"The Irish fanned out across Europe, salvaging books wherever they could, making copies, reassembling libraries and teaching the newly settled barbarians of the continent to read and write. But they did more than this: they managed to infuse the emerging medieval world with a playfulness previously unknown. In the margins of the books they copied, the Irish scribes drew little pictures, thickets of plants, flowers, birds and animals. Human faces occasionally peek through the tangle, faces of childlike delight and awe. If you were a scribe copying out some especially ponderous philosophical Greek, the margin in which you could reflect on your own world served as a source of 'refreshment, light and peace,' to quote the ancient Latin liturgy.... We have many reasons to be grateful to St. Patrick and his fierce and playful Irishmen and Irishwomen. So on this St. Patrick's Day, remember them as they would wish to be remembered. Read a book."
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
58
Erin Go Blargh!!!
From the Book of Kells to House of Pain.
"Another, presumably a female scribe, describes a young man . . ." ORLY?
St. Patrick kicked out the lesbians same time as the snakes.
St. Patrick was English.
I always like to bring that up.
More Romano-British. He was before the damned Saxon or Angles or Jutes (the poor Jutes; always forgotten) and their heathen German-ness made the "English."
Unemployed, scrambling for the last percocet in the bedside drawer, drunk by 10am and living in Canada. Truly, I am Muintir na hÉireann!
Éireann, apologies.
Or you could do something sorta in-between and watch the dancing of Irish-Americans in Singin' in the Rain and Yankee Doodle Dandy--which some salon.com essay suggested absolutely ages ago, but since I can't find it, it's my suggestion now, mofo.
Blech, I just noticed that's San Francisco. I guess he's wearing an A's cap just coz it's green?
No. Coz the A's are awesome!
Yeah but they don't have that pitcher with the crazy long hair!
Funny, I didn't see a single person illustrating a manuscript this morning as I passed through Grand Central.
It's either the Jew or the Gay that cancels out my Irish half.
Haven't figured out which one yet though.
"--What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen. --Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland."
So I'm guessing the gay.
I think Cahill's book was the first one with the "How the X saved Civilization" subtitle, so I blame him for that whole execrable trend, including all morphs thereof, such "The True Story of the Map that Changed the World," etc.
If you look at the nonfiction section it seems the world was "saved" over and over again by all sorts of people and events and things. Perhaps we could have a tourney for that?
IANAPaleographer, but I remember being told once that the Irish monks were the best copyists of Greek mss (as far as later classicists were concerned) because, not understanding Greek very well, they mostly just copied the text exactly, rather than larding it up with "corrections" and "explanations," as other more literate copyists were wont to do.
That's an interesting point.
The old Irish literature actually had many points in common with Greek and even Indo-Aryan. The meters of Irish poetry are cognate with some in Greek and Sanskrit. The language easily rivals Latin and Greek in grammatical intricacy. It probably wasn't a vernacular, but a literary language. The word for Ireland, Eriu, is cognate with the Greek Pieria (as in pierides Mousai) the haunt of the Muses. Ultimately an Indo-European feminine meaning "fat" or "rich."
Hey, that's really interesting. Thanks.
I have the vague impression that Celtic was, in medieval Europe, the lingua franca. Is that true, does anyone know? If it is, it's pretty: all those monks running around spreading language and manuscripts with weirdly cheery creatures and who know what else.
Ancient Greek I assume? Not modern Greek.
Oh wait, I just re-read the link. He says first vernacular European language written down, so who knows whether it would qualify as a lingua franca, or whether lingua franca implies spoken or just written language, and anyway, is Celtic the same as Irish or not? The waters deepen around me.
I ask because no one speaks ancient Greek so no one knows if it was only a literary or also a vernacular form.
@Goons: Ancient! My parochialism. Let me show you it.
Platonic Attic Greek, to be exact.
No, Latin was the lingua franca of Medieval Europe, mainly due to the efforts of the various popes. "Celtic" had been wiped out in what was the old Celtic Heartland (France to Poland to Slovenia) and existed only on the fringes (Galicia/Ireland/Wales/Brittany/Kerno).
I blame old Irish for giving Modern German 16 ways to say "the".Stupid peregrini.
@ Annie, Irish is Q-Celtic one of the two major branches of Celtic, the other P-Celtic(which was probably the more common branch but only survives in Wales)
Basically four types of "ancient" Greek: Homeric, Ionian, Attic, and Koine. All were spoken (but the Attic we have written is a probably a bit formal) and written down. Attic Greek graffiti is not nearly as formal as Plato or Xenophon.
@Mindpowered: "Platonic Attic Greek, to be exact." Well, no. These monks were centuries and centuries later. And any "Greek" in question was whatever they happened to be copying. So maybe it was Homer! Or Menander! Or, yes, even Plato! But maybe Polybius or Proclus!
There is actually an interesting aside. When Pytheas the Greek visited he spoke to Q-Celt speakers gave us Britannia/Hibernia(one the Greek was turned into Latin) leading to the British and Knifecrime in the modern age.
If he'd spoken to P-Celtic speakers we would have something like "Cruttish", and they wouldn't done anything because who really wants to be a "Crut"?
I studied ancient Greek and when I went to Greece (WANT TO GO BACK SO BAAAD) modern Greek was like, well, Greek to me.
Now correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't there a huge Hadrianic revival of Attic Greek, of which Plato was considered the Ne Plus Ultra, and mongrelizations such as Koine, were disparaged?
It seems to me that most of the (Greek)texts of Late Antiquity were a product of that revival, no?
OK, the density of classicists on this site is pretty scary.
Now that I think of it, the oldest written language in Europe (if you count Turkey) would easily have to be Hittite. Indo-European. Written from about 1800-1200 BCE.
@ Mindpowered: Gnothi seauton. :)
I see you and raise you the Phaistos disc.
@Mindpowered. Yes there was an "atticizing" school.
I love the little pepperoni pizzas on the Phaistos disk. I once wrote a little piece about Champollion, Michael Ventris, Linear B, as yet undeciphered languages, etc. for a children's magazine, and proceeded for years to receive deeply fucking insane letters offering their own, er, hermetic solutions to the mystery.
God but you guys are educated! I'm just OCD'ed myself and still want to know, maybe from Mindpowered, whether Celtic might have been a pre-Latin lingua franca. I swear a scholar told me the Norse epics were written in Celtic. Maybe I was hanging out with the wrong sort of scholar. Or maybe I'm just wrong.
Speaking of Atticizing, I once had to translate a part of a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. into Greek in a Greek Prose Comp. class. I translated Mississippi as Μιττιττιππι, and was quite pleased with myself. (That was possibly the dorkiest sentence ever written.)
@oudemia: I... I think I love you.
@ Annie, it seems unlikely
A)Caesar mentions that the Gaels spoke mutually unintelligible languages (No surprise if you've seen Welsh vs Irish in print.
B) The Norse/Germanic saga's from my understanding came from Iceland(where they had been preserved) and were re-introduced to Europe in the 13th century. The celtic epics while structurally similar had different themes.
@Oudemia yes, try googling "Phaistos disc" and "Goddess cult" one day. I dare you.
Ventris was kickass. Current thoughts on Linear A are annoyingly boring.
@Goons: Aw! We can have half-Irish babies, and raise them Gay!
Meaning when encountering Linear A we're still "WTF"?
So ok, the scholar said something else. Maybe it was the alphabet used in the epics. Maybe I should stop drinking at parties with scholars.
I am talking about the current and fashionable Indo-Iranian thoughts on Linear A. The Luwian theory is a lot more intriguing and seems to make more sense.
And the Luwian connection actually has archaeological support. (I thought you meant all the Goddess hysteria flying around Linear A)
Ok. Enough of this. If anyone wants me I'll be transcribing Finnegans Wake into Ogham with a pint of Murphy's down in the Pub
That really is hugely interesting, Propertius, thanks.
An uncle of mine is a fairly eminent scholar of Gaelic, ancient and modern- his texts were adopted by Harvard's Irish Studies program, which is grand but: it is just an incredibly difficult language to learn , at least to me. I tried, but it's syntax and pronunciation are so peculiar, so very different from other European tongues, it's quite challenging.
There is no reason why you can't get drunk and read a book at the same time.
It is true--this is my every Friday night :|
And thank God.
Happy fake ethnic drinking holiday.
I can drink whenever. But St. Joseph pastries beat the shit out of Irish Soda Bread.
I can't wait until Whacking Day when we can beat these fuckers up.
Ha!
My partner is Irish and he gets really pissed (no pun intended) that any reference to "Irish" in American popular culture has to be linked to alcohol.
Oh, just Irish up his coffee and he'll quiet down.
(I'M SO KIDDING!)
"Celts" were just the first known of many groups to overlay their culture and language over the basically Basque genetic substrate of Ireland. Genetically identical, nearly, one might add, to the English, in the dominance of that Basque substrate.