Profile of Cairpre Riata Conaire

+4 votes
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Needless to say, very early Irish history is fraught with legends and disagreements about dates.   

I have looked at a number of sources and Wikipedia did a pretty good job of narrowing the scope down.   I have put some research notes on the profile.

I think we can come to some consensus of a death BEFORE date.  I suggested 275 from this reasoning:  Father's dates from above earliest 136 and latest 180 as the start of this reign.  Latest date of death is 192.  So all of the children would need to be born prior to 192 as worst case.
I think we can safely put before 275 as a date of death allowing for a long life which was not really the norm back then.  It could be earlier.  I would also be happy with 250 but felt that 275 was the outermost date.

Do you think it is safe to list a death date of 275?

This would clear a suggestion from the list as well.  We could also list birth as before 194 allowing for the child to be conceived in 192 as it could be delivered in 193.

WikiTree profile: Cairpre Riata Conaire
in Genealogy Help by Laura Bozzay G2G6 Pilot (824k points)
His son had birth date of 0120 which I have removed, thinking it too early for his grandfather's death in 0192 and certainly too early for your suggested death date here of 0275. Perhaps 0275 is a little too late? 0250 might be more realistic.

I think it reasonably OK to go down the descent list with estimated death dates because every now and again the old sources do come up with a death date for these people. The Annuls etc. are full of the dates of battles that took the lives of these kings and their kin. Estimated birth dates just get in the way.
The sources quoted for his father had a pretty widely disparate list of possible dates.  My 275 was as I noted based on the latest date of birth of 193 i he was conceived but delivered after the father was killed.  I agree that 250 is also plausible but if this is one of those that lived a long life 275 is also doable.  I think a plausible before date will at least give some fabric to compare others within. The Wikipedia article I added to the profile cited the sources and they did a good job of summary I thought on this one.  

Anyway, there are a lot of competing opinions out there.  And most of the things with dates are internet trees with no sources.....
are you working from the data errors data base?

a great-grandson "Achir Cirre Eochaid formerly MacEchachhas been given the death date 0275 https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/MacEchach-3

Yes suggestion 133 No Dates - Dates on relatives - Open - Unknown Status Help

As to the other dates...  My guess is they were using the earliest dates of his father:  Looking at the disputed dates for the father:The Lebor Gabála Érenn synchronises his reign with that of the Roman emperor Commodus (180–192).[2] The chronology of Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn dates his reign to 136–143,[3] that of the Annals of the Four Masters to 157–165.[4]

Basically there is a gap of 46 years (almost 2 generations) within his father's own list dates of reign.

Which is why I say spending time to "correct" dates (or replace those I have deleted for the sake of "suggestions") is a fruitless exercise. These profiles may be legendary, but they are here, and it is possible to show where they originate; and if one cares to take the time, add a little more to the discourse in the way of gathering some decent academic critiquing sources for each profile.

Just to say that I discovered just how much work there was to do among the early Irish profiles a few weeks ago when thinking about the upcoming Spring-clean-athon. I very quickly realised that the profiles themselves responded well to a little TLC and that my time was better spent working up and down the family lists than struggling with unconnected data base errors. I created some categories to get started and the whole collection is promising to come together nicely, though it is a big job and there is still a great deal to do. It would be nice if others could take just one collection like this group using Diceto's Ymagines historiarumcheck the names etc. and write bios for them.

Re the John O'Hart' pedigree linked above - it is actually referring to a different family https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Eochu-1 and his son https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Forchrith-1

1 Answer

+1 vote

Dates not as important as sourcing?

I have been putting a lot of work into sorting and sourcing the early Irish profiles at present, many have temporarily lost their dates in the process in order to avoid recreating errors in the errors database which was becoming a problem immediately prior to the last Spring-clean-athon. "Correcting" an estimated date in a long descent lines immediately threw up related profiles as "new errors".

I think it best at this time to ignore dates when profiles are located in a partly dated descent line and to concentrate on sourcing the profiles as fully as possible as has been done for his father Conaire Cóem https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mogha-1 Many associated profiles will have sourced death dates.

Note that there are siblings here still to surface, and I guess merges yet to be made. The object of adding categories to these profiles is to make them available in a relocatable source for checking against possible merges and connections.

Recognising these profiled individuals in the variety of names used for them is not always easy - sourcing and rationalizing name fields seem to me to be a more worthwhile endeavour than providing dates in the short term. Estimated dates will fall into place once the whole descent line is securely identified and sourced.

 

by Valerie Willis G2G6 Pilot (114k points)

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