Caesar Cruithach - Looking for sources

Tagging Justin Durand :-)

This is going to be one of the hardest parts of the tree to get under control.

The core tradition goes back to the Lebor Gabála Érenn (say, 12th century). It's a monumental work that takes the history of the Irish people back to Adam, and ties together all of the Irish royal lines into a common descent from folk hero Milesius Galamh (Lebor Gabála Érenn) (Míl Espáine) whose descendants invaded Ireland and took it from the Tuatha Dé Danann (essentially the old gods).

http://www.ucc.ie/celt/indexLG.html

It was supplemented and systematized in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Forus Feasa ar Erinn, Leabhar na nGenealach, and Annals of the Four Masters. These later works also assigned specific dates to the kings. Unfortunately, they assigned different dates ;)

Then, all of this was synthesized for popular consumption by the great 19th century Irish genealogist John O'Hart. His book, Irish pedigrees; or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation (1892) was wildly popular with Irish families in America, particularly during the Irish war for independence. It was a great source of national pride that the Irish were all a single, very large extended family.

Unfortunately, the whole thing is mythological. And also unfortunately, it's probably one of the most common genealogical traditions in the English-speaking world, so we've already had many battles on Geni about it.

About a year ago we had a discussion and ending up cutting the Irish version of Magog from the Biblical tree.

http://www.geni.com/discussions/120216

I got, and continue to get, a lot of hate mail about that. And, of course, people try to put it back all the time ;)

We probably need to form a working group on Geni to identify the boundary between the historical material and the legendary material. I don't think it would be hard, but it would be very time consuming. We can't just prune a couple of side branches and be done, because every one of those branches leads (or should lead) to modern Irish families. And, it would be a nightmare if some lone vigilante goes in and starts hacking.

Good idea.

I did some clean up on Caesar Cruithach herself. The sources say her father was King of the Gauls, but in modern times there have been various attempts to link him to one of the legendary Frankish kings.

Thanks Justin!

Are the sources you're using Lebor Garanna Errenn and John O'Hart? (the cleanup refers to "the sources", but doesn't name them)

My thinking is that we should try to separate at the point where one legend tries to attach to another - so that the tree of the Lebor Garanna Eirenn legend should not be allowed to touch the tree of the Biblical legend, even though the sources say they do. I feel queasy about severing the legends from the histories because of the diffiuclty of getting agreement on the boundary between history and legend, but I think it's easier to defend a choice to snip the legendary material at the upper end.

That good advice, Harald, but it will have to wait until I have the sources in front of me so I can be specific about which source each piece came from.

What I do (and what I would ask everyone to do) is put the information and sources you have in the profile if it's better than what's there now. Don't think you have to go off on a three-day jaunt to do exhaustive research. Someday, someone else will have better information and better sources.

@Milesius Galamh (Lebor Gabála Érenn)
Galamh / Milesius is your 65th great grandfather.