"And this was the last year of his reign, for the Tuatha-De-Dananns came to invade Ireland against the Firbolgs; and they gave battle to each other at Magh-Tuireadh, in Conmaicne-Cuile-Toladh in Connaught so that the King Eochaid, son of Erc was killed by the three sons of Neimhidh son of Badhrai. The Firbolgs were vanquished and slaughtered in the battle." This is from The Annals of the Four Masters which commences not at Creation as some annals do  but at the Flood which the Masters note took place in 2242Anno Mundi/Year of the World. 

"At the end of the twentieth year of the reign of Nuadhat of the Silver Hand, he fell in the battle of Magh-Tuireadh na bh-Fomorach, by Balor of the mighty blows, one of the Formorians." 

Both above Moytura battles we contend are in Sligo: the first is now beneath the shallows of Ballysadare Bay, the second is where the latterday De Reir Book of Moytura Annal has taken on recent life and logging at the north end of the plateau of Moytura east of Lough Arrow.  

The narrative of that second battle, some believe, informed the framework for George Lucas’s STAR WARS.

Eusebius, a Greek speaking Palestinian commences a World Chronicle in 303AD, being an assembly of all information from Abraham to his own time, the Emperor Constantine’s Christian-ising the Roman Empire in 325AD.  It is vast: lists of Pharaohs, the edicts and goings-on of the kings of kings of Persia, almost a thousand years of Olympic race winners, Greek defeats, Roman victories. In its entirety it only now exists in Armenian. It is this tome that laid the ground for later world chronicles and most especially, that with the most diligent of continuity: the Irish one.            

The Annals of Inishfallen are themselves the oldest surviving vellum of Irish Annals in existence, reaching back to 1070.

The Irish chronicling tradition inherited Eusebius’s model via St. Jerome’s Latin translation.  Not all years have something to say for themselves. In this year Emperor Honorius I abolishes the gladiatorial combat but no extant Irish Annals recalls that, nor any other item provincial, insular or continental. 404 is the last and 27th year of Ireland’s most famous King: Niall of the 9hostages.  Wait a year more and various Annals note his killing on the Muir n-Icht, off Boulougne plying his slave trade.

In the extant Irish Annals, the three and half millennia before Christ contain oodles of empty years.  In the four centuries after Christ somewhat better. It is only with the coming of Christianity in 432AD that the years become more storyful.  After the mid 16th century items describe most years and some extensively so.

There is an idea that Aodhan’s third son Arthur might be one of the possible proto-typres that became the myth of King Arthur. 

The Annals of Boyle have nothing happen in Ireland but in “Euro-news” they relate how St. Benedict became famous – they do not say this year but in this time:  "Anno D v. Pater Monachorum hoc tempore claruit.  Hujus vitam virtutibus et miraculis gloriosame beatus scribit Papa Gregoriums." According to Pope Gregory 

The Annals/ World Chronicle have been in Ireland about 80 years now, being written up first in Leinster. About the time that St. Colmcille purportedly copied them they were in Droimín Abbey, County Louth.  We cannot tell if the original of what he copied survived Time or not but his copy went to Iona, and became much more substantial.

Aedh, son of Colgan, chief of Oirghialla and of all the Airtheara, died on his pilgrimage, at Cluain Mic Nois. Clonmacmoise  Of him was said:

There was a time 

when Loch Da Damh was a pool of splendour,

 The lake was nothing else but splendour

 in the reign of Aedh, son of Colgan.

Indifferent to me who destroyed it; 

my friend has abandoned it; 

Though it was he that placed a brilliant house 

upon the island of Loch Da Damh.

Our continuous tome by this time is in “exile” on Iona brought there by Columba and copied for an ensuing 180 years. The Annals having moved beyond sight of Ireland, are yet clearly concerned with Ireland more than their Scottish hinterland, though still noting a Pope’s passing or a solar eclipse. 

Despite entering a third century in exile in Scotland the annals written in Iona cite Scottish, Irish items and Saxon items.

Preserved yet in The Annals of Tigernach  "Dunchadh held the principality of Iona."

Preserved yet in The Annals of the Four Masters:  "The battle of Selgge, in Fortuatha Laighean, wherein were slain the two sons of Ceallach Cualann, Fiachra and Fianamhail, and some of the Britons, who had joined the army of Ceallach."

"DIOMAN OF ARAIDH, anchorite of Mounster, died a happy death. + There was great slaughter of Danes (GAILL) in Ulster."

Clonmacnoise was the place where the Annals were most continuously written, for close on five hundred years, having crossed back over the Irish sea to County Down from Iona, to Movilla Abbey, now the suburbs of Newton Ards.  Across some decades more the tome wound its way towards the east bank of the Shannon.

"Some say that this was how Cerball was killed: he was going into Cell Dara eastward along the street of the stone steps, with a proud horse under him, when he came opposite a comb-maker's workshop; at that moment the comb-maker set out his antlers, when the horse was opposite him outside, and the proud horse shied backwards, and he Cerball struck his own spear, in the hands of his own servant, who was behind him (and Uille was the name of that boy, or the name of the comb-maker). Cerball died of that wound at the end of a year, and he was buried among his forefathers in the graveyard of Nás. Whence was said:

There are nine kings—a warring line—
in the churchyard of Nás, under brilliant sky….." 

Note re Uille above - the Annals were not shy of having doubts. 

This is a brother of Brian MacCenneidigh Boru; by then High King of Ireland who insisted the Annals referred to him as Imperator Scottorum  His father was Cennetig, the ur-Kennedy.  In the early 13th century the Kennedy clann were patrons of the Franciscans of Nenagh who themselves kept Annals, since lost but some items of which were noted by antiquarian James Ware.   It was from these that the Wexford Kennedys went on to sire the freeWorld 'King,' JFK

A disempowering gesture, with overtones not simply of tribal sabre rattling but a Christian era putting its pagan past to the sword.  The Cenél Eoghain inauguration site, where their kings were crowned, in the parish of Desertcreat, County Tyrone was a sacred site.

MEANWHILE 250km south according to the 3rd item of 9 in The Annals of Inishfallen for 1111: A great assembly of the men of Ireland at Raith Bresail, including the high king and Cellach the coarb of Patrick ( Archbishop of Armagh ) and other Irish nobles and they enacted discipline and law better than any made in Ireland before their time    

The Annals of Boyle tell nothing but that above synod happened.  Anno M c xi Senad Usnig ac Cleribh Erend which Charles 0’Conor translates as Synodus Usnichensis habita a Clero Hiberniae.   Other Annals have a more to say about this gathering and multiply its host of priests by ten.

One must defer to the same year to The Annals of the Four Masters to know why: The castle of Clones was burned by Hugh O’Neill and men of the north of Ireland but they say nothing of its renewal.

1. WORLD NEWS  Clemens papa in Christo quievit. Death of a Pope.
2. EUROPEAN NEWS    The French king died.   Philip the Fair who had persecuted the Templars. 
3. NATIONAL ROIBEARD BRÚS king of Scottland, came upon the coasts of Ireland this year.  
4. PROVINCIAL NEWS DIARMUID CLEIREACH O BRIAIN, King of Mounster died. 

The Annals of Lough Key offers the above plus some fleshed-out parish pump news: 

1. LOCAL NEWS Tadhg, son of Andrias, son of Brian Luighnech, son of Toirdhelbhach Mor O’Conchobhair,, died in hoc anno, after having been a long time in the habit of a gray monk after triumphing over the world and the devil, and was nobly and honourably interred in the monastery of the Buill.  ( Boyle )

He was a man who granted no projection to cleric or laymen or to the poets of Ireland, for he plundered every of its clerics and men of skill in every art on whom he laid hands and exposed them to cold and beggary.  He plundered Niall son of Aed o hUicinnn in Usnagh of Meath.”  HOWEVER  Henry Dalton took vengeance on the King’s followers and took from them a cow for each cow and for each horse a horse and for each sheep a sheep and a pig for each pig and gave them to the Ui hUicinn.  They were then convoyed into Connaught. After this Ui Uicinn made lampoons on John Stanley and he lived only five weeks till he died from the venom of the lampoons. ( This was the second time death from a lampoon had been affected by the poet Niall Ui hUicinn.) He had done same in 1400.

The Annals of Ulster while having a skew towards their immediate world will always include items from beyond their province’s purview.  1414: The monastery of Sligeach was totally burned by a candle in the Spring of this year.

And from same source they have the south Leinster news: Great war arose between Mac Murchadha and the Foreigners of the County Wexford and the son of Mac Murchadha was taken prisoner by them, namely, Gerald Caemanach, and Ui Droghna was burned and pillaged by them.  So the descendants of that famed traitor King Dermot McMurrough became 250ish years later a thorn in the side of the English.

A separate Septuagint dating system could be said to conclude with the last item of The Annals of the Four Masters, of which two copies were made, one presented to The O’Gadhra of Moygara Castle, Sligo, the other stored for safety at the Irish College in Louvain. 

"O'Neill (Hugh, son of Ferdorcha, son of Con Bacagh, son of Con, son of Henry, son of Owen), who had been Baron from the death of his father to the year when the celebrated Parliament was held in Dublin, 1584 recte 1585, and who was styled Earl of Tyrone at that Parliament, and who was afterwards styled O'Neill, died at an advanced age, after having passed his life in prosperity and happiness, in valiant and illustrious achievements, in honour and nobleness. The place at which he died was Rome, and his death occurred on the 20th of July, after exemplary penance for his sins, and gaining the victory over the world and the Devil. Although he died far from Armagh, the burial-place of his ancestors, it was a token that God was pleased with his life that the Lord permitted him a no worse burial-place, namely, Rome, the head city of the Christians. The person who here died was a powerful, mighty lord, endowed.

News-Anchors blamed a bat for the influential outbreak. The bat-man virus came from the Middle of the Middle Kingdom, they made out.

National News 39th item of 64 items for 2020: Roughly 50sq km idir St. Mochta’s cell at Louth over to St. Finnian’s by Croimin-on-Sea; that is the portion Ivan Ko asked leave Dundalk Chambre to build Nextopolis, a pure-land replica of HongKong Island albeit a humbling third smaller.  Simon of Coveney perished the thought of such simulating fragrant harbour upwind of TaytoPark.

“Ecclesiastical Notes,” 49th item for 2020: Armistice Day, Papa Francisco appeases for now in his prayers the machines: “Pregiamo affinché il progresso della robotica e della intelligenza artificale sia sempre al servizio dell’essere umano….. possiamo dire “sia umana.”  This was left in Italian as it looked more like a prayer in its original.  The Holy Father is beseeching that the AI be at the service of man/ of human being.

59th item of 2020:  Annie Lynch first human in xxViCounties to get C19 vespertilionine. “I didn’t feel nothing,” says she. St. Lar pray for her and her courage.