Misplaced Pages

Saying that Elizabeth's religious views were held only to "suit her own ambitions" is ipso facto non-neutral. The description of the manner in which the Irish insurrection of 1583 was put down is not neutral, insomuch as it paints the English as cruel and oppressive. "Appalling" is inherently not a neutral phrase. I hope that these explanations suffice; if not, we could discuss it further. -- Emsworth 00:34, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Atilla

Damned if I remember. On the Village Pump or Reference desk, I believe someone had typo'd something, and I made a cheap pun. I occasionally do that, usually with an edit summary like "Frivolous remark" or "even less useful response". -- Jmabel | Talk 23:50, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Protestant Dissenters

On the precision of the term 'dissenter': yes and no. I think it's a loaded term, even without the historical connotations; it places one side rather than the other as those who dissent, seeming to imply that the thing they dissent from is the generally-accepted truth. I don't think it adds anything to the statement " is disputed on grounds of doctrine by Protestants" to add that the Protestants are "dissenters" - the statement already says they disagree with the claim; adding that they are "dissenters" merely seems to give them a particular characterisation.

On the term 'Protestant': I, and the 'Protestant' article, think that Protestant now fairly unambiguously refers to members of the Christian movement which divided from the Roman Catholic Church at the Reformation; the third major branch of Christianity along with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. I'm not sure I see that as particularly vague; and I think it is the case that all Protestants would dispute the Roman Catholic Church's right to sole use of the description "Catholic".

On the term "Catholic Church": ideally, yes, each article would have a single, simple, uncontroversial title. Unfortunately, the organisation referred to by this article prefers a title - "the Catholic Church" - which makes a claim which is disputed; the 'Catholic' article has a good examination of the different claims on the term Catholic. I'm sure that, for example, the Palmarian Catholic Church would also like to be called "the Catholic Church", while most if not all Protestant denominations would claim that no single denomination has the right to call itself that. I don't think it's compatible with Misplaced Pages policies for Misplaced Pages to declare that one contenter is "the Catholic Church", even if it is the largest body that claims that title. Those outside the organisation usually distinguish which particular "Catholic Church" this is by prefixing it with "Roman". Misplaced Pages policy on naming is:

"Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature."

What is specifically not mentioned is what the body itself would like to be called. It is of interest, and should be noted, that the body would prefer to be called the Catholic Church; but I don't think it's Misplaced Pages's place to award it that title given that a large proportion of people would dispute its right to it.

On Talk:Roman Catholic Church: I read it; I post to it; unfortunately, it's far too long and little-read. I've read most of it, but there's no consistent thread of debate, just a huge array of unconnected comments. For example, I made a proposal on there (about the Terminology section) several months ago; but I haven't yet carried it through, because, even though it received no objections on the talk page, I have no confidence that the majority of editors will have read it. Nothing ever seems to be decided there; it probably needs a purge and restart from scratch.

TSP 14:44, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Spanish Armada

Thank you for your note. Leicester point taken but he was back in England by 1588. I hope the article contribution is not too forthright but religion is always a problem. When it enters into a topic, an attempt to point out truths will appear unbalanced to those whose minds are set in another direction. :-) (RJP 13:29, 23 September 2005 (UTC))

>Your point ... should be relegated to the discussion page
I do not think so. The points of view in the Spanish and English/Dutch articles are too different/opposing to be brushed under a discussion page. I hope you will agree after you read the Tergiversaciones históricas ("historical distortions") section in the Spanish Misplaced Pages Armada article. I have renamed the section from "Discussion" to "Point of view". MH 20:30, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Black Legend

Hi, Shtove. My contributions to es:Leyenda negra were mainly objections. I find the article in w:es extremely POV, and I have argued with Ecelan to the point. I think the fact that the very term was developed by a conspicuous ultra-Catholic and pan-Hispanist revisionist should be clearly mentioned in the introduction, and that more attention should be paid to the usage of the term by the historians of the Franco regime, more interested in resuscitating an anachronical idea of Spanish grandeur and nobility than in historical precision. I don't think the English version is much better, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, I am no historian. I think your best bet in this regard is es:User:Cinabrium, who is far more competent on the matter than I am. He has a homepage here, he writes some mean English, and he's certainly up to the task. Best, Taragüí 13:48, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

(copied from User talk:Jmabel)
Thanks for your vigilance. It's a significant propaganda subject, so I'm trying to get fair Spanish input to make the article more or less accurate and balanced, in both languages (I dont' speak Spanish, and my knowledge of the subject is marginal) - hopeless perhaps, but can you assist? The end of the discussion page shows my attempts. Are the people I'm talking to the same ones you keep reverting?shtove 23:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
(end copied passage)

Who knows, since the people I find myself reverting are almost uniformly editing anonymously. The comment above indicates that Taragüí would probably have objections that would go well beyond those I've raised, but in the same direction.

FWIW, I read Spanish well and write it decently. If you have specific material you want translated, I'm glad to help (though a bit busy), but I agree with Taragüí that the Spanish-language Misplaced Pages article won't be much help: unsurprisingly, it is even more uniformly apologist for Spain.

What the article really most needs is references and citations, so that no one has an excuse to keep throwing away large portions of it that they happen to like, selectively invoking the claim that the material is uncited. And this is a topic where I suspect that the online references will mostly be mediocre: for a controversy that raged largely in historians' journals, someone needs to do some library research.-- Jmabel | Talk 00:22, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Brian Boru

Thanks for your input and don't give up just yet :) See comments on Talk page - FrancisTyers 00:39, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Columbus in Galway

The info was related to discussion on Christopher Columbus, and whether there was any evidence to support the saga that he learned about Hy Brasil in Galway. See Talk:Christopher Columbus#Signs of Land beyond the Atlantic in Galway? / Navigatio Sancti Brendani. --Red King 18:04, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

(btw, while I'm here, it is not true to say that Protestants are Dissenters. Only Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists (along with Catholics) are - the dissent is from acceptance of the Supremacy Act and the Book of Common Prayer. --Red King 18:04, 31 October 2005 (UTC))

Redirect

You can move pages with the "Move" feature :) I hope I didn't cause an edit conflict when moved it. Nice article, BTW. Alensha 23:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Ian Paisley

No problem, the unverified info can probably be deleted, since it appears to be a very weak conspiricy theory, not even notable since its not widespread.

You might like to look over Misplaced Pages:Cite_sources/example_style and Misplaced Pages:Template_messages/Sources_of_articles/Generic_citations for some hints on how to format references. --Barberio 02:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

On Basques, Milesians, Welsh and Irish...

Please accept my apologies for a delayed reply. I've been on (short) vacations, far away from computers (or even TV or newspapers -- and yes, there is a life beyond the Internet :D).

Getting back into the issue: tracing the roots of a people is usually a hard task, particularly when one does not have written documents. Modern science gives us two significant tools: genetics and linguistics. If a people is essentially an identity (common culture, common traditions, self-recognition of "belonging to"), the latter tends to be more useful than the former. But both of them can (and indeed do) give us good clues.

From linguistics, it is today generally accepted that Basque (Euskara) is an isolated language. It is believed that Euskara was part of a more extended pre-indoeuropean linguistic conglomerate (a family of languages, perhaps?) also represented by the longtime extinct Aquitanian language. The words Gascon and Basque have the same root, since the Romans called the tribes living in that area uascones- Archaelogical evidence shows that Basque ancestors were living more or less in their current settlement area, i.e. between the Adour and Ebro rivers.

From genetics, we know some interesting (and curious) things. Among all peoples, Basques have the highest prevalence of both type O blood and Rh negative factor. Basques with O- blood are 27% of the population, against a 7% average for people of European descent. This fact has given grounds for some speculative theories: areas known to have been occupied by the Cro-Magnon man (as the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and the Canary Islands) show a very high incidence of Rh-, and this is often cited. together with skull features, as a proof of the Cro-Magnon origin of the Basques.

If we try to get the mythical Milesians into historical context, we could say that the legend is an account of (one of the?) indoeuropean wave(s) moving westwards. By all accounts, Milesians were Celts. Protocelts appear in Central Europe (Urnfield and Hallstadt cultures) between 1500 and 1000 BC, contemporarily with the migration of Protoitalics to Italian Peninsula, the rise of the Vedic civilization in Punjab (Northern India) and the fall of the Micenic civilization. Between 1000 and 500 BC Celtic languages spread over Central and Western Europe, and Celts reach British Isles not before the second half of the 1st millenium BC (see also Celtiberians). There is no reason to assume that those Milesians were Basques; it is however possible that they could have departed from the mouths of the Adour (today's Bayonne), coming from Celtic areas in today's Southern France.

With regard to genetic kinship between Basques, Welsh and Irish, I've not found the reference here in WP. Some form of correlation is however possible, so please let me speculate a little bit about it. Today's Irish and Welsh peoples are of Celtic origin, but a lot of intermixing exists. Basques are not Celts, but a lot of intermixing with neighboring Celtic peoples (as Galicians) exists too; in fact, Basque "ethnicity" is not defined as belonging to a certain genetic heritage, but by the sharing of a common language: Euskaldunak ("the Basques") are "Euskara-speaking people". Their land, Euskal Herria, is "the land of those that speak Euskara".

I hope this (unordered) notes help. If you have any further questions, please contact me (in my Misplaced Pages en español talk page). Best wishes from Cinabrium 02:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Note:

BTW, my mother and most of her family are O-. I'm A+, and am alive just because I was her firstborn child. Had I been the second, Misplaced Pages would have had one less editor (see Rh disease).

islands Voyage

It does not link to an article yet because it has not yet been witten! But it is the name of the expedition: Google --Philip Baird Shearer 00:24, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Irish 16C Articles

Hi Shtove, thanks for all your good work on the tudor Ireland articles up to now. I want to have a really good set of articles on early modern Irish history here, so I've also been looking at the biographies of people from that time. The Hugh O'Neill article is coming along, which is good because it was left in really bad state until recently. Likewise the Hugh Roe O'Donnell article. How about a category people of the time eg "Tudor Irish People" or 16th century Irish people"?

I'm not happy about the Florence MacCarthy article at the moment. It seems to be far to long to me and clouded in detail, which the average reader could never absorb. I may have mentioned before that I wrote an MA thesis on this topic, so its a bit close to my heart! I am tempted to re-write this article completely, but I want to run it by you first. (Chapters of the MA can be sent by email if you are interested btw! :) )

Also, I've made some changes to Tudor re-conquest of Ireland recently. What I want is to have a thorough but fairly concise account of the main trends in English policy in Ireland and the Irish response to them. Do you think anything has been missed out? You might also like to have a look at Early Modern Ireland 1536-1691 for the same reason - is anything important missing?

Another project that I have in mind is the starting of articles on 16C battles in Ireland, including a category to contain the Nine Years War battles. I have my sights on battle of Affane, battle of Farsetmore, Siege of Smerwick Castle, battle of Clontibret, battle of Curlew Pass, battle of Moyry Pass. Help would be much appreciated. Jdorney 01:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Clontibret

Very good work. I've expanded it a bit with details from McCoy's "Irish battles", but your text is still the backbone of the article. I've also added an article on the Battle of Affane, whichyou mifght like to edit. Jdorney 01:09, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Good work on Affane. I would question though, whther its a good idea to quote Falls directly. For one thing, Fall' language is abit dated, for another thing, his writing usually echoes the state papers a bit too uncritically. Have most of those battle articles done now. Only Moyry and Smerwick left. Jdorney 22:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Doh! Apologies. Ok, well "espied" sounds strange to my ears anyway. Re the "rascals", I have no doubt that Fitzgerald used the term, but I think in modern terms it would mean "marauders", "looters", or "scavengers". Kerne would have done this, but also acted as scouts and skirmishers. Lennon's fairly brief account says that the Geralidines were caught in the river, I assumed this meant drowned. Fair enough. I don't really understand aht you mean about Coyne and livery. If you are asking what it means, it refers to the maintaining of private armies by Irish lords. The term itself comes from the combination of an Irish word for free quarter, coinnmheadh and the English word Livery, which means the colours or uniforms worn by a lord's retained soldiers. Jdorney 00:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Carrigafoyle

Excellent work. I wikified it a bit and added a sentence. We're nearly there on the battles front now. I have notes ready on the battle of Moyry Pass and intend to start it shortly. I have no detailed info on Smerwick however. Do you? Btw, have you seen battle of Farsetmore article and battle of Curlew Pass? Your input would be appreciated. Jdorney 19:14, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

History of Ireland

I don't like the "story" designation either, actually. It's bugged me since I first saw it. In fact, I'm preparing (after some discussion) to attempt a condensed rewrite of the whole intro that is more "intro" and less "highlights of Irish history". When I do that, I'll do my best to throw in some verbiage that acknowledges Ireland's interactions with the continent. Dppowell 17:15, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Richard Grenville - Trivia

In the Trivia section at Richard Grenville you added an anecdote about Gilbert. Does this belong under Grenville? The connection is not clear. Shouldn't it be under Gilbert, if anywhere? Also, how reputable is the source? Lambiam 09:17, 9 January 2006 (UTC)