Verdons
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- "Verdun, épée longue et étroite, proprement épée de Verdun, ville de tout temps renommée pour ses fabriques de lames d'acier.". ("Verdun, long narrow sword, more properly, sword of Verdun, a town ever renowned for its manufacturing of steel blades").
- Verdun: a city in northeast France
- Once Verdun was the centre of a Europe-wide thriving trade selling young boys to be enslaved eunuchs to the Islamic emirates of Iberia. "The people of Verdun, however, according to Liutprand, carried their barbarity yet farther. They sold to the Arabs of Spain a large number of young men whom they emasculated, with the view of qualifying them to act as the guardians of eastern seraglios."[1] See also Camibalistics, Whoyteboyce
- Treaty of Verdun: treaty which divided Charlemagne's kingdom among his three sons in AD 843 → see Baddelaries for further commentary
- Battle of Verdun: the longest and second bloodiest battle of World War I, it was fought in 1916 between the French and the Germans → Charlemagne's kingdom had included much of modern France and Germany
- de Verdun: Norman family (also spelled "de Verdon"), who had first come to Ireland on John's expedition of 1185 [2].
- Castle Roche ("Castleroche") in the north-west of Dundalk, Co. Louth was the seat of the de Verdun family. The site of the castle held a strategic position on the frontier between the exclusively Gaelic province of Ulster, and the Anglo-Norman territory known as The Pale. A story about its building still survives to this very day. Granddaughter of Bertram de Verdun, Rohesia, after her husband’s sudden death moved to her lands in Ireland and decided to fortify her castle. However, her quick tempered reputation deterred all potential architects. She then offered her hand in marriage (and thereby a share in her wealth) to the man who would build the castle to her liking. Local legend has it, after their wedding banquet in the newly completed castle, she invited her husband to the bridal suite and urged him to view their estate from the large bedroom window. Taking no chances with the castle’s secrets, she promptly pushed her new husband from the window, where he plummeted towards his death. The de Verdun family held the site for many years. A hosting of all English forces in Ireland took place here in 1561. Castle Roche was laid to ruin in 1641 during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
- Vernon: Anglo-Irish family who claim to have Brian Ború’s sword
- Admiral Edward Vernon: British admiral who captured Porto Bello in Darien in 1739 during the War of Jenkins’ Ear → see Malachus Micgranes and John 18.10 for another allusion to an ear
- Verlaine: French poet → see Baddelaries and Malachus Micgranes for two other French poets
