Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature

by Patrick Sims-Williams

In the Middle Ages Ireland's extensive and now famous literature was unknown outside the Gaelic-speaking world of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man - with Wales an important exception. Irish emigrants had settled in Wales from the fifth century onwards, Irish scholars worked in Wales in the ninth century, and throughout the Middle Ages there were ecclesiastical, mercantile, and military contacts across the Irish Sea. From this standpoint, it is not surprising that the names of Irish heroes such as Cu Roi, Cu Chulainn, Finn, and Deirdre became known to Welsh poets, and that Irish narratives influenced the authors of the Welsh Mabinogion . Yet the Welsh and Irish languages were not mutually comprehensible, the degree to which the two countries still shared a common Celtic inheritance is contested, and Latin provided a convenient lingua franca . Could some of the similarities between the Irish and Welsh literatures be due to independent influences or even to coincidence? Patrick
Sims-Williams provides a new approach to these controversial questions, situating them in the context of the rest of medieval literature and international folklore. The result is the first comprehensive estimation of the extent to which Irish literature influenced medieval Welsh literature. This book will be of interest not only to medievalists but to all those concerned with the problem of how to recognize and evaluate literary influence.

Genres: Medieval

440 pages, Hardcover

First published September 23, 2010

About the author

Patrick Sims-Williams has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1996. His research is focused on ancient and medieval Celtic language, literature and history. From 1977 to 1993 he was a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, before becoming Professor of Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth University in 1994.

Reviews

[dragonhelmuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately this book comes down to an analysis of the various "Irish influences" which have been claimed over the years on Welsh literature and beyond to Welsh culture. I'm not sure if I admire Sims-William's knowledge to go beyond the literature, or find it boring to hear about the historic documents. I never like Patrick Sims-Williams style of writing for some reason, and this one wasn't much of an exception. I feel like I'm reading a list of facts and re-tellings of the literature rather than a comprehensive argument about influences. Still, this is perhaps the greatest living Celticist's viewpoint so it needs to be respected, and the book is definitely causing a stirr Three quotes:

{The book in his own words}
This book has been devoted to exceptions {to the rule that Wales was separate or more aligned to Latin literature}. In the ninth and tenth centuries Irish scholars were active in Wales, and Welsh scholars studied in Ireland in the eleventh century. Latin may have been the principal means of written communication, but during these centuries both countries mixed Latin and the vernacular in their extant manuscripts, so that some Irish material reached Wales in Latin contexts-not just Irish glosses, as in the Juvencus manuscript, but at least one complete poem in the case of the Life of St Máedóc.5 Scholarly communication may be the context in which some nuggets of Irish lore passed into Welsh tradition: the name of the magic boar Twrch Trwyth perhaps; Kaer Sidi as a name for the Otherworld; the names of Diwrnach Wyddel, Cai fab Cynyr Cainfarfawg, Maelwys mab Baedan, Brys fab Brysethach, and other Irish characters in Culhwch and Olwen; the fivefold division of Ireland between the grandsons of Lóth.6 The Munster hero Cú Roí is the subject of an early Welsh elegy in the Book of Taliesin, and he and four Ulster heroes are listed in Culhwch and Olwen.7 The Four Branches of the Mabinogi seem to draw on traditions about Devenish, Co. Fermanagh, and about the Leinster king Brandub who was buried at St Máedóc's monastery at Ferns, Co. Wexford;

{very knowledgeable conclusion on his argument that gorsedd and sidi not related}
I conclude that the Irish-derived term sidi is a minor and insignificant element in Welsh sources. To this extent, then, I would agree with Ó Cathasaigh that 'there can be little doubt that for the most part the Welsh conception of Annwfn derives independently from the Celtic Otherworld'.178 At the same time, I would doubt whether it has yet been demonstrated that speakers of Common Celtic (or Insular Celtic), as distinct from speakers of other north-western European languages, shared a peculiar conception of 'the Otherworld'. Certainly, it left no trace in terminology.

{Even Homer nods? This assertion seems a bit unfounded}
Early Celtic-speakers would probably have connected their word for 'cauldron' (*kwario- ? Welsh pair, Irish coire) with the homophonous verbal root (*kwar-) expressing causation and creation (whence Welsh paraf/peri 'cause, create' and perydd/peryf 'creator, lord')-modern scholars still debate whether the Celtic Parisii tribes in France and Yorkshire were 'people of the cauldron' or 'people who caused things to happen'.17 This apparent etymological connection with 'creation' may have enhanced the mystique of cauldrons. Cauldrons were obviously associated with sustenance, in this world and the next. Their food restored warriors' physical well-being, and in early Ireland bathing in a vat of meat broth or clay was supposed to heal otherwise mortal wounds.18 It is hardly surprising, then, that storytellers imagined magical cauldrons with the power of restoring life itself. While we cannot know the significance of the drowning or baptism-like immersion ritual portrayed on the Gundestrup Cauldron,19 there is no doubting the connection between the cauldron-like fonts of medieval churches and spiritual death and rebirth.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extremely useful book. I did read it cover-t0-cover over several weeks, taking notes, because I had to get it from inter-library loan. It was definitely worth the effort. Some chapters may interest you more than others, depending on your focus, but despite the rather technical character of some of the discussion, Sims-Williams is always lucid and never dry. His wit shines through the writing without ever feeling forced. I learned so much from this book!