Quaintmere, Max (2018) Aspects of memory in medieval Irish literature. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/9026/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Aspects of Memory in Medieval Irish Literature Max Quaintmere MA, MSt (Oxon.) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities College of Arts University of Glasgow September 2017 Abstract This thesis explores a number of topics centred around the theme of memory in relation to medieval Irish literature roughly covering the period 600—1200 AD but considering, where necessary, material later than this date. Firstly, based on the current scholarship in memory studies focused on the Middle Ages, the relationship between medieval thought on memory in Ireland is compared with its broader European context. From this it becomes clear that Ireland, whilst sharing many parallels with European thought during the early Middle Ages based on a shared literary inheritance from the Christian and late-classical worlds, does not experience the same renaissance in memory theory that occurred in European universities from the thirteenth century onwards. Next, a detailed semantic study of memory terms in Old and Middle Irish is provided with the aim of clarifying, supplementing and revising the definitions found in the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language. Whilst the two principal memory nouns, cuimne and mebair, appear largely synonymous, the verb mebraigid appears to lean towards favouring the sense of ‘committing to memory,’ whereas cuimnigid(ir) encompasses this sense in addition to that of ‘recalling from memory.’ The third part of this thesis re-evaluates the dichotomous tension between notions of orality and literacy which some scholars have found in medieval Irish literature, arguing that this aspect has perhaps been exaggerated and that memory was a fluid concept in medieval Ireland embracing and merging both oral and textual forms. Following this, an assessment is made as to the importance and function of memory within the learned culture of the filid emphasising its necessary significance in a culture still partly based in an oral world. A wide range of sources including legal texts, grammatical tracts and tale literature is explored to show that the filid’s idealisation of memory was, largely, as a broad, comprehensive source supplying the knowledge necessary to acquire prestige through its performance and expression in a social context. The last part of this thesis investigates the notion that memory of the past could be used for the purposes of propaganda in medieval Ireland through the case study of the Ulster Cycle tales. Summarising and criticising some of the key prior scholarship in this area, this final section advocates for a much more cautious approach when claiming Ulster Cycle tales demonstrate political leanings, and that these must include or reconcile other more literary based interpretations of the themes and characters in these texts in order to remain successful as critical readings. 1 Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………................. 3 1.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………… 4 2.0 Memory in the Medieval World…………………...……………………………….. 8 2.1 Memory, Transmission and Composition……………………………………………. 16 2.2 The Ars Memorativa in Medieval Ireland………………………………………….. 27 2.3 Classical and Medieval: Problems of Transmission and Chronology…...………… 30 3.0 Memory Terms in Medieval Irish…………………..………………………………… 39 3.1 Nouns Denoting Memory in Medieval Irish…………………………………………. 43 3.2 Verbs Expressing Memory Actions in Medieval Irish……………………………….. 54 3.3 The Scope of Medieval Irish Memory Terms: Conclusions and Further Directions… 61 4.0 Orality, Literacy and the Role of Memory in Transmission in Medieval Ireland…….………………………………………………………………… 64 4.1 Orality and Literacy: Framing the Debate………………………...…………………. 68 4.2 Approaching the Dichotomy: Ogham and Literary Attitudes towards Orality…… 86 4.3 Orality versus Literacy? Reconsidering Acallam na Senórach…………………… 92 5.0 Textual Evidence on Memory, Authority and the Filid……….…………………… 103 5.1 The Fallibility of Text………………………………………………………………... 104 5.2 Cenn Fáelad’s Unusual Headwound…………………………………………………. 122 5.3 The Legal Element to Head and Brain Injury………………………………………... 137 5.4 Memory and the Authority of the Filid: Cenn Fáelad……………………………….. 141 5.5 The Filid and Ideals of Memory……………………………………………………... 145 5.6 The Authoritative Witness: Fintan mac Bóchrai in Do Suidigud Tellaig Temra……. 156 5.7 Authority, Remembering and Forgetting in Acallam na Senórach………………….. 163 5.8 Memory and Authority in Medieval Irish Texts: Conclusions………………………. 171 6.0 Memory as Propaganda? Manipulating the Past for the Purposes of the Present in Medival Ireland: The Case of the Ulster Cycle……………………… 173 6.1 Memory, Propaganda and the Ulster Cycle: A Critical View………………………. 188 7.0 Aspects of Memory in Medieval Ireland: Conclusions….………………………….. 194 Bibliography: Primary Sources…………………………………………………………. 199 Secondary Sources……………………………………………………………………….. 203 2 Acknowledgements This PhD was funded through a very generous grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, without which it would not have been possible. Thanks must go to my academic supervisors, Professor Thomas Owen Clancy and Doctor Geraldine Parsons, for their continued support and advice. All errors remaining in this work are mine alone. Thanks to my fellow PhD students in Celtic and Gaelic at the University of Glasgow; Joan, Myra, Martina, Andrew, Cynthia and Sofia, for their company and conversation during the last four years. Personal thanks also to Felicity for her enduring patience, and for her continuing faith in me. Without her support, her encouragement and her advice this project would not have seen completion. Thanks also to my mother for her comments and corrections on my final draft. In memory of my father. 3 1.0 Introduction Memory is not an easy topic around which to form a study. It is a word which encompasses a variety of subtly different meanings and implications. The Oxford English Dictionary defines memory with no less than ten distinct categories under three primary groupings.1 These, in very brief summary, variously cover the concepts of the mental faculty of memory, items retained within this faculty and physical objects serving a memorial purpose, as well as acts of remembering, recollecting and committing to memory. Consequently, when taken as a theme in a study of a particular historical culture as preserved in its surviving literature, memory provides many potential avenues for exploration. One option is to study depictions of memory found in a literature through how it portrays actual acts of memorising and recalling, in order to come directly to a clearer understanding of how such acts were viewed and understood in a historical context, and to better define their function and importance according to the consciously professed values held by that culture. A second is to view the texts comprising a literature as memorial monuments in and of themselves and study a culture’s attitude to memory almost archaeologically, by examining the nature and uses of the surviving tools through which memory could be preserved. Literature, amongst its many other possible functions, is often created to serve a memorialising purpose, and it has long been recognised that this is especially true of medieval Irish literature.2 These two possible approaches to the study of memory in relation to a historic literature do, to a greater or lesser extent, overlap and complement each other. Indeed, it is not possible to do one full justice without considering it in relation to the other. In the context of medieval Ireland, the situation is compounded by the fact that the literature concerned arose in a world where text was not the only nor, indeed, always the primary means of preserving and transmitting memory. Our surviving texts were produced in context of a culture which also relied on and valued an oral means of communicating memory. The question of how best to understand the relationship between the oral and the written within medieval Irish literature is a topic that has greatly preoccupied scholars working with this material. Consequently, it is not possible to study aspects of memory in relation to the 1 OED Online, nb. Memory (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/116363). 2 H. M. Chadwick and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Literature, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932, repr. 1986), p. 269. 4 surviving examples of this literature without also considering the relationship between them and the wider cultural and intellectual world which birthed them. This thesis was born out of a desire to investigate and better understand how medieval Irish writers felt they were able to access the past and how they represented that past in the works they produced. Memory, in this context, provides a general unifying theme. Those who composed and recorded the surviving examples of the literature of medieval Ireland were keenly aware of the passage of time, and of the fragility of human attainments in the face of this. This sentiment is nowhere better reflected than in an illustrative metaphor from the tale known as Echtra Cormaic i Tir Tairngiri, (‘The Adventures of Cormac in the Land of Promise’): Focerd Cormac a magh mor a ænur. Dun mor ar lar in maighi. Sonnach credhumae uime. Teag findairgid isin dun 7 se lethtuighthi do eitib en find. [Marcsluag side oc tathaiged in tigi 7 utlaigi] do eitib en find ina n-ochtaibh do thuighi in tighi.