Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Publication
    The battle of Clontarf in later Irish tradition
    (Four Courts Press, 2014-04-12)
    In considering the battle of Clontarf in later Irish tradition, an obvious starting point is a tale known as CCT which, according to the present writer, was one of the most popular Irish prose texts to have come down to us in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish manuscripts. Its popularity may be ascribed in part to two reasons. First, at the heart of the tale’s message is the fact that the battle of Clontarf amounted to Brian Bóraimhe’s victory over centuries of foreign heathen oppression, a message which, as will emerge below, appealed to Irish scribes. Second, rather than being a laconic record of events, CCT presents the historical battle as a story in which ‘heroes shine and villains play their sinister parts and dramatic incidents are invented or exaggerated for the benefit of the reading public’. These two reasons are not exceptional to this prose tale, of course, as the same could be said (and indeed has been said) about the earliest literary account we have in Irish concerning the battle, that in the early-twelfth century Irish text CGG. Many of the plot details in the Modern Irish story, in fact, ultimately derive from those forming part of the account of the battle in the latter Middle Irish text.
      451
  • Publication
    The battle of Clontarf story and Gortnaclea
    One of the most popular texts among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scribes in Ireland is a literary re-enactment of the historical battle at Clontarf in 1014 called Cath Cluana Tarbh (hereafter CCT). To its eighty-nine extant manuscript sources described in my recent edition of the text, one more is now to be added which came to light in 2012 and was subsequently purchased by the Royal Irish Academy where it is now preserved as MS 12 K 50. There are two principal reasons for the popularity of CCT: firstly, at the heart of its message is the fact that the battle itself amounted to Brian Bóraimhe’s victory over centuries of Viking heathen oppression in Ireland; secondly, rather than being a record of events, the historical battle at Clontarf in 1014 is presented as a story in which ‘heroes shine and villains play their sinister parts and dramatic incidents are invented or exaggerated for the benefit of the reading public’. These two reasons are not exceptional in the case of CCT, of course, as the same holds true for the earliest literary account we have in Irish concerning the battle of Clontarf, namely that in the early-twelfth century Irish text known as Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh (hereafter CGG) or the ‘War of the Gaels against [lit. ‘with’] the Foreigners’.
      144
  • Publication
    Observations on the text known as the Leabhar Oiris
    (Uppsala Universitet, 2014-02-19)
    The importance which Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn attached to the O’Briens of Thomond as key figures in Ireland’s glorious past continued in subsequent Irish narrative tradition, resulting thereby in the emergence of what the present writer has termed elsewhere an ‘O’Brien Saga’, which was developed and promoted in five key eighteenth-century prose texts. The first of these is a romantic literary re-enactment of the battle of Clontarf with the title Cath Cluana Tarbh, one of the most popular prose texts to be transmitted in the post-classical Irish manuscript sources. Three discrete sets of annals, mainly concerned with Munster affairs, present their own particular encomium of the O’Briens of Thomond, while giving the battle of Clontarf and events surrounding it a central place in their respective narratives. The first in this post-classical triad of annals has come to be known as the ‘Dublin Annals of Inisfallen’ and the remaining two are described in the manuscript sources as extracts d’Annálaibh Innis Faithlionn (‘from the Annals of Inisfallen’). And, finally, the fifth text and subject of what follows below, that known in the manuscript sources as Leabhar Oiris (LO), which yet again praises Dál gCais and the heroic age with which this dynasty is associated.
      311