This book appears in a very distinguished series steered by a “who's who in Celtic studies” editorial board, and the authors are highly respected specialists in their respective fields (Insular Latin and early medieval art). In the light of recent scholarly orthodoxies, however, this work definitely has heretical leanings and will doubtless be anathematized in some learned circles. Herren and Brown propose that the fifth-century Briton (or Irishman?) Pelagius and his writings were much more influential among the early medieval churchmen of Britain and Ireland than is currently thought, and that, pace contemporary pooh-poohing of such supposedly monolithic notions, there really was such a thing as Celtic Christianity, definable to a great extent in terms of its use and modification of, as well as reaction to, the heresy of Pelagianism. As “defining theological features” of Celtic Christianity, the authors offer the following: “The assertion of the natural goodness of human nature, the possibility of a sinless life, the denial of transmitted original sin, categorical denial of predestination, a marked tendency to discount the miraculous, and the reliance on the scriptures as the sole source of religious authority. Salvation could be achieved by all through strict obedience to God's law as revealed by the scriptures. The ability to obey God's law in all respects was fostered by askesis [ascetic practice]” (p. 5). These features, the authors continue, “are, for the most part, central doctrines of Pelagius and his followers” (p. 6). Building on these conclusions, the authors interpret the history, literary tradition, and artistic production of the early insular churches accordingly, viewing for example the struggle between the Hibernenses and Romani factions in the early Irish church as a matter of more-or-less Pelagians versus anti-Pelagians, who, however, may have been more Pelagian than they thought.

Of course, Pelagianism like most early Christian heresies had much to do with Christology, but, given the overwhelming emphasis of the book, it could just as well have been titled Pelagius in Celtic Christianity. Herren and Brown are refreshingly frank about the difficulties in arguing their thesis: it is not easy to judge what concepts or writings are echt-Pelagian (hence the authors’ devising of the term “semi-Pelagian”); there is relatively little in the way of writing left from the fifth to mid-seventh century on which to base the case for rampant Pelagianism in Britain and Ireland, and much of what there is from this period can only be used at best as negative evidence (Patrick, for examples, appears in general to be anti-Pelagian); and some of the purported key textual witnesses for Pelagian influence postdate the triumph of the Romani in the seventh century. Despite these difficulties, the authors determinedly soldier on, painting their sometimes simplistic Pelagian picture, and devote the second half of the work to images of Christ in Celtic Christianity, with separate chapters on “Christ Revealed in Texts” (tracking a shift from a Pelagian Christ as paradigm to an anti- or post-Pelagian Christ as salvific hero), “Non-Representational Images of Christ” (Pelagian), and “Representational Images” (non- or less Pelagian).

Christ in Celtic Christianity is likely to cause a lively row in insular studies, comparable to the controversy over whether Hiberno-Latin is a figment of the scholarly imagination. For the CSANA reader who is not particularly enthralled by theological controversies but is interested in medieval

insular literary traditions, there is much food for thought here, including Herren and Brown's deft broadening of their topic to include the concepts of natural law and “good pagans” as they operate in vernacular literature, the motivations behind various remarkable literary projects launched by the Irish and the British (such as Gildas's grumpy De excidio Britanniae, the monomaniacal pseudo-Augustine's De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae, and the Old-Irish “Alphabet of Piety”), as well as the reasons why hagiography featuring wonder-working saints seemingly takes wing only with the triumph of the Romani. The writing is consistently engaging and renders the arcana of late-antique/early medieval religious thought eminently accessible and even compelling. And who could not look with affection on a work that includes formulations such as: “The common Celtic Church was xenophobic and ostracising”?

Joseph Falaky Nagy

University of California, Los Angeles

St Petroc (6^th century) is undoubtedly Cornwall’s most famous saint; his cult in the Middle Ages spread into Wales and Brittany, and his church in Cornwall, as can be seen in Domesday accounts, was the wealthiest in the region - as well as the most influential. St Petroc is notable among insular Celtic saints for the magnitude of his dossier, a wealth of hagiographical sources including a document most unusual in Celtic hagiography, the account of the theft and restoration of his relics in the twelfth century, De reliquiarum furto. Karen Jankulak examines the documentary evidence of St Petroc’s cult from its beginnings to the mid-twelfth century, both historically and geographically; with thoroughness and acumen, she offers a detailed portrayal of the formation and transmission of his cult over time and place. This is a model of hagiographical investigation, and in the process, Jankulak sheds considerable light on the history of the early Cornish church and the political and ecclesiastical relations between Cornwall and Brittany in the Middle Ages.

In the first chapter, Jankulak looks at the hagiographical traditions of St Petroc, most of which appear to stem from Bodmin priory, the centre of Petroc’s cult in the eleventh century. The texts include two vitae, genealogies, and a Miracula, as well as the aforementioned text of a furta sacra, a rarity in Celtic tradition. While I would have liked more examination of the composition of the two extant vitae, this is admittedly a personal bias (Jankulak considers them “unexceptional in their use of motifs common to Celtic hagiography,” p. 6). Jankulak focuses instead on the topographical and onomastic concerns of the texts, which she explores in greater detail in later chapters. The chapter continues with an overview of St Petroc’s appearance in Welsh and Irish traditions and of the Miracula, and concludes with a look at the De reliquiarum furto which she takes up further in chapters five and six.

Chapter two examines St Petroc’s cult in Cornwall, with a focus on toponymy, the foundation of Padstow (the primary cult site) and the church at Bodmin and their possession of St Petroc’s relics. Jankulak draws a picture of a widespread and wealthy ecclesiastical network, centred first at Padstow, then at Bodmin where St Petroc’s relics lay. Chapter three then moves to Brittany and the spread of St Petroc’s cult in that region. Again, the focus is on toponymy, and Jankulak demonstrates the dissemination of the cult in the toponymic evidence; she explores also the liturgical evidence and the appearance of St Petroc in popular tales, as well as St Petroc’s hagiographical association with Breton saints such as Wethinoc and Gwenolé and, to a much lesser extent, Samson. Such associations, she argues, began in Cornwall and posits that Breton exiles in Cornwall, escaping Viking raids and then assisted by the Wessex king Athelstan, were largely responsible for the transmission of St Petroc’s cult into Brittany in the tenth century. But it is St Petroc’s association with St Wethinoc, and thereby to other Breton saints, that allowed the cult of Petroc, of all the Cornish saints, to travel into Britanny. Jankulak makes a cogent argument for the importance of place, as well as familial connections, in the spread of this cult into the strongholds of local Breton saints.

In chapter four, Jankulak widens her geographical sphere to discuss the cult of St Petroc in England, almost as prelude to her discussion the De reliquiarum furto in chapters five and six. While theft of relics in the Middle Ages was not in itself unusual, the involvement of secular authorities in their restitution makes the theft of St Petroc’s relics from Bodmin to the abbey of Saint-Méen a noteworthy event, quite apart from the fact that it occurs in connection with a Celtic saint. Jankulak carefully excavates the historical background, and the secular and ecclesiastical politics, of Cornwall, Britanny and England under Henry II in the twelfth century to demonstrate the importance of the text to the cult and church of St Petroc. In so doing, she also reveals the importance of relics to both secular and ecclesiastical authorities, how each party made use of saints’ relics to promote their own agendas, and in the case of St Petroc, what those agendas meant in the historical and hagiographical context of the church in Cornwall. These last chapters alone would make this book outstanding; as a whole, it is a landmark study in the growth and transmission of a saint’s cult, and the uses and importance of relics in promoting a cult. The book provides copious notes and documentary evidence, and an excellent bibliography. Jankulak not only makes an exceptional contribution to the study of Cornish saints and the early Cornish church, she raises the bar for students of hagiography in general.

Dorothy Ann Bray,

McGill University

(Samhain 2002)

John Davies’ 1994 monograph History of Wales has been until now the only readily available one-volume comprehensive history of that country in English. Now Tempus and the National Library of Wales offer an alternative—a collaborative history of a type that will be familiar to readers of Moody and Martin’s The Course of Irish History or R.F. Foster’s Oxford History of Ireland.

The Tempus History of Wales has all of the advantages and drawbacks of those Irish counterparts. Its outstanding attraction is its impressive list of contributors, all of them associated with the University of Wales or the National Library. K.L. Maund, an outstanding historian of eleventh-century Wales, is the author of the chapter on “Dark Age” Wales, covering the period from the Roman withdrawal to the eve of the Norman Invasion. Huw Pryce, author of Native Law and the Church in Medieval Wales, contributes the chapter on the period from the Norman incursion to the end of Welsh independence in 1282. The other contributors are Ralph Griffiths on late medieval Wales, Geraint Jenkins on Wales “from Reformation to Methodism, 1536 – c. 1750", Prys Morgan—who has also edited the volume—on the Industrial Revolution, and J. Graham Jones on the twentieth century. The opening chapter, “Wales’ Hidden History c. 25,000 BC – c. AD 383”, is a special case, a collaborative history within a collaborative history, as it were, with contributions by Stephen Aldhouse-Green on the Paleolithic and Mesolithic, Joshua Pollard on the Neolithic, Mike Hamilton on the Bronze Age, Miranda Green on the Iron Age, and Ray Howell on Roman Wales, all under the editorship of Stephen Aldhouse-Green of the University of Wales at Newport.

The title of that first chapter points to one of the book’s frustrations: while a single-volume history of manageable size is a very convenient thing to have on hand, it’s no easy matter to cover the 27,000 years announced by the title in 179 pages of text (subtracting the illustrations and front and back matter). That’s more than 150 years per page, on average! The truth is that we’ve reached the Act of Union (1536) by p. 140—98% of the timeline covered is encompassed within a mere 100 pages of text. Another inevitable problem for a collaborative history, especially such a compact one, is the establishment of harmony among its voices as each writer seeks an organizing principle or set of principles for his or her chapter. Kari Maund places the rise of the House of Merfyn Frych and the careers of its greatest dynasts, Rhodri Mawr and Hywel Dda, at the center of her chapter, and this leads her quite smoothly into a discussion of Wales’s relations with the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings. Huw Pryce focuses on the idea of borders as a structuring device, discussing not only the political relationships among Welsh princes and between Welsh princes and Norman lords in the Marches and elsewhere, but also the ways in which conservative resistance and innovative adaptation operated at the borders of Welsh, Norman, and English culture during the period. These devices give coherence to the treatment of a variety of topics—political history, economy, ecclesiastical organization, etc.—that need to be covered for enormous swaths of time in these chapters, 700 years in the case of Maund’s. With Chapter 4, the pace slows a bit, and Ralph Griffiths achieves a very successful narrative flow in his chapter. Geraint Jenkins’ tone is more that of a very lively and engaging lecturer, but it too is quite effective.

The highlight of the volume, though, is its illustrations. Morgan has made very good use of the materials collected for Peter Lord’s Visual Culture of Wales and of the resources of the National Library to develop a program of more than 150 illustrations that work exceptionally well with the text. This is a real innovation; as Morgan writes in his foreword, “During the last twenty years it has become possible to think the unthinkable because so many books have appeared which set forth the richness of Welsh visual material.”

The Tempus History of Wales is best suited to an audience of interested lay readers, and it is very well suited indeed to that audience, as enthusiastic reviews in The Western Mail and other Welsh media attest. It may be of less use to most CSANA members, however. Too condensed for the purposes of a scholar—even one seeking an overview of a period other than his or her own—it is also, at least in its first three chapters, so compact that it is likely to baffle a student. I should say, though, that the nicely chosen bibliography, organized by period and limited to roughly a dozen items per chapter, is an excellent starting place for undergraduate student research into any aspect of Welsh history.

Catherine McKenna

City University of New York

(Beltaine 2003)

Dáithí Ó hÓgáin's study of pagan Irish religion is a difficult work to classify. The cover image of the Corleck Head from the National Museum of Ireland shows a Janus head facing left and right; presumably this is supposed to suggest the position of Celtic mythology (the head itself) looking toward both its past (the religion of the pre-Celtic peoples of Ireland) and its future (Christianity). Ó hÓgáin brings together the archaeology of Ireland from its earliest inhabitants, the mythology preserved in medieval, Christian-produced manuscripts, and folklore collected throughout the modern era in an attempt to describe the practice and theology of Iron Age Irish religion. In many ways, the book follows the paradigm set by Ann Ross's Pagan Celtic Britain (1968) in its agenda of correlating archaeological with literary remains, and many of the criticisms made over the years of the speculative nature of Ross's work can be applied to Ó hÓgáin's. Ultimately, readers must decide for themselves whether they find the arguments persuasive, since the only way to determine their literal accuracy would be to follow in the footsteps of Senchán Torpéist and fast against the grave of some Iron Age hero in hopes of getting an eye-witness account of reality.

The book has seven chapters--"The Pre-Celtic Cultures," "Basic Tenets in the Iron Age," "The Druids and Their Practices," "The Teachings of the Druids," "The Society of the Gods," "The Rites of Sovereignty," and "The Triumph of Christianity"—end notes, and a bibliography. (Oddly, there is no index, a serious lack in a scholarly work.) The first chapter theorizes about the Celtic people's possible religious inheritance from their predecessors, in particular the types of rituals that may have been carried out at sites such as Newgrange and the many other court cairns and passage graves that dot the Irish landscape. This analysis perforce concentrates on the burial practices of the Mesolithic and Neolithic inhabitants of Ireland and the beliefs about the afterlife that may be derived from them, which may give a skewed view of these cultures' religious beliefs that Ó hÓgáin tends to gloss over. The second chapter outlines the archaeological evidence for Celtic Iron Age religion, focusing on the Irish material but making connections to Continental and especially British Celtic analogs as well. The third and fourth chapters focus on the druids as the priests of the pre-Christian Irish religion. These chapters must draw on Classical writings about the Continental Celts for the early, ethnographic point of view and then skip to the medieval, Christian literary representations of Irish druids; the fact that these are both "outsider" and more or less hostile points of view is just one of the problems of understanding druidry that modern scholars must learn to live with. (Ó hÓgáin's statement that there must have been some "shamanic" element in druidism seems a merely pro forma bow to the enthusiasms of popular culture, since, having made the statement, he ignores the arguably shamanic resonances in the literature when they arise in the course of his discussion.) The fifth and sixth chapters use literary sources--primarily the mythological cycle in the former, the Ulster cycle and the king sagas in the latter--to draw out underlying themes and patterns in the literature that may correlate with the religious practices deduced from the archaeological evidence presented in the earlier chapters. Finally, Ó hÓgáin reviews the process by which the Celtic belief system was usurped and then adapted by Christian beliefs and practices. In particular, he shows how outright antagonism between Patrick and the dominant, pagan druids depicted in the hagiographies evolves so that a later saint, such as Columcille, can unite the functions and attitudes formerly ascribed to druids (acerbity, control of the weather, poetic composition) with a Christian, saintly existence.

Ó hÓgáin makes a good case for an underlying system of sun worship persisting from Mesolithic to Christian times, symbolized by images such as horses and horsemen who draw the sun across the sky and down into the underworld, the prevalence of fire as both an apparent focus of ritual and a name element revealing mythological connections, and the overwhelming imagery of red, white, and black in religious contexts. He also brings together convincingly both archaeological and literary evidence of a notion of supernatural power and wisdom located in water and, by extension, other liquids. His chapter on sovereignty surprisingly plays down the focus on the so-called Sovereignty Goddess that overwhelms many works on Celtic mythology and instead analyses the actual representation of kingship and its functions in the literature. This section makes the transition from the theoretical reconstruction of pagan society derived from "fictional" sources to the "historical" politics of early medieval Ireland. Ó hÓgáin shows the ways in which these myths of kingship may reflect the passing of political power from one family, tribe, or kingdom to another.

There are a few peculiarities to this work that make its intended audience difficult to determine. The lack of an index seems to suggest a nonacademic readership, but the analyses presented would be difficult to follow without a fairly deep previous knowledge of the narratives under consideration. Furthermore, although Ó hÓgáin gives extended plot summaries and analyses of narratives such as Tochmarc Étaine, Togail Bruidne Da Derga, Cath Magh Tuired, and Táin Bó Cuailnge and its various remscéla, none of these narratives is ever named. They are simply referred to as "a story," "the plot," "a common folktale," or "the tradition." For better or worse, this tactic seriously undermines the understanding of this material as textual, at least as it has survived into the present, and would be seriously confusing to a neophyte reader and is seriously annoying to a specialist.

Most of the themes and conclusions presented will be familiar to anyone who has done graduate work in Celtic Studies (although nearly all attributions to the conclusions of others is relegated to end notes); Ó hÓgáin's originality lies in juxtaposing literary analysis with the evidence of comparative anthropology and material culture in a way that illuminates consistencies in the admittedly fragmented and Christianity-filtered narrative corpus. Even this approach has been, as previously mentioned, pioneered by Ann Ross and in many ways carried on by Miranda Green, but Ó hÓgáin's focus on purely Irish archaeology and literature makes this a useful, if occasionally exasperating, contribution to the understanding of pagan Irish religion as a belief system held and practiced by living human beings in a specific historic and geographic context.

Leslie Ellen Jones

Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA

(Beltaine 2003)

This interesting and lively work is intended to provide an introduction to ‘mythic Britain’ for non-specialists and students. The work is written in an accessible style with no footnotes to hinder the flow. The theoretical approach is that of cultural archetypes as known through the work of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, and the thesis seems to be that a British way of articulating the human condition (a ‘British mythology) emerged through a Celtic, Roman, Germanic and Christian synthesis of universal themes (such as the hero quest). This is a popular approach, although hardly the ‘latest research’ as promised on the dust jacket. It also means that the authors make little use of more subtly nuanced analyses of this material as presented by other, more modern, authors included in the bibliography, in particular Barry Cunliffe, Miranda Green and Joseph Nagy. In addition, the lack of footnotes makes it difficult to distinguish the authors’ opinions from those of other scholars listed in the bibliography. As a result some statements acquire an air of authority which is not always justified. For example, the intro-duction puts forth that hoary chestnut of the probable use of stone circles in Celtic druidic rites (p. 4). No source is given, and it is not clear if the authors are referring to modern neo-druidic rites, which do take place at stone circles, or ancient druidic rites for which there is no evidence, or at least none that is supplied here. They refer to the ‘Celtic tradition of the Green Man’ (p. 199) with no references to source and certainly none to the considerable body of scholarship debunking this particular myth about Celtic myth.

The authors indicate clearly that this book is a worked up version of an undergraduate survey course on various mythologies which are relevant to ‘mythic Britain’. Such survey courses are very popular, and I am sure that I am not the only reader or reviewer who has taught one. The categories are under-standable as pegs on which to hang undergraduate courses (and the authors are up front that this is the source of the work) but the implicit assumptions do raise some problems. A fundamental problem with the study, and a rather important one, is the way in which this book defines the parameters of British. The authors use the phrases ‘the islands of Britain’ or ‘British Isles’ to encompass the geographical extent of their British mythology. But Ireland is never really accommodated (although references to Irish material dominate whenever the topic involves ‘Celtic’), except by the bald statement that the history (p. 8) of the early Christian church in Britain is largely the story of the Irish church. Surely this simplifies the problem to the point of meaninglessness. Such statements cannot hope to encompass the Patrician mission to Ireland or the Columban mission to Scotland or whether Celtic and Latin Christianity are fundamentally different in the first place? Other chapters, for example the one on deity types, have all the hallmarks of a series of lecture notes which the authors have not quite managed to turn into a balanced study.

While this is a well-written and even thoughtful book, it repeats and reinforces many old stereotypes and outright mistakes. One might hope for a book which would have challenged rather than reinforced this.

For all practical purposes, Britain means the main island and that aspect of the culture which came to be called English. Rather ill-defined concepts such as British-Celts, Romano-Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and the Irish church jostle one another around this notion, and, crucially, the authors buy into the stereotyped view that Irish medieval sources are part of a British heritage. While they admit that the stories of the Ulster Cycle are Irish and those in the Mabinogi are Welsh, in practice they ignore this distinction. The focus here is on culture with a Germanic underlay, and there is very little about the autonomous identities of Scotland, Wales and, most crucially, Ireland. As a result the book has an old-fashioned and rather imperial feel to it in which Celtic is seen à la Matthew Arnold as making an imaginative contribution to an essentially English world. Not surprisingly, the most coherent passages are on the sagas, Old English poetry, Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer. This is not intended as a criticism of the authors’ politics, merely that for them, the essence of mythology is a series of pre-existing archetypes that are given new faces every time culture changes. In archetypal terms, different deities represent difference manifestations of the same human thirst for divine expression (p. 220), and any specific cultural context is subordinae to this. Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell would no doubt agree and, to be fair, so might W. B. Yeats and David Jones, but one wonders what Bede might have said, or St David, or St Columba or St Patrick?

Juliette Wood

Cardiff University

(Samhain 2003)

This volume is the second in the Antiquity Papers series, which reprints classic essays on selected topics that originally appeared in the archaeological journal Antiquity. This particular volume includes twenty-six contributions on the Celts that were published between 1929 and 1998. Although the editors had a wide variety of articles from which to choose, they limited their selections to four main topics: Celticity (five articles), Continental Europe (seven articles), the Southern British Iron Age (ten articles), and the Scottish Iron Age (four articles). Each of these topics forms a separate section of the book and is prefaced by an editorial introduction that places the individual selections within their broader scholarly context. In addition, essays by the editors introduce and conclude the volume as a whole.

The first section of this book will be of particular interest to members of CSANA, since four of the five selections pertain to the current debate over the validity of traditional notions of Celticity. The first of these articles is an inflammatory piece by Vincent & Ruth Megaw (1996) that begins as a clarification of their views on ethnic identity and ends as an attack on the English archaeologists who deigned to question their orthodox views on Celtic prehistory. In not so subtle terms, the Megaws accuse these revisionist scholars of propagating a kind of retrospective genocide on the Celts, one sparked by fears of growing European unity and diminishing English sovereignty. These unsettling accusations do not go un-challenged but provoke heated responses

from John Collis (1997) and Simon James (1998), both of which are reprinted here.

While James addresses the Megaws’ charges of racism among English archaeologists, Collis takes his response as an opportunity to review the very issues that first led to the present reassessment of Celtic identity. The result is an important article that no Celticist should overlook. Although there is much in his discussion that is open to debate, Collis provides the clearest statement yet of the problems that must be addressed before a new, more accurate model of Celtic identity can be articulated. (These problems are reiterated in a numbered list at the end of the article.) Nevertheless, the Megaws get the last word. Their “partial response” (1998) to Collis and James concludes the section on Celticity, although their thesis – “Is nothing sacred?” (48) – leaves something to be desired.

The next section of the book includes seven articles on Continental Europe, four of which are reports on historic excavations or landmark finds. These include J. Biel’s (1981) description of a late Hallstatt burial at Hochdorf, Gerhard Bersu’s (1946) summary of his German monograph on the Wittnauer Horn, and Werner Krämer’s (1960) discussion of the oppidum at Manching. These last two studies are noteworthy for downplaying the defensive aspects of the sites and focusing attention on their overall character. Worthy of special attention is Hartwig Zürn’s (1964) original announcement of the discovery of the now famous Hirschlanden stele, without a picture of which no coffee-table book on the Celts would be complete. According to Zürn, this 1.5m sandstone sculpture once surmounted the Hallstatt barrow next to which it was found and served as “a representation of a dead warrior buried there” (80). The remaining articles in this section are reassessments ongoing problems in Continental archaeology. Vincent Megaw (1966) revisits the contents and context of the famed Vix burial, and Ian Ralston (1988) surveys the inherent difficulties of applying Caesar’s settlement vocabulary (oppidum, castellum, etc.) to archaeological sites. Both articles are difficult to follow without prior knowledge of the topics under consideration. This is not the case, however, with the fine article by Anders Bergquist & Timothy Taylor (1987) on the provenance and date of the Gundestrup Cauldron. After a careful assessment of the problem, the authors conclude that the cauldron has its origins in the Thracio-Celtic milieu of “northern Bulgaria and southern Romania between c. 150 and 118 BC” (108). This well researched article is one of the highlights of the collection and is a must read for anyone interested in this fascinating artifact.

The fourth and largest section of the book focuses on the Southern British Iron Age. Some of the more influential contributions include Leslie Alcock’s (1972) report on the excavations at Cadbury-Camelot, Ian Stead’s (1991) discussion of the Snettisham hoards, John Dent’s (1985) description of three cart burials from Yorkshire, and Rosalind Niblett’s (1992) account of a cremation from St. Albans. Niblett’s work is notable for its plausible reconstruction of the events that culminated in the final deposition of the remains. It is a fascinating look at the funerary practices of one Iron Age community. Most of the other contributions in this section deal with the rich archaeological heritage of Salisbury Plain. Christopher Evans (1989) reviews the “background and impact” of the Little Woodbury excavations conducted by Gerhard Bersu in late 1930s. It was Bersu’s recognition of the post-hole structures as houses that effectively put an end to the archaeological fiction of pit-dwellers and inaugurated a new era in British archaeology. These excavations are also discussed by Geoffrey Wainwright & Mansel Spratling (1973) in light of the neighboring settlement of Gussage All Saints, which was excavated in its entirety in 1972. This site consists of a three-acre enclosure surrounding a number of habit-ations, refuse pits, and the remains of a once-productive bronze foundry. Inform-ation gleaned from this dig has allowed archaeologists to reassess the nature of Little Woodbury-type settlements. In the final selection on Salisbury Plain, David McOmish (1996) discusses the East Chisenbury Midden, which consists of “deliberately curated accumulations of feasting debris” rather than general domestic rubbish (215). Based on this and other evidence, McOmish concludes that the construction of the midden was connected to the conspicuous consumption of food, likely as part of some seasonal rituals. His findings have prompted the reassessment of known middens at other locations.

The final section deals with the Scottish Iron Age and focuses exclusively on brochs, the remnants of some five hundred of which survive. These structures make their appearance in the first millenium B.C. and consist of circular dry-stone towers with hollow walls that enclose the domestic space of Iron Age farmsteads. Readers unfamiliar with this aspect of Scottish archaeology might well begin with the last of the four studies included in this section, an article by Mike Pearson, Niall Sharples and Jacqui Mulville (1996). This article provides a précis of broch scholarship as of its original publication date together with the authors’ stance on particular controversies. It is well organized, exhaustively researched, and generally accessible. The other three contributions, however, are much more specialized. They include two preliminary reports on landmark excavations -- Dun Mor Vaul, Tiree by Euan MacKie (1965) and Bu Broch, Stromness by John Hedges & Bernard Bell (1980) -- as well as Sally Foster’s (1989) application of “the theory and technique of access analysis” to study of the Orkney brochs. Unfortunately, like many theorists in literary studies, Foster employs needlessly complex jargon to explore a simple, even common-sensical, idea: that the demarcation of physical space through the construction of walls and doorways affects how people interact within that space. While her conclusions are not without merit, the application of access analysis to incomplete archaeological data is open to criticism on a number of levels, as Foster herself acknowledges. Even so, hers is the most thought-provoking piece in this section.

Celts from Antiquity is primarily designed for Celticists and archaeologists of different specialties who wish to add greater depth to their knowledge of the topics covered, and it serves that audience well. With few exceptions, the studies in this collection are accessible to anyone who has read one or more of the standard syntheses of Celtic prehistory, though it is unsuited for use in the undergraduate classroom. It is the sincere hope of this reviewer that the efforts of Carr & Stoddart will not go unnoticed, but will set a precedent in the field leading to the publication of similar collections drawn from the pages of other journals.

Dan M. Wiley

Department of English

Hastings College

(Samhain 2003)

Five years after its initial publication, R. R. Davies’ The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343 remains fresh, rewarding reading for scholars of medieval and early modern studies interested in sorting through “the problem that is the British Isles” (3). In seven chapters (all but one part of the Ford Lecture series delivered at Oxford in 1998), Davies focuses on the 250-year period that shaped the relationship between England and the British Isles, and throughout the book he explores why that relationship was not ultimately an integrative one. An equally salient theme exposes the “essential Englishness of English political culture,” and Davies calls our attention to the enduring tradition of an “English-trained”

approach to the polities of the western British Isles (111; 65). Along with Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales 1130-1300 and his multi-part series addressed to the Royal Historical Society on “The Peoples of Britain and Ireland,” this book reaffirms that objective and thorough examination of the question of medieval Britain is Davies’ domain.

The distinction of Englishness rather than its fusion with a larger sense of Britishness preoccupies each of Davies’ chapters. In his analysis (chapter 1), English overlordship and its eventual triumph as undisputed central power of the British Isles depended in large part on exclusivity, on a fierce and separate sense of English superiority. From the 1090s, the period of Norman advancement into outer Britain, English kings—against both the ideological precedent set by tenth-century Wessex and the ecclesiastical politics of an “all-Britain”—opted not to style or title themselves rulers of Britain (8-10). No dream of a unitary and integrated Britain directed England’s earliest relations with its “outer zones” (18). The British Isles formed instead “the zone of Anglicization” into which “self-consciously and aggressively English” settler communities “exported” Englishness (19). The closest possibility for “a single British political nation” was in effect Edward I’s “English take-over of the British Isles” (25, 30).

Superior strength made Englishness as such possible. Charting the far from predetermined course by which England became the sole “orbit of power” in the British Isles, chapter 3 credits as England’s greatest success “the illusion that [the concepts of ‘England’ and ‘the English’] were inevitable, even immemorial realities” (61). Before lines of power and loyalty had “settled into a four-countries mode”—before any local vision of Scotland, Wales, or Ireland as unitary nation-states—England had already become “more than a geographical expression” (74). Its brand of single and direct kingship, its “military gusto,” and its “insatiably acquisitive aristocracy” differentiated England.

The political contraction of Britain into England was mirrored on an ideological front. In “Island Mythologies” (chapter 2), Davies recounts the battle for “Britain” as an English defeat-turned-victory: when efforts to appropriate “Britain” and to include England in a “pan-British ideology” failed (44-48), the solution was to eliminate British terminology altogether, to replace it with terms of state and ecclesiastical power that were indisputably English—Engla-lond, Anglia, ecclesia anglicana. The “triumph” was to define English identity as separate and to fix an irremediable “disjunction” between England and the idea of Britain (52).

Combative rhetoric pitting “heartland” against “backwater” and civility against barbarity is the focus of chapters 4 and 5, and the “Anglicization” of the British Isles (“the triumph of the fashionable, the innovative, the exciting, the technologically more advanced, the wealth-creating, the transformative,” 170) occupies chapter 6. Each lays bare the “profound fissures” of a seismic “fault-line”—the metaphor of core instability with which Davies emphasizes economic, sociopolitical, cultural, and ethnic “incompatibilities” (140, 141-2, 189). A central, reiterated lesson of the book, and the focus of chapter 7, is not one of inevitable but of constructed disjunction, a disjunction created largely by “an English identity and power which had defined itself in such an exclusive fashion” (210).

Kristine Over

North Eastern Illinois University

(Samhain 2005)

In this masterful study of Cork and south Munster during the years 1630-1830, David Dickson weaves an intricate tapestry of a colorful region with a fascinating history. Dickson integrates analysis of significant economic issues with a discussion of crucial historical events to create a captivating and informative study. In one chapter, the reader may discover a detailed and illustrative treatment of potato cultivation as well as of the spade utilized by the potato farmer—all set within the context of a discussion of socio-economic motives leading to civil agitation and even religious strife. In other chapters, the reader may encounter compelling portraits of such characters as Richard Boyle, the Englishman who as a pioneer of the plantation system astutely obtained Munster land in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, beginning his family’s rise to prominence as earls of Orrery and later Burlington—or of such characters as the Roman Catholic Bishop Moylan, who warned his flock against participation in the violence of the late eighteenth century. Throughout the book, the reader cannot avoid the tortuous and torturing thread of inter-sectarian antagonism during this two-hundred-year period.

As Dickson notes, his aim in focusing on the Cork and south Munster region is not to compose “a social history of Ireland in miniature” (xi). Instead, he focuses on the area in such a way that “the aim has been more of a search for the elements that went into the creation of this region as a region, the factors driving change, and the possible explanation for the distinctive outcomes” (xi). From the very beginning of the English foray into Ireland, Dickson points out, “Henry II made the conquest of the small town of Cork one of his immediate objectives” (xi). In subsequent centuries, this area remained Ireland’s southern exposure to other nations, like France and Spain, with mercantile and political interests. This fact, combined with “the perception of outsiders that it contained untapped riches” contributed to “the strategic importance” of this region (xii). Therefore, south Munster in the 1580’s was chosen at “the site for the English state’s first programme of settler colonization” (xii)—a decision which was to have repercussions in subsequent centuries.

In any case, through developments “within a greatly strengthened exchange economy,” Cork became “one of the great ports of the Atlantic world” (xii). As Cork grew, so did the surrounding area, with Cork’s “growing commercial muscle helping to transform landscape, social relations and material culture in the ‘back country’ with all its inherited cultural and ecological variety” (xii). Economic developments, however, offer only “one perspective” for the changes in this area of Ireland “between the early seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries” (xiii). Noting that south Munster, like the rest of Ireland, was torn apart “in the ‘long’ seventeenth century by civil war and the expropriation of the existing landowner elite,” Dickson describes in his book the formation of a “new elite”: “Between the 1580s and the 1690s political and economic power passed for the most part to an entirely new elite, which was installed in the wake of the great reconquest, whose ideology and culture was freshly English and whom we label as ‘New English’ “ (xiii). Shaping this group was its “largely Protestant allegiance” in the midst of a people adhering to Catholicism (xiii). Dickson analyzes “the severe reverses” of this “new elite” during the 1590’s, the 1640’s, and the 1680’s—reverses that “profoundly shaped their sense of mission and their view of the indigenous community over which they had at least nominal control” (xiii). Dickson does not hesitate to call this group “colonial”: “But by any definition the victors in the struggle for control of south Munster were a colonial group insofar as the region (like the province of Ulster) experienced heavy, varied and sustained immigration, principally but not exclusively from England, over a period of seventy years” (xiii). This group possessed “economic power in the region” and “constituted a self-defined community with colonial characteristics” (xiii).

Dickson divides his book into three sections. In the first part, he takes up the period from 1630 to 1770. In the first two chapters, he traces “the totality of seventeenth-century developments” with the year 1641 as a dividing line (xiv). In later chapters, he concentrates on “social and economic change between the mid-seventeenth century and the 1760s,” taking into account “land ownership and the world of the gentry,” “commercial change,” and “the rural estate system and the working out of agricultural change” (xiv). In the second part, Dickson discusses “the surface tranquility of south Munster before the late eighteenth century,” while considering “evidence of profound underlying tensions” (xiv). In the third part, he studies “thematic developments between 1770 and 1830,” including metamorphoses in “agriculture and demography,” “changing power relationships in rural society,” “trade and manufacturing,” “urbanization and infrastructure” (xiv). In the last two chapters, he delineates “the origins of the crisis of the 1790s” and “the bitter post-Union period” which ends “in the dénouement of 1829” (xiv). Dickson in this study of Cork and south Munster has chosen to work within the context of the “long” eighteenth century in order “to address some of the limitations in current historiographical convention, both as to periodization and to theme” (xiv).

In his Afterword, Dickson considers post-1830 issues in the light of earlier history. Most salient among these issues is the Famine of the 1840’s, the “memory” of which for Dickson is imbued with “elements of a deeper past”: “The terrible years of sickness, death and displacement passed into collective memory. But in the process, elements of a deeper past were compressed into the political aspects of that memory” (499).

In this detailed, well-researched study of Cork and south Munster, well provided with charts, tables, bibliography, illustrations, index, and copious notes, Dickson has clarified some factors involved in “the creation of this region as a region” in the hope that others will be motivated to advance the study of what for him is “an endlessly fascinating region of surprise” (xiv).

Gregory Darling

(Samhain 2005)

It is not often that one can classify a new study as truly groundbreaking. This latest offering from Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, however, fits comfortably into this category. Fitzpatrick deals with a feature of the Irish landscape that, despite its relatively wide distribution, has proved an elusive subject, principally on account of the disappearance of many of its distinguishing characteristics over time.

Fitzpatrick uses the prologue to detail the distinguishing characteristics of the inauguration ceremony in late medieval Gaelic Ireland, explaining that there are just three texts available for this period that deal significantly with this event, in addition to the many minor references to be found in Irish chronicles and the observations of Tudor administrators. Despite this, Fitzpatrick manages to identify at least five distinct rites that constituted the ceremony: a robing ceremony, the performance of a clockwise ceremonial turn, the bestowal of the rod of kingship (slat na ríghe) on the candidate, proclamation / acclamation and the surrendering of the king’s horse and garments. In addition, rituals of bathing or drinking may have been performed during the ceremony in addition to the recitation of the candidate’s genealogy or the performance of a eulogy. Each, in turn, is discussed in the light of similar practices in Europe. This welcome approach places Gaelic inauguration practices clearly in the wider context of similar practices and ideas about kingship and authority found elsewhere, something that Fitzpatrick continues throughout the book.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first sets out to recover knowledge of the location and use of inauguration sites from written records, both Irish and English, in addition to Tudor and early Stuart maps. Place-names, of course, feature prominently in this quest as do later folk traditions collected by antiquarians in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In commenting on the demise and loss of assembly places, Fitzpatrick notes that in the period of the Nine Years War political expedience had made the charting of inauguration sites by the Tudor government a necessity; however, when the threat had passed, this was no longer the case. The disappearance of these sites from the maps coincided with the lament for their disappearance found in many contemporary bardic poems. The downfall in status that was to be the lot of these sites led to an equally devastating loss of significance in the popular consciousness, as evidenced by the fact that these traditional meeting places were overlooked as locations for assembly by the Catholic rebel leaders in 1641. The work of identifying inauguration sites from both the written record and from the landscape itself is not straightforward. Fitzpatrick notes that these sites defy easy classifications and are far from homogenous. The number thus far identified is relatively small when one considers that early medieval Ireland consisted of some one hundred and fifty petty kingdoms and later medieval Ireland approximately ninety lordships.

The second chapter explores possible explanations for the choice of certain

locations as inauguration mounds. Some of the earliest associations of mounds with medieval royal assembly date from the tenth century (e.g. Magh Adhair, assembly site of the Dál gCais). Fitzpatrick argues that the contribution of the Viking assembly practices to Irish ideas regarding royal meeting places, while little understood, must, nevertheless, have been significant. For instance, the custom of holding royal ceremonial assemblies on sepulchral mounds also features prominently in Scandinavia during the time of the Viking invasions while there is no evidence to suggest that there was a custom of inaugurating Irish kings on mounds in late prehistory upon which later practices might be based. The role that myth and tradition (even hastily-invented tradition) played in the legitimization of certain sites is also discussed here. This chapter, in addition, deals with stone cairns and mottes (arguing that the interpretation of some mounds as Anglo-Norman mottes may require re-evaluation).

The third chapter centres on the role of the kingship leac in inauguration ceremonies and here – quite literally – Fitzpatrick does not leave a stone unturned. Sources trawled for this chapter include literary texts, chronicles, place-names, material remains, folk tradition and the comments of antiquaries. The creation of suitable myths projected many of these features back into prehistory when actually most leaca, with the exception of the Leac na Ríogh, mentioned under the year 1432 in the Annals of Ulster, make their appearance in documentation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rite of kingship was not immutable and changes in personnel and furniture appear as early as the fourteenth century and increase as the concept of kingship changes to that of lordship. Fitzpatrick examines the possible significance of the inauguration stone, comparing Irish examples with the Fürstenstein in southern Austria. Footprint impressions and their relationship with inauguration stones are next explored. These elusive features, for which little archaeological evidence exists to connect them to later inauguration rites but which loom large in Irish mythology, may have been a feature of the early rather than later medieval period, suggests Fitzpatrick, who points to the significant number of these stones found at early ecclesiastical sites in support of her argument. The rite of the single shoe, on the other hand, dates from a much later period – the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Fitzpatrick sets out to discover the purpose behind the shoe, which she claims was a gesture of support by leading vassals for the authority of their overlords. In her discussion of the symbolism of the single shoe (and the rite of monosandalisme in general), Fitzpatrick is not afraid to venture not only into the world of classical mythology but also into anthropological studies by scholars such as Marc Bloch for answers (see especially pp 125–7). This approach is both welcome and refreshing.

Chapter four continues Fitzpatrick’s discussion of inauguration furniture, this time centering on the inauguration chair and its symbolism. Special attention is given to Tulach Óg and the inauguration chair of Ó Néill. The significance of the throne is explored with reference to Scottish royal inauguration ceremonies. Fitzpatrick places particular significance on the apparent progression in late medieval Ireland from an inauguration leac to a ‘chair’ or ‘throne’, perhaps influenced by contemporary models of European monarchy. Chapter five proceeds to examine ecclesiastical influence on inauguration practices, particularly during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which manifested itself at times in the movement of location to a church site. The final chapter examines the relationship between the location of assembly sites and the residences of kings and chiefs in the early and later medieval period. The epilogue focuses on the end of a tradition and the effect of the Nine Years War on assembly places. The appendixes, detailing attested and possible inauguration sites and footprint stones form an immensely valuable

starting point for future research. One noticeable typographical error can be found at the bottom of p.26 where the sentence beginning ‘Hore’s list of inauguration sites […]’ is replicated on the top of p.27.

This is a hugely important book on an area that has been neglected for far too long. Fitzpatrick is meticulous in her treatment of her subject and her breadth of learning is evident throughout. Her discussion of the rite of the single shoe alone exemplifies this perfectly.

Salvador Ryan,

National University of Ireland Maynooth

(Samhain 2005)

It is rare indeed to find translations of Breton literature in the English language – whether it be originally published in the French or the Breton language. This is a very welcome book – a “treasure chest” - as it claims to be - of Breton language writings (poems, stories, ballads, folktales, and essays) with translations in English as well as English language work (especially travelers’ and historians’ observations ) that bring a different perspective to Breton society, history and culture.

In a fiery Preface Bernard Le Nail describes the struggle in Brittany to survive and culturally thrive despite French oppression and a centralization that forces French citizens to look to Paris for inspiration. He declares “Brittany has mostly prospered and been able to make a significant contribution to humanity when it looked outwards.” Le Nail, who is certainly familiar with the full breadth and depth of Breton literature, notes that the authors have succeeded in preparing a collection of very diverse texts which take an intimate look at Breton society, but also show that Brittany has a place in a wider world that does not orbit around Paris.

Jacqueline Gibson and Gwyn Griffiths begin their foreword with a brief overview of the history of Breton language literature and publishing. They insist that while the aim of the book is to give an “overall picture of the literary texts published in Breton,” it is not a definitive anthology of Breton literature. Much has been left out, despite the size of the book and its inclusion of some 80 Breton language writers of various styles and from various centuries.

This is an ambitious project and this book includes a mixture of literature and writings by Breton language authors as well as observations by outsiders to Brittany. The organization of topics starts out in a chronological way but then shifts to a focus on different themes. By including such a breadth of materials, from Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul to works of the present day, the book succeeds in introducing the reader to a huge expanse of literature over time and in themes. While introductions to chapters and some of the individual works give a bit of context, this is not an in-depth analysis of Breton literature and culture. It is a sampling that whets the appetite and demonstrates that there is much more to be discovered. Short excerpts from novels or longer short stories are sometimes unsatisfying, but they serve to give a flavor of an author’s style. This book does not serve to substitute for the experience one would get reading the text of a novel, story, play, or poetry in their original Breton. Nor is it intended to serve as a history of Breton language literature or Brittany.

Certainly the selection of texts – as incomplete as the author’s admit they may be – are a very tantalizing selection for English language readers who might otherwise never learn of the existence of Breton language

literature. The translators/compilers have succeeded in their main aim “to give a voice to those who are not normally heard [by English speakers] because of the language in which they write. It is in no way complete, and yet it gives a picture of the liveliness of contemporary Breton creative writing which continues to thrive against all odds.”

The first seven chapters of the book (pages 18-195) are chronological in nature and focus on particular time periods. While there is too little information to give the reader a full understanding of any historical period, the poetry and excerpts from short stories or letters bring an emotional charge and feeling for the people of those times – particularly the chapters treating more contemporary periods. This is a very different perspective than that of non-fiction history books.

The first chapter, “Traces of a lost literature,” discusses the lack of medieval Breton literature and the reflection of Brittany and Celtic countries in other European writers, such as the lais of Marie de France or Chaucer’s The Franklin’s Tales which is set in Brittany. It is interesting to see the juxtaposition of Marie de France’s “Laüstic” and “Ann Eostick” from the 1893 edition of the Barzaz Breiz by Kervarker (Hersart de la Villemarqué). The chapter “The Pagan Past” looks at druids in early documentation such as Julius Caesar’s The Conquest of Gaul and later historical studies such as Sabine Baring-Gould and John Fisher’s Lives of the British Saints. Also included is the well known song “Ar Rannou” from the Barzaz Breiz whose origin and meaning remain obscure.

The chapter “Invasion from Britain” focuses on the settlement of Brittany by Brythonic Celts of the British Isles in the 4^th century BC

– an earlier date than most French (and Breton) historians of the past have recognized. A variety of short texts on this topic are drawn from the 11^th century to the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries. “The Arrival and Worship of Breton Saints” is a logical follow-up and includes excerpts from a variety of works about the early saints of Brittany which have figured strongly in early Breton language literature and in many more contemporary cantiques and lore celebrating the many saints still important to Bretons today.

With the chapter “Brittany and the Revolution” the authors include more writings by Breton authors versus observations by non-Bretons about Brittany. Poetry and stores from the period and later times evoke the counter-revolution and the conflict within Brittany during the period of the Revolution. War is again the focus in the following chapter “The Two World Wars” which evokes death and the horror of war on the battlefield and home front. Excerpts from short stories are particularly effective in portraying the impact of German occupation during World War II and the emotional toll of retribution after the war for presumed collaboration.

The chapter “The Breton movement” reflects a mix of defiance, bitterness and love in the fight for Breton freedom. Some writings reflect the romantic flavor of the Breton quest for identity in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Other writings help one to understand the complex nature of pro-Breton action during World War II and the persecution of Breton militants in the immediate post-war period. And other more recent poems and stories express a sense of hope for Brittany’s future.

This is a good springboard for the following chapters which are all topical in nature, but not entirely disconnected from Breton history. “Tales and Legends from Brittany” includes a nice series of variations on the story of Tristan and Izold and on the sunken city of Ys and its main characters, King Grallon and Dahud, his daughter. In the final humorous story on this theme by Marianna Abgrall written in 1920, the stone statue of Grallon atop the cathedral in Quimper clambers down to the street to consult (in Breton) about a cough with the statue of Dr. Laennec, the Breton inventor of the stethoscope, born in 1781.

The chapter on “Love” includes poems and excerpts from short stories by some of the better known writers of the early 20^th century (Youenn Drezen, Fañch Elies Abeozan, Xavier Langleiz and Yann-Bêr Kalloc’h) as well as some authors of more recent years (Ronan Huon, Philip Oiloo, Alan Botrel). While distinctly set in Brittany, these writings are about universal themes of love and longing. The chapter which follows on “Death” features the Ankou – Brittany’s grim reaper who visits in his squeaking cart to announce death, but also a variety of writings from the 15^th century to the present about murder, suicide, death from alcoholism, the death of a young woman in childbirth, the death of a child, and the transfer of a prize recipe from an old woman to her favored niece. To show that there can be a humorous side to this topic there is also the tale written in 1949 by Jakez Konan about a one-eyed general who rises from his coffin on the way to the church to angrily chase the townsfolk who had gathered for his premature burial.

“Snapshots of Brittany” begins with Julius Caesar’s view of the Veneti and his defeat of those skilled sailors of early Brittany. In the rare excerpt from a theater piece (from 1931), Tangi Malmanche presents the people of the Bro Bagan and the poverty which drove them to prey on ship wrecks on their coast of far northwestern Brittany. Other snap shots present countryside and villages, the sea, and its islands in poems and stories – sometimes a loving look at Brittany and sometimes a less complimentary view.

The chapter “Travelling Though Brittany” seems out of place since it does not include Breton writers nor literature in the Breton language translated from Breton to English. Most are travel accounts – many from Welsh travelers – who comment on Bretons and Brittany. These are more “snap shots” and they are always interesting. Two are fictional works – an excerpt form H.G. Wells’ novel A Propos of Dolores set in the town of Roskoff, and an excerpt form H. A. Vachell’s The Face of Clay, set in Pontaven during the early 20^th century when artists such as Gauguin gathered there to paint.

The chapter “Childhood Memories” starts with a “snap shot” from Anne Douglas Sedgwick’s A Childhood in Brittany, a book in English published in 1919 which describes life among the upper class in the mid 19^th-century. Poetry and stories of Breton language writers in this chapter beautifully evoke the joys and challenges of being a child in rural Brittany – playing hooky from school, fishing, exploring the countryside, “courting” girls, and the burden of going to church.

Some of the texts in the chapter “Bretons and Their Language” refer also to childhood - and the pain of being punished for speaking Breton in school. Other writings evoke the anger of an old woman when a new priest – who could speak Breton – switches to French for church services, outrage at the dominance of French and sadness to see its incursion at the expense of Breton, and impatience with

Bretons who are complacent and let this happen. As is the case for all of the topics explored in this book you find a mixture of emotions and complexity to Breton life.

The final topical chapter is “Women Writing About Women.” This includes many works about women’s relationships with men (and in one case another women), but also portraits of women – from housekeepers to militants. Eleven of the eighty Breton language authors in this book are women, reflecting the domination of men in the literary field. As social expectations change and new roles open up for women this will change and a future anthology is certain to include a higher percentage of women writers.

Short biographical notes are often included in introductions to selections in the book, but an alphabetical listing at the back of the book is a very welcome addition. Eighty Breton authors in the book are each given a short paragraph with dates of birth (and death) and pen names, in addition to some basic information about their life and work. Also included is a bibliography of some of the works of these authors – those from which excerpts have been drawn. A list of “Further

Reading” is also a nice addition and is broken down by works in English, Breton and French. This provides a nice start for those who want more information, but it could be a bit more extensive – particularly for the

English language section. I was surprised not to see listed Writing the Wind – A Celtic Resurgence, edited by Thomas Rain Crowe (New Native Press, 1997). This collects poetry of the six Celtic nations, including 55 poems by 11 Breton language poets. While only some of the Breton poems include the original Breton version, this is nevertheless a rare collection of poetry from Brittany for English language readers. Another book that should be noted is Lenora A. Timm’s translations of Anjela Duval’s poetry, A Modern Breton Political Poet, Anjela Duval (Edwin Mellen Press, 1990).

But, the work of Jacqueline Gibson and Gwyn Griffiths can only be applauded in its success in bringing such a wealth of literature and writing to English language readers. Those studying Breton will find this a great resource to practice reading skills with both the original text and translation available. This is a very rich sampling of writing and literature of all styles both by Breton language authors and outside observers of Brittany over the course of some 2,000 years. It is unique in presenting a wide range of perspectives and in evoking many different emotions to better understand the complex and changing culture and society of Brittany.

Lois Kuter

Secretary of the U.S International Committee for the Defense of the Breton Language

(Beltaine 2006)

Many studies have dealt with the French, Italian, and classical sources of Chaucer’s work. Rory McTurk, in this present volume, devotes attention to less acknowledged sources—Irish and Norse. His intention is not to reject the notion of continental influences on the Chaucerian opus, but to widen the scope of discussion. The cumulative effect of the mass of evidence presented by McTurk also leads readers toward a more detailed comprehension of medieval Irish and Norse literature.

In his first chapter, “Chaucer and Snorri,” McTurk, distinguishing between “analogies” and “analogues,” points out various analogies or correspondences between Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Snorri Sturluson’s Edda (composed in the 13^th century). He also considers the notion that the Skáldskaparmál, a portion of Snorri’s Edda, is an analogue to The House of Fame in the sense that both works, although independent, draw from the same source. The correspondences between the Edda and The Canterbury Tales are examined under the topics of framed narrative, literary anthology, and pilgrimage. Both works, as examples of framed narratives, are studied through the perspective of French narratologist Gérard Genette, who has elaborated a theory of levels of narrative. Both the Edda and The Canterbury Tales include a variety of literary forms, and therefore in a sense may be considered literary anthologies. Both the Edda and The Canterbury Tales encompass pilgrimage, for as McTurk notes, the pagan context of Gylfaginning suggests a pilgrimage of a Christian sort. In addition, McTurk argues that the tale of Óðinn’s robbery of the mead of poetry in Skáldskaparmál may be an analogue to a tale in Chaucer’s House of Fame; he marshals his arguments in terms of poetry, the other world, and natural functions. Both in The House of Fame and in Skáldsksparmál, the eagle mediates between two forms of poetry—“the literary and the oral,” according to McTurk (27), who also invokes a variety of literatures—Irish, Greek, and Indian—to note the difficulty of obtaining “increased poetic knowledge” from the other world (30). The travails of the eagle in Skáldskaparmál, of the eagle in The House of Fame, and of the bird flying off with the soma in Indian literature offer parallels in the sphere of natural functions.

In Chapter 2, “Chaucer, Gerald of Wales, and Ireland,” McTurk examines Chaucer’s ties with Ireland via the author Gerald of Wales or Geraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146-1223), who wrote Topographia Hibernie and Expugnatio Hebernica; he considers whether or not Chaucer in composing The House of Fame could have been influenced by lines in Topographia concerned with eagles and with the Kildare shrine of St. Brigid. According to McTurk, Chaucer was emboldened by the presentation of the eagle in Topographia to depict the eagle in The House of Fame as less than perfect. Having noted similarities between Topographia and The House of Fame, McTurk discusses whether or not the two works are analogues to each other as well as to Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál—all drawn from a source “which would be reflected in the story deducible from the Indian texts” portraying a figure with wings bringing soma (also associated with the poetic gift) to earth (45-46). For McTurk, Snorri and Gerald present versions of a tale in which a bird tries to carry poetic knowledge to earth, and Chaucer utilizes in The House of Fame a narrative which occupies a middle ground between the Norse and the Irish versions. Such an account, according to McTurk, Chaucer might have discovered during a stay in Ireland in 1361-66, when Chaucer was in the employ of Prince Lionel, who was viceroy in Ireland. The high point of Lionel’s viceroyalty, according to McTurk, was the enactment in 1366 of the Statute of Kilkenny, which was instituted “to counter the threat of Hibernicization facing the English colony” (62). During these years in Ireland, notes McTurk, Chaucer may have “had contact with Irish minstrels and storytellers” (64).

Influencing Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, according to McTurk in his third chapter, “Chaucer and the Irish Saga Tradition,” was the Middle Irish prose saga Acallam na Senórach (“Colloquy of the Elders”). First noting the parallels between The House of Fame and Togail Bruidne da Derga (“The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel”), McTurk discusses the relationship of The Canterbury Tales and the Acallam in terms of framed narrative, literary anthology, and pilgrimage. He observes that the narrative levels in the Acallam operate as they do in Snorri’s Edda and in The Canterbury Tales. Noting that the Acallam, like The Canterbury Tales, has “four organically interrelated levels of narrative,” McTurk sees the Acallam as a possible source (75). In addition, both works employ “a wide variety of literary forms” (94). Throughout the Acallam, the notion of pilgrimage is suggested, as St. Patrick wanders throughout Ireland with his entourage. The Acallam, according to McTurk, should be considered a possible model for The Canterbury Tales (104).

Loathly ladies are taken up by McTurk in his fourth chapter, “The Wife of Bath, the Hag of Beare, and Laxdoela Saga.” McTurk argues that both the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and her Tale were influenced by Irish Loathly Lady stories and that related Middle English narratives—the “Tale of Florent” by Gower in Confessio Amantis, The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and DameRagnall, and The Marriage of Sir Gawaine—are derived at least in part from the Wife of Bath’s Tale. He also postulates that the Icelandic prose Laxdoela Saga has the Irish Loathly Lady story as a source. Noting that Eisner in 1957 discusses nine Irish versions of the Loathly Lady story, McTurk affirms that this story is a source for the Wife of Bath’s Prologue as well as her Tale. McTurk raises the question “as to how far it is legitimate to equate the Wife herself, as she reveals herself in the Prologue, with the hag of her Tale” (116). He argues that Chaucer in his youth became acquainted with the Irish story and was further motivated by his reading of Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum, “with its idea of an ugly wife being lustful,” to employ the Irish story as a basis for the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale (136).This Irish material, according to McTurk, also influenced the Icelandic Laxdoela Saga.

In the chapter “Chaucer and Irish Poetry,” McTurk takes up the provenance of Chaucer’s five-stress line and announces his intention to present “a theory of Irish origin”; he observes, however, that nothing like Chaucer’s five-stress line “is preserved in Irish sources” until long after Chaucer’s death (148). Referring to the amhrán tradition, which emphasizes the importance of stress over syllable count, McTurk cites articles by P.A. Breatnach to affirm that five-stress lines were in existence in Iceland previous to “their earliest surviving Irish examples” (148). He observes that such line forms could have influenced Chaucer while he was in Ireland—and that Chaucer also could have been subject to the influence of Irish syllabic poetry.

Concluding his work in a sixth chapter, McTurk concedes that his book is no “substitute” for other works detailing French, Italian, and classical influences on Chaucer, but is meant to be a “supplement” (189). Finally, having escorted the reader through his well-researched analysis, he asks “whether Chaucer should not also be credited with preparing the way for the development of a distinctively Irish element in the English literary tradition” (189).

Gregory J. Darling

(Beltaine 2005)

1899-1905 was a seminal period that saw the rise of the Abbey Theatre and Sinn Féin as molders of public opinion. In this profound study, Mathews views the Irish Literary Theatre (forerunner of the Abbey) as a self-help movement because it produced plays by Irish writers staged before Irish audiences that reflected rural Irish society or adapted native epics and folklore for the stage. Moreover it sought to establish an intellectual focus within Ireland itself. Viewing the Irish literary revival within the greater context of contemporaneous self-help movements such as the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, the Gaelic League, and Sinn Féin, it becomes clear that all of these groups fostered the progressive cultural and economic development of Ireland, some-times at odds, but often cooperating, with one another. Such collaboration was facilitated by the active participation of Horace Plunkett, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, W.B. Yeats, Edward Martyn, and Maude Gonne in more than one of these groups.

Mathews challenges the traditional view that the Irish literary revival was wholly retrospective, so absorbed in a Celtic past that it was hostile to modernization. Instead, he amply demonstrates that the Irish Literary Theatre, like the other self-help groups, was responsive to the times and highly innovative, adapting Irish traditions in an endeavor to rally public opinion and effect change. Although professedly apolitical, these groups achieved more political and economic gains during these years for the Irish people than the Irish parliamentary party, splintered since Parnell’s fall in 1891 and enervated by the subsequent failure of Gladstone’s second Home Rule bill in 1893. Realizing that little would be achieved at Westminster once Tory Unionists gained control of Parliament two years later, Irish intellectuals were determined to mobilize the Irish people to address their own needs; accordingly the Gaelic League was formed in 1893 to preserve and promote Irish as a spoken and literary language and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society was founded one year later to promote and modernize cooperative agricultural practices. The Irish Literary Theatre as a showcase for Irish dramatic works followed in 1899, and the Irish women’s movement, Inghinidhe na hÉireann, in 1901.

Since the seventeenth century, Anglo-Irish intellectuals had eagerly aped English models; their indifference to native Irish culture, as well as the British imperative towards colonial assimilation, resulted in the decline of the Irish language, literature, and folk traditions as Irish natives increasingly adopted the language and manners of their rulers. Early twentieth-century revivalists sought to reverse this trend but disagreed on the definition of what constituted authentic Irishness. What makes Mathews’ book especially valuable is his trenchant discussion of this controversy.

Douglas Hyde’s lecture, “The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland,” (1892) is perhaps the most famous attack on Irish eagerness to imitate English models; but Mathews is quick to point out that in so doing, and in urging the Irish to develop their own literary and cultural forms instead, Hyde was echoing arguments voiced by Yeats some six years earlier. Another ardent critic of “West Britonism,” D.P. Moran, denounced English cultural influence as the product of imperial domination, observing, as well, that the inability of Irish presses to compete with England in providing the Irish reading public low-cost publications had actually aided this endeavor. Moreover, the influence of English theatre on the Irish stage was criticized for its negative Irish stereotypes by Arthur Griffith, who would found Sinn Féin in 1905, and actress Maude Gonne, leader of Inghinidhe na hÉireann. In sum, the 1890s saw the sprouting of resistance to cultural imperialism whereas the following decade would witness a vigorous debate on how to define Irishness. In this contest the Irish Literary Theatre would play a leading role as the productions of a new generation of intellectuals explored controversial issues and demonstrated the ability of drama to influence the views of theatergoers. Pursuant to heavy press coverage, the ideas so presented reached an even wider literate audience as well. Analyzing the first five years’ productions of the Irish Literary Theatre (omitting, however, Kathleen ni Houlihan), Mathews aptly demonstrates that the theatre “became a central arena where notions of national identity could be fashioned, legitimized, and disputed.”(p.23), validating Yeats’ prediction that “in the theatre a mob becomes a people” (Dublin Daily Express, 14 Jan. 1899)

Three definitions of Irishness emerged at the turn of the century. Gaelic League members endorsed writing and speaking in Gaelic as the most important badge of Irish identity and went on to establish local branches throughout Ireland to provide informal instruction in the Irish language while also pressing for greater Irish representation in official school curricula. The Gaelic League also fostered the dissemination of Irish literature, music, dance and other traditions as expressions of Irishness.

In promoting the idea that the only genuine Irish literature was in Gaelic, the Gaelic League would come into conflict with the British government and with members of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, most notoriously Trinity University dons J.P. Mahaffy and R. Atkinson. It would also challenge the Irish Literary Theatre’s claim to be a national theatre while producing plays in English. As founder of the Irish Literary Theatre, Yeats believed that the essence of Irishness was rooted in the rich Celtic traditions of myth and folklore, regardless of the language in which this heritage was transmitted. Ultimately, however, the Gaelic League would prevail upon the Irish Literary Theatre to put on some productions in the Irish language. Finally, the Gaelic League came into conflict with the Catholic Church’s view that Catholicism was the definitive mark of Irishness. Ironically, socialist James Connolly viewed this controversy as bourgeois and irrelevant, caustically observing that “you can’t teach starving men Gaelic” (Workers Republic, 1 Oct. 1898) and that the Catholic Church in time accommodates itself to the established order, whatever that might be. To be sure, the tendency of so many pundits to express their views might induce one to conclude that an abiding characteristic of Irishness is readiness to voice an opinion!

The Boer War that began in October 1899 had enormous impact on Irish political life. Pro-Boer sympathizers, including Griffith, Connolly, and Gonne, organized street rallies and anti-enlistment campaigns in Dublin; anti-Boer war mass meetings also took place in rural areas. Civil unrest led to the reunion of the Irish parliamentary party in January 1900 and election of conservative, Home Rule advocate, John Redmond, as its leader. Advocates of Irish national independence thereupon abandoned any allegiance they may have had to Irish parliamentary leadership. Later that year, the Irish National Theatre produced Edward Martyn’s play, Maeve, whose choice of death rather than compulsory marriage allegorized Ireland’s plight vis à vis the Act of Union. The same season saw the debut of George Moore’s Bending the Bough, an indirect yet nonetheless scathing attack on Irish parliamentary politicians dependency on England and pursuit of self-interest. Mathews convincingly argues that the new level of popular awareness and activity thus engendered by the theatre was critical for the development of Sinn Féin.

Of all the playwrights whose work was staged by the Irish Literary Theatre, Mathews singles out John Millington Synge as having the greatest understanding of Irish culture, owing to his competency in the Irish language, knowledge of its literature, and personal experience of Gaeltacht life. Synge voiced concern about the impact that the Gaelic League’s goal of standardized Irish would have on native speakers of dialects. In 1903 Synge’s play The Shadow of the Glen was produced by the Irish Literary Theatre. In this drama, the heroine, compelled to marry a much older and brutal husband, remains defiant and ultimately runs off with another man. Synge appears to have based her character on his acquaintance with unconventional, outspoken, Aran women. The debate that this play engendered, openly (rather than allegorically) flying in the face of bourgeois Victorian – and even Catholic – morality, seems to have been a fitting farewell by the Irish Literary Theatre that would soon become the Abbey.

Mathews painstakingly demonstrates that these self-help initiatives, independently and working together, generated much public energy. In championing native Irish culture and promoting economic progress they challenged parliamentary politics and spearheaded the initiative for decolonization that would be pressed by Sinn Féin and the Abbey in years to come.

Diana Delia White

Department of History

Rhode Island College

(Beltaine 2006)

Some recent publications of compelling interest to CSANA members, to their institutional and local libraries, and to those special persons on your gift-shopping list. . . .

* * *

Who would have thought that two new English-language introductory textbooks on Old Irish would appear in the same year?– on the heels, no less, of 2005's much-awaited First Old Irish Grammar and Reader, including an Introduction to Middle Irish by Kim McCone (published by the Department of Old and Middle Irish of NUI Maynooth).

The two latest (2006) entries in the growing library of books offering instruction in Old Irish are Sengoídelc: Old Irish for Beginners by David Stifter (Lecturer at the Institut für Sprachwissenschaft at the University of Vienna), published (in paperback) by the Syracuse UP as part of their “Irish Studies” series (for more information, see www.SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu), and An Old Irish Primer (hardback), by Wim Tigges (Lecturer in the English Department, University of Leiden), in collaboration with Feargal Ó Béarra, published under the auspices of the Stichting Uitgeverij de Keltische Draak, Nijmegen, by Nodus Publikationen (http://elverdissen.dyndns.org/~nodus/nodus.htm#DKD).

Both books are designed with classroom use in mind, but they can also guide the private learner-beginner, as well as by those of us OI veterans well aware of the truth of the adage, “Learning Old Irish is like mowing the lawn–you have to do it again and again.” The Primer is divided into twelve chapters and from beginning to end features, as sample/practice texts, poems (“generally from the Old Irish period [i.e. c. 600 to c. 900 AD], but a few items from what is properly speaking the Middle Irish period [up to 1200] are included as well”; Stifter’s Sengoídelc also acknowledges the inevitable creep of Middle Irish into any introduction to Old Irish). The choice of verse is justified by Tigges/Ó Béarra on the grounds that these texts “on the whole are linguistically relatively simple but at the same time substantially sophisticated and therefore and therefore hopefully more challenging than the syntactically informative but otherwise not terribly exciting Old Irish Glosses which have often been the beginning student’s main alternative.” Also included is an appendix that brings together several additional poetic texts; each accompanied by its own thorough glossary, as are the poems included in the individual chapters. In these glossaries, the reader already equipped with some knowledge of Modern Irish, or looking forward to acquiring such knowledge, is provided with the “modern reflexes of the vocabulary.”

Taken from the standard editions of Murphy, Carney, and others, the verse featured in the Primer adds up to an impressive mini-anthology of annotated Irish poetry for the beginner, including the Pangur Bán poem, verse from the Líadan-Cuirithir cycle, a selection of Blathmac, the Reicne Fothaid Canainne, and Finn’s rhapsodic praise of Maytime.

Stifter’s considerably longer and more detailed Sengoídelc (391 chockful pages, versus the 200 pages of Tigges/Ó Béarra), is organized into 58 lessons. While it features some practice poetry (sometimes the same “greatest hits” as in the Primer), Sengoídelc relies for its exercises primarily on prose selections--from, for example, the Glosses and the Táin Bó Cúailnge. All practice texts are supplied with phonetic transcriptions. Stifter has even composed English-to-Old-Irish translation exercises, as self-parodying as anything in E.G. Quin’s Old Irish Workbook (RIA, 1975), e.g., “The bold scribes stop the weak thieves in the ship.” Glossing is relegated to an all-purpose Old Irish-English word-list in the back of the book, and there is an appendix with the “Solutions” to all the exercises. Mindful of future editions, Stifter has set up a website where readers can register their observations and advice.

Both works provide some rudimentary information for the beginner on the Celtic and Indo-European linguistic background to Old Irish. They of course offer definitions of the more specialized terms necessary for the understanding of OI/Celtic languages (e.g., “lenition”). But teachers planning to use one or both books in the college classroom should note that Tigges assumes “a basic familiarity with the terminology of phonetics and syntax,” while Stifter is more willing (or has more time and space!) to walk the raw beginner through terms/concepts such as “inflection” and “case.”

* * *

The massive, two-volume Cambridge History of Irish Literature appeared from Cambridge UP earlier this year (2006). Edited by Margaret Kelleher (Senior Lecturer in English Literature at NUI Maynooth) and Philip O’Leary (Professor of Irish Studies at Boston College), and written by over thirty contributors, the History consists of independent pieces surveying different periods and aspects of the Irish literary tradition, each with its own select bibliography. There is a feast of information and insight here, in the lead-off survey of “The Literature of Medieval Ireland to c. 800: St Patrick to the Vikings,” by former CSANA President Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, and in other contributions on later Irish literature by a distinguished roster of scholars, including Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Kaarina Hollo, Mícheál Mac Craith, Neil Buttimer, Gearóid Denvir, and Donna Wong (the last contributing a bird’s eye view of “Literature and the Oral Tradition”). For more information, see the CUP website at www.cambridge.org.

* * *

Brian Ó Catháin, Lecturer in the Modern Irish Department at NUI Maynooth, has edited a collection of profiles of modern women scholars who have left their mark on the field of medieval Irish studies, published as the 2005 issue of Léachtaí Cholm Cille (vol. 35, from An Sagart Press of Maynooth). Titled Scoláirí Léinn, it features extensive articles (in Irish) on the life, times, and achievements of Eleanor Hull (by Pádraigín Riggs), Eleanor Knott (Eoin Mac Cárthaigh), Nessa Ní Shéaghdha (Pádraig Ó Macháin), Kathleen Mulchrone (Gearóid Mac Eoin), Cecile O’Rahilly (Ó Catháin), Máire MacNeill (Ríonach uí Ógáin), Winifred Wulff (Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha), and Deirdre Flanagan (Mícheál Ó Mainnín). Also included are complete bibliographies for the scholars profiled, and a veritable treasure trove of rare photographs.

* * *

Another recent publication that would doubtless be of interest to CSANA members is ethnomusicologist and folklorist Lillis Ó Laoire’s English-language, updated edition of his 2002 monograph Ar Chreag I Lár na Farraige, titled On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean: Songs and Singers in Tory Island, Ireland, and published by Scarecrow Press (2005), as part of their “Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities” series (No. 4; for more information, see www.scarecrowpress.com). Mining his extensive fieldwork conducted among Tory islanders in the eighties and nineties, Ó Laoire (recently appointed Lecturer in Irish folklore in the School of Irish at NUI Galway) deals with a wide range of topics, including the cultural significance of singing and dancing, oral versus written transmission, “folk aesthetics,” keening, and allusions to traditional song in the published works of Tomás Ó Criomthain and James Joyce. The book comes with full texts and translations of many of the songs collected from the islanders, as well as a CD featuring over two dozen of the author’s field recordings.

Joseph Nagy

UCLA

(Samhain 2006)

This volume of five essays about Gaelic-medium education (GME) in contemporary Scotland is in a series about the present and future of education in Scotland, particularly for those concerned with practical, political and economic aspects of its implementation. The contributions are “An Historical Overview,” D. J. MacLeod; “Gaelic Medium Education in the International Context,” Wilson McLeod; “Managing Provision: The School Perspective,” Rosemary Ward; “A Local Authority Perspective,” Jean Nisbet; “Contexts and Futures,” Margaret Nicolson and Matthew MacIver.

As members of CSANA are not likely to find chapters three and four immediately relevant to any interest they might have in the general issues of linguistic revitalization (being very specific to the institutional framework of education in Scotland) I will limit my comments to chapters one, two and five.

“An Historical Overview” offers a summary of the evolution of GME in Scotland, especially since the 1960s. This is essentially the story of a small group of dedicated individuals getting Gaelic through the “backdoor,” as it were, of Environmental Studies. A growing confidence in these achievements, and the consciousness of the steady encroachment of English into the previous Hebridean heartlands, led to more widespread efforts in the 1980s: the establishment of Gaelic-medium playgroups throughout Scotland (including urban centers outside the traditional Highlands), Gaelic-medium primary school classes in Glasgow and Inverness, an organization to coordinate efforts (Comunn na Gàidhlig) and the Gaelic Specific Grants Scheme.

This chapter does provide very interesting information about how these developments emerged from one another, what kinds of people have been involved and why, and the degree of success of each initiative up to the date of publication. As this booklet is expressly meant to “provide the background to this development by placing GME in its historical context,” however, I find the first chapter failing to provide an historical framework complete enough to explain the lack of provision for Gaelic in Scottish educational institutions and the hostility to Gaelic amongst the general population (referred to implicitly several times in the book) which has hampered its acceptance in schools and elsewhere. This chapter begins chronologically with a brief mention of the 1872 Education Act and related acts thereafter before quickly moving two paragraphs later to the 1960s. There is no mention of the work of Charles Withers and Victor Edward Durkacz, for example, to help explain the decline of Gaelic (although there are two paragraphs in the concluding chapter (pp. 65, 66) on this issue). While the work of previous authors need not be unduly duplicated, the book surely needs more on this topic.

The second chapter reviews the development of minority-language education in Wales, Ireland, and the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) to see what lessons might be available for the efforts of Gaelic-medium education in Scotland. In order to do this properly, McLeod provides some of the relevant historical, political and demographic contexts for these cases individually, making observations on advances and fallbacks, strengths and weaknesses. While McLeod acknowledges that there are many differences between these disparate circumstances, and limitations to applying or adapting the strategies from one region to another, he offers important observations about the limitations in particular implementations and, on the other hand, the remarkable successes that have been accomplished in a short space of time in, for example, the BAC. This suggests what can be done if sufficient political will and communal effort exists.

The fifth chapter examines three crucial contexts in which GME operates in the current day (linguistic, educational, and political), attempting to determine how these contexts have limited the effort to develop and expand GME and what could be done to shape these contexts to be more favorable to GME. The authors here raise some very crucial points about the current state of things and the obstacles in the path of achievement: the inadequate assignment of responsibility for GME in the political infrastructure, the marginal role of language learning in the Scottish curriculum, the shortage of GME teachers, the dominant monolingual mentality in Scotland, the lack of legislation to give Gaelic proper status in Scotland, and the general lack of accountability in the political structures in Scotland (the newly created Bòrd na Gàidhlig not excepted).

While I believe that the authors have identified the relevant issues and articulated them well, it should be recognized that these essentially boil down to political culture and identity formation. Toward the end of the article, they conclude “Yet in Scotland, we have maintained a rather awkward relationship with language, and will continue to do so if it is not accepted as a necessary element of who we are.” Surely part of this “awkward relationship” has been the result of anti-Gaelic biases in education in the past, from the Anglocentric approach to history to the teaching of language itself. Political will and communal effort favorable to Gaelic’s survival are not likely to come until there is a major cultural shift in Scotland. While this is not directly under the remit of GME, it is necessary to acknowledge and confront, and it is to be hoped that Scotland’s new political apparatus will allow that.

Michael Newton

University of Richmond

(Beltaine 2004)

In modern Irish, the term used to describe a woman whose marginal social status imparts enough authority to render her potentially dangerous is cailleach. Denoting old woman, hag or witch depending upon the context, the term applied in traditional culture to both real women who may have wielded limited authority from the margins of society, and to their legendary counterpart whose feminine powers were celebrated in myth as they were constrained in real life. The mythical cailleach, who spent her days digging lakes, dropping mountains from her apron, and pleasuring her many husbands, is characterized by, among other things, supernatural longevity and inexhaustible fertility.

This legendary figure, often named the Cailleach Bhéarra in the numerous Irish and Scottish oral tales concerning her, has well-established literary antecedents. The most famous of these is, of course, the medieval poem “The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare,” but the lines of descent and influence by which the nun/old woman Caillech Bhérri of medieval literature becomes the supernatural, witchlike Cailleach Bhéarra of relatively modern Irish and Scottish folklore are fascinatingly unclear.

The poem alone presents the scholar with multiple difficulties, which B. Murdoch has outlined in an article published in ZCP in 1994. Five manuscripts exist, each differing on order and number of stanzas, and sometimes entire passages. The linguistic variants in each have caused scholars to date the poem anywhere between the eighth and eleventh century. While the imagery in many of the stanzas is clear and vivid, some are so obscure as to be unintelligible, causing significant translation variances.[1]

Interpretations also vary widely. A long-standing scholarly debate concerns whether her reference to herself as “Caillech Bérre Buí” in the second stanza of the poem simply supplies her with a proper name or associates her with the Buí mentioned in the Dinnshenchas, and therefore with the literary Sovereignty tradition as well as the somewhat more folkloric place name tradition. Tomas Ó Cathasaigh, who summarizes this debate in his 1989 article “The Eponym of Cnoba” as well as tracing its origins, concludes that the Sovereignty association is valid.[2] Kim McCone, on the other hand, characteristically interprets her “Lament” as a thoroughly Christian allegory.[3]

Other elements of “The Lament,” along with other medieval literary artifacts, expand these associations into less well-charted terrain. The prose introduction which precedes the version of the manuscript designated “H” names the Caillech Bérre along with three other women: “Brigit daughter of Iustán…Liadain, wife of Cuirithir, and Úallach daughter of Muimnechán.” All of these women belonging to “the Corca Duibne, that is to say of the Uí Maic íair Chonchinn,” and the saint “Finán Cam has bequeathed to them that they shall never be without some wonderful glorious caillech among them.”[4] Women with these names all appear in other literary sources as both saints and—tantalizingly—as poets.

Cormac’s Glossary makes a reference to Brigit the “poetess,” and a poet called Úallach is referred to, in passing, in both The Annals of the Four Masters and the Annals of Innisfallen, The link between these references and the Caillech is admittedly weak; no patronym or spousal designation clearly associates these poets with the saints of the same name, nor do these sources refer to either woman as a caillech. But “Liadain wife of Curither” clearly alludes to the medieval tragedy Liadain and Curither,[5] and the links between these two texts are far more readily established. Liadain’s confessor, who banished Curither to punish her for breaking her religious vows, was St. Cuimíne, who also, according to the prose introduction, of “The Lament,” placed the nun’s veil on the head of the Caillech Bhérri, after which “age and infirmity” came to her.

Another referential thread links both “The Lament” and Liadain and Curither to the Middle-Irish Aislinge Meic Conglinne.[6] The narrator names “Don[n] fhiach caillech Berre bán” as one of the “eight persons in Armagh at that time of whome these lays were sung.” Another of the persons named is Mac Da Cherda, a poet/trickster who appears in several other tales, but also, significantly, as the messenger Curither sends to Liadain in the tale concerning them. Furthermore, according to one of Kuno Meyer’s annotations of the Aislinge, Mac Da Cherda and St. Cummine collaborated on the composition of a poem.

A compelling figure woven within an intricate cultural pattern of medieval literary references, oral tradition and numerous contemporary revivals, the cailleach figure has nonetheless received surprisingly little sustained scholarly attention. The folkloric accounts have not, as yet, received the type of painstaking, exhaustive documentation and cataloguing that Patricia Lysaght brought to her groundbreaking study of the bean sídhe. Medieval scholars continue to explore the fascinating complexities “The Lament” presents: difficulties of dating, reconciling the multiple manuscript versions and multiple translations, and whether she is another manifestation of Sovereignty or mere Christian allegory. As far as I know, however, no one has yet examined the poem as one strand in a web of highly self-reflexive literary allusions with the sort of keen interpretive insights by which Joseph Nagy has illuminated the equally complex Fenian materials. And aside from certain recent literary re-appropriations such as the contemporary Irish language poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill’s, feminist attention to this intriguing personage has been surprisingly minimal. Nor has any scholar of whom I am aware attempted to bridge, to any great extent, the material and methodological gap between medieval literary and modern folkloric study.

I had hoped, when I began reading The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer, that Gearóid Ó Crualaoich had accomplished such a comprehensive study. On the surface, it appears to be. He spends the first section of the book placing the Cailleach of oral tradition within the medieval tradition, rehearses relevant scholarship on both, and argues for oral storytelling as a mode of literature. The second section focuses on the specifics of the oral tradition itself, providing several examples from the original, largely hand-written texts gathered by the Irish Folklore Commission in the early and mid twentieth-century and housed within the marvelous Folklore archives at University College Dublin. These he offers in their entirety in the original Irish in the third and last section of his book, as a supplement to the highly readable translated excerpts he interprets in the previous section. The subtitle “Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer” suggests an interpretative approach that emphasizes the figure as a positive, complex image of femininity independent of her rather reductive portrayals as sovereignty goddess or landscape shaper.

In the past, I have found Professor Ó Crualaoich’s approach to the cailleach, grounded as it is in folklore and in modern spoken and written Irish, to provide an illuminating alternative perspective on the debates within medieval scholarship. In a 1988 issue of Bealoideas, he argues that she represents a different principle in the oral traditions than in the medieval sources: “a version of a supernatural wilderness figure peripheral to and usually inimical to the human world.” In a piece published in the 1994-95 issue of that same publication, he again emphasizes the importance of considering her within a broader context. She is not merely an Irish sovereignty goddess, but rather represents “a female cosmic agency” that expresses some necessary truth about all human relationships.

Ó Crualaoich’s insistence that interpretation of the cailleach’s significance depends upon the context in which she appears is important and valid. But his equal, ultimately contradictory insistence on reading her as exemplary of some universal feminine principle, effectively neutralizes not only his argument for the importance of context, but all the inherent complexity that makes the cailleach such an interesting figure of feminine power in the first place. And therein lies the major problem with his book. His material is fascinating, the scope of his learning impressive and his effort to offer something relevant to both scholarly and popular audiences commendable. But his critical approach, grounded primarily in Jungian psychology, long outmoded nineteenth-century notions of a universal mother goddess, and celebration of the legendary cailleach as a nurturing “wise woman/healer” who exemplifies a “heritage of autonomous feminine authority and wisdom” (229), is lamentably reductive.

To a certain extent he does account for specific contexts. The first section provides a sound review of the ways the caillech figure has been rewritten throughout Irish history: the Caillech Bérre, other mythical goddess figures, the sovereignty tradition, the later nationalist aisling and poetry, contemporary literary revivals, and the thread of oral narrative tradition that winds through this literary history.

But throughout the book, he consistently speaks of these specific instances in terms of “the feminine” in the singular. In support of this monolithic definition, he rehearses long-discredited notions of pan-European mother-goddess cults, based on the highly questionable assertions of pseudo-scholars such as Marija Gimbutas and mid twentieth century Jungians such as Erich Neumann. If this weren’t problematic enough, he martials French Lacanian feminist theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray—both of whom argued adamantly but in different ways against such universalizing gestures and antiquated concepts—as further support of his generalizations.

Most unfortunate, to my mind, is his editorial selection of the oral materials he presents. This incredibly rich material, written mostly in modern Irish and as yet still largely uncatalogued, has long been unavailable to the general, English-speaking public. While Professor Ó Crualaoich has provided us a valuable service in offering some of it in translation, he focuses solely on the cailleach stories that provide evidence of her maternal, healing, nurturing, “wise woman” qualities, under headings such as “Intimations of a female-centered cosmos,” and “Accommodating female knowledge and power.” What he leaves out of his summaries, most regrettably, are the numerous accounts of the sexual prowess and dangerous, witch-like powers folk tradition also attributes to the cailleach: her frequently-attested abilities to satirize an enemy—a power that that renders her equal in verbal acuity to the venerable, exclusively male poets, and the even more dangerous ability to curse or kill with a mere glance. And for all his celebration of the “victories of a male-centered social order” some of these stories may represent, he never mentions the actual, frequently oppressive conditions suffered by the actual Irish people, particularly the women, who told these stories. In his emphasis on the importance of reading within alternate contexts, he effectively effaces all possible contexts that give the cailleach figure any depth or meaning.

By ignoring the lived realities of actual Irish women, by emphasizing the maternal qualities of the cailleach rather than her exuberant, independent sexuality, by all but ignoring her more dangerous and even deadly aspects, and by not adequately exploring the implications of her verbal acuity — all

qualities that have equally characterized the cailleach figure throughout her long and colorful history—Professor Ó Crualaoich sadly leaves those of us who have long and eagerly awaited for the degree of exploration that this material so richly deserves still waiting and still wanting.

Shannon McRae

English Department

SUNY Fredonia

(Beltaine 2005)

Much has been written about Patrick Pearse and his role in Irish history. His central place in the Rising of 1916 has made him an icon for Irish nationalists. As Elaine Sisson correctly identifies in this new book, Pearse’s life needs to be understood by more than how he died. His emergence in the political movement for Irish independence came after he had developed an attachment to the Gaelic Revival and the cultural movement that shaped the last decade of the nineteenth and the first two decades of the twentieth century. Pearse’s work as a cultural nationalist came to be epitomized by his opening and leading an Irish school in Dublin. St. Enda’s was not just a place to teach the Irish leaders of the future the language of their ancestors, but it was a place to immerse them in the culture of the Celtic past so that they could be authentic inheritors of this tradition. The importance of St. Enda’s is highlighted not just by Pearse’s leading role in the rising in 1916 but the large number of teachers and former students who participated with him. St. Enda’s became the school that provided the intellectual ferment of the Irish nationalist revolution.

One of Sisson’s interesting points is the importance Pearse placed on defining and training young boys in the principles of Celtic masculinity. Sisson contends that until the time of Pearse Celticism had predominantly come in the form of a literary revival led by Anglo-Irish elites. This form of nationalism was seen as feminine and

distorting the history of Gaelic Ireland. It made Ireland weak and docile in the face of the power of the British Empire. What Pearse and other Irish nationalists sought was the emergence of strong and effective nation capable of achieving independence both culturally and politically. This required regendering the Irish nation in the form of a masculinity allied with the Gaelic tradition, not the Celticism highlighted by the work of Yeats.

In the end, Pearse wanted all bases of Irish identity, including the Celtic sense of self, to be remade to highlight Ireland’s greatness of the past and promise for the future. This required the Irish national identity to be reimagined based on the great heroes of the past. These examples would teach young boys and men the virtues “of physical prowess, honour, courage, and chivalry” (p. 19). Medieval monks, such as St. Colmcille, were to serve as important role models in this endeavor. Pearse used art, especially drama, to demonstrate the heroic role of boys in the traditional West of Ireland. He also hoped to create Christian warriors fighting for the Irish nationalist cause. Cúchulainn was the mythical hero from the Celtic tradition that merged with images of these Christian saints to produce the role models for the boys at St. Enda’s. Gaelic games, especially hurling, and military drills were used to inculcate the physical virtues associated with the ancient Gaels and which were needed to defend the Irish nation.

Throughout the book and especially in the concluding chapters, Sisson raises the sexual purpose or consequence of Pearse’s apparent obsession with boyhood, beauty, and the virtues of Irish national identity. While the author does not offer any definitive observations regarding Pearse’s sexual orientation, she does successfully demonstrate that his emphasis on boyhood helped define how he wanted to see the nationalist cause. Ultimately, his death and his emphasis on martyrdom that came to dominate his life in its final years have tended to overshadow the emphasis on puerile virtue associated with Irish nationalism in his days at St. Enda’s. After his death, St. Enda’s began a quick decline and closed its doors in 1935. Without the charismatic leadership of Pearse, this school for the training of young Irish nationalists faded into oblivion. Sisson’s book succeeds in informing us of an important period and focus of the life of Ireland’s mystical nationalist hero, Patrick Pearse.

Timothy J. White

Department of Political Science and Sociology

Xavier University

(Beltaine 2005)

This book examines Irish popular music through the theoretical perspective of Popular Music Studies. Gerry Smyth bases the book upon the work of Jacques Attali and his concept of “noise.” For Attali and Smyth, the separation of sounds into the categories of “music” and “noise” is problematic. They propose an acceptance of all the sounds of life as “noise.” This theory allows Smyth to engage popular music without having to question its artistic merits, or lack thereof. The irony inherent in this system is that when all sounds are bunched under the category “noise,” no sound is unique. At the core of this theoretical approach is the idea that meaning is always in relation to culture or society and therefore political and cultural changes are the primary discourse of “noise.” What is lacking here is any discussion of philosophical or theological issues that might have influenced the Irish musicians. In Smyth's world, all artistic thought is concerned with politics and culture. The result of this is that the explanation of the growth of Irish pop music is somewhat deficient and discordant.

U2, which receives a significant discussion in the book, is presented as a band with two main preoccupations: “humanitarianism and the nature of 'truth' in the modern world” (89). The idea that U2's concerns with these matters might stem from religious or philosophical beliefs, or that they had any significant beliefs at all, is never dealt with. While it is true that U2's music almost always deals with oppression, suffering, and identity, to ignore the heavily religious themes of the group's work is quite problematic.

The section on U2 is also a good example of how Smyth goes about developing his ideas. There is a lengthy explanation of the band's records and the major themes that inform them, for example, Smyth claims that U2’s Achtung Baby is, “...about the claustrophobia of the city streets and the ambivalent moral choices that arise there, as reflected in the urgent, hustling rhythms and 'dirty', noise textures of the music” (98). This is both Smyth's argument and evidence for themes of the album. No quotes from the lyrics, no examples from the music, no interviews from the band to support this interpretation, just a broad claim. Unfortunately, most of the book follows this same pattern, which leads me to wonder whether Smyth believes his own interpretations to be so accurate that they require no evidence; or perhaps he thinks that there is no point in arguing from evidence since great art, “is a mirror wherein different agents see different things” (89). Smyth, in his attempt to approach popular Irish music as an academic study, ought to support more fully his claims with historical and or textual evidence.

The book does sometimes strike just the right notes. The discussion of Irish Punk Rock and to some extent the singer-songwriter movements are perhaps the best in the book in that Smyth finds numerous examples from

the music to support his discussion. Since Smyth views politics and culture as the key issues of popular music, some “musics,” such as the politically charged punk genre, easily fit into his paradigm. The author does a great job of lining up two punk bands, Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones, and showing how they both offered different approaches to the same cultural/political issues. Choosing a song from each of them, Smyth demonstrates from evidence that there is a clear connection between the themes of the songs and the issues of the body, the individual, and society.

Smyth provides an informative, though narrowly conceived, history of Irish popular music in The Noisy Island, which he parallels with the cultural/political history of Ireland. At times he is able to find compelling connections between these histories. While the analysis of these histories is occasionally flat, Smyth does give a resonant explanation of how Irish pop music grew from its showband roots modulated by a contrapuntal confluence and clash with American and British popular music.

O. Alan Noble

Department of English

California State University, Bakersfield

(Beltaine 2006)

This book represents the first full-length study of Welsh folklore since T Gwynn Jones’s work originally published in 1930. Unfortunately the subject is ill-served by this carelessly researched and old-fashioned book. For the most part the author simply rehashes material from older printed sources, often with considerably less detail than the originals. For example the chapter on ‘The Church and Oral tradition in Wales’ consists of summaries of anecdotes from Gerald of Wales with a bit of Thomas Pennant. Elsewhere, Henry Rowlands work (presumably his Mona Antiqua Restaurata published in 1723) is cited as if it were current and acceptable research and not neo-druidic romanticism ( p. 21). Only two books in the rather meagre bibliography are contemporary folklore studies, namely Trefor Owen’s book on custom (1989) and Chris Grooms’s study of giants (1993). There are excellent references in the bibliography to be sure, such as Rachel Bromwich’s work on the medieval triad tradition, but by limiting herself to medieval and older folklore studies, the author simply reinforces her preconceptions that Welsh folklore consists of survivals from the mysterious Celtic past. There are a number of these assumptions which really should be put to rest (and have been by an extensive body of excellent scholarship which for some reason the author is unwilling to take on). For example, the idea of a Celtic fire festival is dependent on material from John Rhys and Marie Trevelyan. Rhys was and still is of major importance in Welsh folklore, but some of his theoretical background popular over a century ago has been modified by more recent scholarship and the Frazerian assumptions which informed Rhys’s analysis need to be challenged in modern research. Likewise the author is still suggesting that folk plays recall ancient sacrifices and seasonal battles between good and evil (p.25). This pre-Christian survival idea has been demolished by folklorists such as Roy Judge (Jack in the Green, rpr. 1999) and many others. Most of these plays are derived from relatively modern chapbooks, and even the Mari Lwyd cannot be dated much earlier than the late medieval period.

The author cites some of her own field-work, but omits all references to the collections at the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans. Indeed the book says virtually nothing about the founding or the work of what is the major institution for folklore study in Wales. The archives at the Museum contain both material culture and folk narrative, and their holdings frankly contradict many of the neo-druid and survivalist statements with which the author is so free. While the book touches on a number of key topics, there is little research (except for giants) which might balance the assumption of the Welsh are an ancient, rural, and Celtic people whose folk traditions are in decline. Many recent articles and studies of Welsh folklore have been published in journals such as Folklore and Folk life and by well-known Welsh publishers such as the University of Wales Press. It is difficult, therefore, to see how the author can have missed them or felt that a book entitled ‘Welsh Folklore’ could be credible without reference to such work. Studies which might well have been considered include the following work: on the subject of folk narrative (Gwyndaf, Davies, Henken), Taliesin (Ford, Wood, Haycock), the Nanteos cup (Morgan), fairies (Huws), witches (Gruffydd), saints ( Henken, Cartwright), the Anglesey ‘old’ religion ( Hutton), marriage customs (Stevens), Mari Lwyd (Saer, Wood), death customs (Stevens), plygein (Saer), Llyn y Van Vach (Davies, Wood). The author may disagree with any or all of these scholars, but to ignore so much scholarship creates a serious flaw in the scholarly credibility of this book.

The substantial section on heads recalls the author’s own seminal work, but even here, the material is treated as a survival of Celtic religious behaviour with no acknowledgement that some of the heads may be modern with possible apotropaic functions quite independent of supposed ancient religious belief. For a book on Welsh folklore, there are a number of inconsistencies (Bedith y mamau in the text, Bendydd in the Index; Dwynwen in the text, Dwynven in the Index), and some outright inaccuracies in the way the language is rendered. However this would merely produce another list. Welsh folklore studies provides sufficient material for a contemporary synthesis which would extend the work begun by T Gwynn Jones, but sadly this book represents an opportunity missed.

Juliette Wood

University of Wales, Cardiff

(Beltaine 2002)

“In Broad Cove, among the older generations at least, singing was the preferred form of expression and entertainment” explains John Shaw based on his experience of collecting oral material in Cape Breton in the 1960s and 1970s and indeed this book stands as clear testimony to the central part which song played in the every-day life of Cape Breton's Gaelic speaking communities. Following the path he laid in Tales until Dawn. The world of a Cape Breton Gaelic story-teller in which he edited a selection of Jo Neil MacNeil's sgeulachdan, Shaw has focused on the repertoire of an individual Cape Breton tradition bearer and has edited a selection of the songs and tales which he recorded between 1964 and 1981 from Lauchie MacLellan of Broad Cove, Cape Breton. Brìgh an Òrain contains 48 Gaelic songs from over 150 recorded by Shaw and nine from around 100 tales collected, and all are presented first in Gaelic and then in translation with musical notation alongside. The songs are arranged thematically and represent some of the main types in the Gaelic song tradition: love songs; sailing songs; waulking songs; local songs; war songs; fairy songs; drinking

songs. The tales include major folk tales, humorous anecdotes and local tales. Also of value are autobiographical excerpts transcribed from MacLellan and with parallel translation.

Shaw is successful in bringing a number of perspectives to the material he has collected. In contextualising MacLellan within his own Gaelic speaking community the editor offers insights into both the role of the tradition bearer in the community and into the nature of the community itself, a community which at the time Shaw was collecting material, was gradually becoming less Gaelic and song was losing its central function in daily life. In wider terms this collection of songs and tales from MacLellan's repertoire serves to underline the strength and tenacity of Gaelic oral tradition. MacLellan's forebears had emigrated to Cape Breton from Morar in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and this is reflected in MacLellan's repertoire which contains not only songs specific to his own Cape Breton community, but numerous songs from Scotland. 'Òran an t-Saighdeir' (The Soldier's Song) is one such example, composed in the early years of the nineteenth century by Alexander Grant, Glenmoriston and which Shaw explains was brought to Broad Cove in the late 1800s. 'Na h-Ìghneagan Donna Bòidheach', composed in the late seventeenth century in Scotland, further emphasises the continuity of the emigrant Gaelic tradition. Alongside these songs shared with Scotland are songs which have emerged from within the Cape Breton communities themselves, such as 'Òran do Mhaighstir Dòmhnall Siosal' (For Father Donald Chisholm), composed by MacLellan's great-grandfather in 1896 on the departure of the parish priest, and 'Òran na h-Àthaidh' (The Song of the Kiln) composed by a local poet when his horse's tail was singed by a kiln.

Brìgh an Òrain undoubtedly has appeal for a wide readership, whether academic or non-academic, and whether their interest be in Gaelic song, music, tradition bearers, or more generally, Gaelic-speaking communities in Cape Breton.

Dr Sheila M. Kidd,

University of Glasgow

(Beltaine 2003)

In this beautifully illustrated book, Michael Slavin portrays colorfully the history and contents of some important books and manuscripts of the Irish tradition, ranging from the early medieval period to the seventeenth century. As Dr. Patrick Wallace notes in his Foreword, this book as well as Slavin’s earlier work, Book of Tara, can be described as “a spot in the middle ground between the world of academia and the purely popular” (viii). Pointing out that “we Irish like to hold on to our past,” Slavin hints that there should be more familiarity with the books from which the ancient narratives are drawn, for these books have stories of their own. It is these stories that Slavin presents in the ten chapters of his own book:

Each of these precious heirlooms has its own story and it is these stories that I wish to tell here. They have been fought over, kidnapped, held to ransom, buried, exiled, lost and found again. They were used for cures, venerated as relics and carried as talismans in times of war. In the following ten chapters I try to trace where and how they were written, what happened to them after that, and where they now reside. (ix)

For Slavin, the stories behind these tomes “are beautifully intertwined with” Irish history and are essential to “our present consciousness of what it means to be Irish” (ix). With this focus on Irish “consciousness,” Slavin arranges his treatment of these books in a unique manner. In the first four chapters, he discusses books that offer a treasure trove of “pre-Christian ancient legends” (x): Lebor na hUidre-Book of the Dun Cow, Books of Leinster or Lebor na Nuachonbala, Book of Ballymote, Great Book of Lecan, Yellow Book of Lecan, Book of Ui Mhaine (O’Kellys), The Book of Lismore. In the next three chapters, he takes up books rich in Patrician, Columban, and New Testament material: The Book of Armagh, The Cathach, The Book of Durrow, the Book of Kells. Having devoted a chapter to Books of the Brehon Laws, Slavin in the last two chapters takes up books delving into Irish history: The Annals of Innisfallen, The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, Annals of the Four Masters, and Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn.

In a vivid and detailed manner, Slavin sets forth the contents, history, scribes, owners, and condition of these books. In his account of the creation of the Lebor na hUidre, for example, Slavin paints a verbal picture of the scribes of Clonmacnoise attempting to replenish their library after Viking raids: “…one can imagine its scribes setting out from their Shannonside home, with vellum-filled satchels on their backs, in order to undertake what must have been perilous journeys into Meath, Louth, and perhaps further north in search of materials preserved in other centers of learning like Monasterboise or Bangor” (8). The ancient Irish books, as Slavin reveals, are enmeshed in all the complications of human nature. The compilers of the Book of Leinster, for instance, may have been associates of none other than Dermot MacMurrough—“he it is who will always bear the stigma of having invited the leader of the Norman invasion force, the Welsh Earl of Pembroke, Strongbow, and his knights, into Ireland as allies” (31). A keeper of the Book of Armagh, Florence MacMoyer, in June 1681 took the book and pawned it while journeying to England, “where he was to falsely testify in the trial that led to the hanging of St. Oliver Plunkett” (88). The histories of these books, however, also include figures like Michael O’Clery and Geoffrey Keating, resplendent in their heroism in the pages of Slavin’s The Ancient Books of Ireland, which ends with a paean to Geoffrey Keating: “All that I tried to write about in this book comes to life in Keating, for his work is the distillation and embodiment of what the ancient books of Ireland contain” (191).

Gregory Darling

John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Fordham University

(Samhain 2006)

Along with the ogham stones collected and displayed in the Stone Corridor of the North Wing of Univeristy College Cork’s old quadrangle, the Honan Chapel (which though associated with the university and its chaplaincy, is its own separate entity) is one of the treasures of the city of Cork. Its stoic Hiberno-Romanesque exterior and its exquisite interior, with its famous stained glass windows of Irish saints (described by university tour-guides as “appraised at ‘priceless’”) and its beautiful mosaic floors, remain an integral part of many students’ memories of UCC. Its extensive use as a preferred site for weddings, and in the past few years, its use for occasions as diverse as remembrance services in the aftermath of global terrorism and the chaplaincy-produced performance of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, makes the Honan a continued location of importance to the lives of the students and alumni at the university, as well as the local Cork community. That this treasure of Celtic Revival architecture can now be known to a much wider audience through the lavishly-illustrated book The Honan Chapel: A Golden Vision, is a welcome occurrence.

That having been said, there are a number of disappointments in this book, and though it was long in production and was beset by a number of difficulties (p. xv), improvements remain to be made, should the volume ever be reprinted.

The book itself brings together three desiderata relating to the subject of the Honan Chapel. First, the eight papers, given at the January 2000 conference “The Craftsman’s Honoured Hand,” held at UCC on the subject of the Chapel, comprise the majority of the book’s text. Second, a catalogued inventory of the furnishings of the Chapel by the editors Teehan, Wincott Heckett, as well as Peter Lamb, is the useful appendix to the discussions which precede it, and the only such catalogue that is published at present. And finally, a diverse body of photographs depicting the various objects, windows, floor mosaics, architectural features, and photos of medieval chapels and objects for comparative purposes (and more), is likely to be the strongest selling-point of the book.

After a brief Foreword by UCC’s president Gerard T. Wrixon and the Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements, the book’s Introduction, “The Honan Chapel: A Visionary Monument” by Mairéad Dunlevy, discusses the chapel as a consciously-devised, unified entity in terms of its overall artistic and spiritual planning for both architectural fabric as well as its liturgical furnishings. The Chapel was firmly in the fashion of its time (designed and built from 1914 to 1916, with the final windows installed in 1917), as well as in the aesthetic proclivities of its principal patrons—Sir Bertram Windle, president of Queen’s College Cork, and Sir John R. O’Connell, the trustee of the Honan Bequest—in terms of its exhibition of Celtic Revival architectural influences, Irish Arts and Crafts Movement principles, and dedication to being executed, as much as possible, by local (or at least Irish) craftspersons and with Irish materials. Chapter One, “A Golden Vision: John O’Connell, Bertram Windle and the Honan Bequest” by Virginia Teehan outlines the philosophies and gives brief biographies of these two figures who were essential in the commissioning and building of the Honan Chapel. Chapter Two, by Celtic Revival and Irish Arts and Crafts specialist Paul Larmour, is entitled “The Honan Chapel: The Architectural Background,” discusses the two primary models for the Honan’s plan, Cormac’s Chapel in Cashel and the façade of St. Cronán’s Church, Roscrea, both in Co. Tipperary. The third chapter, Peter Lamb’s “The Furnishings of the Honan Chapel, Cork, 1915-1916,” gives a detailed examination of select examples of the wooden furniture, fine metalwork altar plate, metalwork fittings on the chapel itself, altar cards, tabernacle, and liturgical books (amongst other items) in the wider Honan Collection. Larmour also wrote the fourth chapter, “The Honan Chapel: The Artistic and Cultural Context,” which focuses on several elements of the medieval Irish artistic tradition which influenced the design of parts of the Chapel, with particular emphasis on the stained glass windows, which depict Jesus, Mary, Joseph, John, and a number of important Irish (especially Munster) saints.

Jane Hawkes’ “The Honan Chapel: An Iconographic Excursus” explores the use of Hiberno-Romanesque architectural models and their approach to liturgical and cosmological space in the design of the Honan, and especially examines the designs and inscriptions on the fine mosaic floors of the Chapel (providing transcriptions and translations of these as well), and further details that the orientation of the stained glass windows depicting female saints on the south side of the church fits in with the “Christ’s Eye View” of the central chancel window, in which Christ, in effect, looks into and over the chapel and its congregation from the east. Chapter six, “The Embroidered Cloths of Heaven: The Textiles” by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett discusses the design, as well as what is known of the artists who produced, the catalogue of about ninety extant altar frontals and dossals, clerical liturgical vestments, and other textiles in the collection, which the wider public has hitherto had little or no access to and which are generally no longer used. Nicola Gordon Bowe writes in the seventh chapter, “A New Byzantium: The Stained Glass Windows by Harry Clarke,” of the artistic career and the eleven exceptionally fine windows executed by this great artist while still in his youth. The afterword, “The Re-Ordering of The Honan Chapel,” was written by the late Fr. Gearóid Ó Suilleabháin, who died in the summer of 2001, and it briefly details the liturgical reforms over the history of the Catholic Church, and how Vatican II has especially effected the look and usage of the Honan Chapel.

While the contents of this book are overall quite excellent, and were written by scholars who are experts in their fields and who have done extensive studies of the objects discussed, the book does suffer from a number of internal difficulties which the editors could have handled differently, despite whatever production problems existed in the overall project. A unified bibliography for the entire book, instead of bibliographies at the end of each chapter that invariably included a large number of the same publications, would have saved much space and needless repetition. And the points that the Honan Chapel is the shining example of both the Celtic Revival and Irish Arts and Crafts movements is made, re-made, re-illustrated, and re-stated ad nauseum, so that by the fourth chapter, one is rather tired of hearing it repeated. At no point do any of the authors attempt to define what they understand by the term “Celtic” in their discussions of medieval Irish art or its nineteenth- and twentieth-century imitations, which is a rather large oversight. And within the entire book, the patron saint of Cork’s name is spelled “Fin barr,” “FinnBarr,” “Finbarre,” “Fin Barr,” “Finn Barr,” and “Fionnbarr” at various stages, even by the same author outside of direct quotations. While one might find a similar variety of spellings in the city of Cork itself, even in the short space between one side of the street and the other of St. Finnbarr’s Road near UCC, and in the name of the nearby Church of Ireland Cathedral, an attempt should have been made to standardize this spelling in the text of the various contributors to the volume.

Fr. Ó Suilleabháin’s untimely death was a tragic loss to the community of UCC and to its chaplaincy, and he was unable to see the fruits of his efforts in this book, which is dedicated to his memory (p. xv). However, of all the chapters therein, his chapter is the one which is most unusual, as it is much more colloquial in tone than any other piece, and it has no bibliographic references or notes. It seems that this is likely due to the circumstances of his death and the inability of the editors to receive a complete copy of his paper. However, it would have been possible for the editors (with some assistance) to have at least attempted fleshing out his discussion of liturgical reforms with a minimum of commonly-available sources on these subjects, which would be of great interest to many scholars and laypersons who might read this book.

Another major point which could have been rectified by editorial decision is the important piece of information that, despite the dedication to Irish craftsmanship and Irish materials stated by O’Connell, Windle, and the wider Irish Arts and Crafts Society, the Stations of the Cross and the mosaic floors in the Honan Chapel were both executed by the Oppenheimer firm in Manchester. Larmour reports this (pp. 44, 46), and that O’Connell’s publications on the Chapel did not state this because such statements would contradict his philosophical ideals. However, Peter Lamb’s note (p. 88, note 5) on this states that it was “suggested” that the Oppenheimer firm executed them, and Bowe notes (p. 188, note 26) that the fact that the floors and Stations not being made by Irish craftspersons is “mysterious.” Editorial procedure should have allowed these three authors to be aware of each other’s information, and to have at least inserted cross-references to earlier chapters (which occurs amongst the contributions elsewhere in the volume) if the authors were not aware of the facts. With such things as this, one would get the impression that the authors of the papers were unaware of each other, were not at the same conference when their findings were shared, or did not revise their papers before they were published, which whether it is the reality or not, should not be the case in the final published version of the book.

There are a number of typographical errors in the book, which while they do not impede one’s understanding of the material, are a distraction. Certain other oversights and errors should be noted. On page 73, figure 3.34, the photo of An Soiscel Molaise, is upside down, thus the symbols of the four evangelists are reversed; for a volume which is so reliant on the images within it, this is a grave error. A further mistake in chapter three is Lamb’s statement on p. 76 that on one of the alter cards, “the Virgin is wearing a Tara Brooch,” when figure 3.49 on p. 80 clearly shows that, though she is wearing a penannular brooch, it is nothing like the famous Tara (or, more appropriately, Bettystown) Brooch. This example may be an outgrowth of the rather fast and loose use of the adjective “Celtic” in relation to anything medieval or premodern. Hawkes’ discussion on p. 125 of the windows depicting female saints does not mention the male saint Ailbe of Emly (for obvious reasons), and yet figure 5.19 on p. 121, which shows the orientation of the female saints’ windows, has St. Ailbe’s window on the opposite side of the church marked (apparently, whoever prepared the figure did not know what the text said, nor that Ailbe could be a masculine name as well), and seems to show that St. Brigid’s window is in the center of the west façade, rather than on one side of it. The caption on p. 199 for figure 4 on p. 198 states that it is the “Mosaic floor beasthead,” when in fact it is the ambiguous whale/dragon/Leviathan “sea creature” on the mosaic floor at the top of the nave rather than the “beasthead” which is at the back of the aisle. In the catalogue of the textiles, the inscriptions found on some of them are given, and on p. 212, HCC/42, the inscription on the dossal (which is marked on p. 155, figure 6.32, as an antepedium instead of a dossal) has its last line transcribed as “báile-áta-cliat [sic],” when on the illustration of the inscription, puncti delenti are clearly visible over both “t”s. (One assumes that this is also the case on the p. 215, HCC/56, which is not illustrated.)

A final source of possible confusion is the discussion by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett of the white antepedium for use on the Feast Days of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The antepedium has three vignettes depicted on it, for the Nativity (Mater Dei), the Assumption (Regina coeli), and “the Annunciation (Mater dolorosa, the Sorrowing Mother)” (p. 144; and later on 210), which is then pictured on p. 157, figure 6.33. The figure shows the Blessed Virgin in the center, being comforted by one angel on the left and flanked by a weeping angel on the opposite side, and behind and above this depiction is the hill of Calvary topped by three crosses. To simply state that this vignette is for the feast of the Annunciation would be confusing to many people not familiar with the Catholic calendar. March 25 is taken as the feast of the Annunciation, when Gabriel revealed to Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus (nine months to the day before Christmas on December 25); however, March 25 is also the date in the calendar on which the Crucifixion was observed and commemorated, despite the fact that the moveable feasts of Good Friday and Easter Sunday are determined through computistics from year to year. This has been the custom, at least in Ireland, since Félire Óengusso was recorded in the ninth century. The two festivals, though on the same date, are quite separate events, and the assumption that one would simply understand the difference here might not be clear to many who read this book.

Though some of the errors in this book are a detraction, it is certainly a valuable volume for its extensive (though not comprehensive) full-color photographic record of the Honan Chapel itself as well as its many furnishings. Some of these furnishings went on display at the UCC Glucksman Art Gallery in the Autumn of 2004, and one hopes that these treasures will continue to be viewed by the wider public on a regular basis. If that turns out not to be the case, this book is an ample guide to these objects, as well as the building itself and its many beautiful features, which will be of great interest to both those familiar with the chapel who desire a memento, as well as those who have not yet been able to visit Finnbarr’s city.

Phillip A. Bernhardt-House

Independent Scholar, Anacortes, WA

(Samhain 2006)

Many readers of the Newsletter who have taught undergraduates classes on Celtic literatures or graduate courses on texts in Celtic languages have doubtless noticed that the smarter students are usually the ones who worry about translation: that is, those who wonder what the original actually says, who puzzle over the choices made by translators, or who refuse to accept the facile solutions to difficult problems occasionally offered in critical apparatus. For both teachers of such courses and the students who take them, Maria Tymoczko's new book (which this year has already been awarded by the ACIS the Michael J. Durkan Prize for the best book published on Irish language or cultural studies) offers rich food for thought, and even more to worry about. In this set of closely linked essays, several of which are developments of her previous publications, she explores the problematics of translation in general, exploring the theories of various notable twentieth-century thinkers and literary critics. She also considers local, practical problems of translation in the medieval Irish context, such as how to handle humor, what to do with semantically loaded names, and which passages to treat as poetry, and which as prose. Deftly navigating between matters of detail and broad issues of how things "mean," Tymoczko implicates literary translation in the web of intercultural discourse and urges an evaluation of translation as allusive rather than definitive, operating metonymically as well as metaphorically, and producing a cultural metonym as much as a literary metaphor. She also sets out to uncover some of the ideological implications of English-language treatments of medieval Irish texts. The history of colonialism and Ireland's relations with England loom large in her consideration, according to which, to say the least, "translation cannot be considered simply textual loss" (p. 22)--indeed, as Tymoczko argues, it adds to the source text at least as much cultural and political baggage as it subtracts from it. In Tymoczko's vision, building on those of David Lloyd and Declan Kiberd, the process of representing Irish texts to English reading audiences constituted a front line in the struggle to establish modern Irish identity and in some ways helped to establish modern Western identity in general: "The history of the translation of early Irish literature into English is the history of a translation practice that fired up Ireland, an entire country, an important country, albeit a small one. The translation movement was central to the Irish cultural revival and from the Irish revival grew the political and military struggle for freedom from England. When we perceive resistance to colonialism encoded in translations of early Irish literature as leading to engagement between Ireland and Britain, then the translation movement investigated in this volume must be understood as having contributed notably to shaping the postcolonial world all of us live in today. It was a translation practice that changed the world, a form of engagement as much as a form of writing" (p. 287).

This study focuses, though by no means exclusively, on published attempts to render the matter of the Táin Bó Cúailnge into English undertaken since the nineteenth-century beginnings of scholarship on medieval Irish literature. ("Translation" might not be the right word for some of these compositions; "translations and refractions" [p. 297] more accurately reflects the range of works that Tymoczko considers.) The distortions, additions, and deletions effected by those playing fast and loose with the text under the pressures of a cultural or political agenda, or perhaps just out of sheer ignorance, are examined in their historical setting by a scholar whose own translations are marked by a wealth of nuanced knowledge as well as imagination. Surprisingly, those who emerge as the villains of the piece, although Tymoczko acknowledges our continuing debt to their scholarship, are translators supposedly hidebound by positivistic notions of philological rightness or wrongness. "Even as it fails to represent the esthetic force of non-canonical works, philology entraps its subject matter, inscribing it within a scholarly framework shaped by dominant Western values" (p. 269). This will be considered too harsh a judgment by some.

Maria Tymoczko is to be thanked for having produced an eminently readable and provocative work that dares to treat issues of translation and culture many of us in the academic business of Celtic Studies have thought about but only a few have bothered to think through--as have, for example, Patrick Ford and Daniel Melia in their sagacious published contributions to our repertoire of strategies for dealing with the opacities of medieval Celtic literatures and for conveying the gist of the text to our students and readers. Translation in a Postcolonial Context, provided with ample background material on the texts in question, also succeeds because it is so accessible to both medievalists and modernists, both readers of Old Irish and those of Joyce and Yeats. And, hardly the least aspect of Tymoczko's accomplishment, it is the most lucid book delving into modern critical theory this reviewer has ever read.

(Samhain 2001)

*This review was published in Bro Nevez No. 98, May 2006 – newsletter of the U.S. Branch of the Inte-rnational Committee for the Defense of the Breton Language.

[1] Murdoch, B. “In Pursuit of the Caillech Bérre: an Early Irish Poem and the Medievalist at Large.” Zeitschrift fûr Celtische Philologie 44 (1991): 81-127.

[2] Ó Cathasaigh, Tomas. “The Eponym of Cnoba.” Eigse 23 (1989): 137-55.

[3] McCone, Kim. Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature. An Sagart: Maynooth Monographs, 1990. 154.

[4] Ó hAodha, Donncha. “The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare.” Sages, Saints and Storytellers: Celtic Studies in Honor of Professor James Carney. Eds. D. Ó Corrain, L. Breatnach, and K. McCone. Maynooth: An Sagart, 1989. 308-333.

[5] Meyer, Kuno, ed. and trans. Comracc Liadaine ocus Cuirithir:, Liadain and Cuirithir: An Irish Love Story of the Ninth Century. London: D. Nutt, 1902.

[6] Meyer. Aislinge Meic Conglinne. London: D. Nutt, 1892.

Celtic Studies Association Newsletter

McGill University

Catherine McKenna

Cardiff University

Hastings College

Secretary of the U.S International Committee for the Defense of the Breton Language

McTurk, Rory. Chaucer and the Norse and Celtic Worlds. Hampshire, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. 218 pages.

Gregory J. Darling

SUNY Fredonia

Juliette Wood

Gregory Darling

Teehan, Virginia and Elizabeth Wincott Heckett; The Honan Chapel: A Golden Vision

Photography by Andrew Bradley; design by Christian Kunnert. Cork: Cork University

Press, 2004. xvi + 240 pages.