ASNCs on the Road: Celtic Literature in Dublin

From ASNC doctoral student Myriah Williams:

The sun was out in Dublin last week, as were a good number of Celticists hoping to enlighten or be enlightened on the subject of Genre in Medieval Celtic Literature.  The School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies hosted the colloquium, organized by doctoral student Nicole Volmering. The aim of the conference was to open a dialogue about the role of genre, both within modern scholarship in the field and within the minds of medieval authors and editors.  The need for such a discussion was evidenced by the terrific turnout at the conference, with a crowd composed of both new and very familiar faces alike.

Proceedings began on Friday afternoon, with the first session on cycles and cyclification in Irish literature, specifically in the Fenian lays and in Acallam Bec (‘The Little Colloquy’).  The papers provided a good start to a good conference, but in retrospect perhaps they should have been split, with one paper in the last session, to bring the whole thing full-circle...  The half-day was rounded out with an analysis of the sub-genre of tecosc (‘teaching’) and its relation to kingship, and a consideration of the role of women in both saints lives and epic narrative.  Feasting as befits Celtic scholars of course concluded the first day’s festivities.

Saturday presented a full day of papers, four sessions worth in fact.  Continuing on from Friday’s theme, three out of the four were focused on further Irish material.  Concerning aspects of modern scholarship, we heard about editing practices and the theory and application of genre methodology onto medieval texts.  In other papers, we were asked to put ourselves into the place of medieval scribes, to question how they were organizing and categorizing their texts, or into the minds of medieval readers, to consider how they were processing them.

This'll be worth a few bob one day: conference programme signed by the likes of Fergus Kelly, Liam Breatnach, Greg Toner, David Stifter, David Dumville, Jenny Rowland, Lizzie Boyle, Barry Lewis, David Callander and Geraldine Parsons  (a few ASNCs past and present in there...)

The first session on Saturday, however, was concerned with Welsh material, and I am glad to have been a part of it.  Our own ASNC David Callander began the morning with a discussion of narrative verse as a medieval Welsh literary genre.  In his paper, David asked us to reconsider the traditional view that medieval Welsh verse is non-narrative and, having made the argument for narrative verse in Welsh, considered the implications for how the verse might then be regrouped for a discussion of genre.  This conclusion provided a nice segue into my own paper, where I dealt with issues that have been present in the definition of ymddiddanau or dialogue poems as a genre.  I sought to clarify the genre by refining the definition, and in doing so also to highlight the potential danger of trying to explain inconsistencies in the texts in a way not supported by their manuscript context.  Barry Lewis, former ASNC and present researcher at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (who will be giving a lecture at the Graduate Seminar on 25 November – mark your calendars!), concluded our session by reminding us about the importance of analyzing the categories into which we put medieval texts.  He addressed the factors that modern editors consider in distinguishing between religious and secular verse, and argued that such distinctions would not necessarily have been made by the medieval people who were dealing with these texts.

Questioning the validity of our modern editing practices is indeed a topic that ran through a number of papers, and was perhaps one of the most important issues to take a away from the conference for further thought.  Though the matter of genre can certainly stand to further discussion and debate, the colloquium was productive for raising the profile of the topic.  Hopefully in time we will begin to see an expansion of critical thinking on the matter of genre in medieval Celtic literature.

 

And there's always time for a visit to the National Museum of Ireland. Pictured is the Ardagh Chalice, possibly eighth century, from Co. Limerick.

Modern Poets on Viking Poetry - A Reading

Rebecca Merkelbach, a PhD student in ASNC, writes:

The evening of Friday 26 April marked the high point and conclusion (at least of the Cambridge part) of Dr Debbie Potts' project ‘Modern Poets on Viking Poetry’. Members of the department and the public gathered in the Judith E. Wilson Drama Studio to listen to eleven pieces written by poets from a variety of backgrounds and ages. They had all been working with skaldic verses, composed between the 10th and 14th century, and translated for the project by scholars of Old Norse. Debbie Potts introduced each of the original verses, which were then beautifully read by Orri Tómasson, transporting emotion across centuries and languages (as one of the poets remarked).

Some of the poems we heard were translations of, some reactions to, and some inspired by the form or content of the original skaldic verse. Especially topical was Lucy Hamiton's ‘Ring of Brodgar’, a response to a lausavísa by Þjóðólfr Arnórsson – a number of members of the department have visited this sight only ten days ago. Rebecca Perry's interesting, feminist interpretation of ‘The Waking of Angantyr’, which she entitled ‘how the earth increases’, fitted in very well with this week's CUSU Women's Campaign's ‘I need feminism because...’ photos. Anna Robinson's translation of Kormákr Ögmundarson's verses turned them into dialogue between the poet and Steingerðr, the object of his desire, now herself transformed into a subject. Probably the most emotionally charged compositions of the evening were the poems after Egill Skallagrímsson's ‘Sonatorrek’ which framed the interval. Chrissy William's ‘The Bear of the Moon’ beautifully caught the immense grief of the original, while at the same time contrasting it with dense poetic language. The film poem ‘Sonatorrek’ by Alastair Cook, featuring ‘The Lost Boy’ by John Glenday, transposed the metre and imagery of the original to the pointless deaths of World War I, commemorating Glenday's uncle who died in November 1918. It can be watched on the project's website.

All poems were incredibly powerful and inspired pieces of art, taking a lost poetic tradition and transforming it into something new, translating it into our time while also keeping the beauty of the old. Not only did the project offer an opportunity for creative dialogue between poets and scholars. The evening also sparked several new ideas for projects among the graduate students of the department, and we hope that we will hear more of them in the coming months.

Old English Riddles

Recent ASNC PhD graduates, Dr Matthias Ammon and Dr Megan Cavell, are pleased to announce their new blog, The Riddle Ages. Stemming in part from their participation in the department’s exciting Old English Reading Group, Ammon and Cavell have embarked upon the ambitious task of providing open access translations and commentary for every riddle in the Exeter Book. The hope is that this blog will act as a teaching and reference tool for those learning Old English, offer an easily accessible list of potential riddle-solutions for researchers and provide insight into these fascinating poems for interested members of the public.

Below is an example of the first post for Riddle 1:

Hwylc is hæleþa þæs horsc      ond þæs hygecræftig

þæt þæt mæge asecgan,      hwa mec on sið wræce,

þonne ic astige strong,      stundum reþe,

þrymful þunie,      þragum wræce

5   fere geond foldan,      folcsalo bærne,

ræced reafige?      Recas stigað,

haswe ofer hrofum.      Hlin bið on eorþan,

wælcwealm wera,      þonne ic wudu hrere,

bearwas bledhwate,      beamas fylle,

10   holme gehrefed,      heahum meahtum

wrecen on waþe,      wide sended;

hæbbe me on hrycge      þæt ær hadas wreah

foldbuendra,      flæsc ond gæstas,

somod on sunde.      Saga hwa mec þecce,

15   oþþe hu ic hatte,      þe þa hlæst bere.

Who among heroes is so sharp and so skilled in mind

that he may declare who presses me on my journey,

when I rise up, mighty, sometimes savage,

full of force, I resound, at times I press on,

5   travel throughout the land, I burn the people’s hall,

plunder the palace? The reek rises,

grey to the roofs. There is a clamour on the earth,

the slaughter-death of men, when I shake the forest,

the quick-growing groves, topple trees,

10   sheltered by the sea, pressed into wandering

by the powers on high, sent afar;

I have on my back that which earlier covered each rank

of the earth-dwellers, flesh and spirit,

swimming together. Say what covers me,

15   or how I am called, who bear that burden.

See the original blog post for possible solutions!

Kennings in the Community and Poets on Viking Poetry

Dr Judy Quinn and Dr Debbie Potts have been awarded funding to run two cultural engagement projects from February–April 2013 as part of an AHRC pilot scheme. The projects – Kennings in the Community and Modern Poets on Viking Poetry – are aimed at nurturing a wider public interest in the aesthetics of skaldic poetry through creative writing workshops and collaborative cultural translation. As Debbie Potts elaborates…

At a workshop last weekend, I fell into conversation with a poet about kennings. To my surprise and gratification, she not only knew what kennings were, but was able to relate an interesting little anecdote about them. A colleague of hers had recently conducted a workshop on kennings with school children. The exercise involved developing ways of referring to family members using items and actions associated with their character or behaviour. A certain precocious child came up with a wonderfully original kenning for his father: sofa-farter.

Some of the most linguistically dexterous of skalds, experts in the rhetoric of defamation, would have found it hard to respond with a kenning equally as cutting. The idea behind sofa-farter is simple, but it carries with it a great deal of cultural resonance (irrespective of whether we would describe our own fathers in such terms). It plays on a cultural stereotype that is both gender and class specific – i.e. the working-class male couch potato (which is in itself a kenning) – and could only emerge from a social milieu in which it is acceptable to occasionally make fun of one’s parents rather than holding them in a perpetual state of reverence.

I think this story provides an excellent illustration of the kenning’s universal cognitive appeal, its capacity to accommodate the mindset of a given individual or particular speech community. The project Kennings in the Community seeks to produce resources for creative writing workshops based on the kenning. My aim is not only to nurture a wider public interest in skaldic metaphor, but to encourage people to create their own kennings relevant to their everyday experience, thereby prompting them to question and re-imagine the way our culture conceptualises the world.

I’m excited to be working with three practicing word-smiths: Lucy Hamilton, Emma Hammond and Jane Monson. These habitual quaffers of Odinnic mead will be applying their creative writing expertise to the development of the workshop materials. Some ‘test’ workshops will take place at the beginning of April and the resources will be made available on the ASNC website before May, so watch this space! If you simply can’t wait until then to try your hand at creating kennings, you can take a look at an exercise I wrote for the Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network here.

(from Wikimedia Commons)

The sister project Modern Poets on Viking Poetry is all about extending the skaldic aesthetic into the creative consciousness of contemporary poets. My intention is to encourage a dialogue between academic research and modern poetic practice.

In the wake of the Poetry Parnassus – the largest ever international poetry festival, hosted by London’s Southbank Centre last summer – it seems an opportune moment to be tapping into the poetry world’s enthusiasm for cultural exchange. Poets will be encouraged to engage with basic translations and commentaries provided by skaldic scholars; they will have complete creative freedom in the way they choose to interact with the poetry, and may produce anything from a poem that seeks to replicate the phonic qualities of skaldic metre to a multimedia art-piece…I’m intrigued to see what they come up with! Selected poems will be published on a blog attached to the ASNC website, and two events will take place (in Cambridge and London) at the end of April where poets will be invited to read or perform their translations.

Debbie and Snorri

It must be acknowledged that neither project would be possible without the boundless curiosity of poets, who are constantly looking for new ways of understanding and expressing the world around us, however bizarre and alien (so much the better). And, of course, the open-mindedness and intellectual generosity of skaldic scholars, who are happily rather less mercenary than Mímir when it comes to offering a drink from the well of knowledge.

https://www.facebook.com/modernpoetsonvikingpoetry

@eehammond

Report of Quiggin Lecture 2012

Helen Oxenham, a doctoral student in ASNC, writes:

One of the highlights of the ASNC year is always the annual E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture, begun in 1993, to commemorate Edmund Crosby Quiggin, the first teacher of Celtic at the University of Cambridge.  This year's lecture was as highly-anticipated, well-attended, and fascinating as usual.  On the 29th November at 5pm, the ASNC department was very pleased to welcome Professor Ruairí Ó hUiginn of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, to speak on the subject of ‘Marriage, Law and Tochmarc Emire (‘The Wooing of Emer’)’.

The lecture began with a summary of the tale of Tochmarc Emire – a tale in which the hero Cú Chulainn pledges fidelity to Emer, and then proceeds to break his pledge with multiple women, while Emer remains faithful – and then moved on to an analysis of the surviving manuscript sources for the various sections and versions of the tale.  Then came the main body of the lecture, which focused on the connections between the earliest versions of Tochmarc Emire (dating to between the eighth and the eleventh centuries) and the early Irish legal material.  Professor Ó hUiginn argued convincingly that Tochmarc Emire can be viewed as a negative exemplary tale through an analysis of certain legal prescriptions.  The legal text Cáin Lánamna, for example, carefully regulates a wide range of types of sexual union, both permanent and transitory.  Cú Chulainn, however, enters an unregulated union with Aífe, a female warrior, which ultimately leads to him killing his own son.

The combined use of a vernacular prose tale and the early Irish legal texts threw new and interesting light onto the ways in which such tales might be analysed within their early medieval context, the underlying messages being given greater resonance and meaning through this wider understanding.

It is traditional at the Quiggin Lectures that questions be reserved for the time at which the visiting speaker has a glass in hand, so after the launch of the pamphlet for the previous year’s lecture (Professor Odd Einar Haugen on The Orthographic Reform of the Old Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise) the assembled audience moved out of the lecture room for a feast of wine and canapés, to continue discussion and bombard Professor Ó hUiginn with questions. We look forward to seeing this lecture in print about this time next year.

The Times Stephen Spender Prize: Irish Poetry and Prizes

Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson, teaching associate in Modern Irish in ASNC, writes:

Modern Irish poems were highlighted in the recent announcement of the winners of the 2012 Times Stephen Spender Prize for translation of poetry. Two of the winners in the Open Award section have connections to Modern Irish Language courses taught in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic—courses which have been supported by a generous grant from the Irish government since 2006.

Comhghairdeachas (congratulations) to Dr Kaarino Hollo, lecturer in Irish at Sheffield University, who was awarded first prize for her translation of the beautiful Irish poem Marbhghin 1943: Glaoch ar Liombó ('Stillborn 1943: Calling Limbo'), by Derry O'Sullivan, an Irish poet born in Rochestown, Co. Cork, in 1944. Dr Hollo taught Modern Irish courses in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic from 2006-08. Her translation of the poem, with comments, can be read here. Hollo received the prize in London on 13 November, and her achievement and long interest in Irish language and literature are featured in the Guardian.

Comhghairdeachas also to Modern Irish language student Seán Hewitt, who was awarded a commendation in the 2012 Times Stephen Spender Prize, open, for his translation of Brendan Behan's Jackeen ag caoineadh na mBlascaod ‘A Jackeen Keens for the Blasket Island’. Behan, a Dubliner who learned Irish, is chiefly remembered for his works in English, but Seán gives a fresh voice to Behan's Irish poem on the remote Blasket Island, An Bhlascaod Mhór, located off the coast of the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry. As Hewitt observes, ‘this poem shows a gentle longing for an Ireland wildly unlike the poet's own, one removed from him not simply geographically, but also culturally and linguistically.’ The poem was written just five years before the last Blasket islanders—Irish speakers who preserved a wealth of traditional lore and verse—were evacuated from the island in 1953.



An Bhlascaod Mhór / The Great Blasket Island (photo: Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson)



Seán Hewitt, who is affectionately known among Cambridge University students in the Modern Irish classes by the leasainm (nickname) ‘Seán Ard’, excelled in Modern Irish classes taught in the ASNC Department (2010-2012), earned a certificate in the Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge examination at the University of Maynooth, and graduated in June 2012 with a first in English (with several papers in Irish literature). During the ASNC celebration of Seachtain na Gaeilge, an international festival of Irish culture, he delivered memorable recitations of poems by the modern poet Seán Ó Riordáin, and the love song Máire Ní Eidhin by ‘Raifteirí’, the blind poet alluded to in W.B. Yeats's 'The Tower'. In 2011 he was awarded a H. M. Chadwick Scholarship to study of Modern Irish in the West Kerry Gaeltacht. Hewitt’s personal experience of the language and landscape is poignantly conveyed in his translation of Behan’s poem. Hewitt writes: ‘Last summer I had the privilege of continuing my study of Irish in West Kerry, thanks to a generous grant, and my visit to the Blaskets was truly haunting – I will never forget the slow backbone of land rising out of the sea-mist, the cormorants skimming the water and, most incredibly, the sheer, devastating silence. It is this silence that the poem conveys so well.’

Jackeen ag Caoineadh na mBlascaod Beidh an fharraige mhór faoi luí gréine

mar ghloine,

Gan bád faoi sheol ná comhartha beo ó dhuine

Ach an t-iolar órga deireanach thuas ar imeall

An domhain, thar an mBlascaod uaigneach luite...

An ghrian ina luí is scáth na hoíche á scaipeadh

Ar ardú ré is í ag taitneamh i bhfuacht trí scamaill,

A méara loma sínte ar thalamh

Ar thithe scriosta briste, truamhar folamh...

Faoi thost ach cleití na n-éan ag cuimilt thar tonna

Buíoch as a bheith fillte, ceann i mbrollach faoi shonas,

Séideadh na gaoithe ag luascadh go bog leathdhorais

Is an teallach fuar fliuch, gan tine, gan teas, gan chosaint.

Brendan Behan

Reproduced by kind permission of The Gallery Press

A Jackeen Keens for the Blasket

Sunset, and the wide sea will be laid out like glass,
no sailing boats or signs of life, just a last
eagle that glints on the world's edge, separate,
circling over the lonely, spent Blasket...

The sun sunk down, and nightshadows scattered
over the high moon, herself scaling
the ground with bare, outstretched fingers, cold
on the broken houses, the life's scaffold...

All silent but the birds' bellies sliding
over the waves, glad to be home, head tucked
snug in breast, the wind's breath rocking the door,
and the damp hearth, fireless, heatless, unwatched.

Translated from the Irish by Seán Hewitt

Seán Hewitt with ASNC students Katie McIvor and Caitlin Ellis following Seachtain na Gaeilge, 2011, in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (photo: Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson)

For Seán Hewitt’s full commentary, see here. The Stephen Spender Trust supports the translation of poetry from any language, classical or modern, into English. Students are encouraged to submit translations of verse for the 2013 competition, which opens on 11 January, 2013. The deadline for the 2013 prize will be Friday 24 May. Details and entry forms will be available on this website.

E. C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture 2012

The 2012 E. C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Professor Ruairí Ó hUiginn, Professor of Modern Irish at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. The title of his lecture is:

Marriage, Law and Tochmarc Emire ('The Wooing of Emer')

The lecture will take place at 5pm on Thursday 29th November in Room GR 06/07 of the English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge, and will be followed by a wine reception. All welcome.

Edmund Crosby Quiggin (1875-1920) was the first teacher of Celtic in the University of Cambridge. His extraordinarily comprehensive vision of Celtic studies offered an integrated approach to the subject; his combination of philological, literary and historical approaches paralleled those which his older contemporary, H.M. Chadwick, had already demonstrated in his studies of Anglo-Saxon England and which the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic continues to seek to emulate.

Public lecture in ASNC

The 2011 E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture will take place on Thursday 1st December, at 5pm, in room GR.06/07 of the English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge.

Prof. Odd Einar Haugen, of the University of Bergen, will speak on:

'So that the writing may be less and quicker, and the parchment last longer':

The Orthographic Reform of the Old Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise

An abstract is available here.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the social space of the English Faculty Building.

All welcome.

Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards

Dr Fiona Edmonds writes:

On the evening of Friday 24th September, a reception was held on the ASNC terrace in conjunction with the highly successful Pagan and Christian conference. The reception provided an excellent opportunity to launch a new book: TOME: Studies in Medieval Celtic History and Law in Honour of Thomas Charles-Edwards. A number of the contributors to the volume were present. Thomas Charles-Edwards, who had been speaking at the Pagan and Christian conference, was present at the reception. He had not been aware of the book launch, and it proved to be a pleasant surprise for him (we hope!).

 A toast to Professor Thomas Charles-Edwards

The book was edited by two of Thomas’s former students, Paul Russell and Fiona Edmonds, both of the department of ASNC. Fiona and Paul gave speeches praising Thomas’s contribution as a teacher of undergraduate students, a supervisor of graduate students, and a leading member of the scholarly community. We also praised Thomas’s highly significant contribution to scholarship, which is demonstrated by the bibliography included in TOME. Paul took the opportunity to explain the book’s title, which has provoked considerable interest. The title has a double inspiration: not only is the latest of Thomas's big books always known in his family as 'the tome', but the so-called 'Pillar of Thomas' (Lower Court Farm, Margam, now in the Margam Stones Museum), which features on the book's cover (the image expertly drawn by Ben Russell) shows a carved cross with the word TO || ME with two letters either side of the shaft of the cross. TOME (a spelling for the Latin genitive singular Tomae) means 'of Thomas' and could scarcely be more appropriate as a title for this volume. But, of course, TOME could also be a dative singular, 'for Thomas', and that is indeed what this volume is with gratitude and affection.

 

The editors with Prof. Thomas Charles-Edwards

The volume features essays that range across the medieval Celtic world, including medieval Wales, Ireland and Scotland. In the first part of the volume, they cover historical aspects (and, as is fitting, often reflect the honorand's interest in archaeology and epigraphy); in the second, they focus on medieval Irish and Welsh legal institutions and texts, which are used by some to inform new readings of literary texts. For more information, see the website of the publisher, Boydell and Brewer.

More congratulations!

The awards and prizes are flooding in this month! Here are some more:

Dr Nick Zair, Research Fellow in Peterhouse and Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics in Cambridge has been awarded the Johann-Kaspar Zeuss Prize for the best PhD in Celtic Studies of 2011. The title of his dissertation, which was completed in Oxford, is: ‘The reflexes of the proto-Indo-European laryngeals in Celtic’. The prize is awarded by the Societas Celtologica Europaea.

Congratulations to Dr Eleanor Barraclough (ASNC) who has been awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Oxford.  Dr Barraclough will hold her fellowship in the Faculty of English, with an affiliation to The Queen’s College, and will be working on a research project mapping the literary landscape and conceptual geography of the medieval Norse world, with close readings of the sagas at the heart of the investigation. This literary analysis will be supported by an interdisciplinary methodology that explores the links between the sagas’ literary designs and the geographical conditions, historical reality, socio-political conditions and cultural memories underpinning Norse society.

Authorities and Adaptations

Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:

On Friday 15th and Saturday 16th April, thirty scholars working on various aspects of medieval Irish history and literature gathered in Cambridge for an advanced research workshop on the theme of 'Authorities and Adaptations: the Reworking and Transmission of Sources in Irish Textual Culture, c. 1000 - c. 1200'. The reshaping of earlier source material to accommodate contemporary concerns is a significant phenomenon in medieval literary culture, and particularly so in Ireland. The process of recycling and reworking textual materials has often been commented on by scholars of medieval Irish, but had never been systematically interrogated. Over the course of the two days of the workshop, Celticists from Britain, Ireland, Germany and the United States, addressed the question of how sources were reshaped and adapted in eleventh- and twelfth-century Ireland. By studying how older authorities were used in medieval Ireland, the participants sought to further our understanding of how medieval Irish intellectuals and authors understood their own history and literary inheritance.

The papers presented at the workshop encompassed texts in both Latin and Old/Middle Irish, and ranged across many genres, from law to history-writing, from narrative prose to doctrinal poetry, and from biblical exegesis to grammatical tracts. A number of papers also focused on how earlier texts, including legal texts, grammars and poetry, accreted layers of learned commentary, which shaped the way those texts were read and understood by later audiences. As all of the papers demonstrated, the reworking of earlier source material was not merely a deferential act of preservation: rather, authors engaged actively with their sources, reshaping them to meet contemporary concerns, and using authorities to lend weight to words that would resonate with new, and changing, audiences.

The workshop was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the H. M. Chadwick Fund, and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. The programme of papers was as follows:

Papers I – III
Session chair: Dr Pádraic Moran (NUI Galway)
I. Prof. Patrick O'Neill (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill): 'Old wine in new bottles: the reprise of early Irish Psalter exegesis in the eleventh and twelfth centuries'
II. Dr Deborah Hayden (Hughes Hall, Cambridge): 'Metrical mnemonics and anatomical accents in Auraicept na nÉces'
III. Dr Paul Russell (University of Cambridge): 'Adaption, re-working and transmission in the commentaries to Amrae Coluimb Chille'


Papers IV - VI
Session chair: Dr Paul Russell (University of Cambridge)
IV. Dr Elizabeth Boyle (St Edmund’s College, Cambridge): 'Invisible authority: Echtgus Úa Cúanáin’s use of Paschasius Radbertus in his poetic treatise on the Eucharist'
V. Dr Brent Miles (University College Cork): 'The Hiberno-Latin background to the Sermo ad reges and an Irish tradition of advice to kings'
VI. Dr Caoimhín Breatnach (University College Dublin): 'Irish and Latin abridged versions of the Gospel of Nicodemus'


Papers VII-VIII
Session chair: Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (St John’s College, Cambridge)
VII. Prof. Thomas Charles-Edwards (Jesus College, Oxford): 'The manuscript transmission of Bretha Comaithchesa'
VIII. Prof. Máire Herbert (University College Cork): 'Some thoughts on history and history-writing in the post-Viking era'


Papers IX-XI
Session chair: Dr Ralph O’Connor (University of Aberdeen)
IX. Prof. Ruairí Ó hUiginn (NUI Maynooth): 'Recycling a cycle: some late "Ulster" tales'
X. Dr Hugh Fogarty (University College Cork): 'Aided Guill 7 Gairb and the "inward look" in late Middle Irish prose saga'
XI. Dr Geraldine Parsons (University of Glasgow): 'Revisiting Almu in Middle Irish texts'


Papers XII – XIII
Session chair: Dr Mark Williams (Peterhouse, Cambridge)
XII. Prof. Michael Clarke (NUI Galway): 'Catheads and Trojans: reworking of Sex Aetates Mundi material in later medieval narratives'
XIII. Prof. Dr Erich Poppe (Philipps-Universität Marburg): 'On some sources of "On the beginning of Christ’s teaching" in the Leabhar Breac'


Paper XIV-XV
Session chair: Dr Elizabeth Boyle (St Edmund’s College, Cambridge)
XIV. Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (St John’s College, Cambridge): 'Authorial attribution in twelfth-century Ireland: new wine in old skins'
XV. Dr Kevin Murray (University College Cork): 'The reworking of Old Irish texts in the Middle Irish period: contexts and motivations'

Report of H. M. Chadwick Lecture 2010

Ronni Phillips writes:

On Thursday, 11^th March the ASNC Department held the 21^st annual H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture.  The lecture was delivered by Professor Joseph F. Nagy of the University of California Los Angeles.  Its topic was "Merchants of Myth in Ancient and Medieval Celtic Traditions".  Professor Nagy began his lecture with reference to H. M. Chadwick’s work The Heroic Age, which argued that the Celtic literary ‘heroic milieu’ – like other heroic literatures – was peopled only by royal or noble families and their households, but depicted no representatives of merchants, farmers or artisans.  These mercantile figures were thus defined as representing a more cosmopolitan ‘medieval’ era, set in opposition to an ancient ‘heroic’ age.

Professor Nagy argued for a more nuanced understanding of representations of merchants and mercantile behaviour in medieval Celtic literature. Drawing on texts ranging widely from the early Irish glossary Sanas Chormaic to the twelfth-century Middle Irish Acallam na Senórach, he noted various depictions of characters engaging in mercantile behaviour, such as negotiating, bargaining and exchanging.  He argued that these examples reflected networks of trade, cultural and intellectual exchange that existed prior to Viking – and indeed Roman – settlement.  This was not to say that such representations of mercantilism depicted it in an entirely positive light.  Rather, Professor Nagy explained that the ambivalence with which negotiating and bargaining for goods and wealth was portrayed in some texts, and the fact that liminal figures such as the Fenians in Acallam na Senórach were often portrayed as displaying mercentile behaviour may have reflected unease about such behaviour.  In projecting it onto the marginal Fenians, it kept mercantilism safely Other, while still engaging with it on an intellectual level. 

This argument draws on some of Professor Nagy’s earlier research from his book of 1985, The Wisdom of the Outlaw.  In that book he noted that fénnidi occupy an uneasy position in medieval Irish literature as ‘social outcasts forever denied adult status’, but whose position as outsiders allows them to gain wisdom not available to fully integrated members of society and bring the benefits of this wisdom back to society.  Mercantile behaviour, perhaps, was another such marginal activity – at least within literature – and depicting fénnidi as engaging in it allowed writers to reflect on the benefits of trade and exchange while keeping it safely confined to marginal figures. 

Professor Nagy’s Chadwick Lecture will be published by the ASNC Department.

Men went to Catraeth...

Dr Mark Williams writes:

This term some of the Part II students will be looking at the supposedly Old Welsh poem, or rather set of elegies, known as Y Gododdin. It's an opportunity for them to immerse themselves within the knottinesses of a particularly tricky body of material, which is bedevilled by serious textual difficulties.

The standard account of the poem is that its core consists of a series of brief elegies upon the warriors of the Gododdin people of south-eastern Scotland. This was a British (that is to say, Brythonic-speaking) tribe, one of the kingdoms of the 'Old North' which fell, one by one, to the Anglo-Saxons. The poem is supposed to have been composed around the year 600AD by one 'Neirin' or 'Aneirin', to commemorate the fallen warriors of the Gododdin who fell in a disastrous raid deep into enemy Angle territory. The internal narrative of the poem suggests that the ruler of the Gododdin, the otherwise-unattested Mynyddog Mwynfawr, gathered warriors from his own territory and the rest of the Brythonic world, and feasted them in his hall at Edinburgh for a year. His return for this was their unquestioning loyalty to him, even to the death. As the poet says, 'they drank pale mead, and it was poison...' Mynyddog's plan, it seems, was to mount a raid upon the strategic settlement of Catraeth in Yorkshire, modern Catterick, and to retake it from the enemy. According to the poem, all the three hundred splendid, gold-torqued warriors perished.

So far, so unfortunate. The text, however, only survives in a Welsh manuscript that dates from the 13th century, some 700 years after the poem's presumed date of oral composition, 'betwixt which regions', as Shakespeare put it in The Tempest, 'there is some space.' Within this tiny manuscript, known as the Book of Aneirin, at least two strata of text are discernible, known as the A-version and the B-version, and within these we find doubled or even tripled stanzas. (That is to say, variations of the same lines crop up separately in the A and B versions.) The A-version is clearly more 'modern' than the B-version, which alerts us to the fact that the texts have been copied and recopied between the 7th and the 13th century. One version of the poem seems to have circulated for several centuries in the British kingdom of Strathclyde, before passing to Wales around 800AD; but another seems to have reached Wales soon after the total collapse of the Gododdin kingdom in 638AD, hence the two widely differing versions. And at each layer of oral transmission and copying, scribes and reciters chose (sometimes) to update lines or phrases which were becoming too archaic to be comprehensible to them. New stanzas may have been rustled up, so that the poem is like a comet, streaming through time and continually gathering new material into its wake. It's like the old question about the car which has been so patched-up that no part of it is original - is it still the 'same' car? What relation does the poem as we have it in 13th century dress bear to the poem that Aneirin may have composed 700 years before?

Adding to The Western Canon

Dr Mark Williams writes:

The great literary critic Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon contains no work of Celtic literature in the huge ‘lifetime’s reading program’ at the back of the book. Not one, in any of the six possible languages. Accordingly, and feeling keenly this dreadful oversight on Bloom’s part, I have taken it upon myself to provide the necessary supplement.

Cornish and Manx are out. The Ordinalia, Beunans Meriasek, Beunans Ke and so on (Cornish medieval drama) have great charm, but we're following Bloom in taking 'great aesthetic interest' as the criterion for inclusion here. Similarly, there's little worth reading in Manx unless you are a specialist. As for Breton: well, the poet Anjela Duval has much to recommend her, especially her passionate environmental consciousness. Here's one I like: