Brian Boru Research Articles

Scrimshaw by Lemsford the Poet

Scrimshaw by Lemsford the Poet Stuart M. Frank, Editor Click for larger view View full resolution Signed walrus tusk scrimshaw by E. Curtis Hine (1812–1853) AKA "Lemsford the Poet," Herman Melville's Navy shipmate in the USS United States (1843–44). Recto: engraved with a series of eight pictorial vignettes, the central one labeled "BURNING OF THE FAME"; the one on the left (bottom of the tusk) is a self-portrait. Verso: engraved with vignettes including an American eagle, an Irish harp (Brian Boru harp), a book inscribed "Peace" and "Liberty," a sea anchor, a ship-portrait, an extended hand holding two flowers, a miniaturized fashion plate, and a lidded urn on a tray. Image courtesy of Dietrich American Foundation, Philadelphia. Photo credit Deborah Rebuck. One of the memorable caricatures in White-Jacket is Lemsford, whose manuscript of poems written aboard the frigate Neversink is finally "published" by being mercilessly shot out of a deck cannon. There is no doubt that this woeful victim of the Navy's impassive oppression is based on Melville's shipmate, E. Curtis Hine (1817–1863), a career sailor and avocational poet who actually did write poems aboard ship and actually did get some of them published back home. Hine also produced at least one work of scrimshaw—a walrus tusk ornamented with an autobiographical procession of pictorial vignettes. In August 1843, Melville was in Honolulu, trying to get home after deserting from the whaler Acushnet of Fairhaven on July 9, 1842, and a yearlong peripatetic sojourn "on the beach" in the Pacific. In conformity with the US Consul's recommendation—and frequent mandate—for American sailors stranded in the Hawaiian Islands, Melville signed articles for a 'Stateside [End Page 138] passage in the frigate United States. Hine was already aboard, had been for years, and so the two were lowly swabbies for the duration, until the frigate landed at Boston fourteen months later, in October 1844. "According to the narrator of White-Jacket, Lemsford knew 'the truth of the saying, that poetry is its own exceeding great reward,' and dashed off 'whole epics, sonnets, ballads, and acrostics,' some of which he read to the narrator" (Parker 26). As one of the protagonist's more eccentric shipmates, Lemsford is a perpetual recipient of scorn and abuse from the officers and crew. Melville's attitude all the while hovers among bemusement, sympathy, and distain; he was, after all, a writer himself, and he contemptuously caricatures the Navy's obtuse, often cruel disregard for Lemsford and other hapless inmates. Like Melville, Ephraim Curtis Hine was from upstate New York, the son of Ephraim Hine and Sylvia Rhoany, a native of the lakeside shire town of Auburn, which since 1816 has been best known as the home of the state penitentiary. Despite many false reports assigning dates-of-birth between 1812 and 1822, Hine was actually born on December 12, 1817 (per his tombstone Lake View Cemetery, Interlaken, New York), making him about a year younger than the prison and about 20 months older than Melville.1 The penitentiary at Auburn did not escape Melville's attention in White-Jacket as a component of his intricate, symbolic characterization of the Neversink as a prison afloat: in Chapter 58, White-Jacket remarks, "My casual friend, Shakings, the holder, happened to be by at the time. Touching my arm, he said, 'White-Jacket, this here reminds me of Sing-Sing, when a draft of fellows, in darbies [handcuffs], came on from the State Prison at Auburn for a change of scene like, you know!'" (241). But Hine's was evidently a happy childhood; later, at sea, he composed one of his most nostalgic and idyllic poems about his hometown. Hine made his career in the Navy and was serving as an ordinary seaman in the United States when Melville deserted from the whaleship Acushnet in the Marquesas Islands in July 1842 and was still aboard when Melville joined the crew of the United States the following year. After deserting the Acushnet in the Marquesas, Melville was "on the beach" in the Pacific for thirteen months, intermittently employed as a sailor, farmhand, laborer, and clerk. The homeward passage in the...

The Vikings were enemy No. 1 for Irish hero Brian Boru, social network study says

The Vikings were enemy No. 1 for Irish hero Brian Boru, social network study says

Network analysis of the Viking Age in Ireland as portrayed inCogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh

Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (‘The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill’) is a medieval Irish text, telling how an army under the leadership of Brian Boru challenged Viking invaders and their allies in Ireland, culminating with the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. Brian’s victory is widely remembered for breaking Viking power in Ireland, although much modern scholarship disputes traditional perceptions. Instead of an international conflict between Irish and Viking, interpretations based on revisionist scholarship consider it a domestic feud or civil war. Counter-revisionists challenge this view and a long-standing and lively debate continues. Here, we introduce quantitative measures to the discussions. We present statistical analyses of network data embedded in the text to position its sets of interactions on a spectrum from the domestic to the international. This delivers a picture that lies between antipodal traditional and revisionist extremes; hostilities recorded in the text are mostly between Irish and Viking—but internal conflict forms a significant proportion of the negative interactions too.

Sarah Butler’s Irish Tales, a Jacobite Romance

Sarah Butler’s Irish Tales, published in 1716, is a romance set against the historical background of Brian Boru’s victory against the Vikings in 1014. Given the timing of its publication, a year after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, the work has been read as an allegorical expression of pro-Jacobite sympathy. Yet the tragic romance dominates the work, complicating this interpretation. This article argues that the combination of fictionalized history and romance found in Irish Tales shows the work to be part of a tradition of romance writing by women in support of the royalist or Jacobite cause. Moreover, this article considers how the heroic role played by the female protagonist in these works represents an aesthetic and political response to the failure to restore James ii and his issue to the throne.

Stylistic contrast and narrative function inCogad Gáedel re Gallaib

AbstractThe Battle of Clontarf was fought in A.D. 1014 by the forces of Brian Boru, over-king of Munster, and his allies against the forces of Viking Dublin, Leinster and their foreign allies. The saga ‘The War of the Irish and the Foreigners’(Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib)was written about events leading up the conflict and gives a dramatic account of events on the battlefield. It became the archetype for many later legends about Clontarf. This paper explores stylistic contrast in thesagabetween the terse description of events in the early Viking Age and the florid account of the reign of Brian Boru. This contrast has led some readers to conclude that two separate narratives were conflated inCogad Gáedel re Gallaib– the first being a summary of annals and the second being a saga. However this paper argues that there is a unity of purpose throughout the work and that its stylistic divisions were deliberately contrived to help glorify Brian’s victory at the Battle of Clontarf.

Sean Duffy, Brian Boru and the battle of Clontarf

Sean Duffy, <i>Brian Boru and the battle of Clontarf</i>

The ‘annalistic section’ of Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib

Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib ‘The war of the Irish and the Foreigners’, one of the best known medieval Irish historical sagas, celebrates the deeds of the Irish king Brian Boru, culminating in his victory and death at the battle of Clontarf in ad 1014. The text did much to establish Brian’s reputation and the fame of the battle of Clontarf in Irish historiography. While most of the saga records Brian’s achievements, the early parts treat of events prior to his reign. This paper is an analysis of the function and chronology of these early sections. The conclusion is that the term ‘annalistic section’, often applied to them, is misleading. Such a term conceals the artistry and purpose of the author and conveys a mistaken view of their historicity.

A reconsideration of the authorship and transmission of &lt;i&gt;Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh&lt;/i&gt;

The eleventh-/twelfth-century encomiastic biography of Brian Boroma (ob. 1014), Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh ('The War of the Irish with the Foreigners'), was the most important text in cementing Brian's reputation as the medieval Irish king par excellence. Scholarly consensus considers it to have been written as a work of propaganda in favour of Brian's great-grandson, Muirchertach Ua Briain {ob. 1119), whose father, Tairdelbach, had earlier wrested the kingship of Dal Cais from his uncle, Donnchad (son of Brian). In this article it will be shown that, contrary to previous scholarly opinion, the text actually portrays Donnchad in a positive light. It will be argued that there may have been multiple versions of the text in existence but that the only surviving complete copy was written or reworked in favour of Donnchad's descendants (and not for Muirchertach) and it is this version which has influenced subsequent accounts of Brian's story, right into the modern period. Introduction With the possible exception of St Patrick, no single medieval figure has remained within Irish consciousness to the same degree as the eleventh-century king of Ireland Brian Boroma (Brian Boru) (see Figures 1 and 3). He owes this position to his supposed leadership of a 'national' struggle against the Vikings, * Author's e-mail: denis.casey@helsinki.fi doi: 10.33 18/PRIAC.201 3. 113.03 1 This article would not have been possible without the help and generosity of Dr Maire Ni Mhaonaigh, who read earlier drafts and discussed Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh with me at length. Thank you to the following who also read and commented on earlier drafts of this article: Dr Elizabeth Boyle, Professor Sean Duffy, Dr Deborah Hayden, Dr Meidhbhin Ni Urdail and the editors and anonymous peer-reviewers of these Proceedings. I am also grateful to Lenore Fischer for bringing work on the Book of Howth to my attention and to attendees of the 2010 Tionol (where an earlier version of this article was presented). Needless to say, none of the above are responsible for any errors or omissions in this article. I would also like to express my gratitude for support I have received from the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge; funding from the Society for Renaissance Studies and a visiting fellowship at An Foras Feasa, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, which afforded me the opportunity to complete this article. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 113C, 139-161 © 2013 Royal Irish Academy This content downloaded from 157.55.39.220 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 04:27:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Waking the King: Faction and Fission in Finnegans Wake

This essay argues that the Wake views the civil conflicts of 1922 as symptomatic of a much older malady rooted in the myth of the Irish High Kingship. The central parallel is the Wake ’s conflation of Roderick O’Connor, the last High King of Ireland, and Rory O’Connor, a key figure in the Irish Civil War. Such political disasters as Dermot MacMurrough’s alliance with Henry II and the betrayal of Charles Stewart Parnell are seen as part of a larger pattern of self-division and betrayal that grew out of the power struggle of kings. This malady was exacerbated by such things as a lack of clarity about laws of succession, the factional proliferation of royal centers, and the tendency to appeal to outside powers to settle internal disputes. Rather than being de-centered, the Wake is seen as multi-centered, fissured by opposing camps. The partisan idealization of these figures and Brian Boru by the O’Brien and Cormac MacArt by the O’Neill in order to legitimate political ambitions also served to disturb the harmony of Irish society and make it vulnerable to colonial incursions. Finally, the “rain of Tarar” unleashed by the Irish Civil War is seen as an extension of “the reign of Tara” in which an arbitrary power posed as a harmonizing royal center. This seemingly interminable battle of the brothers is also mediated by a, perhaps utopian, vision of reconciliation and truce.

Traveling Pleasures and Perils of Sensibility

philosophical investment in pleasures of sympathy--especially if represented as contagious--provides a continuity between traditions of Sensibility and of Romanticism. To illustrate, I pair two blockbusters of first decade of nineteenth-century, Sydney Owenson's Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale (1806) and Germaine de Stael's Corinne, or Italy (1807). Together they offer a perspective on moments of cultural encounter, on pleasures and perils of Sensibility that animate cultural polities of both works. Both novels function partly as travel books introducing intense, destabilizing pleasures of foreign locales, customs, and traditions to critique domestic political circumstances. But for these women writers (and in different ways for female protagonists at center of novels) notion of home is vexed itself. Tensions produced by distance, displacement, discomfort, and sometimes even by divided allegiance, add complexity to subtle and implicit nationalist critique their narratives enable. Owenson conveys her competing allegiances to Ireland and England after Union of 1800 both through marriage plot uniting characters and nations in conclusion to Wild Irish Girl and in her insistent equation of national with natural, especially for natives of wild western region of Connaught. De Stael's familiar homelessness, constantly displaced by Napoleon's dictates of exile, is reflected by a geographically diverse and thorough immersion in Italian landscape and culture, past and present. Both novels distrust excesses of nationalism while imagining cross-cultural love relationships animated by extreme states of sympathetic attachment to people, places, and objects that are master tropes of Sensibility. Ultimately, pleasure in both novels engenders a volatile notion of history that embraces pleasures of historical change and transcends its inevitable pains. Owenson's embrace of futurity in a revolutionary era in contrast with de Stael's fatalism distinguishes two novels. In literature of Sensibility, electric charge of human contact provides more than simple pleasure. Moments of literal contact arouse one's own physiology and sensitivity to other beings: hence, fellow-feeling. Such moments of imagined sociability follow from a heightened ethical imperative to connect with others, often at one's own peril. Typically, in a Sternean mode, touching scenes in Wild Irish Girl foreground eroticized benevolence between characters which Owenson frames with Gaelic symbolic significance. For example, when fingers of hero and heroine accidentally meet on harp Glorvina is playing, Horatio comments, The touch circulated like electricity through every vein, breeding (Owenson 66). Both trope of circulation and unaccountable emotion protagonist experiences (while assuming it is shared by both parties) express Sensibility tradition. This excitement is less than utter delirium of an earlier scene, but beyond power of words--a commonplace of eighteenth-century tradition that, would be retooled through Romantic versions of sublime. This interchange is also significant in introducing a key interruption in narrative, an extended chain of footnoted material which discusses antiquity of harp and distinctive Gaelic tradition of itinerant bard, while citing Percy's Reliques, introducing Brian Boru and Cambrensis, and drawing (as notes so often do) on author's personal experience of Ireland--the author as native informant. specific linkage of Gaelic culture with tradition of Sensibility provides a necessary corrective to critical narratives that root Sensibility within a primarily British cultural framework, while nodding to French and German influences. As several critics have noted, this reduction ignores increasing identification of Sensibility with the Celtic fringe (Eagleton; Alliston). …

The Triumph of ‘Virtuous Liberty’: Representations of the Vikings and Brian Boru in Eighteenth-Century Histories

The Triumph of ‘Virtuous Liberty’: Representations of the Vikings and Brian Boru in Eighteenth-Century Histories

The Vikings in Southern Uí Néill until 1014

This paper provides a brief survey of Viking influence in Southern Uí Néill to 1014. The evidence highlights the resilience of both churches and polities in the face of Viking attacks, compared to the Vikings’ impact in England. Viking settlement and territorial power was limited to areas near the Irish Sea coast, and various strategies were employed to limit the impact of Viking attacks. Nevertheless, Vikings exercised a strong impact on the political and economic history of the region. Prior to the battle of Clontarf, Brian Boru and Mael Sechnaill overking of Uí Néill vied for control over the resources of Dublin. This competition was reflected both in events and in political propaganda.

The Irish and their Nation: A Survey of Recent Attitudes

Introduction In a series of essays published in the months preceding the Easter Rising of 1916, Padraic Pearse expressed his thoughts about the Irish people and their nation. Echoing a sentiment that many in his day embraced, he wrote, ‘Irish nationality is an ancient spiritual tradition, and the Irish nation could not die as long as that tradition lived in the heart of one faithful man or woman’ (1924: 304). As in previous armed rebellions, the 1916 Easter Rising failed to force the British from Ireland, and Pearse, who had proclaimed himself president of the provisional Irish government during the five-day insurrection, was ultimately executed along with fifteen other rebel leaders. Despite its lack of immediate success, the Easter Rising is now viewed as the event marking the beginning of the end of British rule, and Pearse has since taken his place in the pantheon of Irish heroes alongside such figures as Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Daniel O’Connell, Thomas Davis, and Brian Boru, the first High King of Ireland. Pearse’s reflections on the nation are important not only for their historical significance within Ireland, but because they also reflect the sentiment associated with national identity everywhere: selfsacrifice, pride, community, history, rebirth, and popular participation. Throughout the world, nations remain objects of affiliation, and, as this study reveals, the Irish people continue to display a strong attachment to their nation, much as Pearse foretold in his early twentieth-century essay.

Advancing the Language: Irish in the Twenty-First Century

The word millennium offers a daunting prospect in that most human beings? Methusaleh, perhaps, excepted?do not live to see it.1 Some have outlived a century, and some have even straddled two centuries in their own lifetimes. Some straddle two millennia. Julius Caesar did not manage this, although Pontius Pilate did. Brian B?ruma, or Brian Boru, repeated this feat a millenni um later, and we now find ourselves on the threshold of doing so. What, then, may lie ahead for any language in the next millennium? Predicting is a precarious activity at the best of times, but prophesying over a millennium's length seems foolhardy in the extreme. Hittite, the earliest of any attested Indo-European language, was on the crest of a wave at the turn of the second millennium b.c. when speakers ofthat language conquered the region of Asia Minor in what that they would call Hatti and found an empire in roughly 1900 b.c. centered around Hattusha, near modern Bogazk?y, and, extending over areas of Anatolia, Turkey, and northern Syria. The Hittites* reign ended by 1000 b.c., and their the language lay in obscurity for three mil lenia until the Hittite texts of the royal archives were uncovered following excavation in a.d. 1906. In the first millennium b.c., Celtic-speaking people enjoyed a preeminent position in continental Europe, as Proinsias Mac Cana has outlined:

With Gissing in Italy: the memoirs of Brian Boru Dunne

With Gissing in Italy: the memoirs of Brian Boru Dunne

The Evisceration of Bródir in ‘Brennu-Njáls Saga’

One of the most memorable and hideous scenes in Njáls saga is the death of the apostate viking chief Bróðir. According to the account of the battle of Clontarf in the saga, after the Irish forces had won the victory most of Brian Boru's bodyguard left the king in order to pursue the survivors. Bróðir, who had been hiding in the woods near the battlefield, saw that the king was relatively unprotected, and took the opportunity to break through the line of men who were protecting King Brian and kill him.

Brian Boru

Journal Article Brian Boru Get access Notes and Queries, Volume s5-XI, Issue 271, 8 March 1879, Page 200, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s5-XI.271.200b Published: 08 March 1879