Medieval Irish lyrics / edited and translated by Barbara Hughes Fowler.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fowler, Barbara Hughes, 1926-

Language:

Celtic (Other)

English

Subjects (All):

Irish poetry--To 1100--Translations into English.

Irish poetry.

Irish poetry--Middle Irish, 1100-1550--Translations into English.

Irish poetry--Middle Irish, 1100-1550.

Irish poetry--Middle Irish.

Irish poetry--To 1100.

Middle Ages--Poetry.

Middle Ages.

Ireland--Poetry.

Ireland.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

vi, 106 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, [2000]

Summary:

This anthology offers modern readers fine translations of the lyric poetry transcribed or written by medieval Irish monks. Irish poets were the first Europeans to write in the vernacular, though few people now read this poetry in its original. Well known for her translations of the poetry of classical Greece and Egypt and of medieval Portugal, Barbara Hughes Fowler once again makes the poetry of another era accessible to a new generation. The 35 lyrics in this book were composed between 800 and 1200 A.D., all of them anonymously, although some are attributed to legendary or historical figures who had died centuries before. Irish monks wrote them in the margins of the manuscripts they were copying, or they interpolated poems they either knew or composed into the pagan tales they were recording. Many of these poems are about what the Irish called Tir na nÓg, the Land of the Young. This was not a place you went after death if you behaved yourself in life. It was where imaginative Irish longed to go--a paradise of lovely women, bountiful food and drink, and endless treasures of silver, gold, and jewels. The monks who composed or recorded such lyrics preserved their Celtic heritage while making concessions to Christianity, as in these stanzas from "Fair Lady, Will You Go With Me?" Lyric poems, rooted so firmly in the expression of human emotion, travel well from an ancient culture to a modern one in the hands of a fine translator. Rendered into language and form intended for a general readership, these lyrics help to preserve an ancient and rich culture.

Contents:

Monastic Poems, Ninth Century

Pangur Ban 15

The Scribe in the Woods 17

The Bell 18

The Blackbird by Belfast Loch 19

The Blackbird Calling from the Willow 20

King and Hermit 21

Monastic Poems, Tenth and Eleventh Centuries

I Am Eve 29

All Things to All Men 30

Manchan's Wish 31

Poems About Colum Cille's (Saint Columba's) Life

A Blue Eye Will Look Back 35

An Exile's Dream 36

Derry 38

The Three Best Beloved Places 39

Weary My Hand with Writing 40

The Old Woman of Beare 41

Creide's Lament for Dinertach 45

Liadan Tells of Her Love for Cuirithir 46

Poor Payment 48

Otherworld Poems

Manannan Describes His Kingdom to Bran 51

The Island with a Bridge of Glass 55

Fair Lady, Will You Go with Me? 58

Loeg's Description to Cu Chulainn of Labraid's Home in Mag Mell 59

Poems Attributed to Mad Suibne

My Little Chapel 65

The Cry of the Garb 66

Suibne and Eorann 69

Suibne in the Woods 71

Suibne in the Snow 81

Poems From the Finn Cycle

Cael Praises Creide's House 85

Creide's Lament for Cael 89

Description of Winter 91

May Day 92

Summer Has Gone 94

Grainne Speaks of Diarmait 95

These Hands Are Withered 96

Once I Had Golden Curls 97.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0268034567

0268034575

OCLC:

44627199