along with those born of a church marriage, there was
no economic incentive for Irish nobles to reform their
marital habits. Arbitrary divorce followed by a remar-
riage that was invalid in the eyes of the church con-
tinued to be common, together with legally recognized
contracts of concubinage, sealed by a bride-price paid
by the man to the girl’s family. It was open to a
divorced wife to appeal to a church court to have her
marriage declared still valid, but aristocratic erring
husbands were normally able to demonstrate, through
the arguments of their advocates, that the marriage in
question had never been valid because they were too
closely related to their wife, or they had already been
married to a former repudiated wife who was still
living when the second marriage took place.
The medieval Irish women who were most likely to
sue their husbands to have their marriage reinstated
were the wives of chieftains, because as the local
queen, the chief’s wife received certain lands and taxes,
and occupied a seat on the council of nobles who
represented her husband’s territory. Queens’ dowries
formed an important source of movable wealth that
could be drawn on for the ransoming of hostages, and
this gave them a role in negotiating peace treaties and
the release of captives. The most influential of all the
queens were those who brought not wealth, but a reg-
iment of soldiers to their husband as their dowry. Some
of these retained considerable control over these mil-
itary forces after their marriage, the best-known being
the Scottish princess Iníon Dubh, warlike mother of the
famous Red Hugh O’Donnell, and Gráinne O’Malley,
the “pirate queen,” both in the late sixteenth century.
Ordinary Irishwomen are first described by foreign-
ers, medieval pilgrims to St. Patrick’s Purgatory, or the
bureaucrats of the Tudor reconquest. All report a gen-
erally relaxed attitude toward nudity and sex, which
may relate to the failure of the Gregorian drive for
clerical celibacy to make much headway in rural Ireland.
Christina Harrington has noted that Irish churchmen,
often themselves married, did not normally demonize
woman in their writings or project her as a temptress
responsible for man’s sins. Young girls in Cork were
seen by Fynes Moryson grinding corn stark naked,
presumably to preserve their clothes from flour. The
rural prostitutes of sixteenth century Gaelic Ireland,
described by Edmund Spenser as monashul (mná siúl:
wandering women), in default of urban centers wan-
dered from place to place and fair to fair, and were
seen as just one of the lower-class entertainers like
gamesters or jugglers, suitable recipients of a great
lord’s fringe hospitality. Moryson noted as unusual that
gentlewomen and Irish chieftains’ wives stayed drink-
ing “health after health” with the men at banquets,
though unmarried maidens might be sent away after
the first few rounds. Modern Irish Puritanism origi-
nated in the seventeenth century, promoted by the
Counter-Reformation missionaries and the extension
of English common law to Gaelic Ireland under James I.
KATHARINE SIMMSReferences and Further Reading
Binchy, Daniel A., ed. Studies in Early Irish Law. Dublin: Royal
Irish Academy, 1936.
Cosgrove, Art, ed. Marriage in Ireland. Dublin: College
Press,1985.
Hadfield, Andrew, and Willy Maley, eds. Edmund Spenser: A
Viewof the State of Ireland.Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
Hall, Dianne Patricia. Women and the Church in Medieval
Ireland.Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003.
Harrington, Christina. Women in a Celtic Church: Ireland
450–1150.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Mac Cana, Proinsias. “Aspects of the Theme of King and God-
dess in Irish Literature.” Études Celtiques7 (1955): 76–114
and 356–413; 8 (1958): 59–65.
MacCurtain, Margaret, and Donnchadh Ó Corráin, eds. Women
in Irish Society: The Historical Dimension. Dublin: Arlen
House Press, 1978.
MacCurtain, Margaret, and Mary O’Dowd, eds. Women in Early
Modern Ireland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1991.
Meek, Christine Elizabeth, and Katharine Simms, eds. “The
Fragility of Her Sex?”—Medieval Irish Women in Their
European Context.Blackrock, County Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 1996.
Moryson, Fynes. “A Description of Ireland.” In Ireland Under
Elizabeth and James I, edited by Henry Morley, 413–445.
London: George Routledge and Sons, 1890.
Nicholls, Kenneth, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle
Ages. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1972. Second ed. Dublin:
Lilliput Press, 2003.
Simms, Katharine. “The Legal Position of Irishwomen in the
Later Middle Ages.” The Irish Jurist10 (1975): 96–111.
O’Dowd, Mary, and Sabine Wichert, eds. Chattel, Servant or
Citizen: Women’s Status in Church State and Society(His-
torical Studies XIX). Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies,
1995.
See alsoBrehon Law; Canon Law; Children;
Church Reform, Twelfth Century; Common Law;
Hostages; Íte; Law Tracts; Nuns; Papacy;
Pre-Christian Ireland; Queens; Religious Orders;
Slaves; Society, Grades of: Gaelic; Ulster Cycle;
Witchcraft and Magic.WOODLANDS
In medieval Ireland, woodlands were a significant
source of raw materials, fuel, and livelihood. They
were often seen as a significant part of the landscape,
bounded with fences and walls and protected by law
and custom. There is a range of archaeological, histor-
ical, and paleoecological evidence that can be used to
reconstruct the character of woodlands in this medieval
landscape. Palynological studies, macrofossil plant
studies, and beetle analyses all can indicate the rangeWOMEN