Readings in Old and Middle Irish. 700-1200;
Prof. Gary Holland, Linguistics,
SPRING 2001: Celtic Studies 105B (4 units),
(Full participation/grade/audit)
I'm afraid I dismally flunked the final in this class. But I'm glad I persevered.
Designed to
offer students who have already taken the basic grammar course in Old and
Middle Irish (105A) further opportunity to work with important texts written in
the period A.D. 700-1200 and to refine their knowledge of the language as well
as their grasp of the vernacular tradition as a whole. Texts will include both
prose and poetry, and major genres such as epic, legend, and genealogy.
Prerequisites:
Successful completion of Celtic Studies 105A or equivalent. Consent of
instructor.
TEXTS:
Wolfgang
Meid (ed.), Táin Bó Froech
Rudolph
Thurneysend (ed.), Scéla Muicce Mac Dathó
Xeroxed
poems
I was in way over my head in both of Gary's classes, the other students were real linguists, so this was easy for them. Me? I was the auditing poet. One guy, can't remember his name, was simultaneously taking other Indo-European language classes—Hittite! I loved the class. I didn/don't know the basics of forensic grammar (you can still write well and not know the basic functions or the forensics of language). So that was a huge handicap. I learned some useful things but I'm still shaky, grammatically speaking. But hey, I know what VSOP stands for.
This class was enough to drive me to drink, but then, who had the time? I got up at 6 AM, translated a paragraph, and again in the evening, until midnight. There wasn't much room for anything else in my life, no time to write poetry, let alone, dreamtime. Dan Melia called Old Irish Bloodbath 101 A at Harvard. There sure was a lot of slaughter going on. But the chill delight when I translated aloud, in class, Cuchullan's epic line: The enemy of your enemy is my friend, it haunts me to this day. Magic and absolute wonder. What a distilled learning moment. I was so owl-eyed that I think even Gary got a kick out of it. Thank you Gary for that moment in time.
Had Dan been teaching the Old Irish class, I probably would've fared significantly better. His teaching style, is more suited to my learning style, such as it is. But I worked hard, and was diligent, with my nose to the books... it gave me a new insight into reading the Irish epics, having transcribed them, word for word from the Old Irish. The learning and knowledge is in my head, somewhere, and sometimes I can actually retrieve bits of it from my imperfect knowledge database. Who knew I would learn to like parsing lines? I felt I was doing real work. Delving deep into something almost unnameable and profound, unlocking those words from the past, like that. And earning the story, word by word.
I eventually plan to transcribe my Celtic Studies class notes, so this post is a placeholder (as well as a reading list). A reminder, a smack in the gob. What brought this on: I was asked to do a lecture on Celtic Bardic Poetry at Sacramento Poetry Center, and a) I was far too long gone from this material, b) I couldn't put my hands on the notes,. But I at least still had some of the books, and TG for the internet. So many medieval texts are now online (not so in 1999). I was able to reconstruct what I needed. But it was almost as bad as reinventing the wheel. —MH 11/2015
I was in way over my head in both of Gary's classes, the other students were real linguists, so this was easy for them. Me? I was the auditing poet. One guy, can't remember his name, was simultaneously taking other Indo-European language classes—Hittite! I loved the class. I didn/don't know the basics of forensic grammar (you can still write well and not know the basic functions or the forensics of language). So that was a huge handicap. I learned some useful things but I'm still shaky, grammatically speaking. But hey, I know what VSOP stands for.
This class was enough to drive me to drink, but then, who had the time? I got up at 6 AM, translated a paragraph, and again in the evening, until midnight. There wasn't much room for anything else in my life, no time to write poetry, let alone, dreamtime. Dan Melia called Old Irish Bloodbath 101 A at Harvard. There sure was a lot of slaughter going on. But the chill delight when I translated aloud, in class, Cuchullan's epic line: The enemy of your enemy is my friend, it haunts me to this day. Magic and absolute wonder. What a distilled learning moment. I was so owl-eyed that I think even Gary got a kick out of it. Thank you Gary for that moment in time.
Had Dan been teaching the Old Irish class, I probably would've fared significantly better. His teaching style, is more suited to my learning style, such as it is. But I worked hard, and was diligent, with my nose to the books... it gave me a new insight into reading the Irish epics, having transcribed them, word for word from the Old Irish. The learning and knowledge is in my head, somewhere, and sometimes I can actually retrieve bits of it from my imperfect knowledge database. Who knew I would learn to like parsing lines? I felt I was doing real work. Delving deep into something almost unnameable and profound, unlocking those words from the past, like that. And earning the story, word by word.
I eventually plan to transcribe my Celtic Studies class notes, so this post is a placeholder (as well as a reading list). A reminder, a smack in the gob. What brought this on: I was asked to do a lecture on Celtic Bardic Poetry at Sacramento Poetry Center, and a) I was far too long gone from this material, b) I couldn't put my hands on the notes,. But I at least still had some of the books, and TG for the internet. So many medieval texts are now online (not so in 1999). I was able to reconstruct what I needed. But it was almost as bad as reinventing the wheel. —MH 11/2015
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