Abstract
The contemporary Irish-language poet Michael Davitt, in his poem “Ó Mo Bheirt Phailistíneach” (“O My Two Palestinians”), describes how, on “18/9/82, having watched a news report on the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut,” he went upstairs and looked at his own sleeping children, visualizing them as corpses, “mo bheirt Phailistíneach ag lob-hadh sa teas lárnach (my two Palestinians rotting in the central heat).”1 This example typifies the sympathy that modern Celtic-language writers have for oppressed, marginalized, or misunderstood cultures throughout the world; as Grahame Davies observes, “many culturally-active Welsh speakers… have an acute consciousness of their political status as members of a minority culture” and “seem noticeably anxious to be affirmative and non-critical of non-English-speaking cultures—not just specifically Muslim ones—possibly partly as a generalized rebuke to perceived Anglo-American cultural imperialism.”2
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Notes
Michael Davitt, The Oomph of Quicksilver: Selected Poems, 1970–1998, ed. Louis de Paor, trans. Philip Casey (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), 40–41. See the essay by Said I. Abdelwahed, “Humanism, Nationalism and History in Michael Davitt’s Gaelic Poem ‘O My Two Palestinians,’” http://www.arabworldbooks.com/Literature/michaeldavitt.html.
R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience oj Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, 1100–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093–1343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Diane Speed, “The Saracens of King Horn,” Speculum 65 (1990): 564–95.
Nicolas Lenoir, Étude sur la Chanson d’Aiquin ou ha Conquête de la Bretagne par le roi Charlemagne (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009), 40–123, 529–563.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands: The Bodies of Gerald of Wales,” in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 85–104.
Asa Simon Mittman, “The Other Close at Hand: Gerald of Wales and the ‘Marvels of the West,’” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. Bettine Bildhauer and Robert Mills (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 97–112.
On the crusade against Ireland, see Elizabeth Matthew, “Henry V and the Proposal for an Irish Crusade,” in Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages: Essays in Honour oj Robin Frame, ed. Brendan Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 163–64 [161–75].
John Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008).
Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations oj Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).
Medieval Muslim sources give an account of Brittany: Bernard Tanguy, “Du Loonois du Roman de Tristan au Leones d’Idrissi: Douarnenez, patrie de Tristan?” Bulletin de la Société Archéologique du Finistère 117 (1988): 119–44; and of the British Isles: David James, “Two Medieval Arabic Accounts of Ireland,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries oj Ireland 108 (1978): 5–9.
Bob Quinn has posited many connections between the Arab world and Ireland from the Paleolithic period to the Renaissance; his work is suggestive but must be read with extreme caution. Bob Quinn, Atlantean: Ireland’s North African and Maritime Heritage (London and New York: Quartet Books, 1986), and The Atlantean Irish: Ireland’s Oriental and Maritime Heritage (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2005).
See the review by Michael Ryan of Atlantean, in Archaeology Ireland 2, no. 2 (1988): 74–75.
Dáibhí Q Cróinín, ed., A New History oj Ireland I: Prehistoric and Early Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Andrew Petersen, “The Archaeology of Islam in Britain: Recognition and Potential,” Antiquity 82 (2008), 1080–92; http://antiquity.ac.uk/Ant/082/1080/ant0821080.pdf.
Venetia Porter and Barry Ager, “Islamic Amuletic Seals: The Case of the Carolingian Cross Brooch from Ballycottin,” in La science des deux: sages, mages, astrologues, ed. Rika Gyselen (Bures-sur-Yvette, France: Groupe Pour L’étude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient, 1999), 211–18.
Eric Carl Gabriel Oxenstierna, The Norsemen, ed. and trans. Catherine Hutter (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society Publishers, 1965), 160.
Alfred P. Smyth, Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles 850–880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 154–68.
Joan Newlon Radner, ed. and trans., Fragmentary Annals of Ireland (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978), 120–21.
John O’Donovan, ed. and trans., Annals oj Ireland: Three Fragments Copied from Ancient Sources by Dubhaltach mac Firbisigh (Dublin: Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society, 1860), 162–63.
Geriadur Prifysgol Cymru, s.v. “blowmon.” Blewmon/blwmon is the term for “black man” used in texts like Henry Lewis and P. Diverres, eds., Delw y Byd (Imago Mundi) (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1928), or the translated Charlemagne material; it is attested from the fourteenth century on and appears to be borrowed from Middle English (Middle English Dictionary, s.v. “bleu-man, blō-man”) rather than Old Norse. The bleu-/blō- part of the English word is probably from Old Norse blá- but could also be from French (Middle English Dictionary, s.v. “blō, adj.”).
Viðar Hreinsson, ed., The Complete Sagas of Icelanders (Reykjavik: Leifur Eiriksson Publishing, 1997), 5:406.
John Lindow, “Supernatural Others and Ethnic Others: A Millenium of Worldview,” Scandinavian Studies 67 (1995): 8–31.
Sirpa Aalto, “Encountering ‘Otherness’ in the Heimskringla,” Ennen ja Nyt 4 (2004); http://www.ennenjanyt.net/4-04/referee/aalto.pdf.
Lil Nic Dhonnchadha, ed., Aided Muirchertaig meic Erca, Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series 19 (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1964); http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/G302026/index.html.
Celtic scholars know this as the “Threefold Death”; see Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, “The Threefold Death in Early Irish Sources,” Studia Celtica Japonica, n.s., 6 (1994): 53–75.
The headless men should perhaps be understood as blemmyae, or chest-faced men, familiar from more “mainstream” medieval writings, rather than decapitated men. It is possible that there is some connection between the “blue men” here and modern Scottish Gaelic folklore about supernatural Blue Men in the Hebrides (see Donald A. Mackenzie, Scottish Folk-Lore and Folk Life [London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son Ltd., 1935], 85–98), but the connection is by no means as clear as Mackenzie claims. Alan D. Macquarrie discusses Scottish Gaelic traditions associated with the Crusades: “The Crusades and the Scottish Gaidhealtachd in Fact and Legend,” in The Middle Ages in the Highlands, ed. L. Maclean (Inverness: Inverness Field Club, 1981), 130–41.
Dáibhí O Cróinín, ed., The Irish Sex Aetates Mundi (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983).
Thomas Jones, ed. and trans., Brut y Tywysogion or The Chronicle of the Princes: Red Book oj Hergest Version, 2nd ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973).
G. Hartwell Jones, Celtic Britain and the Pilgrim Movement (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1912), 118–20.
Lewis Thorpe, trans., Gerald of Wales: The Journey through Wales and the Description of Wales (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1978), 202.
Ibid. On Gerald’s own enthusiasm for the Third Crusade, see Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales 1146–1223 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 77–84.
Judith Weiss, trans., Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic: Two Anglo-Norman Romances (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), v. 1828, p. 60n181.
The description of the desecration is quoted by G. H. Jones, Celtic Britain, 113; on the criticism of Llywelyn, see J. E. Caerwyn Williams, The Court Poet in Medieval Wales: An Essay (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Meilen Press, 1997), 170.
Erich Poppe and Regine Reck, Selections from Ystorya Bown o Hamtwn (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), 11. 559–72, p. 18.
Erich Poppe and Regine Reck, “Rewriting Bevis in Wales and Ireland,” in Sir Bevis of Hampton in Literary Tradition, ed. Jennifer Fellows and Ivana Djordjević (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), 37–50.
R. L. Thomson, ed., Owein or Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn, Mediaeval and Modern Welsh Series IV (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 11. 108–13, p. 5.
Sioned Davies, trans., The Mabinogion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 254n119.
An example would be the Irish annalists’ habit of referring to Scandinavians as Finn Gaill “Fair(-Haired) Foreigners i.e. Norwegians” and Dub Gaill “Black(-Haired) Foreigners i.e. Danes,” as noted by Speed, “The Saracens of King Horn,” 581–82). See further Ruth P. M. Lehmann, “Color Usage in Irish,” in Studies in Language, Literature and Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. Elmer Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), 73–79. Kassandra Conley (Harvard University) critiqued Sioned Davies’s translation of gwr du as “black-haired man” at the 2010 California Celtic Conference at UCLA, and I thank her for calling Davies’s choice to my attention.
See Poppe, “Owin,” and Kristen Lee Over, Kingship, Conquest, and Patria: Literary and Cultural Identities in Medieval French and Welsh Arthurian Romance (London: Routledge, 2005), both of whom support the view that Chrétien, whatever sources he used, influenced the extant text of Otvein.
Daniel Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 231.
Stephen J. Williams, ed., Ystorya de Carolo Magno o Lyjr Coch Hergest (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1930).
The most recent comprehensive discussion of the Welsh Charlemagne material is by Christina L. Chance, Imagining Empire: Maxen Wledic, Arthur, and Charlemagne in Welsh Literature after the Edwardian Conquest (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2010), 184–223.
See Annalee C. Rejhon, ed. and trans., Can Rolant: The Medieval Welsh Version of the Song of Roland, Modern Philology 113 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 29–31, 71, 89.
A similar understanding is expressed by the eighth-century Irish poet Blathmac, son of Cú Brettan, when he condemns the Jews for crucifying Christ; he says they violated legal bonds of clientship (célsine) and “violated their counter-obligations” for the favors they had received from God. See James Carney, ed. and trans., The Poems of Blathmac son of Cú Brettan together with the Irish Gospel of Thomas and a Poem on the Virgin Mary (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1964), 34–37, for the text, and Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, “The Sister’s Son in Early Irish Literature,” Peritia 5 (1986): 130–32 [128–60], for analysis.
The range of Early Modern Irish, the standardized language of the bardic schools, is ca. 1200-ca. 1650. The Irish tale of Bevis is preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript, Trinity College Dublin MS H. 2. 7 (= 1298), which also relates the adventures of various Irish kings and heroes, Hercules, and Guy of Warwick. See Fred Norris Robinson, ed. and trans., The Irish Lives of Guy of Warwick and Bevis oj Hampton (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1907). On the general subject of translations
and adaptations into Irish, see Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, “Translations and Adaptations into Irish,” Celtica 16 (1984): 107–24. Whitley Stokes, ed. and trans., “The Irish Version of Fierabras,” Revue Celtique 19 (1898): 16–57, 119–67, 252–91, 364–93, has particular relevance to our theme. Poppe and Reck point out that the Irish Bevis tale “belongs to a second phase of Irish vernacular adaptations of foreign narratives with an interest in Continental matters during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—Charlemagne and English romances (William of Palerne, the Grail, Guy of Warwick, and Caxton’s version of the story of Hercules)”; see Poppe and Reck, “Rewriting Bevis,” 45. The first phase, which began in the tenth century, dealt with texts from classical antiquity, such as the Aeneid, Thebaid, and Dares Phrygius. The last of these (i.e., Dares) is also featured in a Welsh translation at the beginning of the Red Book of Hergest.
Erich Poppe, “The Early Modern Irish Version of Beves of Hamtoun,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 23 (1992): 93–94 [77–98]; Poppe and Reck, Selections, 47.
Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), 139.
Elizabeth Gray, ed. and trans., Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired (London: Irish Texts Society, 1982).
Cf. Williams Gillies, “Arthur in Gaelic Tradition,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 2 (1981): 47–72; 3 (1981): 41–75.
Dafydd Johnston, ed. and trans., Iolo Goch: Poems, Welsh Classics V (Llandysul, Wales: Gomer, 1993), 188; the text is 11. 8–9, 15–16, pp. 154–55.
The Irish translation, made in 1475, has been edited and translated by Whitley Stokes, “The Gaelic Maundeville,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 2 (1899): 1–62, 226–300.
On the Welsh reception of Mandeville, see W. Beynon Davies, ed., “Siôn Mawndfil yn Gymraeg,” Bulletin oj the Board of Celtic Studies 5, no. 4 (1931): 287–327. Mandeville’s Travels are rewritten in verse as the report made by a widely traveled raven to Mandeville himself. There is a diplomatic edition of one of the Welsh texts at http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/dwew2/hcwl/pen218/pen218_mandefil_dipl.htm. Rosemary Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the Book of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 16, has promised a study of British Library MS Add. 14921 (sixteenth century), which contains another of the Welsh translations. Kassandra Conley (Harvard University) is also preparing new work on Mandeville in Wales.
For the Irish text, see Stokes, “Gaelic Maundeville,” 226–37; for the Middle English text, see Michael C. Seymour, ed., The Defective Version of Mandeville’s Travels (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society, 2002), 56–64.
For general discussion of Mandeville’s Travels, see Ian Macleod Higgins, Writing East: The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences; and Akbari, Idols in the East, especially 20–68). The kinds of differences that do exist in the Irish text are sometimes intriguing. At the end of chapter fourteen, when describing the frozen land that one must cross to reach the land of the “Saracens” from Prussia, the Irish text asserts that “ní bí duine ‘sa tír sin cin luirg (there is no one in that country without a club)” (62–63); Stokes remarks that “club” should read “stove.” Vernam Hull, in his notes on the text in the Fred Norris Robinson Celtic Seminar Library, Harvard University, suggests that the translator read stave rather than stove in his English source.
Roisin McLaughlin, “Fénius Farsaid and the Alphabets,” Ériu 59 (2009): 1–24.
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Boyd, M. (2011). Celts Seen as Muslims and Muslims Seen by Celts in Medieval Literature. In: Frakes, J.C. (eds) Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230370517_2
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