TRIADSwithin codes of practice recognized all over western
Europe. Binding agreements governed the chartering
of ships and crews, freight charges, destinations, and
turnaround times, as well as arrangements between the
individual merchants who often formed a consortium
for a particular venture.
Round trips were economically the most viable.
One such was the voyage of the Julianof Bristol. In
1454, an agreement was drawn up between a group of
Bristol merchants that included John May, a member
of a prosperous Irish family settled in that city, and
their ship was loaded with merchandise in Bristol. It
sailed for Lisbon, where the English products were
sold and wine, honey, and salt were taken on board.
The ship next went to “legge de Breon” (unidentified)
and Galway, where the wine, honey, and salt were
exchanged for hides. From there they went to Ply-
mouth for the final decision on whether to go and sell
the hides in Normandy, Brittany, or Flanders.
Apart from the attentions of over-zealous customs
inspectors in English ports, shipwreck and attacks by
pirates were the main problems faced by merchants
trading to and from Ireland. Navigation out of sight of
land was a science that developed very slowly. The
prototype of the mariners’ compass was in use during
the thirteenth century, and the following century saw
the first Italian portulanmaps of Ireland. The earliest,
dated 1339, names over fifty places and islands. These
maps were intended for use with a book of sailing
directions containing bearings and distances. By the
mid-fifteenth century the maps had about thirty new
Irish names, which included Malahide (Co. Dublin),
Ardglass (Co. Down), Baltimore (Co. Cork), Galway,
and Sligo, indicating the development of the herring
fisheries and interest in Atlantic seaways. But the
directions given were very general and the outline of
the coast inaccurate, so that ships rarely ventured into
unfamiliar territory without a pilot.
Irish pirates were sailing the Irish Sea in the fifth
century, sometimes directing their attention to the
coastal communities of Britain. After the Viking raid-
ers became settled traders in Ireland, shipping contin-
ued to be menaced by their relatives operating out of
the Norse kingdom of Man and the Isles. Throughout
the 1300s there is a continual series of complaints
about the depredations of the Scots in the Irish Sea
north of Holyhead. Merchant ships were comman-
deered and brought to Scotland; hostages were taken
and were not freed until a ransom, generally in the form
of victuals, was paid. After 1400, increasing num-
bers of Breton and Spanish pirates appeared in the
southern Irish Sea. The Bretons demanded money ran-
soms for prisoners captured at sea. According to the
Law Merchant, towns were responsible for the conduct
of their sailors abroad, and as a result, the goods of
many legitimate Breton merchants were confiscated
and used to compensate victims. Nicholas Arthur of
Limerick lost goods worth 700 marks in 1425 and
spent two years imprisoned in Mont Saint Michel, until
a ransom of 400 marks was paid. On his release he
got “letters of reprisal” to the value of 8,000 marks
against any Bretons “within the dominions of the king
of England whether by land or sea,” which, we are
told, he levied “to the last farthing.”
The modest trade and prosperity of Ireland
increased for a time in the sixteenth century. In the
Elizabethan period, however, systematic and ruthless
warfare and displacement of people crushed the inde-
pendence of lords and merchants, not least by wasting
the countryside on which the prosperity of so many
depended.
TIMOTHYO’NEILLReferences and Further Reading
Longfield, A. K. Anglo-Irish Trade in the Sixteenth Century.
London: George Routledge, 1929.
O’ Neill, Timothy. Merchants and Mariners in Medieval
Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1987.
Childs, Wendy, and Timothy O’ Neill. “Overseas Trade.” In A
New History of Ireland: Vol. 2, Medieval Ireland 1169–1534,
edited by Art Cosgrove. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987.
See alsoCork; Dublin; Fishing; Fraternities
and Guilds; Limerick; Ports; Roads, Routes;
Ships and Shipping; Walled Towns; WaterfordTRIADS
A predilection for triadic arrangements—groupings of
three items that share a characteristic feature—is
already discernible in ancient Celtic imagery and orna-
mentation. As a method of systematizing and preserv-
ing mytho-historical and legal lore, as a vehicle for
proverbial and ethical statements, and finally as a lit-
erary genre with some affinities to wisdom texts, triads
are known from the literatures of Ireland and, even
more prominently, of Wales. The triad is just one pos-
sible mnemonic device for grouping information. Cat-
alogs based on other numbers such as 2, 5, 7, or 9 also
occur throughout medieval Irish literature. An entire
law tract is called Heptads. The Christian doctrine of
the Trinity must have reinforced the special popularity
of triadic arrangements, but an outright derivation of
the device from Old Testament models (e.g., Prov. 30:
18–31) as suggested by Meyer (1906: xii) is unlikely
because of the great stylistic differences between the
biblical and the Irish patterns.
Medieval Irish tales abound in triplets, for example,
the three female personifications of Ireland (Banba,