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Not an Island unto Itself: Celtic Literatures and Multilingualism in the Early Middle English Context

Matthieu Boyd

Early Middle English, Volume 1, Number 1, 2019, pp. 3-16 (Article)

Published by Arc Humanities Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/731648

[ Access provided at 27 Sep 2021 07:41 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] NOT AN ISLAND UNTO ITSELF: CELTIC LITERATURES AND MULTILINGUALISM IN THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH CONTEXT

MATTHIEU BOYD

studying and teaching Early Middle English involves a plea for inclu- siveness (an essential value for our own time) in two respects. First, with respect to the Thecanon: case at the forlevel of the undergraduate survey course, there may be pressure or temp- tation to leap from Beowulf to Chaucer, leaving Early Middle English in the gap. Second, with respect to historical reality in the intervening period, which might lend support to in and French, and then Chaucer came along.” Multilingualism in medieval Britain isa narrativea hot topic like and “For the a couplesubject of of centuries several recent after the books, Conquest,1 focusing all important especially writing on French. was This scholarship invites us to be “no longer wedded to an account of multilingualism in Britain that concentrates on the emergence of English as the national language.”2 To accept the invitation, yet continue to study English at a time when it was decidedly not literary ecosystem. It is to insist, while fully acknowledging Latin and French, that our picturethe national of the language, time and requires place would a willingness be incomplete to look without at the total properly cultural, accounting—in linguistic, and a non-teleological way, of course—for English. - eratures alongside Early Middle English. They are part of the ecosystem. There are The same logic justifies studying and teaching the and their lit thetwo literaturearguments of for multilingual including them:, one and based we onneed influence, to know and about another the Celtic based cultures on the scope of our subject. The influence argument says that there was Celtic influence on can be shown. The other argument says that our subject, whatever we choose to call it, includesto properly the appreciateCeltic cultures that from influence. the outset. This Thatargument second is perspectivelimited by the is represented influence that by

1 For example, Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, edited by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne with Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter, and David Trotter (York: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell & Brewer, 2009); Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and Its Neighbours, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011); Jonathan Hsy, Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013); and Elizabeth M. Tyler, England in (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). An earlier collection of this type was Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. David A. Trotter (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000). 2 Simon Gaunt, review of Kleinhenz and Busby, Medieval Multilingualism, in French Studies 65, no. 4 (2011): 516–17. 4 Matthieu Boyd the new Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain,3 and its mandate

English, British, Irish, Pictish, as well as the Latin languages.”4 (For “British,” read the comesBritish fromCeltic ’s languages—Welsh, remark that “there Cornish, are and five Breton—and languages in forBritain “Irish,” […] read These the are the ones, which now include Irish, , and Manx.) Norse and French are obvious ways to extend the list, which privileges a sense of —Britain or “the Isles”5— as the relevant framework. This carries forward to an interest in the continuing cultural diversity of the Isles since the , and to an inclusive vision of English or Brit- ish literature today; such is one way to demonstrate the relevance of studying medieval literature. I’ve suggested elsewhere6 - erature—geographical (of England); linguistic (in the ); and ethnic or political (of or that the thereEnglish might nation)—and be three ways that ofeach defining of these “English” is compli lit- cated by the other two. More languages than English were used in England; the English language was used outside England, and by non-English people; and nominally English people might use any number of languages other than English. An “Isles” framework doesn’t solve all the problems, given Angevin involvement on the Continent, but it goes a long way towards a full and accurate picture of the relevant dynamics. For some Middle English specialists, thinking in terms of the Isles—and paying more attention to Celtic languages and literatures as a result—will be an adjustment. For others, less so.7 At this stage, the adjustment called for, especially in , is not so much theoretical as practical. The theoretical structure is already more or less in place, thanks to the spate of publications that I mentioned. It’s true that as discus- sions of the multilingualism pertaining to “trilingual England” grow ever more detailed and sophisticated, and seek their “most pregnant textual examples rather in border ter- ritories and areas of shifting sovereignties than in hegemonic centres,” a few continue 8

3 Edited by Siân Echard and Robert Rouse (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). The “in Britain” of the is not ideal, because the encyclopedia covers too. 4 Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: , 1969), 17. 5 Compare Norman Davies, The Isles: A History (: Macmillan, 1999), and Hugh Kearney, The : A History of Four Nations 6 Matthieu Boyd, “The Languages of and the Stakes of Anthologies,” Pedagogy 13, (Cambridge University Press: 1989; 2nd ed., 2006). no. 2 (2013): 303–19. 7 I realize that for some of my readers, I am preaching to the choir. The idea is not new: J. R. R. and its philology lack an experience necessary to their business. As necessary, if not so obviously and immediatelyTolkien said inuseful, 1955 asthat a knowledge “English philologists of Norse or […] French” who have (“English no first and-hand Welsh,” acquaintance in The Monsters with Welsh and the Critics and Other Essays, ed. Christopher Tolkien And the 1999 Cambridge History of Medieval edited by David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) had chapters on “Writing(London: in ,” Allen “Writing & Unwin, in 1983), Ireland,” 162–97, and “Writing at 163). in .” What has changed is that the rationale for this attention has become clearer. 8 Robert Stein, “Multilingualism,” in Middle English: Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 23–37, at 35. 5 Not an Island unto Itself to omit or even actively dismiss the Celtic languages. In those cases, it’s as though some- one built a house with rooms clearly furnished for the needs of certain residents, then let only some of them move in. The very nature of the house should make it apparent that something is missing. Altogether it feels that the work needed now is in the vari- ous kinds of teaching that professors do—graduate training, undergraduate surveys, and writing and speaking for the public—and so this essay is meant primarily for Early Middle English specialists in their role as teachers. Any teaching of the period, I would argue, should follow through in some way on the theoretical commitment to a multilin- gual and cross-cultural perspective that was made in taking on the French of England. It is important to encourage the development of language skills, but even without them, somewhere. andenough promote information them to and consideration analysis to transformby the larger the discipline, field is already including in print students at the appropriateThe challenge level. now Some is to ofrecognize these contributions important contributions deserve to be from foundational specialized texts subfields, for the next generation of scholarship. I am not just suggesting that well-known Irish and Welsh texts like the Book of Lein- ster Táin, Acallam na Senórach - land), or the Four Branches of the Mabinogi should be added to reading lists, although that would be a good start. (Some (The teaching Colloquy anthologies, of the Ancients/Tales notably the of Broadview the Elders Anthol of Ire- ogy of British Literature, recent years.9) The kind of literary studies I have in mind is encapsulated by the list of sixty-seven items in Shrewsburyhave significantly School MS expanded 7 (ca. 12 their70), whichcoverage are ofapparently Celtic texts in of Breton lays, including several by Marie de . The manuscript may have come from Chester, an important border node, and the list, unrelated to the rest of the manu- script, is possibly a plan for a compilation, or a record of the texts a workshop had avail- able to copy. The list includes a number of known lays and romances, and other titles that are distinctly French, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Welsh, and Irish. This list has been known to scholarship for some time,10 by Patrick Sims-Williams that belongs on every graduate reading list.11 The Irish titles but has now been examined in a definitive article therematrix deserve from which special Middle notice, English but the romance list as emerged.a whole testifies to the rich mix of cultural traditions that occurred within the Anglo-Norman sphere of influence, and formed the

9 See again Boyd, “The Languages.” I am involved with the third edition of the Broadview, which has been coming out with new volumes since 2015; it is a major improvement over the second edition, and would be my preferred anthology in a survey course for the kind of teaching I suggest. 10 Georgine A. Brereton, “A Thirteenth-Century List of French Lays and Other Narrative Poems,” Mod­­ern Language Review 45 (1950): 40–45; Elizabeth Archibald, “The Breton Lay in Middle English: Genre, Transmission and the Franklin’s Tale,” in Medieval Insular Romance: Translation and Innovation, ed. Judith Weiss, Jennifer Fellows, and Morgan Dickson (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000), 55–70. 11 Patrick Sims-Williams, “Shrewsbury School MS 7 and the Breton Lays,” Cambrian Medieval

60 (2010): 39–80. 6 Matthieu Boyd Now Keith Busby’s magisterial book on French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medi- eval French12 has synthesized and advanced our understanding of interactions involv-

- rianing Ireland, lay of Melion including and directthe long Irish romance influence The on Marvels Arthurian of Rigomer romance, both and otherof which “Matter are set of inBritain” Ireland literature. and show (It a covers high degree some of of my familiarity own findings, with especiallyboth Irish concerning geopolitics the and Arthu Irish stories.13) What I will do now is offer some guidelines and demonstrations for handling Celtic material within an “Isles” framework in the Early Middle English period. The concept of a “Celtic fringe,” which need not be expressed in those exact words, is not a neutral descriptor and its usefulness is limited. Both parts are problematic: “fringe” and “Celtic.” A fringe is one-sided. Besides the risk of projecting a modern sense of centre and periphery onto the Middle Ages, for which it is not entirely appropriate, this term neglects the perspective of the supposed fringe-dwellers, who have their own concept of the centre. A paradigm of “border writing” is less dismissive and more theo- retically rich. It covers literary attempts to redraw borders—for example, using King perspectives from both sides of borders and from the borderlands themselves.14 Lit- as a prototype for Anglo-Norman conquests—but encourages us to look for and Latin works making their way into the Celtic languages just as Celtic storytelling enrichederary influence romance certainly and hagiography. went both ways,It would with be nice to have and examples adaptations of linguistically of French by a Welshman at Oxford, in English but in Welsh spelling with cynghanedd,15 or Tudur hybrid texts of the kind attested later, like the fifteenth-century ode to the Virgin Mary an Englishwoman.”16 Even without that, it is clear that a place like Wales was “a linguistic clearingPenllyn’s house, (ca. 1420–ca. with French-, 1485) Norse-,bilingual and poem Irish-speakers “Conversation present between alongside a Welshman Welsh and

12 Keith Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). 13 See Busby, French, chap. 3 and 4. As a practical matter, choosing to teach Marie de France’s Lais from the translation by Edward J. (Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 2010), which includes Melion, would make it easy to teach that lay as it has been analyzed by Neil Cartlidge and myself. 14 For more detail on this and other points made in this essay, see my chapter on “Border Literatures: Both Sides Now,” in High Medieval: Literary Cultures in English, ed. Elizabeth Tyler and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, to appear in the Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature series from Oxford University Press. 15 Edited by E. J. Dobson, “The Hymn to the Virgin,” The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1955): 70–124. Cynghanedd is the various patterns of and internal rhyme that characterize strict-metre poetry in Welsh. It is best explained to non-Welsh audiences by contemporary poet Twm Morys, “Cerdd Dafod: A Welsh Poet Introduces a Welsh Metrical Tradition,” EnterText Twm-Morys-Cerdd-Dafod-A-Poet-Introduces-a-Welsh-Metrical-Tradition.pdf. 2, no. 2, http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/111155/ 16 Edited and translated by Dafydd Johnston in Canu maswedd yr oesoedd canol/Medieval Welsh Erotic Poetry “‘What Saist Mon?’: Dialogism and Disdain in Tudur Penllyn’s ‘Conversation between a Welshman and an Englishwoman’,”(: Tafol, Studia 1991; Celtica rev. 46 ed., (2012): Bridgend: 123–36. Seren, 1998). Discussed by Patricia Malone, 7 Not an Island unto Itself English”17 (not to mention the Flemish who were settled there by Henry II). The Welsh may have been an oppressed minority within the Anglo-Norman realm, but they were also cosmopolitan.19 18 As for “Celtic,” the modern concept of a Celtic race or Celtic identity did not exist in the Middle Ages. “Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are all Celtic countries, but their respec- tive medieval populations did not know this.”20 The term “Celtic” was never used. Of course, we recognize certain cultural commonalities,21 but the largest units that the medieval populations thought about were and British. There is a popular stereo- type of “” as emotionally volatile, hyperverbal, aggressive, hedonistic, otherworldly. Tolkien described this kind of thinking as a myth, opposing, from time immemorial, “the wild incalculable poetic Celt, full of vague and misty imaginations, and the Saxon, solid 22 “Unlike most myths,” he added, “this myth seems to have no value at all.” The Celtic stereotype is largely a product of theand nineteenth practical when century, not whenunder writers the influence like Ernest of beer.” Renan and Matthew Arnold celebrated 23 Arnold thought “the composite English genius” had Germanic, Celtic, and Norman elements, as follows: the sentimental and artistic qualities of the Celtic race. The Germanic genius has steadiness as its main basis, with commonness and humdrum

basis, with love of beauty, charm, and spirituality for its excellence, ineffectualness and self-willfor its defect, for its fidelity defect. to The nature Norman for itsgenius, excellence. talent forThe affairs Celtic asgenius, its main sentiment basis, with as its strenu main- ousness and clear rapidity for its excellence, hardness and insolence for its defect.24

17 Julia Crick, “‘The English’ and ‘the Irish’ from Cnut to John: Speculations on a Linguistic Interface,” in Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (Turnhout: Brepols,

18 See, e.g., Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales, ed. Ruth Kennedy and Simon 2011), 217–38, at 233.

19 See, e.g., Antony David Carr, “Inside the Tent Looking Out: The Medieval Welsh World-View,” Meecham-Jones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). in From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths, ed. R. R. Davies and Geraint H. Jenkins (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 30–44. 20 in The New Cambridge Medieval History II: c. 700–c. 900, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: CambridgeDonnchadh University Ó� Corráin, Press, “Ireland, 1995), 43–63, Scotland at 43. and Wales: c. 700 to the Early Eleventh Century,” 21 Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage (London: Thames & Hudson, 1961), is a classic study in this vein. 22 Tolkien, “English and Welsh,” 172. 23 See Boyd, “The Languages,” 310–11. There is considerable literature about these ideas: see, e.g., Patrick Sims-Williams, “Celtomania and Celtoscepticism,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies The Coming of the Celts, AD 1860: Celtic Nationalism in Ireland and Wales 36 (1998): 1–36, and most recently Caoimhí�n De Barra, 24 Matthew Arnold, “The Study of , Part III,” The Cornhill Magazine (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018). Gutmann, Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (Princeton: Princeton University 12 (May 1866): Press, 1996),538–55, 52–90. at 548. For a critique of the racialist thinking here, see Kwame Anthony Appiah and Amy 8 Matthieu Boyd productive to replicate it. The Celtic stereotype is surprisingly durable, and shows up in wordsIt may likebe productive“free-spirited,” to critique “tempestuous,” this kind “feisty,” of racialist and “colourful” thinking with being students. used to describeIt is not “Celts” and their literature, rather than some of the characters in it. That many self-iden- for analyzing literature from centuries earlier. If Celtic texts are treated as gatherings oftified mythological modern Celts debris embraced that may Arnoldian be “colourful” thinking but does don’t not make itsense, any less that problematic constrains interpretation. - cally, which means that “Celtic-speaking peoples” is better nomenclature than “Celts.”25 The present view in Celtic Studies seems to be that “Celtic” is best defined linguisti different Celtic-speaking peoples individually by name (as Irish, Welsh, and so on). A biculturalThe influence observer of stereotypes like the Cambro-Norman might be further Gerald mitigated of Wales, by thinkingwho retails in termsa number of the of what seem to be medieval stereotypes as well as personal prejudices, might describe the Welsh with a sensitivity that doesn’t extend to the Irish, for example. Distinguishing the Celtic groups will also help with students who think there’s such a thing as “speak- ing Celtic.” It follows from the fact that there was not a single “Celtic” culture, that the transfer of motifs or stories from one Celtic-speaking population to another was not automatic or seamless. Teaching only Irish or Welsh literature is not enough to cover “the Celtic attested in Ireland, such as the Loathly Lady26 and the Beheading Game,27 and it should beworld.” called Specifically, to students’ there attention are some that famousthis is a motifsproblem in thatArthurian has not literature been fully that solved. are first Did they enter the French tradition from Ireland directly, or via Wales, and how might that have happened? There is a time-honoured practice of looking for analogues to “” narratives in early when they are not forthcoming from medi- eval Welsh literature. This may seem like an obvious way to proceed, but it is really 28 the material originated in Ireland, or that the Irish evidence implies something about in the nature of a necessary evil. The argument needs to be clarified: is the idea that

25 For example, Sims-Williams, “Post-Celtoscepticism: A Personal View,” in Saltair Saíochta, Sanasaíochta agus Senchais: A Festschrift for Gearóid Mac Eoin

The Celtic Question: Modern Constructs and Ancient Realities (:, ed. Dublin Dónall Institute Ó� Baoill, for Donncha Advanced Ó� hAodha, and Nollaig Ó� Muraí�le (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 422–28, at 428; Kim McCone, 26 Notably in the short text mac n-Echach Muigmedóin (The Adventure of the Sons of Studies, 2008). Mugmedón), The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales, ed. John Koch with John Carey, 4th ed. (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications,

27 Notably in the saga Fled Bricrenn (Bricriu’s Feast), best taught from The Celtic Heroic Age, 76–105. 2003), 203–08. 28 A classic example is Tom Peete Cross, “The Celtic Origin of the Lay of Yonec,” Revue Celtique

“The Ring, the Sword, the Fancy Dress, the Posthumous Child, and the Birdman: Background to the31 (1910): Element 413–71, of Heroic at Biography420–8. For in my Marie take deon France’sthe particular Yonec ,”case Romance he discusses, Quarterly see Matthieu Boyd, 205–30. 55, no. 3 (2008): 9 Not an Island unto Itself the kind of material that existed in Wales or ? In either case, the examples and caveats assembled by Patrick Sims-Williams in Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Lit- erature29 will need to be considered. John Carey, in his account of how a package of narratives associated with the Grail legend might have travelled from Ireland to France, 30 It is increasingly clear that there was an emerging Irish contribution to the develop- appropriatelyment of Arthurian stops romance to consider that how was it separate might first and have distinct gotten from from the Ireland British to (Welsh Wales. or Breton) contribution—we see it clearly in the lay of Melion and the romances Durmart le Galois and Les Mervelles de Rigomer31—while Guillaume Le Clerc’s Fergus was shaped by Scottish concerns. Like the Shrewsbury list, the early Irish tale-lists32 and Welsh Triads33 give us a sense of how much literature there was in Celtic languages, and it should always be remem- bered that not all of it is extant. When Bernard Sergent claims that the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi Equitan, because they both involve adul- tery and a bathtub,34 this feels forced; but it doesn’t follow that Equitan must not have had a Celtic source influenced because Marie the Fourth de France’s Branch is the best analogue we have available. If we can’t be sure what the sources were, we can still describe what they were like35: it is still instructive to compare the two texts without asserting a source relationship. When Carey constructs a detailed account of Bleddri ap Cadifor’s transmission of Grail- related tales to the Continent,36 documentary evidence shows that this kind of transmis- sion occurred whether Bleddri was involved or not.37 The Bleddri story is attractive and detailed, but it comes with a safety net: if it fails as an explanation of certain processes, that does not invalidate the processes themselves. On the other hand, there are instances where a lack of evidence is lamented with- out making every effort to compensate for the lack. A choice example is the originals of

29 Patrick Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 30 John Carey, Ireland and the Grail (Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies, 2007), esp. 121–31. 31 See again Busby, French, chap. 3 and 4. A comprehensive survey of Arthurian verse romance, which in contrast to the prose tradition particularly expressed Anglo-Norman political concerns, is Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann’s Der Arturische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart (Tübingen: The of Arthurian Romance

Niemeyer, 1980), trans. Margaret and Roger Middleton as 32 See Proinsias Mac Cana, The Learned Tales of Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Dublin Institute for (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

33 Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain, ed. and trans. Rachel Bromwich, 4th ed. Advanced Studies, 1980). (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014). Bromwich’s “Notes to Personal Names” are an invaluable resource. 34 Bernard Sergent, L’Origine celtique des Lais de Marie de France (Geneva: Droz, 2014), 70–76. 35 For a demonstration, see Boyd, “Background to the Element.” 36 Carey, Ireland and the Grail, 269–96. 37 Pierre Gallais, “Bleheri, la cour de Poitiers, et la diffusion des récits Arthuriens sur le continent,” Journal of the International Arthurian Society

2, no. 1 (2014): 84–113, with introduction by Matthieu Boyd, “Arthurian Vogues: Pierre Gallais’s Neglected Evidence,” 80–83. 10 Matthieu Boyd the Breton lays, an issue of special importance given the now-canonical status of Marie de France, the pioneer of the genre, as a British author and poster child for “trilingual England.” Marie says that li Bretun (the , or the Britons, or Brittonic Celts in general—this is one place where modern terminology seems to force a distinction that Marie doesn’t clearly make) made lays and that she heard them. Other texts reiterate the claim that the Bretons made lays. Saying that “the Bretons made a lay” obviously becomes a convention of the genre of “Breton lay” in French and English, but did it origi- nally have any basis? Setting aside the broader case that Marie’s Lais derive from Celtic sources, which Bernard Sergent has comprehensively laid out, the three Celtic words in Marie (bisclavret, laüstic, and the conjunction ha) 38 conservative, as has been shown by comparing the versionare specifically of events Breton.in songs There collected is a centuriespractice of after sung the narrative fact with specific judicial to Brittanyrecords from(i.e. not Ancien Wales Régime or ) France. 39which Except is highly when the singers felt the need to correct what they saw as a miscarriage of justice, the ballad versions are impressively accurate. In a few cases, these ballads—called gwerzioù (sg. gwerz, from Latin versus)—demonstrably preserve medieval material: they are a close match for medieval Welsh verse or historical events in medieval Brittany. Donatien Lau- rent, the twentieth century’s leading expert on the gwerzioù, boldly claimed that I think we can take it for certain that this oral, narrative, Breton folk poetry represents the exact extension of the Breton medieval lays, as if the thread of tradition had never gwerziou we can hear today in Breton living tradition are Breton medieval lays that never fell into decay[.]40 been broken. […] It is, in fact, probable that at least two of these Gwerz Skolan or Skolvan, a gwerz collected in enough distinct ver- sions to support genuine oral transmission.41 It corresponds to the tenth-century Welsh Thepoem flagship Yscolan case in the is thirteenth-century Black Book of Carmarthen.42 In both, a cleri-

38 Sergent, L’Origine celtique des Lais. But the way Sergent insists that Celtic origins preclude

Celticothers matiere (“Les sources de Marie ne sont pas antiques ni germaniques. Elles sont bretonnessen. This etis especiallyceltiques,” easy117) to is shownot appropriate; for Yonec: see like Boyd, her contemporary “Background to Chrétien the Element.” de Troyes, Marie conjoined her with Classical and Christian influences, giving it a new orientation or 39 La complainte et la plainte: chanson, justice, cultures en Bretagne (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) (: Presses Universitaires de Rennes/Dastum/CRBC, 2010). É�va Guillorel, 40 Donatien Laurent, “Tradition and Innovation in Breton Oral Literature,” in The Celts and the Renaissance. Tradition and Innovation. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Celtic Studies Held at Swansea, 19–24 July, 1987, ed. Glanmor Williams and Robert Owen Jones (Cardiff:

41 University of Wales Press, 1990), 91–99, at 98. century collection Barzaz Breiz, had a song corresponding to Marie’s Laüstic (Ann Eostik, 151–55 in This is an important point. Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué, in his controversial nineteenth- of Marie. On the issues with the Barzaz Breiz, see Constantine, Breton Ballads (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications,the third edition, 1996) : and Didier, The Truth 1867), Against but we the can’t World: be Iolo sure Morganwg he didn’t make and Romantic it up himself Forgery on the (Cardiff: basis University of Wales Press, 2007). 42 Donatien Laurent, “La gwerz de Skolan et la légende de Merlin,” Ethnologie Française 1, no. 3–4 (1971): 19–54; Mary-Ann Constantine, Breton Ballads

, 62–81. 11 Not an Island unto Itself - ness for a series of crimes including the slaughter of cattle, the destruction of a , andcal figure, the drowning dressed ofin a black holy book.and riding Considering a black thehorse, interval performs of about penance eight incenturies, the wilder the similarities are compelling. There are other cases like this.43 The formulaic language of the gwerzioù is also found in one of the earliest surviving literary texts in Breton, An Dialog etre Arzur Roe d’an Bretounet ha Guynglaff (The Dialogue between Arthur King of the Bretons/Britons and Guynglaff) (ca. 1450),44 which belongs to a genre of bardic prophecy that is far earlier and better attested in Wales.45 This means that the Dialog bridges the learned Brittonic tradition of bardic verse and Breton folk tradition, as the Yscolan/Skol(v)an story must have done. It would too simplistic to say that the gwerzioù themselves are Breton lays, since they are performed a capella in a rural set- ting, while the medieval lays are supposed to have been sung in a court setting to the accompaniment of harps, rotes, and hurdy-gurdies. But to call them the “extension of the medieval lays”—an instance of what folklorists call gesunkenes Kulturgut, i.e. folk con- tinuation of an elite-culture practice—seems reasonable. One would expect this position to have been thoroughly investigated by Marie de France scholars, who have tradition- ally bemoaned the dearth of extant medieval literature in Breton, but in fact it is almost never mentioned.46 With Marie, the issue is especially important, since her translations were meant to be interpretive. She says in her famous Prologue that as one of the “mod- erns,” she has a duty to “gloss the letter” (v. 15: gloser la letre) of the ancients, “who expressed themselves most obscurely” (v. 12: assez oscurement diseient). Since so many others were dealing with the Classical ancients, she turned to the Brittonic ones, “the lays I had heard” (v. 33). Unless her intellectual and artistic enterprise was completely dishonest, she did hear something, even if it was just from Bretons at the Anglo-Norman court. It is productive to ask, about any of Marie’s Lais, “How might this be a gloss?” This takes us a step beyond lining up analogues. Consider Marie’s Bisclavret. Suppose we simply state that bisclavret is a Breton word

“diseased wolf,” “speaking wolf,” or something else. What are students supposed to do withor name, this information?that Marie presents it as equivalent to “werewolf,” and that it literally means Now suppose we point out that the early Irish, Welsh, and Bretons were absolutely enamoured of wolf and dog names, and that our documentary sources from all three cultures are full of names like “Fire-Dog,” “Stone-Dog,” “Man-Dog,” “Hound of Plunder,”

43 See Laurent, “Tradition and Innovation,” and Constantine, Breton Ballads presentation of these examples. , 62–81, for a summary 44 See Hervé Le Bihan, “An Dialog etre Arzur Roe d’an Bretounet ha Guynglaff and Its Connections with Arthurian Tradition,” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 29 (2009): 115–26, at 122–24. 45 See Aled Llion Jones, Darogan: Prophecy, Lament, and Absent Heroes in Medieval Welsh Literature (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013). 46 Even Sergent, L’Origine Celtique des Lais, mentions it only in passing: 19–20, 345. The recent Miracles and Murders: An Introductory Anthology of Breton Ballads (London: British Academy/Oxford University Press, 2017), may bring publicationthe subject to by a Marywider- Annaudience, Constantine but is not and especially É�va Guillorel, directed to medievalists. 12 Matthieu Boyd “Ravening Wolf,” and so on.47 (The Irish Cú Chulainn, who assumes the name and aggressive names clearly became conventional, since in Old Breton sources like the ninth-centuryrole of a dog that Cartulary he killed, of Redon, is a special they arecase, borne but superficiallyby priests and it’s monks like the as rest.)well as These wit- nesses. Now the name Bisclavret, whatever the second element is (I personally agree with William Sayers that it is claffet, “diseased/rabid” ), starts with an element “wolf” (Modern Breton bleiz 48 Bleidbara, a compound of “wolf” and “fury/madness/rage.” It has also been pointed out that bisclavret seems ),to so be it both fits thea proper pattern: name in fact,and theit’s verygeneric close name to the for attestedwhat the name man becomes (he tells his wife Dame, jeo devienc bisclavret, “Lady, I become a bisclavret,” v. 64). This led me to suggest that the transformation here is, at least in part, a gloss on an evocative name: a woman marries a man named Manwolf or Madwolf or Wolf-frenzy; she is then shocked to discover that in this case his name is not conventional but literal. Hence she gets the surplus of meaning which Marie famously urges us to elicit from the obscure writings of the ancients (vv. 9–16 of her Prologue to the Lais).49 This has since hardened into a personal conviction: I really think that this is what is going on, whether or not Marie made up the entire plot of Bisclavret to substantiate her gloss. The larger point is that when there is an informed attempt to make it meaningful, the footnote factoid about the etymology of bisclavret is repositioned as a key to the nar- rative, consistent with the author’s overall intellectual project. Or so I would argue—and with the documentary evidence in play, others would now have a basis to argue back. My reading, of course, does not eliminate the possibility of Francophone audiences reinter- preting the bi- as expressing doubleness, and evolving new interpretations on that basis: “the subject’s inherent splittedness, humanity’s monstrous doubleness as both social- ized and bestial,” as Peter Haidu puts it.50 Here’s another example: the alternative title of Eliduc, Guildeluec ha Guilliadun. These are Breton names,51 and the conjunction ha (and) is distinctively Breton. (Welsh or Cornish would have been just a.) How can those facts be made meaningful?

47 Gary German, “Breton Patronyms and the British Heroic Age” (2013, available online at www. wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Research/BretonPatronymsBritishHeroicAge.pdf); compare, for Irish, Kim McCone, “Werewolves, Cyclopes, Díberga, and Fíanna Ireland,” Cambridge [now Cambrian] Medieval Celtic Studies : Juvenile Delinquency in Early 48 See Matthieu Boyd, “The Ancients’ Savage Obscurity: The Etymology of Bisclavret,” Notes and 12 (1986): 1–22, at 16. Queries 60, no. 2 (2013): 199–202, and Sergent, L’Origine, 100ff. In the most recent translation of Marie’s Lais, by Claire Waters (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2017), the only comment on the etymology is that “The word bisclavret bleiz lavaret would mean a “spoken” rather than a “speaking” […] has been wolf. plausibly We could traced conjecture to Breton bleiz cognates lavarek meaning, “chatty wolf,”‘speaking but wolf’”that adds (145n1). a phonological This has indeed change, been and argued, anyway but “diseased/rabid/ravening I don’t find it as convincing: wolf” or “wolf- diseased one” are more consistent with attested early Breton names, as I explain in my article. 49 Boyd, “The Ancients’ Savage Obscurity,” 201. It’s easy to think of analogous plots involving animal names in English—Wolf Blitzer, Jamie Foxx, Bear Grylls, Tiger Woods, and so on. 50 Haidu, The Subject Medieval/Modern (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 136. 51 See Sergent, L’Origine Celtique des Lais, 316–17. 13 Not an Island unto Itself Guilliadun—a Breton name—is the daughter of the king of Exeter (Excestrë, v. 91)— an Anglo-Saxon place. Marie’s Lais do not present the whole world as Breton or British: for example, Les Dous Amanz is convincingly set in Neustria (Normandy). But when Eli- duc leaves Brittany to go to (England), he lands at Totness and proceeds to Exeter. This replicates the coming of Brutus, legendary ancestor of the Britons, who landed at Totness according to Geoffrey of . The result is that the people of Exeter are presented as “honourary” Bretons or Britons. The Exeter of the lay is not the real Exeter, but Exeter before Exeter, as it were—an Exeter that was still British. So the title Guil- deluec ha Guilliadun links the noble lady from with the princess from Exeter across the Channel. I am not sure how precise a political analogy I would draw,52 but the effect is to extend British identity to England, which is something the Anglo-Normans and English deliberately sought, for example through the progressive adoption of the Brutus story as a founding myth in Geoffrey’s Historia, Wace, and Layamon. Other texts, like the Four Branches of the Mabinogi or Arthurian verse romance, project a sense of Mabinogi, for example, the Welsh are progressively alienated from “the crown of London”; in Renaud dethe Bâgé’s post-Conquest Bel Inconnu geopolitical, Arthur relocates situation to back London into andlegendary Wales istime reframed (in the as merely one Les Mervelles de Rigomer earlier in the same manuscript53). Eliduc projects legendary time forward onto thepart present. of his empire, Obviously, just asrestating Ireland Eliduc becomes’s title an asArthurian Guildeluec conquest ha Guilliadun in focuses our attention on the women; but on the level of geopolitics as well as gender politics, the little Breton “and” has a lot to say. Celtic Studies understandably privileges the vernaculars, but it is important not to neglect Latin as a medium of expression for the Celtic-speaking peoples, especially ear- lier in the Middle English period. We know, of course, that Latin was used to write about them: the ethnographic writing of Gerald of Wales is a popular example.54 Joshua Byron , in a recent study of Walter Map, lends support to Patrick Sims-Williams’s idea

52 Compare Sharon Kinoshita’s take on Yonec and Milun in her Medieval Boundaries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), or the idea that Dorigen, Arveragus, and Aurelius in Chaucer’s “Franklin’s Tale” correspond to Brittany, England, and France respectively in the context of the War of the Breton Succession (1341–1365)—this has been most recently presented by Shannon Godlove, “‘Engelond’ and ‘Armorik Briteyne’: Reading Brittany in Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale,” The Chaucer Review 51, no. 3 (2016): 269–94. The analogy in this case might involve Eliduc representation of translatio studii et imperii. Brittany, no longer the favoured spouse, nevertheless himself as a figure for British identity passing from the arms of Brittany to those of England in a apparently lost to the seductions of England, actually draws England into a hybrid marriage acknowledgingcontinues to enjoy that autonomy authority. and It would respect not and be acts unreasonable as a figure toof discerncultural something authority. Britishlike this identity, as one of the possible layers of meaning in Eliduc (along with the redirection of courtly love to the love of God, and so on), even though the details would need to be worked out. 53 54 See Shirin Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages These examples are fleshed out in Boyd, “Border Literatures.” (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), chap. 2; Gerald of Wales: New Perspectives on a Medieval Writer and Critic, ed. Georgia Henley and A. Joseph McMullen (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2017). 14 Matthieu Boyd that learned Latin culture played an important role in the transmission of “Matter of Britain” material, perhaps alongside professional interpreters like Bleddri ap Cadifor, as opposed to Roger Sherman Loomis’s idea of “Breton conteurs.” 55 Keith Busby has shown 56 the future home of the “Saracens” of King Horn and other texts.57 The transcultural hagiogra- phythat producedtexts in Latin at key were nodes the like first Glastonbury wave in defining and Furness Ireland mirrors as a land the culturalof marvels, diversity of the secular genres. 58 Recent scholarship has highlighted various ways that Celtic speakers engaged with the Latin classics.59 Among its many advantages, Latin could appeal to, caution, or even awe a wider audience.60 My favourite example, from the vita of the Welsh saint (Vita S. Gundleii), is this: , eager to assail the Welsh, raids Gwynllyw’s church. His men get their hands on some cheeses, but when they cut them open, the cheeses bleed. Harold decides to give everything back, and begs for violating the - 61 So William church.and his successorsToo late: “Forthwith were put onin the notice. next With month the for admission that iniquity of “other and fortransgressions” other transgres the sionstext stops he was short conquered of claiming in the that battle the king of Hastings of England by king serves William at the and pleasure slain.” of the Welsh, or that the Welsh have the authority to remove him, but it makes a clear threat on behalf of the Welsh church: if you mess with our saints or our churches in the course of your secular quarrels, you’re finished.

55 Smith, Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Conteurs Transmit the Matière de Bretagne?,” Romania conteurs does not consider2017), esp. the 158–71, evidence referencing of the gwerzioù Patrick, however. Sims-Williams, “Did Itinerant Breton 116 (1998): 72–111. The dismissal of Breton 56 Busby, French, esp. chap. 3. 57 See Matthieu Boyd, “Celts Seen as Muslims, Muslims Seen by Celts in Medieval Literature,” in Contextualizing the Muslim Other in Medieval Christian Discourse, ed. Jerold C. Frakes (New York:

58 See, e.g., Antonia Gransden, “The Growth of the Glastonbury Traditions and Legends in the Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 21–38. Twelfth Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness (York: York Medieval Press, 2010). Another interesting case is Darerca/ Modwenna, now discussed by Busby, French, 357–64:27 (1976): an 337–58, Irish saint and whoseHelen Birkett, cult extends into Scotland and the English . 59 For example, Brent Miles, Heroic Saga and Classical Epic in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011); Classical Literature and Learning in Medieval Irish Narrative, ed. Ralph O’Connor (Cambridge: Brewer, 2014); Paul Russell, Reading Ovid in Medieval Wales (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2017). 60 A compelling example is the Latin biography of the twelfth-century king of Gwynedd (northwest Wales), Gruffudd ap Cynan, which was written on Classical and Carolingian models: see Patricia A. Malone, “Entirely Outside the World”: Rhetoric, Legitimacy, and Identity in the Biography of Gruffudd ap Cynan (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2009), and “‘There Has Been Treachery from the Beginning’: The Historia Gruffudd ap Cynan as Narrative Hybrid,” CSANA Yearbook 10 (2011): 61–74. 61 §13; Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae et Genealogiae, ed. A. W. Wade-Evans (Cardiff: University of

Wales Press, 1944), 187. 15 Not an Island unto Itself The same manuscript, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A XIV, ca. 1200, contains various other lives of Welsh saints, including the Life of St. David by Rhigyfarch ap Sulien, “a manifesto for the independence of the Welsh church”62 that sends David to Jerusalem to be made archbishop, to show that he is not beholden to either Rome or Canterbury.63 The hagiographer Rhigyfarch was also a poet, in Latin.64 His famous lament Planctus Ricemarch yr Ynad Coch on the of Llewelyn ap Gruffudd (the last native prince of Wales, d. has images in common with the magnificent elegy composed by Gruffudd ap difference that his cry of pain and protest could be understood from outside Wales, by anyone1282)—a who cry cared to God, to listen.a sense that the ocean will cover the land—but with the important Throughout this essay I have tried to show the value of engaging seriously with Celtic languages and literatures as part of the literary ecosystem framing Early Middle Eng- lish studies. Much more remains to be said about the borrowings made by the French tradition, especially as it involves Ireland—even a familiar author like Marie de France remains a limited and limiting perspective. has Tosecrets the extent left—but that to taking focus on borrowingthe subject alone matter (the of oldCeltic concept Studies of “Celticfeels like influence”) it might produce overwhelming complexity in Middle —don’t Latin and French - togive know us quite everything, enough thoughto think they about, need already?—the to be aware situationof what they calls don’t for a know.review Without of pur abandoningposes, a reshuffling their specialized of priorities, work, and Celticists a willingness are challenged to collaborate. to offer Not non-Celticistseveryone needs a meaningful experience of their philology, to prioritize their insights, and to offer them up in an accessible form in an accessible forum. Non-Celticists are challenged to adopt a paradigm of Insular literature that lets them take an interest in the contributions of - forCeltic other Studies languages even whenpresent those in the contributions medieval Isles, don’t such speak as Hebrew. to the familiar In many issue ways, of all influ this hasence, been because happening the field already. of medieval I rather English hope thatstudies I’ve is been inclusive preaching that way. to the The choir, same at holds least in theoretical terms. Because the classroom forces tradeoffs—time is limited, and so is students’ capacity to take on new material—a crucial issue for the future will be how our theoretical commitments translate into different kinds of teaching practice65 and to a baseline sense of Britain as a matter of many languages from long ago to now.

62 Christopher Brooke, The Church and the Welsh Border in the Central Middle Ages (Woodbridge:

63 See Kathryn Hurlock, Wales and the Crusades, c.1095–1291 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, Boydell, 1986), 6. 2011), 200. 64 See now Sarah Zeiser, Latinity, Manuscripts, and the Rhetoric of Conquest in Late-Eleventh- Century Wales (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2012), which includes editions of Rhigyfarch’s poems. 65 I made some suggestions about this in Boyd, “The Languages of British Literature and the Stakes of Anthologies.” A more recent contribution to the discourse was the forum on “A Better Brit

Lit Survey: Celtic, Norse, and Teaching a Multicultural North Atlantic” at the 2018 MLA Convention (https://mla.confex.com/mla/2018/meetingapp.cgi/Session/2831). 16 Matthieu Boyd MATTHIEU BOYD is Chair of the Department of Literature, Language, Writing and Philosophy at Fairleigh Dickinson University, an associate of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, and a contributing editor to the Broadview Anthology of British Literature.

Abstract: thinking in terms of the total linguistic and cultural ecosystem of Britain and Ireland. Recent work on multilingualism in the Early Middle English period justifies The Celtic-speaking peoples are an integral part of this ecosystem and should be treated as such, not just as a source of raw material for literary developments in the English, French, and Latin of “trilingual England.” This article suggests some basic principles for advice for our teaching practice. engaging with Celtic languages and literatures in this broader context and offers specific Keywords: multilingualism, border writing/border literatures, Celtic, Irish, Welsh, Arthurian, Marie de France, Breton lay, pedagogy