The Roman Occupation

then you need to link the poor slobs
Suetonius,
Titus Livius,
Polybius,
Tacitus
etc

wackin em with information overload is just as fun

While the Late Roman/Early-to-Mid-Medeival Irish are most widely known for their proselytizing monks and scholars (Saints Patrick and Columba, for example), Irish mercenaries were far more plentiful, typically organized into heterogenous units, widely employed by folks wishing to add weight to an existing military or even simply to hire a formidable force without the bother and expense of maintaining one's own military. Fighting in someone else's army has a long and revered tradition among the Irish, the career for centuries being, apart from the clergy, about the only way an Irishman might hope to better his lot while remaining "within the law". Not all Irish of ambition were overly concerned about becoming outlaws, though; brigandry and piracy were careers relatively well-populated by the Irish as well.

And that prolly explains a lot

An Englishman's war but an Irishman's fight.

There is another side to the story of piracy and military service as a mercenary and that is tradition of exile which was strongest among the Irish and the Scandinavians who invaded and then settled in Ireland. It is often difficult to separate Irish from Scandinavians, anyway, as the surname, "McLaughlin," illustrates. Laughlin was originally meant the Vikings or Scandinavians as people from the land of lochs or lakes.

Anyway, exile was a criminal punishment of folk origin that transmuted into a penance for sins in the form of pilgrimage which later became a popular judicial sentence in the civic courts as it temporarily moved criminals out of the area while saving the community the expense of imprisonment.

The Irish word for exile/criminal/pirate is di berga.

That some of these exiles would later become mercenaries is understandable in economic terms.

Listening here...

Oh, you betchya - 'specially if they get to goin' at one another in a bar

Speaking of which (and substituting East Prussian for Scandinavian) G OB and I really appreciated Timber's hospitality in USMC premises and kind of hope to be invited again next year in the new building - this year's building being reduced to a fond memory, unfortunately (sorry 'bout that, but we had a grand time!)

Merry Christmas.

timberlandko -- I guess both countries produce great drinkers. There used to be a sewing machine store near me that once employed a woman from the Dublin and a woman from Belfast. When you heard them speak together, the Belfast woman sounded like a Swede. It was amazing how distinct their accents were.

I should say that I have a terrible ear and can't readily distinguish accents.