Friday 29 March 2013
Vacancy in Celtic History
The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic is currently advertising a one-year teaching associate post in Celtic History to cover a period of leave. The full details are available here, and the closing date for applications is 19th April.
Friday 15 March 2013
Irish Songs from Connemara: A Concert by Saileog Ní Cheannabháin
Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson writes:
Saileog's performance in the ASNC Common Room (photo: Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson)
The concert included versions of several songs from a region of Connemara known as Iorras Aithneach. Ní Cheannabháin has been influenced by singers from this region (among them, her father, Peadair Ó Ceannabháin), and yet her sean-nós style is very much her own. She was awarded the Seán Ó Riada Prize from the Department of Music at University College Cork (2009) for her study of the songs and singers from Iorras Aithneach. Consulting original manuscripts housed in University College Dublin (Ionad Uí Dhuilearga), Ní Cheannabháin researched songs which the Irish musician Séamas Ennis collected in Iorras Aithneach between the years 1942-45, many of which had since disappeared from the local repertoire. With the aim of bringing these songs back into the living tradition, Ní Cheannabháin recovered lyrics and tunes from various manuscripts, interpreted the ornamentations noted by Ennis, and arranged and recorded several of these rare songs on the recently produced CD I bhfíor-dheiriú oídhche.
Saileog and Andrea in the Red Bull after the performance (photo: Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson)
Saileog Ní Cheannabháin has made a significant contribution to the Irish song tradition, and the ASNC Department extends its thanks and appreciation for a wonderful concert. It is particularly appropriate to commend the work of this young, talented musician during the weeks of Seachtain na Gaeilge (4-17 March), an international celebration of Irish language and culture. Thanks are also extended to ASNC Modern Irish student Andrea Palandri, who helped to bring Saileog Ní Cheannabháin to Cambridge University, Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Fellow of Clare Hall, who kindly assisted with arrangements, and Charlotte Watkinson, Secretary of the ASNC Department, who offered generous assistance throughout the event. The concert was organized by Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson, Teaching Associate in Modern Irish. The Modern Irish Language courses and cultural events have been supported by a generous grant from the Irish Government.
N.B. Saileog is on Facebook and her page can be found here. Details of her CD can be found here.
N.B. Saileog is on Facebook and her page can be found here. Details of her CD can be found here.
Labels:
Ireland,
Margo Griffin-Wilson,
modern Celtic languages,
music
Tuesday 12 March 2013
Report: Communication and Cultural Contacts in the North Atlantic Community
Sarah Waidler, a doctoral student in ASNC, writes:
On 2nd
March, the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic hosted a seminar
entitled ‘Communication and Cultural Contacts in the North Atlantic Community’.
Held in St John’s College, this lively and intellectually stimulating event
focused on the related topics of medieval commerce and the economy within this geographical
area. The seminar also touched on many other forms of exchange, including
cultural, intellectual, familial and political ties between the lands joined
together by the North Atlantic waters. Ranging from the actual process of trade
and use of currency to how crafts and ideas travelled, to the memory of
specific events and preservation of literary and historical traditions, this
day presented much food for thought and presented many useful insights, while
at the same time highlighting how much work still needs to be done in these
areas.
The event was divided into two
parts. In the morning, four speakers gave 45-minute talks on different aspects
of contacts in this region. The day kicked off with a presentation by Andy Woods, from the Department of Archaeology
at the University of Cambridge, on ‘An economy of scale? Considering the volume
and use of coinage in Ireland c. 995 -1170’. Andy presented his work on coinage
in Ireland and demonstrated how it was possible to make fruitful comparisons between
Dublin and many other commercial centres in the North Atlantic world in the
medieval period. As well as showing the considerable variation in Ireland’s use
of coinage both regionally and chronologically, this paper answered old queries
and raised new questions on the nature of currency in Ireland. Dr Colmán Etchingham
of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, was the next speaker of the
morning and presented a paper entitled ‘The myth of the Irish monastic town’,
in which he revisited a topic which he has discussed in other publications,
including in his Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lecture at Cambridge in 2010. Dr. Etchingham provided further evidence in
support of his argument that ecclesiastical centres in medieval Ireland did not
function as commercial hubs. This included a very worthwhile investigation into
the semantics of terms such as ‘óenach’ and ‘marggad’, which took account of
the sources in which they appear.
The Lewis Chessmen, image © Trustees of the British Museum
After a short tea
break, the third speaker of the morning, Dr
Alex Woolf of the University of St Andrews, discussed ‘The bishops in the
Lewis chess sets’ and looked in particular at the question of provenance of
these famous pieces. This paper also considered the identity of the craftsman who
made such pieces as well as other high-quality goods and how the basic
materials for manufacture were obtained. The morning was rounded off with a
lecture by Professor Helgi Þorláksson,
from the University of Iceland, on ‘Between Oddi and the Orkneys: on Icelandic Orcadian connections, c.
1180-1240’. Professor Þorláksson examined the complex
relationships between families in these areas and how much insight could be
gained from the extant sources regarding their relationships.
In the afternoon, a text
seminar was held to investigate three primary texts which had been circulated
prior to the seminar. This discussion was led by Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe of the Department of ASNC and Dr Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir of the University of Iceland. Dr Rowe
introduced a text entitled ‘Gísls þáttr Illugasonar’ in which an Icelander,
Gísl, comes to the court of the Irish king Muirchertach as a hostage. Dr Ní
Mhaonaigh and Dr Óskarsdóttir presented the Irish text ‘Cogadh Gáedhel re
Gallaibh’ and the Icelandic text ‘Njáls saga’ and examined how these texts
represented the battle of Clontarf. These two sessions proved how bringing
together experts from multiple disciplines to examine textual traditions can
provide new insights into the material and help elucidate difficult textual quandaries.
The discussion covered a range of topics, including the
way in which the Irish language was portrayed in ‘Gísls þáttr Illugasonar’ and
the transmission of material about specific events and wider culture phenomena
between Ireland and the Norse-speaking world.
This seminar was attended by many of the
members of the Faculty from the Department of ASNC, several distinguished
speakers and visiting academics, as well as post-graduates and students. This event was an excellent example of how
interdisciplinary approaches can hugely benefit research and present new
findings. I’m sure that much of what was discussed at this seminar will go on
to influence many of the attendees’ work and it is hoped that the many fruitful
discourses that began at this seminar will continue for some time to come!
Friday 8 March 2013
Illuminating the Middle Ages debate, Battle of Ideas 2012
Three ASNCs past and present, namely recent graduate Albert Fenton; Dr Levi Roach (Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Exeter); and Dr Elizabeth Boyle (Affiliated Lecturer in ASNC and Research Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge), teamed up with cultural commentator Lindsay Johns to discuss the significance of the Middle Ages at the Battle of Ideas 2012 at London's Barbican. You can watch the video here:
Labels:
alumni,
Elizabeth Boyle,
Levi Roach,
media
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