The Gaelic Oracle

Braedyn Schmitt is an unusual name for an unusual boy. He has strange, vivid dreams that seem to be warning him. But what are they warning him about? Then ?The Strange Man? comes into his life and he is drawn into a world where the past and the present merge into one? While visiting his ancestral home in Ireland, Braedyn and Noah, his one and only friend, are tormented by creatures long forgotten, who seem intent on their destruction. Lives are at stake, as forces neither of them knew existed, challenge them in ways they could never have envisaged. If they survive, the Gods have further plans for Braedyn and Noah. In particular, it is the Cougar God who haunts Braedyn's dreams and who will become their greatest adversary yet. And this time, a whole nation is at stake, as well as their lives. Join Braedyn and Noah on their adventures, as they try and answer riddles that have confused scholars for centuries, while trying to stay one step ahead of their enemies, both human and immortal.

An apprentice seeress. A mischievous shifter. A family mystery that will catch up with her in the end. Abandoned. That’s what I was. Left on an all-but deserted island by the man who’d sworn to protect me. Now I was left with one terrible choice: Learn the craft of clairvoyance that had eluded me my entire life and save my family’s legacy. Or fail miserably and ruin the world for fey everywhere. But when I meet a charismatic selkie, more change looms on the ocean’s horizon. Will he thwart my training even more? Or will he help me become the oracle I’m meant to be? Author’s note: The Irish Oracle is the fourth serial in the Magi Series. Readers will enjoy this series if they begin with Book I, The Mind Witch. Mind the cliff, but not to worry. The fifth and final part is on its way!

How did an unlikely group of peoples--Irish-speaking Catholics, Scottish Highlanders, and American Indians--play an even unlikelier role in the origins of the American Revolution? Drawing on little-used sources in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution places these typically marginalized peoples in Ireland, Scotland, and North America at the center of a larger drama of imperial reform and revolution. Gaelic and Indian peoples experiencing colonization in the eighteenth-century British empire fought back by building relationships with the king and imperial officials. In doing so, they created a more inclusive empire and triggered conflict between the imperial state and formerly privileged provincial Britons: Irish Protestants, Scottish whigs, and American colonists. The American Revolution was only one aspect of this larger conflict between inclusive empire and the exclusionary patriots within the British empire. In fact, Britons had argued about these questions since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when revolutionaries had dethroned James II as they accused him of plotting to employ savage Gaelic and Indian enemies in a tyrranical plot against liberty. This was the same argument the American revolutionaries--and their sympathizers in England, Scotland, and Ireland--used against George III. Ironically, however, it was Gaelic and Indian peoples, not kings, who had pushed the empire in inclusive directions. In doing so they pushed the American patriots towards revolution. This novel account argues that Americans' racial dilemmas were not new nor distinctively American but instead the awkward legacies of a more complex imperial history. By showcasing how Gaelic and Indian peoples challenged the British empire--and in the process convinced American colonists to leave it--Samuel K. Fisher offers a new way of understanding the American Revolution and its relevance for our own times.

Nationalism is a particularly slippery subject to define and understand, particularly when applied to early modern Europe. In this collection of essays, Brendan Bradshaw provides an insight into how concepts of ’nationalism’ and ’national identity’ can be understood and applied to pre-modern Ireland. Drawing upon a selection of his most provocative and pioneering essays, together with three entirely new pieces, the limits and contexts of Irish nationalism are explored and its impact on both early modern society and later generations, examined. The collection reflects especially upon the emergence of national consciousness in Ireland during a calamitous period when the late-medieval, undeveloped sense of a collective identity became suffused with patriotic sentiment and acquired a political edge bound up with notions of national sovereignty and representative self-government. The volume opens with a discussion of the historical methods employed, and an extended introductory essay tracing the history of national consciousness in Ireland from its first beginnings as recorded in the poetry of the early Christian Church to its early-modern flowering, which provides the context for the case studies addressed in the subsequent chapters. These range across a wealth of subjects, including comparisons of Tudor Wales and Ireland, Irish reactions to the ’Westward Enterprise’, the Ulster Rising of 1641, the Elizabethans and the Irish, and the two sieges of Limerick. The volume concludes with a transcription and discussion of ’A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland, 1554-5’. The result of a lifetime’s study, this volume offers a rich and rewarding journey through a turbulent yet fascinating period of Irish history, not only illuminating political and religious developments within Ireland, but also how these affected events across the British Isles and beyond.

The ancient Celts believed in a connection between everyday reality and the spirit realm and using their divination methods, we too can experience the enduring magic! This beautiful volume, complete with 36 beautifully designed tree and animal cards, reveals how to interpret and apply timeless Celtic wisdom to our own lives in order to heal our bodies and souls and explore the future. It covers a wide range of folklore, traditions, and myths, from the language of trees to dreams, visions, and more. "