h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not sure Brian Boru would have worn plate armour, he would be very unlikely to have had a crown, and would certainly not have had 3 lions on his shield....but that's just me being picky, I suppose

I did also wonder where those three lions passant came from.

It does seem a little odd, doesn't it?

It's a great article though.

Agreed its a good article - I shall have to cross-reference it from my Howth article.

After searching long and hard on the net, I found a very old (probably drawn well over 100 years ago) 'artist's depiction' of Brian Boru. Rather than spend a couple of hours doing intensive research into the costume/iconography/symbols/shields etc etc of that time I opted for the quickest and easiest way to do an illustration for this article - which was to base it on that artist's depiction. I am glad to have feedback and did wonder about the armour and shield etc, and given the lions it does suggest the artist's depiction was done by a patriotic englishman, but honestly I didn't have time to do a thorough research into a topic for which I could find no adequate visual references. I hope that explains it. Thanks for the input, though - if you have a suggestion as to an alternate image for Brian Boru, or can educate me with visual references for the costume etc of that time I would be happy to hear them Spirit

Thanks for the compliments! As for the picture, I too am baffled. I think they based it on a picture I included in the original article which was supposedly the official portrait of him. It did have a small undecorative crown (nothing like this one) but his clothing appeared to be bearskin and it was only a bust portrait; they didn't get the shield from there. My guess is the editors just wanted to make him look like what they thought a warrior-king should look like. I'm happy it got a picture in the first place, so I won't complain.

Interesting - I'm the artist who did that picture and I never saw the original picture you included with your article. Can you point me to it please? The images aren't down to the editors - they simply let us know which articles are to be featured and we go from there. Thanks Spirit

Spirit must have posted while I was writing my own post. Disregard what I said (except for the "thank you" of course).

LOL You did it again! I forget where I found the original copy of the picture but I copied it to my own website. (I know, I know, you're not supposed to do that, but I knew they wouldn't use it in the approved entry anyway.) I'm not sure if it's still there or not but if it is it would be at http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/zarquon/boru.jpg At least I think it would.

The three lions passant are the family crest of the McMahon family (or my line of it at least) anyhow, they are usually silver on a red background. And Brian Boru's brother was named Mahon, so possibly that's where that came from?

Hmm, I was afraid it would do that. I think my Angelfire account has exceeded the disk space limit, so all of the older images don't show up. I think I have it on my hard drive though. I'll upload it later today and then let you know.

Thanks, but there's nothing there If you do manage to find it then let me know and if I find time I'll redo it, as it's always good to represent things as accurately as possible - when possible.

I have seen the image from which this came, complete with 3 lions and curvy shield but...the 3 lions is the heraldic shield of the "O'brians" which means descendents of Brian....and I am not convinced that plate armour was in use at that stage in history...and the Celtic shield was round...

Indeed it was round. And Plate armour came with the Plantagenets I believe. I saw the original icture now sadly losst it was like many I have seen from the period in museums over here.

This whole controversy on the crest is very interesting. I must confess, I'm not very familiar with the particular crests of the Irish clans. Anyway, I found the picture I was looking for and uploaded it to my new website. It's been a while since I last saw it so I was mistaken about a couple things. The clothing is not bearskin. It appears to be the skin of deer or another similar animal. But that's hardly significant. I no longer think it is an "official" portrait as it was obviously painted long after his death, as anyone can see from the style of the painting. Still, I think it is probably much more realistic to how he really would have dressed. Here it is: [Broken link removed by Moderator]

Hm. When I subbed this, I noted the import link to the picture at the top, but didn't include it in the article, as I'm not supposed to link to pictures (~non-permanent) off of h2g2. Then I checked the link and found it was lost.

Ah, well. I tried.

-jb

Thanking you for that Zarquon! Just to let you know - I had to reload the url as I was originally given a message stating that they're sorry but they don't allow hotlinking to their site from other sites - just for your info. Thanks again for the more accurate pic.

No prob - sorted now. But perhaps when subbing if there is a link to an image that might be useful for reference (particularly for an article which is of something from a rather remote time in history), could you let the editors know and ask them to inform the artists? Cheers.

I had linked the picture in the article; in a short paragraph of important information that could be relevant to the article, but I that I wasn't sure whether to include. The picture was pushed off the angelfire site, and so didn't appear; it wasn't there.

-jb

Brian Bóruma mac Cennétig is a man of great ledgend he is my ancestory and i have studied his history and truth be told that the three lions on his sheild represent the fact that he admired old culture and lions were a sign of great strength in rome and thats what they stand for it is also the clan o'briens sheild thats my clan by the way.