Pronunciation and Translation of Irish Words

uisce beatha (fire-water—whisky) /eesh-kee ba-hah/

bhean sidhe (woman faerie) /ban shee/

a rúin (My love) /AH-rune/

Dia dhuit (God be with you) /jeeu which/

Onóir duit (Honor to you) /on-yay which/

Dyes

There are no Wishmé mollusks or dyes. But elements of them are modeled after something based in reality. And the rest is just pure fictional fun.

I based the color on the famed Tyrian murex purple dye of ancient Rome.

As far as its explosive nature, I modeled this after picric acid, a yellow dye that, in its powdered state, is explosive.

And the “chameleon” effect…that’s pure fiction.

A little about chameleons: They do not really “reflect” their environment. They have a limited repertoire of colors which change based on mood—they’re more like living mood rings. With three layers to their skin, light waves from the surrounding environment get filtered through these, bouncing off underlayers, reflecting some and absorbing others.

In fact, cuttlefish are actually more chameleon-like than chameleons when it comes to camouflage, changing their chromatophores to blend in with their environment.

I started wondering, Well, why can’t this happen with wool fibers? Senna’s wool. What if a certain sheep’s wool had the capacity for such qualities? Tri-level cells that continue to “read” environmental input after fleecing, and shift in response. Of course, it would be impossible to create such an effect with dead wool.

Wouldn’t it?

Characters

None of the primary characters are real. Some of the secondary characters, including the the justiciar of Ireland (steward, governor) John Wogan, King Edward I of England (“Longshanks”), and the Irish tribe O’Melaghlin were real, vibrant peoples in Ireland in the late thirteenth century.

Weather

Autumn is often quite stormy in Ireland. I needed it to be calmer, and drier, though, so I played with this.

Illegitimacy and Suicide in Medieval Ireland

Illegitimacy had not yet gained the social stain it would in years to come, and already had in England. It was certainly no barrier to kingship; rival claimants to the princedoms of Ireland often were sons of kings by various mothers, fighting one another for supremacy, and no less legitimate for it. But while illegitimacy may not have hindered political aspirations, a mother abandoning her family would cause great pain, and shame, just as it would today. Particularly for a son left behind in the care of an enervated father.

Suicide, on the other hand, was cause for shame all around, and was a very public debacle. No burial in church grounds was allowed, and in fact, corpses were often debased, burned, and otherwise disgraced, a physical mirror of the abasement believed to have been done to the soul.

Fictional Kingdom

I wanted to base the Irish tribe in this story on a real tuatha, specifically the O’Neills. For years, in the working manuscript, that was my default kingdom and king. The O’Neills were the dominant Irish tribe in the north for thousands of years. All I needed to make it work for the story was a relatively stable period of kingship about the time that the Auld Alliance was being forged in Scotland.

Such periods are hard to find in medieval Irish history. If the story had been set a few years earlier, my aging king could have been Brian mac Neill Ruiad Ó Néill, who reigned in relative stability from 1238 until 1260. But alas, the Scots had not yet rebelled so openly, and Edward “Longshanks” was not yet king of England, so out with Brian mac Neill.

Set a few years later than Brian’s reign and I could have used Àed Buide. His term certainly endured the ups and downs of an Irish kingship, but in the end, he served as a relatively stable king, from 1263 until his death in 1283.

But following Àed Buide, there were too many violent transitions of power, too many coups, for me to have a “good king” who was old enough to serve as Finian’s mentor.

Thus was born The O’Fáil. The name Fianna, inextricably linked to fáil, has a long and rich history in Ireland.

A fian is group of soldiers. Mythically, the Fianna were a great tribe of Irishmen, known from the Fenian Cycle, led by the greatest Irish warrior, Fionn mac Cumhaill (pronounced Finn McCool). In ancient Ireland, the Fianna was also a name given to semi-independent warrior bands, often made up of noble-born men not yet come into their inheritance, who lived apart from society in the forests as mercenaries, and often bandits, but still served their ruling king in wars. And in contemporary times, the name Fianna has been used by a great number of organizations, right up to the Fianna Fáil, the largest and most influential political party in the Republic of Ireland.

Fianna Fáil is commonly and usefully translated as “Soldiers of Destiny.” But fáil is a rendering of the ancient pre-Christian word for Ireland.

Music I Listened to While Writing The Irish Warrior

“The Space Between,” Dave Matthews Band

“Hallelujah,” Jeff Buckley

“One Thing,” Finger Eleven

“You and Me,” Lifehouse

“Better Days,” The Goo Goo Dolls

“I’ll Be,” Edwin McCain

Far too many Irish songs to list

Bibliography

Annals of Innisfallen.

Barry, Terry B., Robin Frame, and Katharine Simms, eds. Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland: Essays Presented to J. F. Lydon. London: The Hambledon Press, 1995.

Otway-Ruthven, A. J. A History of Medieval Ireland. 2nd ed. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1980.