An Irish publisher has said it has been targeted by online “trolls” after a YouTube post by a well-known history blogger.
Currach Books says it has been inundated on its social media channels and on email following a YouTube post on Friday by Simon Webb.
Mr Webb runs the YouTube channel History Debunked which has 184,000 subscribers.
On Friday he published a blog post alleging that St Brigid had “metamorphosed from a slender white maiden, into a morbidly obese African” and this was part of an erosion of Irish culture.
The video has over a thousand comments on YouTube and the publisher has received negative comments on different platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Currach Books has also been sent e-mails, telling them they are a disgrace for “eroding” Ireland’s cultural history in this manner and that depicting St Brigid/Queen Medb as anything but a fair-skinned Irish maiden is “woke nonsense” and undignified.
He further accused the publisher of trying to erase the fact that only 20 to 30 years ago Ireland was “a culturally homogenous country”.
Mr Webb alleged that Currach Books had tweeted an image of what the Victorians called a “Hottentot Venus”, a derogatory term used to describe the bodies of African women in the 19th century.
In response Currach Books said the image Mr Webb was referring to was not of St Brigid but of Queen Medb. It was made by Galway-based author and artist Mark Joyce for his book Mythical Irish Wonders.
It was shared on St Brigid’s Day last year as an example of a well-known powerful woman from Irish mythology. The tweet stated: “Let’s celebrate some powerful women for St Brigid’s Day. Queen Medb of Connacht was described as a fair haired wolf queen whose form was so beautiful that it robbed men of two-thirds of their valour upon seeing her.”
Currach Books managing director Garry O’Sullivan said: “We are proud of Irish history and heritage, as can be evidenced with the projects we have published over the years, but we are also supportive of Ireland’s growing diversity and believe multiculturalism enriches a country and doesn’t erase it.
“In fact, one of our new children’s books coming out in April 2023 is titled The Most Irish Person and it focuses on the diversity in Irish schoolchildren and how it should be cherished and encouraged.”
Mr Webb responded: “I was not at all sure who the figure was supposed to be, although I did mention that it might have been Queen Medb in the video. I did not think this possible because she is explicitly described in all sources as fair haired. I am happy to make clear in a subsequent video that the publishers intended this to be Medb.”
