Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Statue of King Arthur, Gallos, UK.

Skellig Islands, Co Kerry, Ireland 🇮🇪

The Treason of the Long Knives (Welsh: Brad y Cyllyll Hirion) was a pseudohistorical myth and legend of a massacre of British Celtic chieftains by Anglo-Saxon soldiers at a peace conference on Salisbury Plain in the 5th century. The story is not included in any contemporary accounts, but does feature centuries later in the semi-mythological histories of the Historia Brittonum and the Historia Regum Britanniae. According to the tradition, Vortigern, who had become a high king of the Britons in the wake of the end of Roman rule in Britain, called for Anglo-Saxons under Hengist and Horsa to settle on the Isle of Thanet in exchange for their service as mercenaries in battles against the Picts and Gaels in Scotland. The settlers, however, exploit a drunken Vortigern's lust for Hengist's daughter into allowing them to increase their numbers and granting them more land, eventually including all of the Kingdom of Kent.

The Treachery of the Long Knives

It happened however after the death of Vortimer, son of King Vortigern, and after the return of Hengist with his forces, they called for a false Council, so that they might work sorrow to Vortigern with his army. For they sent legates to ask for peace, that there might be perpetual friendship between them. So Vortigern himself with the elders by birth of his people [considered the matter and carefully thought over what they might do. And the same] opinion was with them all, that they should make peace, and their legates went back and afterwards called together the conference, so that on either side the Britons and Saxons should come together as one without arms, so that friendship should be sealed. Hengist ordered the whole of his household that each one should hide his knife under his foot in the middle of his shoe. 'And when I shall call out to you and say hey, draw your swords!, then draw your knives from the soles of your shoes, and fall upon them, and stand strongly against them. And do not kill their king, but seize him for the sake of my daughter whom I gave to him in matrimony, because it is better for us that he should be ransomed from our hands.' And they brought together the conference, and the Saxons, speaking in a friendly way, meanwhile were thinking in a wolvish way, and sociably they sat down man beside man. Hengist, as he had said, spoke out, and all the three hundred elders of King Vortigern were slaughtered, and only he was imprisoned, and was chained, and he gave to them many regions for the ransom of his soul (i.e. life), that is Essex, Sussex, Middlesex, Wessex. (Many districts he named)

The general meaning of the term "colleen", as most English-speakers use it, is a stereotypical young Irish maiden. Red hair, fiery attitude, and an earthy Irish accent. "Colleen" is an anglicization of the Irish Gaelic word "cailín", meaning nothing more than "girl". “The Black Velvet Band” is a traditional folk song collected from singers in Ireland, Australia, England, Canada and the United States describing how a young man is tricked and then sentenced to transportation to “Van Diemens Land” (Tasmania), a common punishment in the British Empire during the 19th century. The last verse of The Dubliners version tells the following: “So come all ye jolly young fellows • I'll have yous take warnin' by me • And when ever you're out on the liquor, me lads • Beware of the pretty colleens • For they'll fill you with whisky and porter • 'Til you are not able to stand • And the very next thing that you know, me lads • You've landed in Van Dieman's land”

Carriganass Castle, Co Cork, Ireland. 16th century tower house situated 8km NE of Bantry 🇮🇪

Duart Castle, Isle of Mull, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Early Christian standing stone, Glencolmcille, Co Donegal 🇮🇪

Ullapool, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Castle Stalker has been standing on an islet on Loch Laich since 14th century and is considered one of the best-preserved medieval tower-houses to survive in western Scotland. IG/rolling_sloane

A Cumbrian Stag doo, these boys will very soon be locking antlers 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿