Boru... for all you Irish history buffs out there. It's a fascinating read, though confusing at times. I will do my best to add in names in English and put in some commentary and footnotes so it's a little easier to understand. There will be links to the Celt Project and to Random House Publishers, (provided they give me permission to use the excerpts I want), as a courtesy for allowing me to use their material. However, I must ask that you respect the copyright laws and don't rebroadcast or reprint or redistribute this material with out their permission.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention... there is an awful lot of snow around here.
So with that... I'll say thank you again to all of you who have sent in information, corrections, cudos and what(k)not to us. We are grateful and hope you enjoy the site.
And lastly... the Celtic Lion above, (some of my handywork), is from the ring of Brian Boru. Feel free, with my blessing, to take it and do whatever you want with it.
And that's the way it is on March 9th, 2001