Hi, Desmond,
Many thanks for this -- gives me more to go on.
Some comments ...
<<
I have always viewed online as an extension of my formal learning, and have
come to understand that the various practices of the ancient Irish bards and
Robert Sheppard's idea of speculative discourse, are essentially coming out
from the same compositional pool in which extemporised writing leads to some
realisation or understanding as one writes.
>>
I'm a bit wary of the whole idea of pre-modern extemporisation, and I wonder
how much of it was a poetic trope? Caedmon as the first poet writing in
English was supposed to have suddenly come out with a set of six or so lines
(quoted in Bede's eclesiastical history) and isn't there a similar tale told
about some Irish poet(s)? Extemporisation in this form (as opposed to slam
competitions?) seems to occur in the context of severely formalised poetic
modes -- something similar is always being attributed to Icelandic poets
like Egil Skallagrimson, but the "extempore verses", naturally enough, only
occur in written manuscript form!
So just how far we can extend the concept of pre-medieval extempore poetry,
in the context of highly socially stratified societies and ultra-constrained
verse forms onto current English practice, which has been going its own
merry way since at least (continuously) the late 16thC, and more generally
runs back to Beowulf and before, depending on which point you want to start
the continuity. So we have *at least* 500 years of independent development
in English verse.
Extemporisation in the English language tradition doesn't seem to figure
much -- the only example I can think of is Pope remarking of himself that he
lisped in numbers for the numbers came, and he puts that forward as being
unusual.
<<
I wrote to Trinity last week asking if i could have a look but it is only
for the eyes of Irish language scholars. They informed me the poem is on
page 53 and was available to look at online at a Dublin Institute of
Advanced Studies website <a href="http://www.isos.dias.ie/">Irish Script
Onscreen</a>, but they are only showing four pages, 44, 45, 88 and 89.
>>
A pain -- maybe they'll get round to digitising the rest eventually. (Not
that it would help me, as I read neither Old nor New Irish. Or Gaelic or
Welsh. <g>)
<<
I have just now found a full lowdown on the contents at archive.org, in a
1921 book <a
href="http://www.archive.org/stream/catalogueofirish00trinuoft/catalogueofirish00trinuoft_djvu.txt">"Catalogue
of the Irish manuscripts in the library of Trinity College, Dublin</a>
>>
TheText option on Internet Archives (which is what shows up on a google
search) can be a bit flakey due to the OCR they use. It's not too bad for
this text (compared to some!) but if you go here:
http://www.archive.org/details/catalogueofirish00trinuoft
... and click on the PDF option, you're given a facsimile scan.
<<
The details on what's in MS 1337, is about a quarter of the way down my
screen, and as i am scrolling down now, page by page descriptions of what's
in it, see it contains various law tracts, poems, tales and at p53, this is
the description:
"Amergin Glungeal's (Amergin White Knee's) mystical poem, beginning:
nio coipe coip goipiach, with interlinear gloss. The leaves are of the same
size as the preceding, and the second is similarly made up of two pieces
sewn with silk.
The first has also a defect supplied by a piece sewn with parchment."
>>
If I'm reading this correctly, the manuscript as a whole -- Trinity College
Dublin MS 1337 -- is a composite, made up of several different manuscripts
bound together. Thus pages 53-56 would originally have formed a separate
and independent MS, which has the text of a 7thC poem with interlinear
glosses by an 11thC scribe, the whole possibly finally transcribed in the
16thC. Would that be a fair account? (I'm trying to put together
information that I've picked up here and there.)
Which leads me back to the point as to how we know the original dates from
the 7thC. I've seen this stated, and I'd be prepared to accept that such a
precise dating is possible, but I haven't come on any text which argues as
to how this date was arrived at. I assume there is something, either on of
off line, that I've missed, but Old Irish really isn't my area.
<<
The language in the poem has been dated to 7C Old Irish, but the MS itself
was compiled in the 15C. It will have been transcribed from another source,
(no longer extant, this is the only copy) which was common practice by the
scribes - and as you will see if you go to the link, the material in the
book is very varied including poems, tales and law tracts.
>>
See above -- when you say "the MS itself," do you mean MS 1337 as a whole,
or the specific pages 53-56? If pp. 53-56 are indeed a late 15thC
transcription, I'd be worried about textual changes and contamination, leave
alone anything else, in the 800 years between the 7th and the 16th C, with
no existing intervening text.
[One thing that passed through my mind when I read the translation was that
there was more than a trace of gnosticism around, which would fit with a
post 15thC date, but be less likely in the 7thC. So I thought maybe the
possibly-gnostic elements had been overlaid later. But that's not even an
educated guess on my part, just a back-of-the-head niggle.]
SNIP
<<
I am going to buy a reader's ticket (20 euro a year) for the Royal Irish
Academy this week so i can access Liam Breatnach's translation and 48 page
article on it in number 32 of Ériu, 1981.
>>
Be nice if this includes the interlinear glosses, which the translations you
and dave provided both omit. On the other hand, they may not be to the
point at all.
<<
The vatic *eating flesh* you refer to, relates to the druidic rite of <a
href="http://www.fhaoil-choin.org/imbasforosnai.htm">Imbas Forosnai</a>,
which Nora Chadwicks 1937 lengthy article (at the link) explains in some
detail.
>>
I think that was where I came on it myself, when I was chasing Imbas
Forsanai a few days ago.
<<
Imbas forosnai, along with teinm laeda and dichetal di chennaib, according
to various bardic tracts relating to the seven filidh (poet) grades which
culminated with ollamh (phon,ulav - poetry professor) and are all
extemporised methods which where first took on at level five, cli
(ridgepole) or six, anruth (noble stream) in the eighth year of the 12 year
training.
>>
But this seems a different issue from the text of The Cauldron of Poetry,
which I don't think goes into details of the various orders of poets.
<<
I couldn't get my head round the myth, and at that point after three years,
there wasn't even a skeleton dilineating itself, no datums, no solid base,
no comprehensible shape - just dry academic stuff or online druid types
talking in that floaty self-help tenor which is big on creative
intepretation for self-empowering and getting through the hell of office
life, but low on poetic insight or scholarship.
>>
Yeah, I'm kinda suspicious myself of the wilder New Age involvement around
the issue, not to speak of the dubious nature of some 19thC Romantic
Irishry.
<<
Chadwick tells us imbas forosnai is glossed by Whitley Stokes, from Cormac's
Glossary in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, as:
""Imbas Forosna, 'Manifestation that enlightens': ....
>>
You might be interested in this, if you haven't come on it yet. Again,
something I chanced on when I was chasing around the issue recently. It's
footnoted by Chadwick.
... and at that point, I couldn't find the text I wanted to pass on to you.
(It was a comparison of various glosses or something in the life of Saint
Columba, and mentioned the meat-eating thing! I'll see if I can find it
again.)
But that suggests it's time for me to stop for now and pass the ball back to
you.
Best,
Robin
(Ah, right, got it!
"Calder, George, Auraicept na n-Éces: The Scholar's Primer, (Edinburgh: John
Grant, 1917)"
You can find the text here:
http://www.archive.org/details/auraicept00calduoft
There's quite a lot of stuff by Calder in the Internet Archives, if you
stick his name into the search engine.
R.)
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