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 9, 2008
5:00 p.m.
~ John V. Kelleher Lecture
Sponsored by the
Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures,
Harvard University Faculty Club Library, 20 Quincy
Street, Cambridge, MA
Professor Damian McManus
School of Irish & Celtic Languages
Trinity College, Dublin
“Good-Looking and Irresistible: The Irish Hero
from Early Saga to Classical Poetry”
~ This event is
open to the Public ~
Colloquium Sessions
October 10, 2008
Dydd Gwener / Dé hAoine / Friday
9:00-10:30 a.m. Session One
D. Graham Aubrey(Australian Institute of Celtic Studies) The Influence of 19th c. Anthologies of Celtic Music in Redefining Celtic Nationalism
Dan Milner (Hunter College) Irish Songs from New York’s Early Entertainment Emporiums
Eva Guillorel(CERHIO- Université Rennes 2) When Historians Study Breton Oral Ballads: A Cultural Approach
10:45-11:45 a.m. Session Two
Philip O’Leary (Boston
College) Mici Muc v. Mickey Mouse: Gaelic Attitudes toward the Cinema in the 1940s
Stephen Regan(University of Durham) Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Irish Blackbird
12:00-1:00 p.m. Session Three
Timothy P. Bridgman(Binghamton University) Names and Naming Conventions of Celtic Peoples in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico
Philip Freeman (Luther College) Alexander the Great and the Celts
2:30-4:00 p.m. Session Four
Gruffydd Aled Williams(Aberystwyth University) Towards a Welsh Renaissance Ars Poetica
Aled Llion Jones (Harvard University) Two Impossibilities Together as One: Some Thoughts on Bilingualism
Adrian Morgan (Aberystwyth University) The Beginnings of Welsh Witchcraft: Robert Holland and the Dialogue of Tudur and Goronw
4:15-5:45 p.m. Session Five
Karen Eileen Overbey(Tufts University) Clothes Make the (Holy) Man: Clothing Relics in Medieval Ireland
Sabine Heinz(Humboldt Universität - Berlin) The British Tristan Tradition
Sarah Zeiser(Harvard University) Performing a Literary Paternity Test: The Bonedd yr Arwyr and the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
FRIDAY'S ABSTRACTS
October 10, 2008
Dydd Gwener / Dé hAoine / Friday
9:00-10:30 a.m. Session One
D. Graham Aubrey(Australian Institute of Celtic Studies) The Influence of 19th c. Anthologies of Celtic Music in Redefining Celtic Nationalism
The nineteenth century saw great improvements in the printing of anthologies of traditional Celtic songs. They affected Celtic society at all levels, but overall, the effect was to create a sense of pride amongst the inhabitants of the Celtic lands, which ultimately led to a redefined sense of nationalism. Moreover, for those natives who voluntarily emigrated from Celtic countries, and those who endured forced emigration, these anthologies were an indispensable link to their homelands. This presentation examines and offers suggestions as to why this should be so, and how the literary world in particular contributed to the rising concept of Celtic nationalism. Political influences are considered when assessing the compilation of the anthologies, as are other external factors, which had an influence on their publication.
Dan Milner (Hunter College) Irish Songs from New York’s Early Entertainment Emporiums
Clustered around the Bowery and Five Points, mid-19th century New York’s Sixth Ward entertainment mecca was just a short jaunt from South’s Street’s bustling wharves. The concert saloons and other music emporiums established there came into being because of the huge changes that occurred in the city following the opening of the Erie Canal, including greatly increased immigration from Ireland. Many workers from these groups were of Irish birth or descent so Irish songs were a major staple of the musical diet. Songs from these venues reveal a repertoire in which realist lyrics reflecting everyday life and plebian themes competed with escapist songs intended to remove patrons from daily drudgeries and difficult surroundings. Many of the former are examples of Irish-American folk culture inasmuch as Irish New Yorkers laboring at various maritime trades accepted them as genuine expressions of their community. Numerous composer-performers of these early American popular songs had risen to the stage only after considerable experience at laboring jobs. Edward Harrigan of Harrigan & Hart was both a caulker and a seaman. “Drill Ye Tarriers, Drill” was written by vaudeville singer, Thomas F. Casey, whose research work included blasting out railroad tunnels. Embraced by common people of the 19th century, these musical pieces paint a vivid picture of the true interests and real conditions of urban Irish laborers during an important period in America’s quest to define itself.
Eva Guillorel(CERHIO- Université Rennes 2) When Historians Study Breton Oral Ballads: A Cultural Approach
Since the 19th century, and particularly since the successful edition of Barzaz-Breiz by La Villemarqué in 1839, historians have been very interested in Breton oral ballads, or gwerzioù. These songs were considered as precious documents to write a Breton national history from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. The folklorists and historians that studied them focused their analyses on a few particular songs in order to date them thanks to information concerning names, places, or events that fit with real facts and people. While this approach is interesting, it obviously has its limits: it is uncommon to find written documents corresponding precisely with stories of gwerzioù, because these ballads often talk about local events that did not necessarily leave written traces, and moreover, the conservation of archival material is partial and uncertain. In the 70s, historians developed a new orientation called “history of mentalities” and later “cultural history.” I would like to show how the analysis of Breton ballads can be completely renewed in this perspective. The problem is no more to date songs, one by one, in accordance with the events they talk about and by comparison with written documents. But we can try to date them by considering cultural elements like social behavior, religious beliefs, or material culture. What we date is not the song itself, but the elements we can find in versions collected since the 19th century. Almost all these elements are linked to the 15th-18th centuries Breton context.
10:45-11:45 a.m. Session Two
Philip O’Leary (Boston
College) Mici Muc v. Mickey Mouse: Gaelic Attitudes toward the Cinema in the 1940s
In a line oddly reminiscent of Myles na gCopaleen's An Béal Bocht, John Gerrard wrote in 1947: “In the purest Gaeltachts of Kerry, Connemara and Donegal you will find the young folk undertaking lengthy journeys, tramping, cycling and even rowing miles to see a picture show.” For many - perhaps a majority - in the Irish language movement this was a great problem. But others like Liam O Laoghaire and Proinsias O Conluain saw the screen as a real opportunity to bring the language to the masses. This paper will investigate both sides of this debate within the movement as well as what, if anything, was actually accomplished to Gaelicize the cinema.
Stephen Regan(University of Durham) Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Irish Blackbird
One of the most influential Irish poems, and one of the most frequently translated, is a very short lyric, usually referred to as “The Blackbird at Belfast Lough.” This tiny haiku-like poem is probably the earliest reference to Belfast in poetry. It comes from the ninth century, and it is thought to have been written by a scribe in the margin of an ecclesiastical text in the monastery of Bangor. The poem is mentioned two centuries later in a study of Irish verse forms and metrics, and in recent times it has prompted numerous translations and versions by poets such as Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and Ciaran Carson. The paper will address the use of English by Irish writers. It will ask a number of questions that have both formal and political implications. What kind of English might be deemed appropriate by Irish writers? Is there a particular model of Irish English or Hiberno-English that poets in Ireland have tended to use? Have the verse forms and rhythmic patterns of old Irish verse shaped modern Irish poetry in English in certain ways? And how might translation from the Irish have influenced the practice of modern Irish poets?
12:00-1:00 p.m. Session Three
Timothy P. Bridgman(Binghamton University) Names and Naming Conventions of Celtic Peoples in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico
From the fragments of Hecataeus of Miletus, the first ancient author to mention the Celts whose works have come down to us, although in extremely fragmentary form, ancient authors mentioned many names of Celtic social groupings that modern classicists, celticists and historians have considered "tribes," "peoples," or some kind of "social units." In analyzing these names, one recognizes certain tendencies on the part of ancient authors concerning names and naming conventions. Ancient authors used names some of which are possible to analyze and understand through what has come down to us of ancient continental Celtic languages and dialects, names that were in all probability never used by the Celts themselves which describe an activity or trait of character, and names that modern classicists, historians, and linguists are unable to analyze and about which they know little or nothing. This paper seeks to focus on names and naming conventions in Caesar's De Bello Gallico so as to ascertain if this author continued these naming tendencies and conventions or whether he changed them or whether he chose to use a mixture of these two approaches. This paper will also deal with transmission consistency.
Philip Freeman (Luther College) Alexander the Great and the Celts
In the year 335 BCE, just before he began his grand invasion of Asia, the young Alexander of Macedon staged a lightning campaign against the Illyrians and Scythians who threatened his northern borders. On the banks of the Danube he was met by an embassy of Celts who had journeyed to his camp seeking good will and friendship. Alexander entertained his visitors royally and asked what on earth they feared the most. Their answer—which has parallels in medieval Irish epic literature—shocked and offended Alexander. This brief encounter is recorded by Alexander’s boyhood companion Ptolemy, who would later found a dynasty in Egypt ending with Cleopatra. In my presentation I will examine the historicity of Ptolemy’s account and place the passage within the context of early Celtic history.
2:30-4:00 p.m. Session Four
Gruffydd Aled Williams(Aberystwyth University) Towards a Welsh Renaissance Ars Poetica
In the sixteenth century Welsh poetry was still dominated by professional bards whose output consisted mostly of time-honored and well-worn genres, predominantly eulogies and elegies addressed to gentry patrons. This, however, was a time of expanding cultural horizons when humanist education, the circulation of printed books and personal experience of cultural centers outside Wales-- both in England and continental Europe-- brought an educated elite of Welshmen into contact with assumptions about the nature and purpose of poetry and examples of poetic practice which were far removed from those which prevailed in their native land. Inevitably, they compared the poetic tradition of Wales, explicitly or implicitly finding it wanting, with poetic fashions current in Renaissance Europe and sanctioned by humanist criticism. This paper attempts to bring together the various strands in the humanist critique of Welsh poetic tradition and practice, examining their antecedents and affinities and considering whether they can in any way be considered a coherent whole approximating to a Welsh Renaissance Ars Poetica. The response of poetic practitioners in Wales to the promptings of the humanists will be considered, as will the validity and practicality of the humanist program given the social, political, and cultural realities of Tudor Wales.
Aled Llion Jones (Harvard University) Two Impossibilities Together as One: Some Thoughts on Bilingualism
This paper takes its starting point from a quotation taken out of context from Iwan Llwyd's poem, 'Mis Bach I' (February I)
mae'n bosib canu'r byd i gyd/ yn uniaith,/ mae'n bosib,/ dim ond i ni ein hunain ei wneud o
[it's possible to sing the whole world / monolingual(ly),/ it's possible,/ as long as we do it ourselves]
The discussion will consider a small number of recent works in Welsh, asking what it might mean to find a practical bilingualism and meaningful linguistic openness in one symbolic language.
Adrian Morgan (Aberystwyth University) The Beginnings of Welsh Witchcraft: Robert Holland and the Dialogue of Tudur and Goronw
Robert Holland was the only Renaissance demonologist to venture into print in the Welsh language. He was born in 1556/7 at Conwy, the third son of a gentleman, and went eventually to Cambridge and into the Church of England. He took his BA at Magdalene in 1577/8, was ordained in Bangor and spent much of his time as a preacher in parts of West Wales and as a schoolmaster in East Anglia. Holland commissioned George Owen Harry’s The genealogy of James, King of great Brittayne as a companion piece to his own translation of the Basilikon Doron by King James I. However, his greatest masterpiece was his dialogue on witchcraft, Ymddiddan Tudur a Gronw, which was presumably published at Oxford during the year 1600. This dialogue will be the subject of the paper. English academic interest in demonology and witchcraft clearly reached its climax at this time as many authors, such as Reginald Scot, George Gifford, Henry Holland (Robert’s younger brother), and even King James himself published texts of this nature. The paper will summarize the many obsessions relating to witchcraft in this period; it will provide an overview of Holland’s dialogue, arguing that the form of presentation was common enough since it enabled discussions to consist of question and answer routines of almost catechetic regularity; and, by comparing Holland’s dialogue with other works of this period, it will argue that his intentions were pastoral and didactic, not intellectual.
4:15-5:45 p.m. Session Five
Karen Eileen Overbey(Tufts University) Clothes Make the (Holy) Man: Clothing Relics in Medieval Ireland
The 8th century belt shrine from Moylough, Co. Galway, is the only extant medieval belt reliquary: it houses fragments of a garment associated with an unidentified saint. An ornate clasp allows the belt shrine to open, and the hinges between the segments suggest that it could have wrapped around the bodies of devotees, as do saints’ belts in hagiography. When saints’ belts, including the Moylough belt shrine, circled the bodies of supplicants, those bodies occupied the space of the saint’s body. This intimacy between relic and worshipper is unusual and, I argue in this paper, permits a kind of radical fusion between the body of the supplicant and the body of the saint. Those who were girded in this way became empowered beyond the healing miracles usually associated with relics: they changed their own social circumstances, or mastered their bodies, or modified natural laws. They performed, in many ways, as holy men and women themselves.
In addition to saint’s belts, other items of clothing were occasionally venerated as relics. The 15th century Shrine of St Brigit’s Shoe, for example, probably once held a cloth or leather slipper, and the chasuble of St Enda of Aran was enshrined as a treasure of his church. Other garments, usually cloaks or cowls, also performed miracles, often spreading out to protect people or land. In this paper I consider the physical and metaphysical spaces created by relics of saints’ clothing, and the ways in which worshippers imaginatively occupied - and traversed - those spaces.
Sabine Heinz(Humboldt Universität - Berlin) The British Tristan Tradition
Although the earliest Welsh Tristan story handed down to us cannot be dated before the 16th century (cf. MS Peniarth 96 1565/1616, MS 6 from 1550 etc.) the author of this presentation will show that the Ystoria Drystan developed during the Post-Roman period in Britain. This will be testified to by using an eclectic approach paying due attention to onomastics, in particular the name Drystan and its variants; hints given by continental writings on Tristan; indications provided by textual evidence of the various early continental Tristan stories, e.g. the geo-political background of the continental stories; the role of Arthur; the motif of the tree as well as the end of the Welsh story; its Welsh literary context and its compliance with Old Welsh law. As a result, it will be demonstrated that Wales had its own Tristan tradition which existed prior to and independently from the continental stories. There is, of course, reason to assume that the Welsh story might have influenced continental Tristan developments which, in turn, might later have re-shaped the existing Welsh tradition as perhaps seen in the fragment from the Black Book of Carmarthen, thus reflecting mutual cultural exchange in Anglo-Norman times. In this context, chronological difficulties in the Welsh evidence will also be considered.
Sarah Zeiser(Harvard University) Performing a Literary Paternity Test: The Bonedd yr Arwyr and the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi
Math uab Mathonwy is a text filled with unexplained mysteries and literary artifacts. It details the exploits and sexual transgressions of the family of Dôn, one of which is the false claim of virginity by Aranrhod. While undergoing a test of her chastity by the king and her uncle Math, she births one infant boy and another "small something," long taken to represent a fetus. Most readers have assumed that the father of these children, and in particular of Lleu, the second birth, is none other than her brother Gwydion. By closely examining the text and using the evidence of the late 15th century genealogy Bonedd yr Arwyr, it is possible to propose a different paternity for at least one of these births. Indeed, the Bonedd provides us with critical links which elucidate the confused and confusing family tree of Dôn.
Food, drink, and spontaneous musical performances.
The Kates Room in Warren House, directly opposite the Barker Center. Please walk up the stairs one floor,
where the door to the Kates Room will be directly opposite.
Free: all welcome.
Bring your pipes and dancing shoes!!!
October 11, 2008
Dydd Sadwrn/ Dé Sathairn / Saturday
9:30-11:00 a.m. Session Six
Bleddyn Owen Huws(Aberystwyth University) Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Trouble at an Inn and the medieval sermon
Patricia Malone(Harvard University) Se principem nominat:Rhetorical Self-fashioning and Epistolary Style in the Letters of Owain Gwynedd
Kassandra Conley(Harvard University) Duty and Nation: the Liminal Discourse of Adam of Usk
11:15-12:45 p.m. Session Seven
Edyta Lehmann(Harvard University) "And Thus I Willed It:" Queen Medb and The Will To Power
Daniel Ranbom(Aberystwyth University) The Giants who Dwarf Culhwch ac Olwen
Matthieu Boyd (Harvard University) Breuddwyd Rhonabwy and memoria
2:15-3:45 p.m. Session Eight
John T. Koch (Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies) “Tartessian”: The Newest and Oldest Celtic Language
Peadar O Muircheartaigh(University of Edinburgh) Getting (H)igh in Celtic Orthography
Keith Plaster(Harvard University) Rhyme in Old and Middle Irish Verse: A New Analysis
4:00-5:00 p.m. Session Nine
Nathalie Ginoux(Institut National d'archéologie préventive) Pendragon’s Ancestors
Sharon Paice MacLeod(Smith College) Abduction, Swordplay, Monsters and Mistrust: Findabair, Gwenhwyfar and the Restoration of Honour
5:15-6:45 p.m. Session Ten
Heather Laird(University College Cork) Time and the Translation of the Irish Brehon Laws
D. Blair Gibson(El Camino College) Celtic Democracy: Appreciating the Role Played by Alliances and Elections in Celtic Political Systems
Charlene M. Eska (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Harvard University) The Glossing of Trinity College, Dublin MS 1433 [E.3.5], pp. 1-20
SATURDAY'S ABSTRACTS
October 11, 2008
Dydd Sadwrn/ Dé Sathairn / Saturday
9:30-11:00 a.m. Session Six
Bleddyn Owen Huws (Aberystwyth University) Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Trouble at an Inn and the medieval sermon
This paper offers an interpretation of one of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s most well-known and popular comic poems, Trafferth mewn Tafarn (‘Trouble at an Inn’). Critics tend to read the poem as a parody of a moral lesson rather than as a serious moral lesson in itself. However, the contents and tone of the sangiadau which serve as a commentary on the dramatic narrative provides us with a subtle hint that the poem may after all have had a serious moral function. By drawing upon recent scholarly work on Latin sermons in later medieval England that contained humorous tales and jests similar to those we associate with the Old French fabliaux, this paper will explore Dafydd and his audience’s possible familiarity with the sort of comic tales employed by some preachers in fourteenth century exempla. Because of the poem’s emphasis on the sort of games young men love playing, this paper will also explore the possibility that the poet publicly focused on the moral implications of one kind of social behavior that could be branded by moralists as being lecherous. Instead of parodying the moral lesson in order to poke fun at the conventions of the Christian moral code, it will be suggested that the poem was perhaps intended to strengthen the lesson that it actually parodies.
Patricia Malone (Harvard University) Se principem nominat:Rhetorical Self-fashioning and Epistolary Style in the Letters of Owain Gwynedd
Owain Gwynedd, the prince of Gwynedd in North Wales who died in 1170, was among the most ambitious of the early medieval Welsh rulers. Not only was he the driving force behind the territorial expansion of Gwynedd during the twelfth century, he was also the first Welsh ruler to reach out to the Capetian court of France in a diplomatic effort to gain allies against the English king, Henry II. Three letters survive in which Owain communicates his concerns to the Capetian court: two addressed to Louis VII himself, and one to the king’s chancellor, Hugh de Champfleury. These letters are important not only as evidence of Owain Gwynedd’s extraordinarily intrepid diplomacy, but for the insight they give on the ways he conceived and represented his own identity. They provide the first evidence of a Welsh leader calling himself princeps, as well as some of the earliest examples of a Welsh ruler adopting terminology based on the Anglo-Saxon Wahl or Wealh, meaning “foreigner,” as a term of national self-reference. This paper will examine the epistolary style of these letters, which are composed according to the principles of ars dictaminis taught in continental schools, in order to suggest further insight into the techniques and strategies through which Owain Gwynedd fashioned his own identity for an appearance on the stage of international politics.
Kassandra Conley (Harvard University) Duty and Nation: the Liminal Discourse of Adam of Usk
Throughout the early years of the 15th century, political prophecy in both Wales and England centered on the figure of Owain Glyn Dwr, whether in the rhetoric of Yorkist partisans aligning the return of Richard II to Glyn Dwr’s military success or in the poetry of Welsh poets looking for inspiration as they searched for a revitalized native prophetic vocabulary. Within this climate of a reawakening of both Welsh nationalism and poetry tradition, the figure of Adam of Usk on first glance seems to be outside of his cultural moment. While many of his contemporaries left England to return to Wales in the face of Glyn Dwr’s revolt, Adam, a young Welsh historian with personal ties to the Marcher lords, was commissioned as a historian for the court of Henry IV. As his writings often take a negative view of Welsh military pursuits and specifically of their leader, Glyn Dwr, he has traditionally earned the skepticism of later scholars of Welsh history who have viewed his allegiance to the Lancastrian cause as proof that he was a thoroughly Anglicized Welshman with few ties to his homeland and language. However, I believe Adam’s own tenuous position could indeed be seen as metonymic for Welsh writing in general during a time in which all literary utterance was political and subject to assault from English ruling bodies. Looking past the overt hostility Adam displays towards Glyn Dwr (hostility that would have been expected, given his job description), Adam’s ample use of Welsh historical and literary allusion belie his rejection of the Welsh cause and create a richly layered text.
11:15-12:45 p.m. Session Seven
Edyta Lehmann(Harvard University) "And Thus I Willed It:" Queen Medb and The Will To Power
The character of Medb is explicitly condemned by the narrative of the Táin. The text shows her making unwise strategic decisions, allows for numerous derogatory comments by her cohorts, and finally elaborates on the disastrous outcome of the raid. However, despite that overt criticism and despite the overt demonization of the character, Medb’s organic strength ultimately defeats that textual tendency. This paper elucidates her character through the lens of the Nietzschean concept of the will to power, and shows Medb as a triumphant creator of the raid that, although it fails in its purpose, succeeds in presenting her as a self-fashioned and self-fulfilled human being.
Daniel Ranbom(Aberystwyth University) The Giants who Dwarf Culhwch ac Olwen
Scholarship on Culhwch ac Olwen has emphasized its virtues and its flaws, the exuberant, lively narrative and consequent adventures, as well as the structural oddities and inconsistencies. Of the latter, much has been made of the tale’s famous catalogues: the list of the members of Arthur’s court, invoked as sureties by Culhwch, and the list of tasks Ysbaddaden later gives as conditions for the hand of Olwen. To a modern reader, the length of these catalogues can be daunting or downright boring, yet, by their presence, they exert enormous influence on the text and the reader’s understanding of it.
This essay seeks to understand the catalogues of Culhwch ac Olwen as essential structural and narrative elements in a unified, coherent literary work, rather than as fragments haphazardly grafted onto the main plotline. The connective tissue that links the catalogues to the narrative proper is the tale’s preoccupation with giants and the gigantic. Culhwch ac Olwen is intensely bound up with conceptions of enormity and disproportion, from the chief antagonists, the giant Ysbaddaden and the monstrous Twrch Trwyth, to the catalogues themselves, which are gigantic in both form and content and which nearly dwarf the actual tale. Whatever their origin or composition, the court-list and task-list are indispensable to a reading of Culhwch ac Olwen, and to dismiss them is to diminish the literary nature of the tale.
Matthieu Boyd(Harvard University) Breuddwyd Rhonabwy and memoria
There are anxieties about memory in Breuddwyt Rhonabwy. For example, Iddawg
tells Rhonabwy that if he had not seen the stone on Arthur's ring, he would not
remember any of his dream. We also have the famous colophon giving "the reason
why no one, neither bard nor storyteller, knows the Dream without a book — by
reason of the number of colors that were on the horses, and all that variety of
rare colors both on the arms and their trappings, and on the precious mantles,
and the magic stones" (Jones & Jones tr.). Oliver Padel has stated that the
colophon is "misleading, both because Rhonabwy would certainly be no harder to
remember than, say, Peredur or Geraint, and because the formulaic nature of the
descriptions is actually suited to memorization". But what if the reason why
one needs a book is to be sure one gets the colors, mantles, stones, etc.
right, not because they hinder memorization and oral performance, but because
they are supposed to help?
I believe this idea is consistent with the acknowledged workings of memoria -
that is, memory, with the specific connotations it acquired in the medieval
monastic context, being one of the five parts of rhetoric. When Breuddwyd
Rhonabwy is compared to the sequences of vivid, even zany images that medieval
preachers were encouraged to create in order to remember simple sentences, the
comparison is instructive. The concern with memory, and the objects which I
will argue are mnemonic objects, are a hitherto unrecognized part of the
well-recognized rhetorical element in this text.
2:15-3:45 p.m. Session Eight
John T. Koch (Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies) “Tartessian”: The Newest and Oldest Celtic Language
The paper will discuss some of the approximately 85 inscriptions of south Portugal and southwest Spain whose script and language are called “Tartessian” (alternatively ‘South Lusitanian’ or merely ‘South-western’). Although notoriously lacking closely datable archaeological contexts, many of the stones were found in necropolises of the Tartessian culture of the Early Iron Age (c. 750–c. 450 BC). In several respects, this archaeological culture and its funerary inscribed stones represent an “orientalizing” continuation of the preceding Atlantic Late Bronze Age (c. 1200–c. 750 BC). The script may show some early Greek influence, but is primarily of Phoenician origin. Phoenician material appears in the area as part of the Huelva deposition of c. 950 BC, and the archaeological sequence of the Phoenician colony at Cádiz (Gadir) begins c. 750 BC. The phonetic values of most of the letters of the Tartessian script have been understood since the late 1980s. José Correa’s proposals that some proper name forms in the inscriptions were Celtic have not led to general recognition of the Celticity of Tartessian. However, a review of the corpus—particularly the longer, most complete, and most legible inscriptions—permits the interpretation that the language is simply Celtic throughout, with close affinities to Gaulish, Goidelic, and Brittonic, as well as Tartessian’s younger neighbour Celtiberian. The texts include well-attested Celtic verbs, preverbs, pronouns, titles, common nouns, and prepositions, as well as the names of persons and gods. There are numerous linguistic, archaeological, and historical implications.
Peadar O Muircheartaigh(University of Edinburgh) Getting (H)igh in Celtic Orthography
This paper will discuss some cognate forms in the Celtic languages meaning high, above, elevated etc. Gaulish uxellos, Old-Irish úas, Middle Welsh uch, Old Breton uchel, and Cornish uch will all be mentioned. Reference will be made to the peculiar orthographic convention of prefixed h- found in all but the Gaulish form. I will examine this peculiarity in the light of contact between Celtic Latin and Germanic languages on the continent. Special attention will be paid to the Late Cornish form which would appear to deviate from its cognate forms. I will argue that this is explicable by reference to more recent language contact.
Keith Plaster(Harvard University) Rhyme in Old and Middle Irish Verse: A New Analysis
The principles underlying generic rhyme, as found in Old and Middle Irish poetry, have long intrigued Celticists and theoretical linguists alike. Despite a number of attempts to explain the rhyme scheme used by the Celtic poets in terms of a set of classes of rhyming consonants, I argue that such an approach is not only descriptively inadequate for the rhyme found in Old and Middle Irish poetry, but that it has concealed a number of facts about the principles that governed the poets’ use of rhyme.
Based on an analysis of the rhyme found in a broad sample of Old and Middle Irish rhymed poetry and building on recent linguistic analyses of half rhymes in other rhyme traditions, I propose a new analysis of Old and Middle Irish rhyme. In particular, I argue that the ability of segments to rhyme was gradient rather than categorical, with better rhymes within and across the traditional consonant classes occurring more frequently and less perfect rhymes occurring less frequently. In addition, I propose that the quality of a potential rhyme was determined by the poets' knowledge of both the perceptual similarity of the various consonants present in Old and Middle Irish and the effect of different environments on such similarity.
4:00-5:00 p.m. Session Nine
Nathalie Ginoux(Institut National d'archéologie préventive) Pendragon’s Ancestors
Where do the two golden snakes carved on Arthur's sword come from? To which remote ancestry can we trace their lineage? Though the Ancient Celts did not come up with the Dragon theme, they transformed it early and transferred it onto the scabbards of their swords as early as the middle of the 5th century B.C: the dragon turned into a protector. Starting with the early 4th century B.C. they next standardized a first shape: the dragon became the generic attribute of the warrior function. They then broadened the visual code, each dragon type being associated with a military function. Finally, by the last third of the 3rd century B.C. the dragon pair was "deconstructed." These interpretations move away from the well-known "social status of the warrior" and substitute a simpler relationship between the posture of Celtic fighters in ancient conflicts and the various configurations of military equipment, of which the patterns constitutes a part. This warrior iconography of the 2nd Iron Age also makes it possible to compare the situation in the British Isles, where armed elites seem not to have been organized along the same lines as their continental counterparts.
Sharon Paice MacLeod(Smith College) Abduction, Swordplay, Monsters and Mistrust: Findabair, Gwenhwyfar and the Restoration of Honour
This paper will explore a number of themes and episodes which occur in Táin Bó Fróech and in various Middle Welsh references to the Arthurian legend, pertaining to the Welsh figure of Gwenhwyfar and the early Irish character Findabair (female figures whose names are cognate). In particular, this discussion will explore symbolism associated with the Goddess of Sovereignty, swords and weapons, bodies of water, serpents and supernatural creatures, Otherworld women, and themes of abduction, trust, honour and the restoration of power.
5:15-6:45 p.m. Session Ten
Heather Laird(University College Cork) Time and the Translation of the Irish Brehon Laws
In 1852, the British government agreed to fund a project to transcribe, edit, translate, and make available for publication the Brehon Law manuscripts. The result of this translation project was a six-volume collection entitled The Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland. This paper is concerned with the temporal frameworks employed by commentators in the debates that accompanied the translation and publication of the Brehon Law manuscripts. These commentators include Sir Henry Maine, the British jurist and legal historian; Eoin MacNeill, the Irish nationalist historian and revolutionary; and James Connolly, founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. Sir Henry Maine's analysis of the Brehon Laws led him to interpret the conquest of Ireland as the coming together of two societies at different stages of social evolution, with the more advanced society wrongly assuming that the less advanced society was irredeemably other. Eoin MacNeill was justifiably critical of Maine who he claimed had “come to Irish law as a happy hunting ground for primitive big game,” but, in his own writings on the Brehon Laws, MacNeill employed a similar temporal framework to Maine's, simply placing the early Irish further along the path of Progress. In James Connolly's writings on early Irish society, I will argue, there is an attempt to disrupt the stadial approach to history and historical development that underpins the writings of Maine and MacNeill.
D. Blair Gibson(El Camino College) Celtic Democracy: Appreciating the Role Played by Alliances and Elections in Celtic Political Systems
In the recent past, scholarship on the operation of the political systems of early medieval Ireland has highlighted the political weakness and lack of jural authority of the more powerful “kings.” Doubt has been cast on the institutional reality of an office of “high king.” This paper surveys a selection of medieval texts and geographical evidence from Munster to address two questions. First, what were the levels of political organization in early medieval Munster? Second, what role did alliance formation play in structuring political relationships between polities at the upper levels of Irish society? This paper will argue that critical to the process of alliance formation between early medieval Irish polities were procedures of choosing paramount chieftains by consensus among the leaders of the member polities of regional alliances. A model of the structure of medieval Irish political systems is offered whereby notions of Irish “kingship” and “succession” are supplanted by a stratified system of consensual alliances among the chieftains of a region. Recent archaeological scholarship makes it seem likely that Celtic political systems so constructed existed since the later prehistoric periods.
Charlene Eska(Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Harvard University) The Glossing of Trinity College, Dublin MS 1433 [E.3.5], pp. 1-20
Trinity College, Dublin MS 1433 [E.3.5] is a composite manuscript dating from the sixteenth century. The manuscript as bound consists of two volumes; the first contains two distinct sections (tracts from the middle third of the Senchas Már legal tradition (pp. 1-20) and part of Bretha Éitgid (pp. 1-20)), and the second volume (pp. 61-92) contains a copy of the Lebor Gabála. All of the legal tracts on pages 1-20 were written by Fergus Mac Aodhagáin and are accompanied by numerous glosses and commentary in various hands. This paper seeks to identify the number of glossators involved with these pages of the manuscript.
Saturday Evening
The Colloquium Banquet will be held at Christopher's in Porter
Square.
Porter Square may be reached either on foot by walking some 20
minutes up Massachusetts Avenue,
or by subway by taking the Red
Line outbound one stop.
The Banquet will begin at 7:30 p.m. (Attendance by reservation in advance only.)
October 12, 2008
Dydd Sul/ Dé Domhnaigh / Sunday
9:30-10:30 a.m. Session Eleven
Marc Caball(University College Dublin) Irish Gaelic and Protestant: A Case Study in Early Modern Self-fashioning
Olivier Coquelin(University of Western Brittany, Brest) A Reactionary Dimension in Progressive Revolutionary Theories? The Case of James Connolly’s Socialism Founded on the Re-Conversion of Ireland to the Celtic System of Common Ownership
10:45-11:45 p.m. Session Twelve
Craig Davis(Smith College) Something There Is that Does Not Love a Hall: Celtic Anti-Sovereignty Themes in Beowulf
Ranke de Vries(Utrecht University) Death by Droning
12:00-1:00 p.m. Session Thirteen
Kristen Mills(University of Toronto) Caílte’s Tears in the Acallam na Senórach
Christopher Leydon(City University of New York) Judas, his sister, and the miraculous cook in the Middle Irish poem Críst ro crochadh
1:30 p.m. Close
SUNDAY'S ABSTRACTS
October 12, 2008
Dydd Sul/ Dé Domhnaigh / Sunday
9:30-10:30 a.m. Session Eleven
Marc Caball(University College Dublin) Irish Gaelic and Protestant: A Case Study in Early Modern Self-fashioning
This paper will address aspects of the fashioning of cultural and religious identity by a little known and obscure cohort in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ireland: Irish Gaelic Protestant clergymen. While contemporary documentary evidence for these individuals is scarce, a series of dedicatory epistles and addresses to readers in translations to Irish of devotional works and the New Testament provide a unique glimpse of the cultural and religious outlook of Irish-speaking Calvinists and Anglicans. Such material, composed in both Irish and English, has never been drawn on as source for an analysis of Gaelic Protestant self-fashioning. The paper will examine introductory tracts from the following printed works: John Carswell’s 1567 classical Irish translation of the Book of Common Order; Seán Ó Cearnaigh’s Aibidil Gaoidheilge 7 Caiticiosma (1571), Uilliam Ó Domhnaill’s Irish New Testament (1602) and his translation of the Book of Common Prayer (1608), Gofraidh Mac Domhnaill’s An Teagasg Cráosttuidhe (1652), and the 1681 edition of the Tiomna Nuadh. This material will be examined with a view to discerning patterns in the delineation of self- and national identity among a cohort which simultaneously formed part of a religious minority in Ireland and which constituted a cultural and linguistic minority within a manifestation of Protestantism which was effectively a religious ancillary of the English crown in Ireland. By way of conclusion, the viewpoint of the Gaelic reformers will be contrasted with the cultural and religious outlook manifest in the counter-reformation works printed by the Irish Franciscans of St Anthony’s College in Louvain in the early seventeenth century.
Olivier Coquelin(University of Western Brittany, Brest) A Reactionary Dimension in Progressive Revolutionary Theories? The Case of James Connolly’s Socialism Founded on the Re-Conversion of Ireland to the Celtic System of Common Ownership
According to the political theorist Andrew Heywood, reaction is a political term generally used to refer to three different expressions of conservative thought: opposition to any change or innovation so as to preserve the existing order in the name of traditions and customs inherited from the past; desire to reform the existing order so as to protect it from destruction; desire to change or destroy the existing order so as to restore the vestiges of a prestigious past. However, owing to the fact that any thorough analysis of radically progressive theories will reveal some chapters celebrating a bygone mythical and glorious past used as a vindication – among others – of any movement for the establishment of a new order or society, one may wonder to what extent progressive revolutionary theories are imbued with a reactionary dimension.
With a view to discussing the above issue the present paper will explore some aspects of the revolutionary theories drawn up by the Irish historical figure James Connolly (1868-1916), whose socialism was based on the idea of re-converting Ireland to the Celtic system of common ownership. In so doing it will not fail to separate myth from reality as for Connolly’s use of Celtic Ireland in the theoretical expression of his progressive revolutionary designs.
10:45-11:45 p.m. Session Twelve
Craig Davis(Smith College) Something There Is that Does Not Love a Hall: Celtic Anti-Sovereignty Themes in Beowulf
Enright (1996) argues that certain motifs in the Old English poem Beowulf are derived from Celtic narrative traditions, reflecting the adoption by Germanic-speaking peoples of the institution of the chieftain’s comitatus bound to him by mutual obligations of service and reward. The leader’s “loyalty down” is manifested in the figure of a sovereignty princess—the lady with a mead cup—whose positive maternal presence in the king’s hall leads her husband to effective rule over his followers and them to an appreciative solidarity with the royal family. The Beowulf poet also dramatizes various endemic threats to the king’s authority. Grendel is a Germanic thyrs ‘fen-troll’ rationalized as a descendent of mankind’s first murderer Cain, whose “dis-arming” and expulsion from Heorot by the hero is an analogue of the severing of the great claw by Teyrnon Twrwf Fliant in Mabinogi Pwyll. Teyrnon’s “loyalty up” expels this mysterious force hostile to the continuity of the royal family, rescuing the infant son of Pwyll and Rhiannon, and restoring the queen to her proper role as “bearer” of the sovereignty of Dyfed. In Beowulf Queen Wealhtheow performs this function, inspiring loyalty and solidarity among the Danish retainers, even after twelve years of relentless attack from an “anti-sovereignty” monster. The resurgence of this menace in Grendel’s mother demonstrates the persistence of forces hostile to stable kingship, manifested in this case by the destructive power of the lex talionis or institutionalized kin feud, which the Beowulf poet thus identifies as the essential threat to effective royal authority.
Ranke de Vries(Utrecht University) Death by Droning
The various dindshenchas recensions of the tale on the origin of Port Láirge (current Waterford) tell us that Roth mac Cithaing met his tragic fate at the hands of sirens or mermaids. One of these recensions consists of a prose section followed by a rosc that has never been translated (with the exception of a few lines). In the prose section preceding this rosc, Roth falls asleep because of the droning of the sirens or mermaids (dord na murduchann). He is then apparently torn to pieces, and his thighbone later washes up on shore at the place that is now known as Port Láirge (literally 'Haven of the Thigh-bone'). The rosc passage differs slightly from the prose section: reference is made, for example, to a 'droning of chants' (dord duchand), but the source of the droning is unidentified. In this presentation, I would like to provide a tentative translation for the rosc passage and compare its contents with the other versions of the tale, as well as look at some other tales in which the protagonist dies as a result of hearing a dord.
12:00-1:00 p.m. Session Thirteen
Kristen Mills(University of Toronto) Caílte’s Tears in the Acallam na Senórach
One of the more striking features of the Acallam na Senórach is its pervasive emphasis on grief, particularly in the character of Caílte. Caílte is one of the surviving Fenian warriors, and his interaction with Patrick provides a frame for the narration of numerous events, both in the textual past and present. Over the course of the Acallam, Caílte weeps with a frequency that is surprising in a member of that most heroic of institutions, the Fian. As he travels throughout Ireland in the company of Patrick, he is often overwhelmed by sorrow for his dead companions and for his present circumstance. On several occasions he lies upon a grave or a monument and sobs, and at times his tears flow so copiously that they soak through his clothing. Since this behavior is so uncharacteristic of an Irish hero, and Caílte seems to fall within the parameters of this category, why has the author of the Acallam chosen to present him in such a way? This paper will explore several possible influences on the portrayal of Caílte in the Acallam na Senórach, including bardic conceptions of the relationship between poet and lord, and the connection between weeping, penitence, and salvation in the Lives of the Saints.
Christopher Leydon(City University of New York) Judas, his sister, and the miraculous cook in the Middle Irish poem Críst ro crochadh
This paper examines the apparently unique combination of two apocryphal traditions concerning Judas Iscariot in Críst ro crochadh (“Christ was crucified”), an anonymous poem of twenty-seven quatrains in the deibhidhe metre, which is preserved in the late 14th century Book of Uí Mhaine, and was published with a translation by Tomás O Máille in 1907 (Ériu 3: 194-99). This poem, one of several such medieval Irish texts, contains descriptions of the personal appearance and deaths of the apostles, St. Mary, Jesus, and the two thieves crucified with him. Six quatrains of the poem, however, tell the story of Judas, his sister, and a cooked rooster that returns to life as a harbinger of Christ’s resurrection. This apocryphal tale appears in a dozen or so extant Latin versions of the 12th through 15th centuries, but with the mother (not sister) of Judas in the role of interlocutor and cook, and with the revived cock identified as the very one that crows thrice at Peter’s denials of Jesus. The nearest vernacular analogue, from among the cross legends in the Leabhar Breac, follows the latter pattern and seems to be the only other representative of this particular apocryphon in medieval Irish. The Judas section of Críst ro crochadh ends with a short description of his suicide and the statement that his soul was the first to enter Hell after the Harrowing. This latter detail points to a second apocryphal tradition, found among the homilies of the Leabhar Breac, whereby the suicide of Judas is an attempt—foiled by God—to gain salvation by arriving in Hell just prior to Christ.
