A Wicklow skirmish in word and image: time and space in TCD MS 1209/12

Abstract

Trinity College, Dublin, MS 1209/12, dates from 1599 and consists of a single parchment sheet, measuring 360 X 292 mm, in ink and wash, the colours being principally green, to a lesser extent blue, yellow-brown and reddish pink. It is one of a collection of Irish maps and plans of different kinds and varying provenances assembled by George Carew, who was to become lord president of Munster in the following year. In its account of a military encounter between forces of the English crown and Irish rebels the manuscript immediately strikes us by its combination of image and word, description and narration. At once a historical document, a legal deposition and a personal record, it arises out of one man's involvement in a national event. For the engagement which its creator portrays, and in which he played a part, falls within one of the most turbulent passages in the history of the relationship between the peoples of the islands of Ireland and Britain. My purpose is to examine the complex interaction between the graphic and verbal, narrative and descriptive modes in the document, as well as the interplay between personal interest and the military and political background to the events portrayed.