Author: Michael Sheane

The Picts first appear in history when the Roman Empire was invading Britain. Their origins and the reason for their disappearance remain enigmatic...

The first Christian missionaries in Pictland are thought to have come from Ireland in the early sixth century. Prominent among them was a disciple ...

The Celts believed that the supernatural pervaded their lives and surroundings. Magic and the observance of rituals dominated their lives, and cons...

The patron saint of Ireland, St Patrick, was born in Scotland around 385 and was carried off by pirates to seven years of slavery in Antrim. He esc...

John de Courcy came to Ireland in 1170 as a young landless adventurer, seeking honour and glory, ready to fight and to conquer. And fight he did, a...

The most popular place of pilgrimage in Ireland today is Knock, a village in County Mayo where, in 1879, two women claimed to have seen a vision of...

Since Antrim''s Holywell Hospital was opened as an asylum in 1898 there have been great changes in the treatment of mental illness and the way it i...

St Patrick is revered as the patron saint of Ireland. His work there as a missionary in the fifth century swept away the old pagan beliefs and esta...