~ PROGRAM ~
TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL HARVARD CELTIC COLLOQUIUM
Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures
Harvard University

All sessions of the Colloquium are held
in the Thompson Room (110) in the
Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA


Thursday October 7, 2004

2:00 - 3:30 pm  Kates Room, Warren House at the Barker Center
Panel discussion on contemporary post graduate prospects for Celticists
This is an informal session to discuss future prospects for graduates in Celtic Studies in side and out side the academic sphere. The panel members will offer brief comments in light of their own experiences and prospects as Celticists to begin a group discussion of the current state of our field.

5:00 pm ~  Inaugural John V. Kelleher Lecture
Lowell Hall - on the corner of Oxford and Kirkland Streets, Cambridge
Presented by the Harvard Celtic Department in cooperation with the
Department of English and American Language and Literature
Seamus Heaney - "Journeys Westward"
This event is open to members and invited guests of the Departments of Celtic Languages and Literatures and
English and American Language and Literature. Due to limited seating space, admission
to this event is not guaranteed.


Friday October 8, 2004

8:00 - 8:45: Coffee and Social Hour, Barker Center, Thompson Room

8:45 - 9:00: Welcome by Organizers and Announcements

Session One: 9:00-10:00 a.m.

Nollaig Ó Gadhra
Conradh na Gaeilge

What Future for the Irish Gaeltacht Communities in the 21st Century?

This paper will seek to update the main developments in the various traditional Irish -speaking communities-the Irish Gaeltacht communities in counties Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, Cork and Waterford, as well as the "new" Gaeltacht colony established in the 1930's in Co. Meath, some 35 miles from Dublin. A paper on the fate of Irish as a living community language at the 1999 Colloquium (published in Studies, Dublin, vol. 90, no. 360 - Winter 2001) suggested there was need for urgent action by Irish Government and other authorities if Irish was to survive as a living community vernacular in the new century. This led to some attention being given to the problem at local, national, and E.U. level. This paper will review various developments and changes since then, including the establishment of a Gaeltacht Commission which reported in 2002, and the conduct of a campaign to get Irish recognized as a working language in Europe on the same basis as the languages of the new East European states who joined the E.U. on May 1st last. But it will rely primarily on the latest (2003) Gaeltacht primary school language statistics comparing these with the figures for 1997-98 in my last lecture if only because I suggested that the 5-6 year primary school cycle should be a crucial planning aid and measuring instrument on the realistic position of Irish as a community vernacular as we approach the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.

Paul André Bempéchat
Harvard University

The Abergavenney Eisteddfod of 1838 and the Birth of Barzaz Breiz

In September 1838, a ferry linking Saint-Malo and Southampton transported a merry group of seven Breton literati and aristocrats towards Abergavenny where, as official emissaries of King Louis-Philippe and under the patronage of the Cymdeithas Cymreigyddion y Fenni (The Society of Welsh-Speaking Abergavennians), they had been invited to rekindle and restore their Celtic brotherhood at the ensuing Eisteddfod. The group, in effect, traced, albeit by travelling in the opposite direction, the migratory route of Brittany's founding ancestors centuries earlier. Among the Breton dignitaries was the young Vicomte Hersart de La Villemarqué who, already renowned at 23 for his faithful transcriptions of ancient Breton poetry, was to be honoured and be crowned a Bard. It was this momentous, catalytic event that inspired La Villemarqué to create Barzaz Breiz ("Songs and Ballands of Brittany"). Published in 1838, the volume's initial impact was so great that it was immediately translated into a number of European languages, and within several short years, it was considered among the greatest volumes of European folklore; in turn, La Villemarqué ranked alongside the greatest ethnographers and literary folklorists of the times. Barzaz Breiz became the cornerstone and emblem of Brittany's cultural renaissance and the impetus of her increasing nationalistic fervour.

Break 10:00-10:15

Session Two: 10:15-11:45

Hugh Fogarty
Celtic Department, Harvard University

Aided Guill meic Carbada 7 Aided Gairb Glinne Rígi: Genre and Innovation

The Middle Irish saga Aided Guill meic Carbada 7 Aided Gairb Glinne Rígi (The Violent Deaths of Goll mac Carbada and of Garb of Glenn Ríge) is a late contribution to the Ulster Cycle. The saga's title identifies it as a tale belonging to the aided (violent death) category of medieval Irish learned taxonomy. In this paper, I propose to examine Aided Guill in terms of the aided-category, and to present some of its significant departures from the norms of the type as instances of possible generic innovation.

Geraldine Parsons
Department. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Cambridge University

Acallam na Senórach as Prosimetrum

The prosimetric nature of the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Acallam na Senórach is often noted but rarely discussed in detail. This paper will consider the relationship between the text's poetry and prose, with a view to commenting on how the text was put together. The paper has, therefore, a notable precursor in James Carney's well-known work on two of the poems of the Acallam, Turus acam día hAíne and Géisid Cuan.* However, Carney's conclusions that in the Acallam "the interweaving of the old poetry and the newly created prose was not done very skillfully" will be challenged.

*J. Carney, "Two poems from Acallam na Senórach", in Celtic Studies:
Essays in Memory of Angus Matheson 1912-62, ed. by J. Carney and D.
Greene (London, 1968), pp. 22-32,(24).


Elizabeth Schoales
University of Wales, Lampeter

Welsh Prophetic Poetry in the Age of the Princes

It has traditionally been held that prophetic poetry in Wales served to rally support amongst all levels of society for the military exploits of various Welsh leaders, culminating in the victory of Henry Tudor in 1485. This paper reconsiders the function of these poems, arguing that throughout most of the Middle Ages, prophetic poetry served instead as praise poetry, alongside the more traditional panegyric of the Gogynfeirdd, and poets of the uchelwyr. It was not until late in its development, when internal and external circumstances necessitated change, that this body of poetry developed into a form of self-promotion and hegemony amongst the uchelwyr.

Break: 11:45-12:00

Session Three: 12:00-1:30

Helen Fulton
English Department., University of Sydney

Class and Nation: Defining the English in Medieval Welsh Poetry

Relations between the Welsh and the English in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Wales were characterized by ambivalence and opportunism. To the nobility of Wales, the English ruling establishment offered social advancement and a well-developed consumer culture, but at the same time it infringed traditional Welsh privileges and cultural practices. This paper looks at the evidence of English-Welsh interactions found in medieval court poetry and argues that these interactions are often predicated on differences of class rather than on differences of nation.

Sally Harper
University of Wales, Bangor

Re-evaluating the roots of Welsh music: the function of the narrative prologue

A sixteenth-century document dealing with the theoretical features of early Welsh music for harp and crwth opens with a narrative prologue, which claims that such music was first codified by a council of musicians meeting in Ireland in the early twelfth century. Closer examination reveals a significant model: the detail bears a strong resemblance to the prologue to the Welsh Lawbooks. Just as Hywel ap Cadell is said to have summoned the wisest men in the land to codify Welsh law, Muirchertach Ua Briain, king of Munster, presides over the codification of Welsh music.

Katherine Olson
Celtic Department. Harvard University

Lay Piety in Late Medieval Wales Revisited

This paper will consider particular characteristics of the lay religious experience in Wales in the Later Middle Ages until the eve of the Reformation. The paper will focus mainly on more well-to-do laymen and women, examining aspects of piety in daily life, such as attending services; gifts to the parish church and communal piety in guilds; other outward acts of piety such as pilgrimages, acts of charity; wills and deathbed bequests. The evidence used will be both literary and historical: poetry, religious prose, wills, deeds, ecclesiastical records. These will help to construct a picture of aspects of lay piety in Wales at this crucial juncture.

Lunch: 1:30-2:30

2:30-2:45: Announcements

Session Four: 2:45-4:15

Charlene Shipman
Celtic Department, Harvard University

The Glossing of Cáin Lánamna

The only complete version of the medieval Irish law tract on marriage and divorce law, Cáin Lánamna (CL), exists in Trinity College, Dublin, MS H.2.15A. The tract, together with some of the glosses and commentary, was copied by two alternating scribes in the fourteenth century. To date, there has not been a detailed analysis determining the exact number of glossators. This paper will examine the glossing of CL and offer an analysis of the hands involved in the glossing of this law tract.

Benjamin Bruch
Celtic Department, Harvard University

Nag vs y far / An barz ma ze bons tamar: The Charter Endorsement and the Origins of Middle Cornish Prosody

Some 127 years after its rediscovery, scholars still disagree about whether the Middle Cornish Charter Endorsement represents a fragment or a full text, a secular poem or a sacred play, a rough draft or a polished final product. One thing is certain, however: this text, the oldest known example of Middle Cornish verse, does not follow many of the 'rules' of prosody which apply to later works. This paper will analyze the unusual metrical features of the Charter Endorsement, and will discuss what these divergences suggest about the nature of this particular text, and about the development of Middle Cornish prosody as a whole.

Iestyn Daniel
Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales

Re-examining the Date, Origin and Authorship of the Native Welsh Tales

The eight Welsh native tales (the Mabinogion) have traditionally been considered the product of different times, places and authors. However, in the mid-thirteenth-century mystical prose treatise Ymborth yr Enaid strong stylistic similarities can be seen in parts to the tales, especially Owain and Breuddwyd Maxen, which justify asking whether there might be a link between its date origin and authorship and those of the tales.
At the same time, certain specific similarities can be observed between the tales, especially in the opening episodes of Pwyll and Geraint, and it is seriously considered whether some of them-excepting Breuddwyd Rhonabwy which appears to be a reductio ad absurdum of the other tales-could be the product of the same author.
In view, therefore, of the similarities between the treatise and the tales, the former may share a common date, origin and authorship with some of the latter. The treatise seems to have been composed c. 1250 at the Dominican friary at Bangor (Gwynedd) by a Dominican friar, and there is increasing evidence to suggest that some of the tales emanate from the same general area around roughly the same time.

Break: 4:15-4:30

Session Five: 4:30-6:00

Nancy Edwards
Department. of History and Welsh History
University of Wales, Bangor

Early Medieval Sculpture in South-West Wales: Research Directions

This paper will examine some of the major results of an inter-disciplinary research project to record the early medieval inscribed stones and stone sculpture of South-West Wales c 400-1100. It will focus on discussion of some new discoveries, the use of antiquarian records, the importance of context and future preservation.

Gene Haley
Celtic Department, Harvard University and Boston College

Hunting Dam Derg

This placename from the hero-list in the Tochestol Ulad section of the Táin also occurs as a battle site in the Irish annals. It appears as well in the Agallamh where, as Loch Daim Deirg, it features an early Christian monastic settlement on its one island. Caoilte says it is located in the territory of the Dál nAraide, and was named for a giant red stag chased north from Munster by himself and two of Finn Mac Cumhail's best hunters. In addition, he gives us numerous local landmarks and the dindshenchas appropriate to them. The present paper looks at possible locations for the lough, makes a case for the probability of one of them, and considers some ramifications for medieval Irish literature and history.

Roxanne Reddington-Wilde
BA Department, Cambridge College (MA)

'For the Standing of the House': Scottish Clans and their fit with Anthropology

Clan Gregor, Clan Campbell, Clan Donald… all are names of Highland clans with histories to match. But the term "clan" has been adopted by anthropologists to refer to a specific form of kin-based social organization. Were these original Scottish kin groups "clans" in the modern anthropological sense? Does Levi-Strauss' model of a "house society" better describe the particular features of Highland clans at the height of their power in the Early Modern era of the 17th and 18th centuries? These questions will be explored drawing upon clan histories, genealogies, Gaelic poetry and Scots legal records.


Saturday October 9, 2004

8:00 - 8:45: coffee

8:45 - 9:00: announcements

Session Six: 9:00 -10:00

Brian Frykenberg
Museum of Printing, Andover, MA

The Figure of Sweeney in Early Irish Literature

The figure of "Mad Sweeney" (Suibne Geilt) has appealed to many recent writers and artists as expressing an authentic voice of early Irish poetic tradition. Academic interpretations of Suibne and his story have likewise been rich and multifarious. Considering various scholarly points of view, this paper probes aspects of the early texts which touch upon Suibne in order to clarify how these historical sources characterize the wild and demented recluse.

Laurance J. Maney
Celtic Department, Harvard University

"I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight" - looking for Arthur in all the wrong places

With German and English Arthurs joining their Welsh counterpart in the UWP catalogue, the time is ripe for a new search for the historical basis of the legend. Unlike prior efforts that have foundered on the impossible task of explaining the victory at Mons Badonis claimed for Arthur by the early ninth-century Historia Brittonum in the context of Gildas' non-reference to Arthur in De Excidio Brittaniae the following will locate both a suitable candidate on whose memory the legend was likely based but also a line of transmission for that memory to have migrated from the British North of the late sixth-century to early ninth-century Gwynedd court of Merfyn Frych for whom the Historia Brittonum was compiled.

Break: 10:00 - 10:15

Session Seven: 10:15-11:45

Philip Freeman
Classics Department, Luther College

The Celts in Egypt

The long tradition of Celtic diasporas did not begin with the wanderings of Columbanus and Fursa in the Middle Ages, but with the migrations of Celtic-speaking individuals and populations during the Greco-Roman period. One of the most distant destinations for traveling Celts was Egypt. Beginning in the Hellenistic period, large groups of Galatians and other Celts made their way to the lands by the Nile River and settled there, forming a distinct but little-known segment of the Egyptian population. This paper will explore the literary and epigraphic evidence for the ancient Celts of Egypt.

Manuel Alberro
Co-Editor, e-Keltoi vol. 6, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

The Celticity of Galicia, Spain, and the Arrival of Celtic Peoples from Britain in the Fifth Century AD

The Position of Galicia within the Celtic world has long been the subject of contention: scholars describing the region's Celtic heritage, but with the institutions of Pan-Celticism pointing to the region's failure to meet the "linguistic criterion". This has not prevented an increasingly self-confident and assertive Galicia from proclaiming a self-defined Celtic identity which has found its expression today in a range of musical festivals and other cultural activities. The Celts emerged in the Iberian Peninsula several centuries BC, a fact substantiated by historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence. Hill-forts with round houses, gold torques, and other jewels found inside them, and, among other things, Celtic place-names, denote their presence in Galicia. That presence was reinforced by the arrival of Briton-Celtic peoples from southern Britain in the fifth century AD. This paper focuses on the latter as a key event in the construction of Celtic Galicia and a possible explanation for the strong feeling of celticity still found in the region.

Joseph Eska
English Department, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

Spelling Celtic the Roman way: An orthographic solution to a linguistic problem

While there is general consensus that the Hispano-Celtic form LVGVEI is the dative singular of the divine name Lugus, there is none at all about what its orthography represents phonologically and morphologically; from the proto-Celtic perspective, the form should appear as orthographic *<LVGOVEI>. Various types of analogies or paradigm shifts, none of them compelling, have been proposed to account for the attested orthography. This paper will demonstrate that the attested form is phonologically and morphologically regular when one takes account of an oft-attested, though sporadically implemented, Hispano-Celtic sound change and the Roman orthographic convention known as 'economic spelling'. This is yet another example in which ancient epigraphists got things exactly right, while modern commentators have sought to find error or difficulty where none exists.

Break: 11:45-12:00

Session Eight 12:00-1:30

Amy C. Eichhorn-Mulligan
University of Michigan

Togail Bruidne Da Derga and the Politics of Anatomy

Togail Bruidne Da Derga demonstrates an intense interest in bodies: the tale opens with a lingering description, unparalleled in comprehensiveness, of the body of beautiful Étaín, and closes with the fragmented form of the geis-defeated king, the symbolic locus of power, the head, severed from his body. In between those two narrative points, some of early Irish literature's most fantastic forms are encountered - the three Deirgs, the grotesque couple Fer Caille and Cichuil, the hag Cailb, and the giant champion, Mac Cécht, whose anatomy is depicted in terms of the landscape that ultimately defeats his king. How do these bodies uphold, undermine and manipulate the political symbolism of the whole, healthy anatomy? In what manner does the Body Politic work its way across the text? This paper will explore these issues, and attempt to come to some conclusions about the unique body logic that informs Togail Bruidne Da Derga.

Brenda M. Gray
Glen Burnie, MD

Reading Aislinge Óenguso as a Christian Parable

Aislinge Óenguso is conventionally read as a love story. This paper argues instead that it is a Christian parable on the spiritual journey of the soul, and an allegory on divine love. It echoes an ancient narrative that entered Medieval Christian literature through the works of the Church Fathers, notably Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine. In this light, tropes such as Óengus' unexplained silence and Caer's puzzling nature may be understood as devices prompting audiences to question the text and seek out its message. The paper examines the story's parable form, the provenance of its symbolism, and the meaning of its allegory.

Brian Ó Broin
William Paterson University

Narratological Theory and the Apparently Anonymous Narrator of Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille

Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille challenges the Irish-speaking reader, too-often used to derivative and traditional fiction, by removing both plot and narrator. This paper shows that Ó Cadhain nevertheless places the reader in a virtual location that replaces narration and follows a temporal logic that gives readers a certain sense of plot-development. It is through this pseudo-narrator's careful positioning of the reader that we are afforded any sense of consecutive order. Indeed, we realize that many stories are presented in this work: Cré na Cille employs multiple unreliable narrators - the graveyard residents themselves - to impart the stories of their lives above ground.

LUNCH: 1:30-2:30

Announcements: 2:30-2:45

Session Nine: 2:45-4:15

Kelly Fitzgerald,
Department of Irish Folklore, University College Dublin

"I Can See Nothing Wrong with your Ears": Labraid Loingsech and Saint Brigit

Labraid Loingsech features in early Irish literature and, though there are no literary tales involving his fellow Leinster figure, St. Brigit, oral tradition has created a narrative that involves both characters in an inter-relationship essential to their development in the Irish consciousness. This paper will explore the relationship between the two of them.

Margo GriffinWilson
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Mythological and Local Landscapes: An analysis of Iomdha sgéimh ar chur na cluana

Iomdha sgéimh ar chur na cluana, one of two wedding crosántacht composed by Dáibhí Ó Bruadair in the seventeenth century, celebrates the marriage of Úna de Búrc and Dominick Roche in Cahirmoyle, County Limerick. The purpose of this paper is to show how the poet's language brings together a traditional understanding of marriage, which emphasizes a joining of the couple, lineages and lands, with the contemporary reality of dispossession, which was increasingly manifested in the local landscape. The analysis will focus on two moments: a sequence of verse which depicts the sexual union of the couple in a fruitful territory, and a prose passage in which the druid Mogh Ruith's magical release of the streams of Munster is juxtaposed to a contemporary account of a New English planter carving out his local estate. While the two passages differ in topic and style, the prose reiterates a theme of fertility articulated in the verse and, at the same time, exposes the antithetical values of the expanding colonial culture.

Juliette Wood
School of Welsh, Cardiff University

Boudicca Redivivus: Creating a Female Hero

The heroic process has been a central concern for many literary scholars, cultural historians and classicists and if the number of recent films is any indication, it is becoming more prominent again in popular culture as well. What makes Boudicca particularly interesting is the context in which her character develops. We see her through the often distorting lens of Roman history, Scottish chronicles, Tudor and Victorian politics and the Internet. Although not a folk heroine, she is no less interesting as a symbolic leader and the unusual context in which she is defined adds a dimension to the complex heroic process. Understanding how her heroism has been constructed is interesting in itself and adds to our understanding of the ever-changing nature of the hero.


Break: 4:15-4:30

Session Ten: 4:30-6:00

Michael Newton
University of Richmond, School of Continuing Studies

Towards a Profile of Scottish Gaelic in the Cape Fear Area

During the eighteenth century, the Cape Fear Valley of the Carolinas became the largest settlement of Scottish Gaels outside Scotland itself, with an estimated population of somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000. The migration of communities of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders began in 1739, and reached peak levels in the decade before the American Revolution. Although hostilities between Britain and the American colonies put a temporary halt to immigration, and many Highlanders in the Cape Fear area left the newly formed United States due to fighting as Loyalists on behalf of the British Crown, the Gaelic nature of the settlement remained intact, and further Highland families continued to arrive until the 1830s. Although a few of the first generation of colonists spoke some form of English, they all spoke Gaelic, most of them exclusively. Yet, by the end of the nineteenth century, within the lifetimes of some of the final immigrants, Gaelic was dead as community language. This paper will examine and analyze the evidence about Scottish Gaelic in the Cape Fear area, attempting to account for language shift and other sociolinguistic phenomena.

Michael Linkletter
Celtic Department, Harvard University

Alexander Maclean Sinclair: A 19th-century Nova Scotian Gaelic Scholar

Alexander Maclean Sinclair, grandson of the well-known Gaelic poet John Maclean, Bard to the Laird of Coll, who immigrated to Nova Scotia in 1819, is himself well known in the Scottish Gaelic world for his many books of poetry. Besides using the two manuscripts that his grandfather brought with him from Scotland as source material for his books, Maclean Sinclair also collected a substantial amount of material from informants in the Canadian Maritimes as well as Scotland. The many letters that he received during his lifetime as correspondent, now housed in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia (PANS), include interesting letters from well-known Gaelic poets and scholars of his time. This paper will look at his life in brief, but will mainly focus on the letters in PANS as a source of information that can shed light not only on Maclean Sinclair's work, but also on the work of other late-nineteenth-century Gaelic figures.

Lenora Timm
Department. of Linguistics, University of California, Davis

Hon ene hag hon zelen ('Our soul and our harp'): Representations of Breton nationalism in 19th century Breton (mainly)-language poetry

Primordial links between language and nationalism proposed in the 18th century led to intellectual and political movements throughout Europe that we know today as "linguistic nationalism". The early to mid-19th century was a time of reawakening of interest among intellectual/artistic circles in Brittany in their Celtic ancestry, leading ultimately to an important anthology of poetry-Les bardes et poetes nationaux de la Bretagne armoricaine (1919)-a compendium of the leading poets of nationalist inspiration of the day. Drawing on this source, I will illustrate representations of Breton nationalism, and especially its links to language, as portrayed by "militant" poets of the era, and will compare these with some nationalistic poets of today.


Sunday October 10, 2004

8:00-8:45 Coffee

8:45-9:00 Announcements

Session Eleven: 9:00-10:00

Mike Cronin
Department of History, De Montfort University Leicester
Brian Ó Conchubhair
Keough Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame

Cricket and Ireland : Foreign Games in a Native Tongue

This paper examines the sport of cricket, and its links with Ireland and the Irish language. Cricket is a minor sport in Ireland today, but before the cultural revival and the ban on 'foreign' games by the Gaelic Athletic Association (1885), cricket was the single most popular pastime in the country. Given the apparent incompatibility of the rediscovery of Irish, as part of the nationalist and cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, and cricket, as the symbolic game of the empire, the paper will explore if the terms that define the sport as a model of Britishness entered the Irish language.
In Britain and other cricket playing nations the language of cricket has entered everyday language as metaphors for positive gentlemanly and essential imperialist values (see for example John Eddowes The Language of Cricket, Manchester: Carcanet, 1997, or, for the Indian adoption of such language, "Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field", The Indian History of a British Sport, London: Picador, 2002). This paper will attempt to shed light on whether the language of a 'foreign' game entered Irish and draw conclusions as to what this may reveal about nineteenth-century popular and linguistic culture.

Llion Jones
Department of Communication & Media, University of Wales, Bangor

Where yo' goin' bud? A poet in transit: Reflections on the travel journals of T.H. Parry-Williams

Widely regarded as one of the greatest literary figures of twentieth century Wales, one of the most intriguing aspects of T.H. Parry-Williams's long and distinguished career are the two momentous journeys he undertook by himself to the Americas, in 1925 and 1935 respectively. Both adventures were chronicled by the poet in detailed travel diaries, from which the two renowned series of Rhigymau Taith (Travel Verses) were gleaned. The aim of this paper is to explore the manner in which these largely unpublished travel journals throw light upon matters which are central to our understanding of Parry-Williams's literary work.

Break: 10:00-10:15

Session Twelve: 10:15-11:15

Axel Klein
Bonn, Germany

Celtic Legends in Irish Opera, 1900-1930

Whereas the influence of the theater and of music in shaping Irish cultural identity around 1900 is well-known, very little research has so far been devoted to the combination of the two in the form of opera. This contribution focuses on works treating Celtic legends such as Echtrae Connlaí, the Children of Lir and Deirdre of the Sorrows, or which use plots and figures of a pseudo-Celtic kind, including a libretto by Douglas Hyde. Besides introducing a number of key works and their archival remains some possible reasons for why these works fell into oblivion are suggested.

Gerwyn Wiliams
Reader in Department of Welsh Language and Literature
University of Wales, Bangor

Our War? The 1982 Conflict in the South Atlantic: A Case Study in Nationhood and Identity

Published in 2003, Rhyfel Ni: Profiadau Cymreig o Ddwy Ochr Rhyfel y Falklands/Malvinas (Our War: Welsh Experiences from both Sides of the Falklands/Malvinas War) by the investigative journalist Ioan Roberts is a fascinating study of the 1982 conflict. It shows how Patagonians of Welsh descent were pitted against Welsh soldiers and considers their predicament. It also throws light upon issues related to nationhood and identity, as well as the plight of Welsh servicemen in the British armed forces. In addition, this pioneering volume helps provide a context for the Welsh literary response to the war.

Break: 11:15-11:30

Session Thirteen: 11:30-1:00

Daniel Williams
English Department, University of Wales, Swansea

Race, Language and Identity: Samuel Roberts and the Miscegenation Debates of 1864

Sidney Kaplan ( "The Miscegenation Issue in the Election of 1864," Journal of Negro History 34.3 (July 1949): 274 - 343) has discussed the role of the "miscegenation debate" in the 1864 election in the United States. It is a little known fact, however, that Samuel Roberts, Llanbrynmair (1800 - 1885), who had settled in Tennessee in 1857, published a hugely controversial essay in Welsh, advocating miscegenation in 1864. Often considered a proto-nationalist, Roberts argued for the eradication of all nationalist feelings when his liberalism came face to face with American racial tensions at the time of the Civil War. This paper explores the cultural and political significance of Roberts's explosive essay.

Philip O'Leary
Boston College, Irish Studies

Stepping Out with Carman Miranda: Gaelic Uses of Ancient Irish Literature, 1940-51

Considering the brilliant success with which Flann O'Brien brought Fionn mac Cumhaill and Suibne Geilt alive in modern Dublin in his 1939 novel At Swim-Two-Birds, it would hardly be surprising if writers of Irish in the 1940s were too intimidated to attempt their own creative re-workings of material from early Irish literature. Such was not, however, the case. Much of the Gaelic work in this area continued, as always, to focus on the provision of adaptations of early texts into a more accessible modern Irish adaptations like Niall Ó Domhnaill's Seanchas na Féinne (1942-3); Seamus Ó Searchaigh's Sgéalta as an tSean-Litridheacht (1945), and Cormac Ó Cadhlaigh's Diarmaid Mac Cearbhaill (1950). (This emphasis on making texts available in a popular form in Irish was to lead to regular and rather vitriolic Gaelic criticism of Ireland's academic establishment, particularly as represented by the School of Celtic Studies in the new Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.)
Of greater interest than such functional adaptations were genuine creative re-shapings of the source material. Some of these, like Séamus Ó hAodh's An tAos Dána (1940), a play based on Tromdamh Guaire, and Éamonn Ó Góilidhe's Deirdre play Ceithre Géaga Glasa (1941) were fairly straightforward attempts to exploit a good story for the stage. But other writers followed the iconoclastic lead of Flann O'Brien and put the ancient heroes into a series of intriguing, implausible, and at times hilarious, situations. Most notable of such works were Flann's brother Ciarán Ó Nuallain's comic story of the horse-eared king Labraid Lorc visiting a barber shop in contemporary Dublin (1946); Cathal Ó Sándair's Réics Carló san Aifric (1951), in which the famed Harcourt Street detective comes on a lost tribe of Fionn's Fianna in the jungles of Africa; and the various geamaireachtaí or pantomimes staged at the Abbey Theatre and Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, extravaganzas in which Cú Chulainn, Fionn, et al. travel the world, date Hollywood starlets, and end Partition. This paper will discuss Gaelic thinking about the meaning and potential uses of the ancient literature for modern writers of Irish as well as offering a quick look at some of the works that literature inspired.

Margaret McAllister
Music Department, Boston College

A Process of Musical Discovery: Musical Metaphor and Meaning in the setting of contemporary Gaelic poetry.

With the exception of James Dillon and William Sweeney the setting of contemporary Gaelic poetry has remained the province of traditional musicians and is largely unexplored by classical composers in Scotland. The presentation of this paper will include the premiere of a new musical composition: a setting of Gaelic texts by distinguished Scottish poet Ahongas Macneacail. The paper will explore dialectical and synthetic interaction between the text and music, correspondences between contemporary and archaic syntax in both sound and words, the dichotomy of high art vs. folk art, and the cultural implications of Gaelic settings being performed in the classical concert hall.

1:00 Closing Remarks

 

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