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Anglo-Norman verse on New Ross and its founders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

William Sayers
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Extract

Literary evidence for political and social developments in medieval Ireland comes down to us in a variety of languages: Latin; a rich and — by European standards — early production in the Irish vernacular; Old Norse; Middle English; with sparser reference in Old English, Welsh and other nearby linguistic communities. Some of this evidence, tightly circumscribed in time, is also in Anglo-Norman French, and reflects a very different Ireland from that of Arthurian romance. These Anglo-Norman works, composed in Ireland or in Britain on the basis of eye-witness testimony, constitute a unique body of material, though their value as historical evidence is constricted in two ways: firstly, they are limited to three preserved texts; secondly, they are rigorously selective in their criteria of historiographical relevancy and in their treatment of the native Irish population, culture and political presence.

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Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 110 , November 1992 , pp. 113 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1992

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References

1 The song of Dermot and the earl, ed. and trans. Orpen, G. H. (Oxford, 1892).Google Scholar

2 Orpen, G. H., Ireland under the Normans (3 vols, Oxford, 1911-20).Google Scholar

3 Prolegomena to the new edition are found in Mullally, Evelyn, ‘Hiberno-Norman literature and its public’ in Bradley, John (ed.), Settlement and society in medieval Ireland: studies presented to F. X. Martin, O.S.A. (Aberystwyth, 1988), pp 327-43Google Scholar, and Cambrensis, Giraldus, Expugnatio Hibernica: the conquest of Ireland, ed. and trans. Martin, F. X. and Brian Scott, A., New history of Ireland Ancillary Publications iii (Dublin, 1978).Google Scholar

4 Sayers, William, ‘The patronage of La conquête d’lrlande’ in Romance Philology, xxi (1967), pp 34–41 Google Scholar. Recent full accounts of the events of the invasion are given in Martin, F. X.’s contributions (chs 2–4) to Cosgrove, Art (ed.), A new history of Ireland, ii: Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar (henceforth New hist. Ire., ii) and Therese Flanagan, Marie, Irish society, Anglo-Norman settlers, Angevin kingship: interactions in Ireland in the late twelfth century (Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar

5 L’histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, ed. Meyer, Paul (3 vols, Paris, 1891-1901)Google Scholar. See also Hamilton, George L., ‘Un manuscrit perdu de L’histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal’ in Romania, xli (1912), pp 601-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and, for some comment on the chronology of William’s early life, Becker, Phillipe-Auguste, ‘Aus dem Leben von Guillaume le Maréchal’ in Romanische Forschungen, lvii (1943), pp 186-91.Google Scholar

6 Duby, Georges, Guillaume le Maréchal, ou, Le meilleur chevalier du monde (Paris, 1984), translated as William Marshal: the flower of chivalry (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

7 Heuser, W., Die Kildare-Gedichte: die ältesten mttelenglischen Denkmäler in Anglo-Irischer überlieferung, Bonner Beitrage zur Anglistik xiv (Bonn, 1904)Google Scholar; also discussed in Bliss, Alan and Long, Joseph, ‘Literature in Norman French and English to 1534’ in New hist. Ire., ii, 708-36.Google Scholar

8 Madden, Frederick (ed.), ‘Poem on the erection of the walls of New Ross, in Ireland’ in Archaeologia, xxii (1829), pp 307-22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; trans. Landon, Letitia in Crofton Croker, T. (ed.), Popular songs of Ireland (London, 1886), pp 275-87Google Scholar; StSeymour, John D., Anglo-Irish literature, 1200–1582 (Cambridge, 1929), pp 22-9.Google Scholar

9 Shields, Hugh, ‘The walling of New Ross: a thirteenth-century poem in French’ in Long Room, xii-xiii (1975-6), pp 24–33 Google Scholar; excerpted in The Field Day anthology of Irish writings, ed. Deane, Seamus (Derry, 1991), i, 150-52Google Scholar. The Anglo-Norman Dictionary, ed. Rothwell, William et al. (London, 1977-)Google Scholar, (henceforth A.N.D.) is the most authoritative guide to the language of the poem, but is not fully adequate for some of its idiosyncratic lexicon.

10 ‘I have a desire to versify in French, if you will be pleased to listen, for words that are not heard are not worth a clove of garlic.’

11 Le couronnement de Louis, chanson de geste du XIIe siècle, ed. Langlois, Ernest, Moyen, Classiques Français du Âge 22 (3rd ed., Paris, 1938), 1. 1,503.Google Scholar

12 ‘On Thursday go the bakers and all the vendors who sell corn and fish; their flags are varied. Well four hundred went there on that day in grand array, and they carol and sing loudly, just like the previous ones. The baker’s boys also go with them on that Thursday. After the others they follow on, and in front they have a fine banner; the trough and the pestle inside it are depicted on their banner. Thus they go to the trench; they are thirty-two in number, in truth.’

13 ‘Whoever had been there to watch could have seen there many a beautiful woman. Many a cloak of scarlet and green and dark brown, and many a well-tucked smock, many a fair, well-dyed streamer. Never in the countries in which I have been have I seen so many beautiful women in a trench. He would have been born in a lucky hour who could look his fill of them.’

14 See Frame, Robin, ‘War and peace in the medieval lordship of Ireland’ in Lydon, J. F. (ed.), The English in medieval Ireland: proceedings of the first joint meeting of the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy (Dublin, 1984), pp 118-41Google Scholar. For an early appreciation of the Norman forces the Irish would have had to face see Winter, Heinrich, Das Kriegswesen in der altfranzösischen Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal (Darmstadt, 1911)Google Scholar. ‘The song of Dermot’ gives some evidence of the tactics the lightly armed Irish troops were obliged to adopt: see Sayers, William, ‘“Go west, young man”: an Anglo-Norman chronicle in thirteenth-century Ireland’ in Florilegium, vi (1984), pp 119-36.Google Scholar

15 La chanson de Guillaume, ed. McMillan, Duncan, Société des Anciens Textes Français (2 vols, Paris, 1950)Google Scholar. ‘For this is the freest town that is on mainland or on island, and every stranger finds a welcome and is received with great pleasure. Well can he buy and sell, and no one will ask anything of him. To God I commend the town and all those who live within it.’

16 The Anglo-Norman terms are: vineters, mercers, marchans, drapers, mariners; taillurs, parmenters, tenturers, fulrurs, celers; cordiwaners, tannors, macecrers; pesturs, regraturs, waynpayns; parturs; carpenters, févers, masuns.

17 Frame, Robin, Colonial Ireland, 1169–1369 (Dublin, 1981), p. 89.Google Scholar

18 Superseding Curtis, Edmund, ‘The spoken languages of Ireland’ in Studies, viii (1919), pp 234-54Google Scholar, is Bliss, Alan, ‘Language and literature’ in Lydon, (ed.), The English in medieval Ireland, pp 27–45 Google Scholar, and more recently Bliss, Alan and Long, Joseph, ‘Literature in Norman French and English to 1534’ in New hist. Ire., ii, 708-36Google Scholar. Long reworks his earlier article, ‘Dermot and the earl: who wrote the “song”?’ in R.I.A. Proc., lxxv (1975), sect. C, pp 263–72, but does not address the question of patronage. For the parliamentary material see Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The administration of Ireland, 1172–1377 (Dublin, 1963).Google Scholar

19 An early appreciation of the organisation and history of the town is found in Orpen, G. H., New Ross in the thirteenth century (Dublin, 1911)Google Scholar. On the background of settlers see Otway-Ruthven, A. J., ‘The character of Anglo-Norman settlement’ in Hist. Studies, v (1965), pp 75–84 Google Scholar, and more recently Frame, Colonial Ireland, pp 84–91. On towns see also Lydon, J. F., The lordship of Ireland in the middle ages (Toronto, 1972), pp 91-6Google Scholar. Interesting comment on other aspects of the artistic taste of New Ross is found in Stalley, Roger, ‘Irish Gothic and English fashion’ in Lydon, (ed.), The English in medieval Ireland, pp 65–86, at p. 68.Google Scholar

20 See J. F. Lydon, ‘The middle nation’ in idem (ed.), The English in medieval Ireland, pp 1–26; J. R. S. Phillips, ‘The Anglo-Norman nobility’, ibid., pp 87–104; Nicholls, Kenneth, Gaelic and gaelicised Ireland in the middle ages (Dublin, 1972)Google Scholar; see also other items cited above from Lydon (ed.), op. cit., and the relevant chapters of New hist. Ire., ii.

21 The marginally fuller picture of the Irish in ‘The song of Dermot’ is examined in Sayers, ‘“Go west, young man” ’. Medieval commentators were not blind to ethnographic considerations, as evidenced by Giraldus Cambrensis’ Topographia Hiberniae, ed. O’Meara, John, in R.I.A. Proc., lii (1949), sect. C, pp 113-78.Google Scholar

22 See Legge, Domenica M., Anglo-Norman literature and its background (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar, and, more recently, Crane, Susan, Insular romance: politics, faith and culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English literature (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1986).Google Scholar