Old and Middle Irish Literature

Using the critical lens of Claire Sponsler’s scholarship on subversive performance, this essay considers the warrior Cú Chulainn’s lament for his foster-brother in the medieval Irish Táin. This ritualized spectacle washes clean and revivifies the slain hero’s body: poetry’s incantatory alliterations and rhymes re-fuse the dismembered body and animate it with story. By considering the lament in terms of caoineadh (“keening”), a genre typically associated with women, we gain insights into the subversive potential of Cú Chulainn’s performance. A man’s transgressive performance of caoineadh provides a critique of gender and disempowerment: the surrounding narrative provides multiple examples of young warriors, noble daughters, and other figures whose bodies and lives are pawned to execute the wishes of morally bankrupt kings and queens. This lament thus participates in the caoineadh’s mode of protest, as a cry against the slaughter of youth in the wargames of the powerful.

Остров «хохотунов» в «Плавании Брана» и «Плавании Майль-Дуйна»: к конструкции одного сюжета [The Isle of laughers in Immram Brain and Immram Maele Duin: to the episode construction] // Древность и Средневековье: вопросы истории и историографии. Омск, 2016. С. 105-108, 241-247. (in Russian)

This small report is just a try to depict the place of an episode "Isle of laughers" in Immram Brain and Immram Maele Duin stories. The are seven general elements in the motif construction, but we could underline some differences as well.

Публикация представляет собой комментированный перевод раннесредневекового ирландского текста, известного как «Синод Западного Мунстера». Речь идет об одном из важнейших источников по политическому устройству и королевской иерархии в раннесредневековой Ирландии. Текст сохранился в составе одного из самых ранних корпусов генеалогий Ирландии, представленном в манускрипте Laud Miscellany 610 в Бодлеанской библиотеке в Оксфорде, и датируется приблизительно началом IX в. В нем описывается заключение соглашения между королем (rí) Мунстера (Южная Ирландия) и правителями небольших туатов1 (rí tuatha), входивших в состав королевства Мунстер. Перевод сопровождается вступительной статьей и небольшим глоссарием раннесредневековых ирландских терминов.

The present publication includes a commented translation of an untitled early medieval Irish text, known as «West Munster Synod», together with an introduction and a short glossary of medieval Irish terms. The text is a major source on the political institutions and the kingship hierarchy in Early Medieval Munster (southern Ireland). It came down to us as a part of a corpus of early Irish genealogical tracts from MS. Laud Miscellany 610 in The Bodleian Library, Oxford, and dated approximately by the late early ninth century. It describes the agreement between the king (rí) of Munster and the kings of the subordinate tuatha of West Munster.

All cultures have in their mythologies tales of heroic births which set the culture’s hero figures apart from the common people. Celtic mythology is no different, and in fact may offer some of the prototypical fantastic birth scenarios to be found in mythology in general. The compact, matter of fact, and yet fantastical tale of Cú Chulainn’s birth offers a fine example of the Celtic peoples’ ability to relate the mysteries of nature and the supernatural in a manner that appears not only to suspend disbelief, but perhaps to even transcend it. The story is short and yet exhibits several of the characteristics which Alwyn and Brinley Rees outline in their work Celtic Heritage as being typical of heroic birth tales. Throughout this discussion, references will be made to Rees and Rees’ postulated heroic birth motif and in general to other ideas offered by the authors which may be seen as relevant to the tale.

Aided Óenfir Aífe (AOA), “The Death of Aife’s Only Son”, is one of the shortest stories of the Ulster’s Cycle which shares the same origins with the Táin, back to the IX century, for language features and themes (Findon 1994, 139; Varese 2001, 129). The earliest version of the tale is contained by the Yellow Book of Lecan (Meyer 1904, 113-121) but other, later variants (O’Keeffe, 1904) are not sporadic and its literary fortune endured until the XX century (...)

Early Irish texts are more likely to have been analyzed as a source of mythology and prehistory than in terms of their significance as literature. In some ways this is due to the lack of reliable texts to analyze, but in general the more fundamental reason has been a predisposition of researchers to view the Irish texts in a factual light; as relics of a long forgotten past and not as the literary creation of the Christian monasteries. In recent years, this predisposition has lessened in a paradigm shift towards examining The Táin as literature, and as such, the creation of the various redactors. Discussing The Táin as literature allows for some old questions to be answered in some new and interesting ways. In addition, such a paradigm shift generates new questions which under the old approaches to the material would not have been conceivable. The literary approach brings to the forefront the meaning behind the tales, the redactors, and their intentions.

Early Irish poets were members of the filid which was the learned class of early Ireland and a functioning profession in Ireland well into the Seventeenth Century. And though it was probable that the perception of justice was dependent on whether one was on the giving or receiving end of a satire, the laws of early Ireland addressed just and unjust use of satire and praise poetry to enforce social order. Poetry in early Ireland was more than just an artistic form of expression. Poetry was a skill, and the power of the poet was seen as a force to be reckoned with by the people of early Ireland.

The genealogical tables of the more important Irish royal dynasties of the early and also later Middle Ages. There are 76 tables, compiled from annalistic, genealogical and other sources, with references to these sources and genealogical tables published in secondery literature up to 1994.

FINAL PROOF of my article on the rise of Dál Cais until Brian Bóraime, based on a wide range of historical sources and with a new explanation as to how they were able to become such a dominant force in Munster and Ireland. This is followed by a discussion how their legendary history was forged in genealogical records and narrative literature. Several of these sources are closely connected and can be dated to the reign of Brian Bóraime (around 1000). NB quite a fewl errors remain in the final draft, the published version is more trustworthy.

This monograph traces the history of one of the most prominent types of geographical myths of the North-West Atlantic Ocean: transmarine otherworlds of blessedness and immortality. Taking the mythologization of the Viking Age discovery of North America in the earliest extant account of Vínland (‘Wine-Land’) and the Norse transmarine otherworlds of Hvítramannaland (‘The Land of White Men’) and the Ódáinsakr/Glæsisvellir (‘Field of the Not-Dead’/‘Shining Fields’) as its starting point, the book explores the historical entanglements of these imaginative places in a wider European context. It follows how these Norse otherworld myths adopt, adapt, and transform concepts from early Irish vernacular tradition and Medieval Latin geographical literature, and pursues their connection to the geographical mythology of classical antiquity. In doing so, it shows how myths as far distant in time and space as Homer’s Elysian Plain and the transmarine otherworlds of the Norse are connected by a continuous history of creative processes of adaptation and reinterpretation. Furthermore, viewing this material as a whole, the question arises as to whether the Norse mythologization of the North Atlantic might not only have accompanied the Norse westward expansion that led to the discovery of North America, but might even have been among the factors that induced it.
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: North-Western Europe: Scandinavia, Ireland, and the Land of the Living

Chapter 2: The Classical Mediterranean: Rome, Greece, and the Islands of the Blessed

Chapter 3: Eastern Roots?

Chapter 4: Continuity, Interaction – and Westward Expansion?

Appendix: Beyond History

Bibliography

Index

This discussion considers the Arthurian elements presented in De Excidio, Historia Brittonum and the Annales  Cambriae and analyses to what extent these may be indicative of the religious and political motives of their authors, rather than simplistically accepted as early primary sources recording reliable ‘evidence’ for an historical Arthur. The discussion is conducted using a framework for examining the texts, their wider historical and literary contexts, the authors’ motivations and the texts’ usefulness as historical ‘evidence’. It concisely distills all the relevant arguments and compares and contrasts various viewpoints. Finally it carefully unpicks the primary sources and demonstrates a number of problems concerning dating, later interpolations, inconsistencies, lack of clarity due to brevity (e.g. Arthur or Ambrosius?) and sensibly concludes that neither Historia Brittonum nor the Annales Cambriae can be viewed as reliable historical evidence, and that that the case for an historical Arthur is ‘unproven’.

This article examines the powerful relationship at the core of the Cath Maige Tuired, “The Battle of Moytura”. The text itself lies at the heart of the Irish tradition, and the Dagda and the Mór Rígain are the pillars of this tale, the movers and the shakers.
Within Cath Maige Tuired, the Dagda is involved in earth-making and boundary-marking, lavishly embodying the principles of hospitality. The Mór Rígain’s involvement has to be courted by the Dagda, and her crucial role is one of poetry and prophecy. This couple is so central to the Irish Tradition that the Mór Rígain is often simply called “The Woman” or “The Dagda’s Woman”.
At the conclusion of Cath Maige Tuired, the Dagda restores the fertility of the land by calling back the Glas Gabann, “Sea-Coloured Calf”,  with the help of his harp, Cóir Cetharcorr, “Four-Edged Rightness”. The Mór Rígain resets the order of human society with her poetry of the past and possible futures, acting as herald, prophet, historian and keeper of lore.
The entire story of Cath Maige Tuired is one of the destruction and restoration of natural fertility and the right order within society, and their fundamental interconnectedness. Both elements have to be maintained. The oft-cited principle of fír flathemon, “the king’s truth”, is a microcosm of the interconnection between the rightness of society and the rightness within nature. This intertwined order is a concept we have called cóir, similar to the Egyptian concept of maat.  And an examination of stories concerning the impact of human activity on the natural world, and our dependence on that world, is surely a timely one.
One surprising outcome of this analysis of Cath Maige Tuired, and the roles of the Dagda and the Mór Rígain within it, is that we find the Dagda standing for natural fertility and the Mór Rígain standing for cultural and societal flourishing. Most modern interpretations embody Nature as female, and Culture as male. But here, we find the deeply masculine Dagda embodying Nature, and the relendtlessly feminine Mór Rígain embodying Culture.

This paper discusses the tale Cath Ruis na Ríg for Bóinn, a sequel to the early Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailgne, in light of the historical context of the period when it was written (the second half of the twelfth century). It argues that its author drew on contemporary historical events and developments as models for episodes in the plot of his story. Specifically, his depiction of Irish kings importing foreign mercenaries from the Hebrides and struggling for influence over the midland province of Mide resonates with distinctly twelfth-century historical phenomena. As a result, although it is set in the heroic past, the images of kingship and of inter-provincial politics depicted in Cath Ruis na Ríg were shaped by the twelfth-century struggle for dominance amongst the various contenders for the high-kingship of Ireland. The paper tentatively suggests that the text might have been written as a commentary on the period of conflict between Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn, king of Cenél Eógain, and Tairdelbach Úa Conchobair, king of Connacht, during the early 1150s.

"The oldest records indicate that the performance of poetry in Gaelic Ireland was normally accompanied by music, providing a point of continuity with past tradition while bolstering a sense of community in the present. Music would also offer, particularly for poets writing in English from the eighteenth century onwards, a perceived authenticity, a connection with an older tradition perceived as being untarnished by linguistic and cultural division.

While providing an innovative analysis of theoretical work in music and literary studies, this book examines how traditional Irish music, including the related song tradition (primarily in Irish), has influenced, and is apparent in, the work of Irish poets. While looking generally at where this influence is evident historically and in contemporary Irish poetry, this work focuses primarily on the work of six poets, three who write in English and three who write primarily in the Irish language: Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Cathal Ó Searcaigh."

An analysis of the dindshenchas tales was carried out, focusing on those tales that mentioned or seemed to take place at the time of one of the four seasonal/cross-quarter festivals.  Curiously, the first two of the festivals—Imbolc/Oimelg and Beltaine—were not mentioned, except in one instance.  And the tales of the other two almost all featured deaths.  At Lughnasa, the deaths were almost always of a female and usually as a result of sorrow or shame, while at Samhain they were the violent deaths of warriors.  Another observation was that the Lughnasa sites all fell within or near a triangle formed by the three royal sites of Emain Macha, Dún Ailinne, and Crúachan.

part of a blog on medieval history of Limerick - designed to accompany a festival in Limerick, 28th-31st October 2019 on Limerick's identity as a frontier city populated by diverse ethnicities and  cultures in the later twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries. See www.medievalhistoryfestivallimerick.home.blog

part of a blog on medieval history of Limerick - designed to accompany a festival in Limerick, 28th-31st October 2019 on Limerick's identity as a frontier city populated by diverse ethnicities and  cultures in the later twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century; see www.medievalhistoryfestivallimerick.home.blog.

This book – the result of about ten years research – deals mostly with the mythological substratum of narratives, composed and written down in early medieval Ireland, within the broader context of Indo-European and Eurasian mythologies.
Some chapters of this book were published previously as articles in different periodicals and proceedings of conferences.
Studies in Irish Mythology relaunches them, reworked and updated, together with hitherto unpublished chapters, as a single comprehensive book with the aim of providing a reader towards a tentative reconstruction of an early Irish mytholo­gical worldview.


Contents:

    Hiberno-Rossica: ‘Knowledge in the Clouds’ in Old Irish and Old Russian
    Cú Roí and Svyatogor: a Study in Chthonic
    Autochthons and Otherworlds in Celtic and Slavic
    Significance of Pentads in Early Irish and Indian Sources: Case of Five Directions
    The Five Primeval Trees in Early Irish, Gnostic and Manichaean Cosmologies
    An Alliterative Poem Eó Rossa from the Dindṡenchas
    The Dindṡenchas of Irarus: The King, the Druid and the Probable Tree
    The King in Exile in Airne Fíngein: Power and Pursuit in Early Irish Literature
    Conn Cétchathach: The Image of Ideal Kingship in Early Medieval Ireland
    Búaid Cuinn, rígróit rogaidi—An alliterative Poem from The Dindṡenchas
    Roads and Knowledge in Togail Bruidne Da Derga
    Oral Past and Wrien Present in ‘The Finding of the Táin’
    The Migration of the Soul in Early Irish Tales
    Goidelic Hydronyms in Ptolemy’s Geography: Myth Behind the Name
    Swineherds in Celtic lands
    Fintan mac Bóchra: Irish Synthetic History Revisited
    Bibliography
    Index

The aim of this M.A. thesis is to provide a first attempt at a critical edition of the version of the poem ‘Flann for Éirinn’ included in recension b of Lebor Gabála Érenn. In establishing the text, the three manuscripts containing this version have been used as a basis, while two other copies belonging to other recensions of LGÉ have also been consulted. The edition is accompanied by an introduction dealing with general aspects of the poem, a translation, detailed notes on the text, the transcriptions of all the copies used and indexes of names.

The Book of Uí Mhaine contains a poem of 121 stanzas written in séadnadh, and ascribed to the twelfth-century poet Gilla na Náem úa Duinn. The poet summarises the Dindṡenchas by dedicating one stanza to each placename. The poem is divided into five sections, the first four of which give the history of famous places in Meath, Ulster, Leinster and Munster respectively. The fifth and final section serves as epilogue and makes reference to contemporary events. This paper will discuss how the poem relates to the corpus of the Dindṡenchas, as well as to other medieval Irish texts, before discussing the text’s date and metrical features.

The identity, geography, and politics of the Gall-Ghàidheil have been re-visited by scholars in recent decades, principally through close contextual analyses of the Irish Annals. However, this scholarship has tended to steer clear of their literary representation, however sparse that is. This paper looks at the implications of their characterisation in the Middle Irish Airec Menman Airard Mac Coisse, and suggests that their association with merchants in that text may give an indication of their social status and economic role, and the possible prejudices of the author of that text.

The now lost Psalter of Cashel included a section with genealogical material. References in the existing Irish genealogical manuscripts suggest that it was first drafted c. 900 by Cormac mac Cuilennáin, who used records compiled in Munster ca. 740. It was later updated ca. 1000 during the reign of Brian Bóroime, and after a limited update c. 1015 it was further edited by northern  scholars. With the updates, genealogical doctrines could change.

Tesi di Laurea Magistrale A.A. 2014/2015.
Traduzione con introduzione e note del Félire Óengusso, martirologio metrico in antico Irlandese composto nel IX secolo.


Master Thesis, Academic Year 2014/2015
Translation into Italian with introduction and notes of the Félire Óengusso, Old Irish metrical martyrology composed in the IX cent.

This paperexamines the contrast between the archaeological evidence for Viking weaponry - which is relatively widespread on the island of Ireland - and the evidence for the adoption of Norse language which seems to be relatively scant. By concentrating on Middle Irish literature produced in the Hiberno-Norse era, it appears that Irishmen adopted both the military technology and also some of the tactics of the invaders.

Taking into account the birth and conducts of the Uí Néill’s king Niall Frossach, The aim of this work is to exemplify how the supernatural sign operates in the story as a forecast of what the child will signify for the realm and for his people. Starting with Niall’s famous Act of Truth, the analysis will show how the figure of the right king and the destiny of his realm have been predicted since the beginning

L’auteur s’intéresse à un bref épisode du récit mythologique en moyen-irlandais du Cath Maige Tuired, celui de la construction par Lug d’un énigmatique cró Logo « enclos de Lug » aux portes de Tara, dont le nom faisait référence à un toponyme réel à proximité de l’ancienne capitale royale. Il revient sur les interprétations précédemment proposées par les chercheurs sur ce cró Logo (enclos sacré pour les uns, parc à bétail pour les autres) et prône une nouvelle explication faisant de ce nom de lieu un possible synonyme du toponyme panceltique *Lugudūnon, « forteresse de Lug », également attesté en Irlande.

The author explores a brief episode contained in the middle-irish mythological tale intituled Cath Maige Tured : the construction of an enigmatic cró Logo « Lug’s pen » installed near the gates of Tara, whose name was referring to an real place name near the ancient royal capital. He reviews the precedent interpretations of this cró Logo by the scholars (sacred enclosure for someones, stockyard for the others) and proposes a new explanation making this place name possible synonym of the pan-celtic name *Lugudūnon, « Lug’s fortress », also attested in Ireland.

Páipéar a phléann scéal Naomh Gall agus ról tábhachtach Mhainistir Naomh Gall a d'imir ról lárnach i gcaomhnú an léinn eaglasta agus chlaisicí araon, gluaiseanna na Sean-Ghaeilge san áireamh, ón 7ú haois ar aghaidh.
Téacs na léachta ar fáil ach teagmháil a dhéanamh liom: triombaill@gmail.com

This paper examines the story of St Gall and the important role of the St Gall Abbey which played a central role in the preservation of religious and classical learning, including Old Irish glosses, since the 7th century.
Conference paper can be provided on request: triombaill@gmail.com

Benedeit's poem Le Voyage de Saint Brendan is not a mere adaptation of the popular Latin Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. By comparing Benedeit's creative use of the sea- and pilgrimage-motives, it appears that the Anglo-Norman poem is in many aspects closer to the Irish immrama than to its presumed source, the Latin Navigatio. As a result, both the relationship between the two Brendan-voyages as well as the alleged dependence of the immrama on the Latin Navigatio are challenged.

To paraphrase Geoffrey Ashe (84) the most that can be said about the quest for a factual King Arthur and its results is that it is now easier for contemporary researchers to believe that Arthur existed rather than not. That’s certainly not glowing praise for the decades worth of effort, but the simple fact remains that no indisputable piece of evidence contemporary to Arthur’s time has been found which can once and for all prove that the King Arthur depicted by Geoffrey of Monmouth existed. As Ashe  (85) points out, almost all the evidence we have is open to disputes regarding dates, locations, the status of Arthur, and his importance in British history.  Yet throughout the early Welsh and Brittonic Latin literature there are tantalizing clues and vague allusions to a figure of the late 5th and early 6th centuries known as Arthur. Getting a grasp on this shadowy figure is difficult, especially when the time comes to assign dates.

This article is a spin-off from my forthcoming high school reference book, Daily Life in Arthurian Britain (Greenwood Press/ABC-Clio Publishers). Find the article on the Ultimate History Project website:

http://www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/usurpers-and-tyrants.html

Check it out now if you are interested because it will soon go behind a subscription pay wall.

Daily Life in Arthurian Britain is scheduled for release on 4/30/2014.
"