Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T09:21:27.447Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Homeric Qualities in the Life and Literature of the Great Blasket Island

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

J. V. Luce
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the ten years between 1929 and 1939 three remarkable books were produced in a tiny Irish-speaking community of less than one hundred and fifty people living on the Great Blasket, an island off the south-west coast of Kerry. The authors, two men and a woman, were peasants, eking out a scanty living by farming and fishing. They were technically literate in that they had acquired the rudiments of reading and writing at the island school, but for all practical purposes their culture was oral. They certainly had neither opportunity nor inclination for book-reading. Yet out of the resources of their oral culture they produced works of a high literary standard, one of which has (in translation) achieved the status of a ‘World's Classic’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , October 1969 , pp. 151 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 151 note 1 An t-Oileánach, by Crohan, Tomás Ó (1929); English translation by Flower, Robin (Dublin and Cork, 1939)Google Scholar under the title The hlandman. Fiche Blian ag Fás, by Suileabháin, Muiris Ó (Dublin, 1933)Google Scholar; English translation by Moya Llewelyn Davies and George Thomson (London, 1933)Google Scholar, under the title Twenty Years A-Growing; republished in The World's Classics (Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar. Machtnamh Seana Mhná, by Sayers, Peig (Dublin, 1939)Google Scholar; English translation by Ennis, Séamus under the title An Old Woman's Reflections (Oxford, 1962).Google Scholar

page 151 note 2 The Islandman, 323.Google Scholar

page 152 note 1 For seanchas see Delargy, J. H., ‘The Gaelic Story-Teller’, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. xxxi (1945), 6Google Scholar. For Peig's large repertoire of stories, ibid. 15. Delargy's article contains much authoritative information on the traditions and techniques of Gaelic story-telling, some of which is of great interest for a comparative study of the Homeric bardic tradition. I am indebted to Professor D. Greene for drawing my attention to the article, and also for helpful information on the cultural background of the Blasket islanders.

page 152 note 2 Twenty Years A-Growing, Preface (by the translators), viii.Google Scholar

page 153 note 1 Thomson, G. in Aeschylus and Athens (first edition)Google Scholar, Preface. Delargy, J. H., art. cit., 6.Google Scholar

page 153 note 2 Cook, J. M. in Greek Settlement in the Eastern Aegean and Asia Minor (= Camb. Anc. Hist., revised edition, vol. ii, chap, xxxviii), 27.Google Scholar

page 154 note 1 Penelope, , Od. ii. 94 ff.Google Scholar; Nausicaa, , Od. vi. 85–95Google Scholar; Priam, , Il. xxiv. 247Google Scholar; Alcinous, , Od. xiii. 20–2Google Scholar; Odysseus, , Od. viii. 447–8.Google Scholar

page 154 note 2 The Islandman, 268.Google Scholar

page 154 note 3 Cf. Kirk, G. S., The Homeric Poems as History (= Camb. Anc. Hist., revised edition, vol. ii, chap, xxxix (b)), 30.Google Scholar

page 155 note 1 Diver, , Il. xvi. 747Google Scholar; Laertes' farm, Od. xxiv. 205–7Google Scholar; brand under ashes (in simile) Od. v. 488–91Google Scholar. Here, and elsewhere in the article, the Iliad is quoted in the translation of R. Lattimore, the Odyssey in that of E. V. Rieu.

page 155 note 2 Twenty Years A-Growing, Preface, ix.Google Scholar

page 158 note 1 Twenty Years A-Growing, 63.Google Scholar

page 158 note 2 Ibid. 80–1.

page 158 note 3 Il. xi. 547–64.Google Scholar

page 158 note 4 Twenty Years A-Growing, 205.Google Scholar

page 159 note 1 An Old Woman's Reflections, 48.Google Scholar

page 159 note 2 Twenty Years A-Growing, 266–7.Google Scholar

page 159 note 3 e.g. Peig Sayers's apostrophe of Eagle Mountain, and her description of a fine night at sea: An Old Woman's Reflections, 14 and 79.Google Scholar

page 159 note 4 Twenty Years A-Growing, 22.Google Scholar

page 160 note 1 Twenty Years A-Growing, 189.Google Scholar

page 160 note 2 Ibid. 202.

page 160 note 3 Il. viii. 555–9.Google Scholar

page 160 note 4 The Islandman, 167.Google Scholar

page 161 note 1 Twenty Years A-Growing, 279.Google Scholar

page 161 note 2 Od. xviii. 365–75.Google Scholar

page 161 note 3 The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1960), 381.Google Scholar

page 161 note 4 The Islandman, 134.Google Scholar

page 162 note 1 An Old Woman's Reflections, chap, viii: Providence: ‘We rowed her with the dint of strength, besides the help of God’ (p. 51)Google Scholar; Fate: ‘But I suppose we were not to be drowned’ (p. 53).Google Scholar

page 162 note 2 Ibid. 21–3.

page 162 note 3 Cf. Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer, 379.Google Scholar

page 162 note 4 An Old Woman's Reflections, 51.Google Scholar

page 162 note 5 Twenty Years A-Growing, 164.Google Scholar

page 163 note 1 An Old Woman's Reflections, 3.Google Scholar

page 163 note 2 Ibid. chap. x. Her description of another pilgrimage in honour of St. Kathleen provides an interesting parallel with the bird-epiphany of Athena, in Od. i. 320Google Scholar, for it was a tradition that St. Kathleen had appeared in the likeness of a swan on the gable of the church (p. 5).

page 163 note 3 Hom. Hymn to Apollo, 147–55.Google Scholar

page 163 note 4 Twenty Years A-Growing, 194Google Scholar. For the proclivity of the Phaeacians for gossip see the remarks of Nausicaa, in Od. vi. 273–85.Google Scholar

page 163 note 5 Twenty Years A-Growing, 197.Google Scholar

page 163 note 6 Ibid. 51–2.

page 164 note 1 The Islandman, 115.Google Scholar

page 164 note 2 Ibid. 116–17.

page 164 note 3 Ibid. 131.

page 164 note 4 Twenty Years A-Growing, 234.Google Scholar

page 165 note 1 The Islandman, 261–2.Google Scholar

page 165 note 2 Ibid. 65–6.

page 165 note 3 Semonides of Amorgos, on Il. vi. 146.Google Scholar

page 165 note 4 Twenty Years A-Growing, 152 and 75.Google Scholar

page 166 note 1 An Old Woman's Reflections, 21.Google Scholar

page 166 note 2 The Islandman, 321 and 46.Google Scholar

page 166 note 3 Od. vi. 204–5.Google Scholar

page 167 note 1 Kirk, G. S., op. cit. 274–5 and 278–9.Google Scholar

page 167 note 2 Delargy, J. H., art. cit. 20.Google Scholar

page 167 note 3 Rodgers, W. R. in An Old Woman's Reflections, Introd., p. viii.Google Scholar

page 167 note 4 Art. cit. 21 and 16.Google Scholar

page 167 note 5 Art. cit. 18 f.Google Scholar