The Tangle-Coated Horse & Other Tales: Episodes from the Finn Saga

Klar, Celtic Romanticism CS 170
Final Paper

THE TANGLE-COATED HORSE & OTHER TALES: EPISODES FROM THE FINN SAGA

Glory O to the bold Fenian men.
—Irish Rebel Song


Utilizing Celtic Revival translations of medieval Irish texts and ballads, Irish folklorist Ella Young retells a richly embellished, but streamlined version of the youthful deeds and the coming of age of a super heroic warrior-hunter, Finn mac Cumail, in her third collection of tales based on Irish mythology, The Tangle-Coated Horse and other Tales from the Finn Saga. 

In her foreword she wrote, “The Fionn saga is one of the oldest of Gaelic sagas: it is also one of the best-remembered… Finn McCool is a household word.” Like the patriot-hero, William Wallace, in Scotland, Finn’s name also survives everywhere in the place names of Scotland and Ireland. According to her colleague, Padraic Colum, Ella Young’s collection departed from tradition in that: “…the Fionn saga was originally the hero-lore of dispossessed men who hunted and hired themselves out as fighting men, and looked back to where they had good hunting or pleasant shelter as places of romance and charm.” (Ella Young, an Appreciation, p. 10).

Whether intentional or not, the timing of Ella Young’s ancient tales published on the eve of Irish nationhood in 1929, contained many parallels with Ireland’s modern-day struggle. The concepts of nationhood and freedom must have been forefront in Young’s mind. She referred to Finn as “The Big Man” (perhaps a reference to the Irish rebel leader, Michael Collins?)... though the Fenians adopted the mythology of the Ulster Cycle and CúChulainn, not Finn, as their national symbol of freedom. However, Finn’s resemblance to CúChulainn is overwhelming. 

In Ella Young’s own story, we also glimpse the quintessential Celtic story of the good fight, heroes overcoming great obstacles, and betrayal—within a modern context. According to Florence Jury, “During the Irish Rebellion she lived in houses where ammunition and rifles and mausers were hidden. She rode horseback at night, carrying messages to hidden units of revolutionary soldiers. She earned a place on the English blacklist.” (Everything Opposite the Golden Gate, p. 319). And Ella herself, “a figure out of romance,” was something of a dispossessed Fenian warrior trying to gain entrance to the modern Tír-na-nÓge, America, and ultimately, to what was to become the Celtic Studies Department at UC Berkeley.

Set in the Golden Age of First Century Ireland, the Fenian Cycle saga unfolds with an introduction to Finn’s childhood troubles: his lack of a homeland, the usurpation of the inheritance of his father’s chiefdom and Fianna band, and how the Clann Baiscne came to be disgraced, outlawed and homeless, betrayed by the clan steward, bearer of the treasure wallet—tribal sovereign treasures. 

And of the regaining of his inheritance and the restoration of his ancestral tribal lands. (The idea of the Fianna, already an outlawed troop, being doubly outlawed, was stiff sentence to bear in a shame-based society.) 

It is a tale of redressing past wrongs, of restoring tribal rights—with a warrior-elite army upholding a chivalrous moral code akin to that of Maloroy’s King Arthur and his court at Camelot. 

These traditional Celtic tale-type motifs are rife with regnal, warrior, and hound lists. The stories include boyhood deeds, namings, coming of age, wooings, abductions, hunts, raids, battles and enchantments—replete with larger-than-life warriors who overcome insurmountable obstacles at great odds; their half-faery dogs, horses; the prophecies of gods, druids and druidesses; and a host of otherworld characters including hags, giants and monsters. 

Young’s Fenian landscape is unspoiled and bucolic (no flies syndrome), the parallel otherworld is positively jewel-toned, the sky is made of sapphires, and flowers are vermilion rubies; the dúns of mortals and faery alike are spacious shining abodes all aflutter with silken banners art and music.

The second half of The Tangle-Coated Horse is comprised of several tales associated with the Fianna, where Dairmid, representing youth, is the main protagonist, and bald Connan/ Cunnaun is the aging storyteller recounting the band’s past deeds. 

The final tale is of Finn’s son, Oisín’s return to Ireland from Tír-na-nÓge. But the heart and soul of the book is the story of young Finn. Because the foretales of Finn’s birth are omitted from Young’s story, I looked to other sources for motivation. In Eileen O’Faolin’s 1950s redaction of “The Young Finn,” which is closest in tone to Ella Young’s version, we learn there was rivalry between the Cumal and the clan of Morna “wishing to get the headship for one of their own family, rose in revolt against Cool…” (Irish Saga and Folk-Tales, p. 126).

I found that Young’s main story closely parallels the medieval text, “The Boyhood Deeds of Finn,” as recounted in Ancient Irish Tales. Young doesn’t furnish the backstory as to why the Clann Morna, at the request of Finn’s grandfather, and Conn, high king of Tara, killed Finn’s father, Cumal for abducting Muirne/Moorne. 

But in an older version of the tale, “The Battle of Cnucha,” we learn of a hereditary blood feud. “Cumall was slain…. by Goll mac Morna.” (Ibid p. 358). The reasons are at best, convoluted: King Conn’s Fianna warrior—Goll, the one-eyed—at Conn’s request, slew Finn’s father, Cumall, who was also Conn’s uncle, at the Battle of Cnucha, for abducting Muirne, a druid’s daughter, from Conn. 

So we really have a story of homicide within the familial derbfhine, an abduction and cross-age love triangle, not mere clann rivalry. And like CúChulainn’s mother, Muirne, rejected by her druid-father, is forced to give birth outside the tribe; Cumal’s sister Bovemall/Bodball, is her midwife.

Young omitted critical portions of the tale which foreshadow events Finn is destined to repeat—the sins of his forefathers. Is it because Young claimed to have collected her stories from the oral tradition and these subtle, complex relationships were too abstract to preserve? 

In the ancient tales, to win back his name, family honor and lands, Finn demands an eric honor price or blood-fine of his maternal grandfather Tadg, for being the cause of his father Cumal’s death. In retribution, Finn is given the palace of Almu, or Allen in Kildare. Cumal means “the equivalent of one slave” and erics, or fines, were rendered in cumals: three cumals equaled one milch-cow (this is still a cattle herding society). So there’s clever word-play in the old stories. It’s possible that medieval audiences didn’t attach significance in a character’s name but I suspect naming was important as it plays a significant part in the Finn saga.

With the additional help of the two versions of Finn’s boyhood in Ancient Irish Tales, we get a more in-depth picture of Finn, a CúChulainn type figure, where we learn his mother’s sisters, druidess Bovemall/ Bodball who controls weather, and her sister the leech/healer Liath. Both “natural philosophers” are also his foster-mothers. They, like Scathach, CúChulainn’s teacher, are women-warriors. Bovemall teaches him forest craft and hunting. She reads him his future. 

His aunts are literally forced to abandon him to the wolves (after introducing him to the king of wolves, making a pact of fealty—a touch of totemic animism as Finn is the hunter king of men), because they’re hunted by the Clann Morna. 

Finn literally goes into the wilderness in order to become a man. His being raised in the forest, which is pure and primeval, is soft primitivism at its best. He is the Noble Savage. The clann scatters to the wilds of Connacht (Cromwell’s line, to hell or Connacht, comes to mind) living like hunted wolves. In Finn’s story, on a subtle level, we also have a supremacy battle erupting between Leinster and Connacht. Professor Eoin McNeill calls the Finn epic “the epic of a subject race.” (Ancient Irish Tales, p. 356).

In Young’s story, “A Night of the Nights,” she weaves a story within a story not related to the Finn Cycle, a theme included in her first book, Celtic Wonder Tales. The story Bovemall tells Finn of the Shining Ones in a parallel Heaven World who created the earth, is stunning in its use of poetic prose. Young’s rich language worthy of the sub-plot where Finn gains eloquence, wins his warrior career, and vows that all prospective Fianna warriors of his band must be equally adept at poetry. Here, Young borrowed from the Leabor Gabala, the Book of Takings, to create a multiple worlds.

Triple Goddess Sive/Sadb looked into the Pool of Fec, where every Samhain Eve, Fintan the Salmon of Knowledge, grazed on the Hazelnuts of Wisdom. Dissatisfied with the beauty of her reflection, Sive slid down into the darkness of the pool and into the abyss. 

Out of that darkness, the earth was created. Partholán joined her, as did Nuada, the ethereal Tuatha Dé Dannán, and lastly, the Milesians, or Men. The Shining Ones, the Tuatha Dé Dannán, are equated with the stars throughout the story—related to quantum mechanics. They gave to the Clann Basiscne the four jewels, and the treasure wallet, talismans of sovereignty and luck which the clann loses due to treachery from within the clann. The treasure wallet bearer Lia Luachra tells Cumal the wallet is lost, and thinking the luck of the clann is lost, Cumal is killed. Goll mac Morna takes over Cumal’s Fianna band and home.

A I previously mentioned, naming, whether secret, or true, plays a prominent role in the Finn saga. Finn means “the white/fair” or “chosen” one, (“gwyn” in Welsh), whose real name is Demna. When Finn’s abandoned by his tribe, he apprentices himself to Finngas, the exiled court druid-poet of the Clann Baiscne, where he learns poet-craft (eloquence). 

Padraic Colum wrote that The Tangle-Colored Horse “is a book… about youth, and in this it has an affinity with another book of Celtic stories, Lady Charlotte Guest’s The Mabinogion.” (Ella Young: an Appreciation, p. 10). In the preface to The Misfortunes of Elphin, the editor (?) compares Elphin/Taliesin to Finn: “They have obviously a common origin with the Gaelic legend of how Finn MacCool got his gift of second sight by scalding his thumb and clapping it into his mouth when cooking the magic salmon for his master. (The Misfortunes of Elphin, p. 550). 

And like his Welsh counterpart, the poet Taliesin, Finn too accidentally gains druid-wisdom from eating the Salmon of Knowledge that was meant for Finnegas—or so Finnegas thought. There is a confusion of names with Finnegas’ own name, because the prophecy naming Finn or Finnegas. But Finn gave Finnegas his birth name, Demna. When it’s all sorted out, Demna is officially re-named Finn. 

To further confuse things, the salmon’s name is Finntan. All these favored ones converging in the same pool is positively blinding! But Finn refuses to name his father or his clann until he’s avenged them, and secured oaths of reward. He proves to be shrewd and clever. 

Only after Finn perfects his poet-craft is he armed. Finn’s warrior arming is unusual in that the marsh [bog] seems to take the responsibility upon itself to present him with a bronze sword of the Tuatha Dé Dannán, the symbol of his dual-world warrior sovereignty. Finn’s father’s warrior, Fiachra, arms him with a faery spear that Cumal had stolen. 

Finn becomes a warrior-hero by saving his tribe and Conn’s Tara from the Tuatha Dé Dannán youth, Allyn mac Midra, who, every third Samhain, burns Tara with his breath because Finn’s father, Cumal once stole a faery spear. The spear keeps him from falling asleep when the faery music begins. By killing Allyn, Finn asks his boon of Conn for the restoration of his clann to its rightful status.

How does a half-mortal hero obtain a mate/ sovereign goddess? from the otherworld, but the caveat is that he can’t keep her. We learn of Finn’s otherworld marriage to Saba, the Tuatha Dé Dannán girl enchanted as a pale otherworld fawn, and how he breaks the enchantment only to lose her when he fights the Vikings. 

The hunter carried his quarry Saba, across his threshold/sanctuary which broke the Dark Enchanter’s evil spell. But while Finn was gone seven days, the Enchanter appeared in his guise (shapeshifting) thus tricking her across the limnal boundary of her own free will. The reason for Finn’s stronger magic was because he is righteous. Seven years later, still grieving, he finds his child Oisín raised in the forest by his mother who once again is a deer. We learn of Finn’s otherworld adventures, and beyond, as he tries to forget his sorrow and loss. The lamenting begins in earnest.

Young’s version of the episodic stories of Finn’s heroic boyhood deeds are intended for young audiences, as the stories of Finn’s middle, and old age are significantly missing from this collection. Padraic Colum wrote: “…in olden times the saga dealt with the life of a hero from childhood to old age, from Fionn’s first boyish feats to the time when he weeps over Oscar, his grandson, slain at the battle of Goura, and see Usheen, his son…go to the Land of Youth.” (Ella Young: an Appreciation, p. 8). In the following stories, Finn is mentioned by reference in the second half of the book, where Diarmid, one member of his band, suddenly becomes the main protagonist.

Most of these stories are told within a framework of storytelling and have to do with the context of retelling the story for posterity, themes of hospitality and of previous right action reaping its just rewards, with an emphasis on maintaining a medieval chivalrous warrior code. 

In one story, the recount the creed of their fellowship—the noble rules of life: generous, hospitable, courteous, and valiant—protecting the weak and under enfranchised. Very Robin hood. University of Chicago professors Cross and Slover wrote:

According to the Irish annals, Finn flourished during the third century…, but the earliest references to him in literature do not appear until several hundred years later, and the vast majority of the tales about him are found in manuscripts dating from the twelfth and later centuries. (Ancient Irish Tales, p. 355).

One group of tales represents Finn as the head of a national militia; in another group of tales, he is powerful enough to oppose the high-king; and the third group “elevates him to a position superior to all opponents, portraying him as a slayer of monsters, a general benefactor of his country, and above all, a national defender of Ireland against foreign invaders, especially the dreaded Vikings.” (Ibid p. 355). 

Cross and Slover concluded that the Ulster epic was “the literary property of the aristocracy, while the Finn material was … from the beginning the literature of the folk…modernized by each succeeding generation.” (Ibid, p. 356) I don’t know some of the original tales that Young draws upon to comment on them—except that they do have a ‘Robin Hood” quality, and are rife with the traditional motifs we associate with Celtic mythology: abductions and enchantments; battles and allegiances with otherworld folk—especially involving Manannán mac Lír’s realm under the sea. 

The title story of “The Tangle-Coated Horse” is about Manannán’s own faery horse who whisks the Fianna off on his back to the Land Under Waves. When otherworld folks are in need of rescue, they seek help from the mortal world. Diarmuid’s wooing is similar to Finn’s story, except that the resent his going off with a faery woman and are instrumental in the destruction of his match with the King Under Waves daughter, Storm.

The penultimate tale in Young’s book, “The Nuts of Knowledge” is about Finn’s double death in the otherworld on Samhain. Finn muses that the sword game is better than old age. Young picks up the lost threads and weaves a samite cloth for the hero’s death. In the first story, Finn wanted to see the shadow Sive/Sadb the triple goddess who created the earth. It’s Samhain. From Sleive-na-mon, Sive comes to draw water from the well of wisdom for the Gods of the Dana. Finn waits for the shadow of the goddess Sive. By naming her, he earns the right to see her, and is changed into Fintan, the Salmon of Wisdom, for his troubles. 

But her terrible beauty and the knowledge is too much for him so he dies twice: once for her Shiva-like beauty and once for her profound knowledge. When he awakens the next morning on the grass outside Tara, he retains some otherworld knowledge, he understands the speech of the birds and grass. 

The final tale is not in the heroic tradition because Finn’s son, Oisín, dies of old age, though the Rip van Winkle theme is archaic. Oisín returns 300 years later from Tír-na-nÓge, the Land of the Ever Young, to tell the stories of Finn to St. Patrick, therefore recording the story we are reading—creating a mirrored Möbius strip much like the motifs recounted in Tales of the Elders of Ireland. In Young’s version, the monks tell Oisín of Finn and his band asleep in a cave, waiting to be wakened like Arthur—when the time is ripe.

How does the story fit the framework of Celtic romanticism? We have issues of nationalism, issues of land, we’ve lots of fighting: with just causes to fight for (usually saving maidens), head-taking, we have treachery from within the tribe. Finn has a divine parent, he gets knowledge from the otherworld (salmon, water, goddesses, druids, druidesses, mists and white animals). 

We assume Finn died a hero in battle though we have no story of it (I looked up “The Death of Finn,” and the battle of Gabra sounds like the battle of Clontarf, with Finn/Brian Boruma fighting the Vikings.) We have feasts galore. Major events happen on Samhain, and at water/fords. There are thin boundaries at Samhain; “To-night a mortal could enter there: could drink, ungrudged—from vats of mead and hydromel—the golden heady drink of immortals.” (The Tangle-Coated Horse, p. 163).

Other Romantic motifs include the quest to save ancient knowledge. From reading Ella’s writings, one gets the sensation that just in the nick of time, she single-handedly saved the stories from oblivion, from a lost tradition, when in reality, many of the stories were already published by the Celtic Revivalists. 

Young (1867-1956) wrote the introduction to The Tangle-Coated Horse from Halcyon, shortly after Samhain eve...1928, the stock marked hadn’t yet crashed; I suspect that cataclysmic event had a profound negative effect on her career. 

However, after the publication of The Tangle-Coated Horse, she was appointed a UCB lecturer from 1931 to 1936. Young is better known for her first book, Celtic Wonder Tales, (1910). Young wrote that she learned many stories as a child in the village of Feenagh, County Antrim, Ireland. We learn from the Dover edition jacket page of Celtic Wonder Tales, that:

Irish poet and mythologist Ella Young recalled hearing as a child, “Tales of ghosts, banshees, haunted castles, mischievous and friendly sprites…” Later in life, she realized what a splendid heritage awaited her in Celtic literature…Celtic Wonder Tales… was the product of her fascination with ‘lost inheritance.

Young was well-acquainted with Dr. Hyde and the Celtic Revival movement. She immersed herself in Gaelic Language, literature and culture. On the Floris Books edition jacket page of The Winder Smith and His Son: A Tale from the Golden Childhood of the World, Ella Young wrote:

The stories were told to me in Gaelic at times, at times in English. I heard them in cottages by turf fires, I heard them in brown-sailed fishing boats and on rocky hillsides. They are mixed in my mind with sunshine and sweet air and wide empty spaces: with lakes in Donegal, where faery horses are said to hide, with pools in Connemara, where crested serpents called Piasts, lift their heads and with glittering inlets of the sea and mountains in Kerry.

Young clamed to have collected her stories in Ireland, and later, in California, she wrote them down. Young stated: “The stories were told to me in Gaelic at times, at times in English.” She named stroyteller Patrick Gallagher as her main source. She wrote, “I have amplified the tales but I have not altered any incident.” But she also liberally borrowed from earlier Celtic Revival authors.

Not only did Ella Young describe the collecting of her stories in glowing romantic terms. Indeed, lore about her life itself could be rendered in romantic terms: she is variously described as a druidess, a seanachie, a Fenian, a deva. “One did not feel she was human or on our plane,” wrote Rosaling Sharpe Wall (A Wild and Lonely Coast, p.186). 

I remember my best friend Micaela’s parents telling us stories of bohemian California in the 1930s and ’40s—especially of Carmel and Big Sur, where they then lived. We grew up on boozy stories of Doc Ricketts, Jaime de Angulo, and Henry Miller. Even stories of Ella Young. We were kids, more interested in horses, and didn’t pay too much attention, but the stories left resonances. 

It was Micaela’s father, Patrick Wall, who whimsically named the Big Sur coast the “Second Celtic Twilight” because of Ella Young. Micaela’s mother, Rosalind Sharpe Wall, a native of Big Sur, practiced bits of her M.A. thesis on me. Rosalind recalled that Ella made quite an impression with her purple druidic or bardic robes, her long flowing white hair and flashing blue eyes: like her otherworld counterparts. Rosalind said that she was super humanly beautiful—an ageless being as shining as the legendary figures she so deftly portrayed:

Ella Young, the extraordinary Irish woman who held a seat in Celtic lore at the University of California… was active in the Irish movement in Dublin and was closely associated with Lady Gregory, Yeats, George Russel, Synge, and Maude Gonne, came to America when she felt the magic had left Ireland, or rather, as she put it, “when its guardians changed.” 

She felt some of the magic that had left Ireland could now be found in America; that is why she decided to come here. The authorities detained her at Ellis Island when she first arrived here because they heard she believed in fairies… They did not want this crazy Irish woman to enter the country. (A Wild and Lonely Coast, P.185).


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cross, Tom P., & Slover, Clark Harris, Ancient Irish Tales
Henry Holt & Co., Ltd., © 1936; reprinted by Barnes & Noble Books, © 1996

Colum, Padraic, The King of Ireland’s Son
Henry Holt & Co., Ltd., © 1916; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., NY, © 1997

Colum, Padraic, Ella Young: An Appreciation
Longmans, Green & Co., NY, © 1931

Dooley, Anne, & Roe, Harry, translators, Tales of The Elders of Ireland (Acallam na Senórach)
Oxford University Press, NY, © 1999

Gregory, Lady, CúChulain of Muirthemne, (also) Gods and Fighting Men
Colin Smythe Ltd., Gerrards Cross, GB, © 1902, Coole Edition, © 1970; PB ed. © 1973

Jury, Florence, McArdle, Phil, ed., Everything Opposite the Golden Gate
(PUBLISHER?)

Kinsella, Thomas, The Táin Bó Cuailgne
Oxford University Press/ & Dolman Press, Dublin, © 1969.

O’Faolain, Eileen, Irish Saga and Folk-Tales
Oxford University Press, London, © 1954

Peacock, Thomas Love, The Misfortunes of Elphin
(PUBLISHER ?) © 1829

Sharpe Wall, Rosalind, A Wild and Lonely Coast: Big Sur Pioneers
World Wide Publishing/Tetra, San Carlos, CA, © 1989.

Young, Ella, The Wonder Smith and His Son: A Tale from the Golden Childhood of the World
Longmans, Green & Co., NY, © 1927; reprinted by Floris, Edinburgh, Scotland, © 1992.

Young, Ella, Celtic Wonder Tales
Maunsel & Co., Dublin, Ireland © 1910; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., NY, © 1995

Young, Ella, The Tangle-Coated Horse and Other Tales: Episodes from the Finn Saga
Longmans, Green & Co., NY, © 1929 (soon to be reprinted)

Finn’s son Oisín returns 300 years later to visit with St. Patrick sometime in the 4th or 5th century.

I’ve reverted to traditional spellings of character names as Ella Young’s phonetic orthography makes it harder to identify who’s who, as the original meaning of the name is lost: 

Moorna/ Muirne, Finn’s Tuatha Dé Dannán mother is “Of the Sea”; 

Uail/Cumal, Finn’s father, means “Slave”; 

Usheen/Oisín means “Little Deer.” 

Goll mac Morna, a.k.a Eichaid “Horse” is “The One-Eyed”. 

Clann Bassa is Baiscne, Sive/Sabd, 

Bovemall/Bodball, etc. I suspect a meta-tale is hidden beneath the name-types, as so many stories have to do with the sea and water, and naming is a central theme. 

University of Chicago Professor T.P, Cross (1879-1951), one of the editors of Ancielt Irish Tales, was a contemporary of Ella Young’s. He and Professor C.H. Slover first compiled the book for their students; it was later published in 1936. Unfortunately he didn’t list his original sources, but I suspect it’s Standish Hayes O’Grady’s Silva Gaedelica.

As the central Finn Cycle story of Finn’s less-than-glamorous love triangle, the Pursuit of Dairmuid and Grainne, is omitted—where, like in the Táin Bó Cuailgne, Conchobor pursues the Sons of Uisneach for abducting Deirdre, he pursues his own man Diarmuid who has run off with Finn’s young intended bride, Grainne.

To her credit, Young gives us her sources for the Fenian Cycle in The Tangle-Coated Horse: Silva Gaedelica (Standish Hayes O’Grady); Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (Kennedy); Leabhar na Feinne (MacInnis); The Red Woman (“The Shining Beast”) in Sgealuidhe Gaedhealach (Dr. Douglas Hyde) Fionn and the Phantoms (“The House in the Valley…”) in Revue Celtique (Kuno Meyer); The Daughter of the King Under Wave in Popular Tales of the Western Highlands (Campbell); and excerpts from Gods and Fighting Men (Lady Gregory).

California Poets in the Schools Residencies

INDEPENDENT STUDY/COMMUNITY INVOLVMENT SUMMARY
with Prof. Maxine Chernoff (for 3 units/ CW 899, creative process requirement for MA; Fall 2000)

CALIFORNIA POETS IN THE SCHOOLS RESIDENCIES

Though I’ve taught California Poets in the Schools workshops since 1979, and was Sonoma County Area Coordinator and master-poet teacher: duties included training poets, marketing workshops, grant writing, and PR. I created multi-cultural programs including a 21-artist poetry & art exchange with the former Soviet Union. I was a board member, & planned state and international conferences.

However, I wish to focus this Independent Study report on my most recent teaching experience. But due to a new urban student population, it was brand new territory. This year, I taught some 18 CPITS poetry classes for a total of 120 sessions to elementary and middle school students in Oakland and Sonoma County. Classes were one-hour sessions; some classes met for one-and-1/2 hour- sessions and most classes took place during the spring, 2000. 

I also made student poetry anthologies, edited poems with students, and taught drawing classes. I wrote, and was awarded a multi-artist grant to the Oakland Cultural Arts council for future funding for spring 2001. Enclosed please find attached: student anthologies and sample lesson plans.

STATS: In Oakland, I taught at Frick Middle School: 12 one-hour sessions (6th & 8th grade; 6 sess. ea.); 6 sess. at Hawthorn (4/5th grade); at Manzanita Middle School I taught 18 sess. (three 6th grades; 6 sess. ea.); at Roosevelt Middle School I taught 30 sessions (6 classes: 5th, 6th, 7th grades; 5 sess. ea.; one was team-taught with Jorge Argüeta) for a total of 75 one-hour sess., plus several drawing classes for anthology art. 

I taught a 6th grade at Riebli Elementary School (6 one-and-1/2 hour-sess.) in Santa Rosa, and a 3rd grade at Alexander Valley School (6 sess.) where I also taught an after school GATE (four one-and-1/2 hour) sess. in science & creativity (grades 3-6). At the private Higham Family School in Santa Rosa, so far I’ve taught 15 one-and-1/2 hour-sess. (2 - 4th grades;); this class will continue to meet after winter break, 2000/2001.

STUDENT POPULATION: With the exception of Sonoma County schools and one class at Roosevelt, classes were ESL/ELD classes. All the Oakland residencies were inner city schools, and English as a second language classes. I taught five bilingual Spanish classes; four classes were Asian students, primarily Mien speakers with fair English speaking skills but bizarre writing skills: the verb “to be” was a virtual landmine field, so I also developed poetry & grammar lessons.

CHALLENGES: Though I’ve been an extremely succesful poet-in-residence since 1979, having received 7 competitive California Arts Council grants, & 2 Montana Arts Council grants (I’ve taught poetry workshops to thousands of kids)—I’ve even taught in Russia and Holland, where we had no common language—but nothing prepared me for working in Oakland inner-city schools. I have never worked so hard in my life. 

In addition, I’ve never worked in so many classes where the majority of the students had little, or no verbal or reading English skills. My passable Spanish skills were taxed to the limit, as I also had to type up their poems from phonetic Spanish—this nightmare inadvertently turned into a crash language course. For some of the Asian-speaking kids, we had translators; often other student translated for us—especially the Korean and Vietnamese students. 

In Sonoma County, the schools are rural or suburban, and though I’ve worked in in what is considered to be the tough, and/or bilingual schools—there, teaching is a very different proposition. Most kids have basic reading skills. In Oakland, I had to completely rethink my teaching process, I had to strip it down to the bare bones and to drastically lower my expectations, which I was loath to do. So I had to reach into a place previously untapped, to teach from the sheer willpower of persona, which left me exhausted & asking the larger question: how to avoid burn-out?

THE TEACHING PROCESS: When I teach poetry, I use a similar format for all grade levels. Introduction: what is poetry? In a nutshell, I tell them (or rather, let them tell me), and I write on the board my basic expectations: comparisons, imagery/imagination and feelings/emotions. I tell students if they use strong comparisons and imagery, the third concept automatically happens. We brainstorm kinds of poems we could write about, and they’re eager to begin. I tell them that poets and scientists use the same observation tools and skills—the poem is the hypothesis & conclusion.

I’ve already met with the teachers and tailored lessons to compliment their curriculum (ex. 4th grade: California history; 6th grade: ancient civilizations; I also choose model poems that reflect student ethnicities, whenever possible). I use a handout so that they can see the model poems in print (see enclosed lesson plans in packet), or if they get stuck, they can use some starter lines if they wish). 

I often begin with “I Am” poems because they’re non-threatening and easy to write; sometimes I ask students about their personalities: are they fiery, smooth as water, adrift in daydreams, etc., and have them write about aspects of themselves. I ask them to imagine secret animals/places inside them, etc., tailoring it to the curriculum. 

(If a student can’t write, I take no prisoners; I take dictation.) We read poems aloud, I tell the kids they’re all great poets, and we have a feedback session (was it hard? easy? What surprised you? What did you learn?) Students write in special poetry journals, which I read and make comments on; I type up a selection of poems for the next session, until I have at least one strong poem per student for anthology publication.

DAY TWO, ETC. I type up a page of kids’ strongest poems so that they can see the printing process. We read poems aloud, I tell the kids these are only our first drafts and the poems will change a lot before we do the anthology (that’s the carrot at the end of the stick; I also give out award stickers when kids get three poems typed up). 

They make verbal changes, sometimes another student will make suggestions, and I’ll point out junkfood words and redundancies, ask them about structure, etc. I say, “in the process of writing, we often forget to put in words/phrases, so it’s OK to add them in verbally.” In this manner, I introduce craft, as well as editing processes. We do a five-minute warm-up freewrite on anything they want (but I often ask for comparisons). I tell them to “write faster than you can think.” They’ll often add onto first poem or try another take. 

We read poems aloud; then I segue into the day’s lesson (see packet) which varies from class to class, depending on student writing skills, interests and curriculum. This is the overall format for the rest of the residency. (For a summary of a typical residency, please see my introduction in the Alexander Valley poetry anthology My Poem is an Explosion of Stars Inside Me in the packet.)

ON THE LAST DAY I bring in typed, corrected poems which they further edit, often adding new material or recombining poems to make a long poem (they only get one poem in the book, unless something knocks my socks off). We often meet one-on-one to solidify their first choice. In Oakland I was unwilling to give up the editing process of student poems. 

But in some cases, because their reading/writing skills were so poor, I brought my computer to class, and they made changes orally, which worked extremely well. I then edit, paste-up and layout the poetry book, and when it’s printed, we have a student reading and autographing party, if there’s time.

IN RETROSPECT, I invest a huge amount of time and energy with this intensive teaching style (2-3 hours per each contact hour), but my student work is the stronger for it. My goal is not to create a league of junior poets, but to develop their creative processes. I’m dyslexic, my philosophy is to develop students’ divergent thinking skills so that they’re empowered to creatively express themselves. Teachers insist that my methodology is extremely successful. 

Though I rarely get closure in teaching, some former students are still writing 20 years later—saying that if I hadn’t gotten in their face in 3rd or 5th grade, to get them to write, they wouldn’t have learned to express themselves so eloquently—to see the world through the poet-colored lens. A story about the MBA student/ basketball jock about to graduate from college, comes to mind. He called out of the blue to thank me for making him write poetry in 6th grade. He said at first he thought it was stupid, then kinda cool—and 15 years later, he found himself again writing poems. . . out of the blue.

Letter to Graduate Affairs, SFSU (missing text)

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a MA candidate (English: Creative Writing) attempting to graduate, having completed all my necessary units last year. To date I have been unsystematically thwarted in my many attempts to graduate by several SFSU offices: culprits I can name include the Office of the Dean of Humanities, and the Office of Graduate Affairs. Repeated filing and refiling of paperwork plus numerous phone calls has not as of yet resolved the myriad bureaucratic complexities plagueing my application form. I would like to know why.

The process for applying for MA graduation should not be akin to that of Soviet bureaucracy, a system which I have also been a victim of. But I wish to bring this to your attention and document the process so that other students less loquacious and stubborn than I, won’t have to suffer similar indignities.

I will try to make this humerous in that Aristotle said that learning should be pleasurable and I believe that you—who are competently completing your jobs—have a high learning curve ahead—because I, the student am consistently falling through large bureaucratic cracks that you may not have not noticed. It is time to find, and mend them. I believe you are there to serve me; I pay you for the priveledge of attending SFSU. I should not have to be telling you how to do your jobs. But you’ve left me no alternative. And an unfortunate side effect is that you now have a very (missing text...)

XXX

Perhaps you’re familiar with the movie/ book, “Catch-22” a lexicon that has entered the English language ammending the WWII acronym SNAFU. I’ll let you discover the origin of that one. I had illusions that SFSU was a newer, kinder bureaucracy. I was a student here in the 1970s and because of similar ridiculous bureaucracy, dropped out of SFSU an..... (missing text...)   damU ASCII hell

XXX

Not sure when this was written. But clearly I was on a roll, and since I must've sent it to several departments, things were on a roll and suddenly my paperwork was approved so fast, it made my head spin.

Russian River Writers’ Guild & Other Readings Produced

INDEPENDENT STUDY/COMMUNITY INVOLVMENT SUMMARY
with Prof. Maxine Chernoff (for 3 units/ CW 899, creative process requirement for MA; Fall 2000)

RUSSIAN RIVER WRITERS’ GUILD & OTHER READINGS PRODUCED


SSU ORIGINS: I never meant to be a literary arts coordinator, my accidental career as a events producer spans 20 years—some events were weekly readings, other were monthly, seasonal, or special events. I first booked readings as an undergraduate art student at Sonoma State University, after volunteering at a conference in 1978 that changed my life’s direction, The Child in Changing Times Conference, where I was first exposed to poetry. Hooked, I took to the streets running: I undertook the equivalent of a second BA in Expressive Arts and trained to become a poet-teacher for California Poets in the Schools.

 

In addition to working in the field, teaching kids poetry while pursuing my own literary career, I also began my MA in Creative Writing; I produced and later, taught a publishing class for SSU’s literary magazines, Sonoma Mandala and Open Hand. I was also an ad hoc T.A. in a poetry class when a professor faced a medical emergency—it was the loony bin—but I digress… 

Sonoma County was laid back and rural. Most of my literary organizing career evolved out of the times we lived in and/or being at the right place at the right/wrong time and my having excess energy waiting to be harnessed. (Luckily, my professors let me blindly follow my vision as I was often the last to know what I was doing. 

Somehow I learned the necessary skills along the way—amazing, since I had no basic writing skills: but I learned poetry saves lives, my own included. I was later diagnosed with dyslexia—after I’d became a journalist/photographer and poetry/entertainment editor for alternative newspapers. I probably have ADS* as well but I was able to get things done on sheer willpower alone.)

One community project was to resurrect SSU’s defunct Public Poetry Center and to create a liaison between the university and the community—which I successfully accomplished. In addition to hosting campus literary and art events for the English Dept., The College of the Humanities and the ASUC InterCultural Center, etc., I co-produced a 2-week poetry festival, Ear to the Ground, featuring acclaimed poets including Forché, Bly, Gunn, Hass, Olds, Olsen, Kizer, Dubiago, Kinnell, LeSueur, Bromige, etc. produced mega-readings at the Inn of the Beginning and the Cotati Cabaret,—except most poets—Pat Nolan, Hunce Voelckler, Mike Tuggle, even Andrei Codrescu—lived on the Russian River, more than an hour’s drive away, so, I went to the River and, it became a countywide project.

As a literary arts event coordinator, my overwhelming passion was to bring together a wide variety of multi-ethnic local, regional and national artists, writer/performers in order to develop larger, more diverse audiences—as poetry was a marginalized art form. I was a zealot, having been newly converted to poetry, I wanted to share that experience with others. How to develop audience? Make it available to artists, not just poets. 

Since I was an artist as well as a poet, I experimented with combining art/photography openings with music and poetry events. For example, I produced a multi-arts event for Guerneville poet-painter/sculptor, Boschka Layton, Canadian Poet Laureate Irving Layton’s former wife, and sister to actor Donald Sutherland. My connection with the university allowed me to network with numerous poets and arrange diverse funding sources, educating myself along the way. 

THE OLD RRWG: I created a liaison between SSU’s Public Poetry Center and local writing groups, including the Russian River Writers’ Guild and Sonoma County California Poets in the Schools, producing a multitude of events in venues countywide. I joined the flagging RRWG and we produced weekly reading series. 

I served as a board member and three years as executive director (by default), and helped to bring it to a 501c3 non-profit status in order to get grants. Grant writing is tedious and the amount of funding we received was not worth the effort. We relied primarily on tiny gate revenues and donations to meet our overhead rent, printing and postal bills. Obtaining free, or cheap housing was critical: bookstores, libraries, a senior center (a disaster of pissy couches, we found after the fact.)

* Attention Deficit Syndrome

THE NEW RRWG: After a serious back/neck injury in 1981, I dropped out of school and quit my reading series obligations & spent time healing and building my California Arts Council artist-in-residency career in the schools. I thought I was done forever with organizing events, other than book parties for my students—until 1992, when R&B musician Johnny Otis asked me to produce a weekly event at his nightclub in Sebastopol. The siren call was irresistible. 

I combined the RRWG (produced by an ad hoc committee) with my new group—we had a truly dynamic reading series. I mean Mr. Hand Jive himself! Everybody wanted to read at the Johnny Otis Club. It was way cool, and sometimes Johnny dropped in for a listen. He always gave us good publicity on his KPFA FM morning show broadcast live from the café, we’d come down and read poems on the air. 

But after Otis’ nightclub folded, adequate housing for the RRWG was a serious problem as the new locations, Mudd’s Café and Higher Grounds Café in Santa Rosa didn’t draw in large crowds. We couldn’t pay poets much (half the gate, or even a match from Poets & Writers), a poet-stipend was a central objective of the RRWG.

Besides booking the talent for the RRWG at the Johnny Otis Club and beyond (a shared duty between myself, David Bromige, Steve Tills, Jayne McPherson, Marianne Ware and invited guest host-producers—this idea prevented coordinator burn-out, gave us a more diverse poet/audience base), I also produced and published a newsletter, did publicity and flyers. 

I developed a paid membership base, as well as emceed. (In the pre-desktop publishing 1980s, our 8-double truck page RRWG monthly newsletter included poems from featured readers, but the cost was prohibitive and was eventually abandoned, as was my poet photograph archives.) Due to shrinking funds and rising postal costs in 1995, I resorted to publishing a quarterly newsletter in order to save money.

In retrospect, it was a very successful reading series, when I look back at the flyers, I can’t believe we hosted so many diverse poets and events. We found it necessary to establish a one reading per year limit for featured poets. We also included quarterly thematic readings in order to keep the audience coming (it was an ongoing party—especially the (n)erotic Valentine event). Please see flyers, and tally sheet at back of packet in order to see the wide range of featured readers we’ve hosted.

OTHER RELATED SERIES: The RRWG was also hosted other readings at SSU and Santa Rosa Jr. College as well as local bookstores and regional public libraries, the Sebastopol, Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa branches of Copperfield’s Books, Reader’s Books/ Sonoma Valley Poetry Festival and the Santa Rosa Barnes & Noble. The Barnes & Noble liaison was the most controversial as it was built right across the street from Copperfield’s and was picketed by locals and independent booksellers alike, but the damage done, the bookstore operational, someone was going to coordinate the reading series.

So, when I was asked to produce a monthly reading series for B&N 1995-97, I saw a unique opportunity to foster local input on the national bookstore’s buying policy. Mega-giant B&N is not fond of carrying small press books (too much bookeeping), but that was my deal: Black Sparrow, Caedmus, SunMoonBear, Clamshell Press. Surprisingly, they bought it as they needed the support of the literary community. 

We featured local, and nationally acclaimed poets, B&N displayed & sold small press books, and produced a hand-set collectable broadside series (see packet). It was a good collaboration as it gave local poets exposure. Though I am no longer involved with coordinating the reading series, B&N still uses the format we created. In addition, B & N continues to host book parties for local anthologies including Green Fuse magazine. A favorite event I produced, the California Poets in the Schools children’s poetry reading for National Poetry Month, is still drawing in record crowds. A good legacy.

ENDGRAM: When I was seriously injured in an auto accident 3 years ago, I was no longer able to coordinate the series, and though we were a consortium, after a successful 27-year run, the RRWG, the oldest continuous reading series in the north bay, foundered. 

I hear rumor that David Bromige still produces events from time to time. In the blood, I guess. I hope that after 20 years, I’m done with producing poetry events, maybe I can put my “Queen of Sonoma County Poetry Readings” laurels aside, though I still have the urge to emcee… getting 3 units credit for producing events seems a fitting retirement plan as any. But then, there are all these great venues in the East Bay where I’m currently living while I’m in school, and there’s the Poetry Center, and the archives at SFSU…

The Hounds of the Mórrígan by Pat O’Shea. Summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE HOUNDS OF THE MÓRRÍGAN
by Pat O’Shea

Pidge and his little sister Brigit go on a quest to save both this world (Galway) and the otherworld from the evil grasp of the battle goddess, the Mórrígan and her two other selves, Bodbh and Macha, who wish to reinstate a reign of terror. After Pidge finds an ancient manuscript in a bookstore, he inadvertantly sets the story of the hunt in motion.

This is a story of the ancient battle between good and evil, a medieval wild hunt where the hounds of the Mórrígan tracking the children through the soft boundaries between this world and the otherworld (replete with mists, gods, heroes and evildoers) to find one of the three drops of blood of the Mórrígan once spilled by CúCulainn at the Battle of the Ford. 

The triune goddess Mórrígan wants Olc-Glas, the evil snake that St Patrick imprisoned between the parchment pages: if she succeeds, her power will be tremendous and the apocalypse as we envision it, will truly be at hand. My heart is an ice well, said the Mórrígan. Soon I shall have one drop of my own strong blood. With it, I will dissolve Olc-Glas and swallow him into my cold heart. I shall add his poison to mine. Only Pidge (who is Patrick’s namesake) with faery helpers, can bring back her blood and save the world.

This clever story, written in three books, utilizes traditional fairytale motifs with specific rules: a previous good action pays off its reward in times of need.. . I was enraptured by the story-within-a-story motif (the 3-day journey through Tír-na-nÓg takes little more than an hour, our time), and I loved all the talking wee beasties: especially the frogs, the earwigs, the ducks, and Cú Rua, the fox. 

But the way Pat O’Shea wove the afterstory of the Cattle Raid of Cuailgne into Pidge & Brigit’s story was most satisfying, and the ending where the children couldn’t quite remember what happened, was also ingenious. We have the full pantheon of Irish gods and heroes: The Daghda and Brigit in their many (good) disguises, the druid, Cathbad, a repentant Queen Medbh and Ailill, their sons, the seven Maines, the entire hosting of the sídhe. . . We have a nasty half-Fomirii GIANT-smith who likes his neggs, the threatening hounds, and lots of delicious treachery all culminating in a glorious mother of battles.

Larry Niven was reputed ot have said that fairy tales were written for adults, not children. One could read a bit between the lines. Adults are dolts, and then there’s the English-Irish dilemma. 

There are some hilarious moments as the Mórrígan and her sisters mistaken for bad-ass English punker hag-chicks riding into town on—of all things—a Harley Davidson—who set up a command post in Galway, fits nicely into time present. (In 1996, a gaggle of British lesbians seeking refuge in Amsterdam, proclaimed to me that Galway was the new dyke heaven.) 

Representing the authority of the adult world, we have the poor misguided Garda sergeant who falls in love with the Mórrígan in her maiden aspect, and calls her his Angel (more like avenging angel, but then, Lucifer was said to be the most beautiful of God’s fallen beauties). And a stone of destiny, the Lía Fáil,

The King of Ireland’s Son by Padraic Column, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary


THE KING OF IRELAND’S SON
by Padraic Column

In these seven inter-related tales within tales within tales—closely resembling Celtic knotwork—The King of Ireland’s Son learns how to become a hero (and some wisdom along the way) and saves his father’s kingdom from the evil enchanter’s curse of barrenness. In a sub-plot, base-born orphan Gilly the Goatboy also breaks a curse, finds his parents, and is named. Together, the boys break spells, find wives and become men (or maybe it’s really the other way round).

In a nutshell: Conall, the King of Ireland had three sons: the eldest, the King of Ireland’s son, is the main protagonist. We never do learn his name, but he naively played three card games with an enchanter-king, Conall’s great enemy, who wins the third game. The Enchanter-king of the Black Bad Lands puts a geas on The King of Ireland’s Son who now must find his kingdom and pluck three beard hairs within a year and a day, or forfeit his father’s kingdom.

We have the usual archetypical fairytale motifs. The good king and stepmother, brave princes and suffering heroines who undergo trials to win their true loves back from evil.

The King of Ireland’s Son (Caintigern is his stepmother) goes questing and meets Fedelma the Enchanter’s youngest daughter. She and her two sisters help The King of Ireland’s Son to complete the seemingly impossible tasks their enchanter-father, but only Fedelma’s help is true. She is spirited away by the King of the Mists and The King of Ireland’s Son must find her. 

He loses and regains his true love by completing many tasks including gaining the sword of light, the crystal egg and the entirety of the Unique Tale (what came before and what followed after), thus breaking the enchantment. 

The King of Ireland’s Son’s vain and somewhat shallow half-brothers, Dermott and Donall, also have parallel adventures and find justly deserving brides. They all meet their unknown sibling, a long lost kidnapped child of King Conall (who is really the Hunter King) and his wife Caintigern (who is really Sheen/storm)—the childwho must be named in order to become a man. His love too is put to the test, ugly Morag’s love is true and she gains beauty. 

And all’s well that ends well. Gilly, who is really a prince, gains a name—Flann—and is reunited with his family. Conall and Canitigern have their own unfinished story cycle resolved when their children, by saving themselves, save the parents (and the kingdom) as well. And when the King of Ireland went to the Isle of Destiny, his two sons equally ruled over his kingdom; one had rule over courts, towns and harbors, the other ruled over the wastelands and villages where masterless men walked. 

This story is peopled with triads of princesses and hero-princes who must perform all manner of tasks in order to break enchantments. Celtic motifs include feasts, and giants, mists, bogs, and fords where battles are fought, red-eared animals and enchantments, all signifying the Otherworld. Good deeds and right formulae (done in the right order) are what is necessary to signify success.

The Wild Hunt, by Jane Yolen, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE WILD HUNT
by Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt is about boy as hero. In this Celtic-flavored fairytale, Yolen explores the uneasy boundaries and perceptions in this story of opposites in a hunt, as personified in the yearly cyclical battle between a divine couple.

In this story within a story, the medieval wild huntsman, Lord Herne (Cernunnos) as winter, and Robert Graves’ archaic White Goddess (a white cat of the hearth) representing summer—are continually at war. 

Herne, with his horses and hounds, is dark, evil, cold—and like most men, he wants to dominate with brute strength, to make winter a permanent season. Yearly, his wife, the White Goddess (she of many names) must find an innocent boy to become a hero and thus break cruel winter’s grasp so that the thaw may come.

Yolen writes that this is a story about magic, the wild hunt, power choices and names. . . (but heroes have two names). . . There are parallel worlds with twin houses with two boys who live in different dimensions: Jerold and his alter-ego Gerund. As Jerold reads a picture book entitled The Wild Hunt, the story begins to unfold around him. 

Luckily the houses are protected from Lord Herne’s evil vassals by a magic ring of rowan trees. When Gerund is kidnapped by Mossman and renamed “Bait” by Lord Herne, which he becomes, the two boys meet up and must resolve the dilemma. Language and naming plays an important part of the story. 

When Jerold writes his name on the window pane it is seen (backwards)by Mossman and used as a weapon against him. Lord Herne, must name and capture Jerold, and though married to the White Goddess, doesn’t know her true name either, and so, can never dominate her. 

She is portrayed as an aloof enigmatic talking cat/kitten who can’t be governed like dogs or men alike. Gerund’s dog, Mully, with the flatulent brainpower of a matchead, provides comic relief to the cat’s conundrums, and becomes sacrificial fodder.

The 15 tripartite chapters are almost and sort of clever, and the language, with its aphorisms and puns is well crafted to engage an adult reader, though the tale itself is sketchy. I emailed Jane Yolen to ask about her sources, and she said she has a whole wall of books on folklore that she draws from. 

Though no stranger to Celtic legend, she claims her story was based on Germanic (not Celtic) myth; and Mossman came from forestlore. She said the house itself in the story is based on her home in St Andrews, Scotland, where she spends half the year (presumably as the White Goddess).

GROWING UP IRISH

GROWING UP IRISH

It was one thing to grow up Irish Catholic in the Mission
or in the Sunset where shamrocks were painted on the sidewalk
and priests, cops and firemen were potential relatives,
but after the Depression my family fled to the country
and I grew up out in west Marin with the cows,
where everyone else's relative was a member of the DAR.

My classmates were Rainbow Girts or Bluebirds
whose parents belonged to elite country clubs for WASPs only—
No matter that most of us were too poor to join.
The baker's dozen families came to school in hand-me-downs.
It might as well have been Appalachia.
What if one of them saw me in her her old dress?

We were labeled freaks when the nuns came for us.
There we were, branded in grade school, while they—
the Bluebirds and Brownies got cookies and milk after class.
We hammered nails into our martyred psyches
and stole candy from old man deLacy's Lagunitas Store
after catechism—just to keep things in balance.

Having left one revolution behind, my grandmother
complained of the Protestant ascendancy here in America.
She said: We're facing religious segregation again,
diminished like those gods of the sídhe who,
during the centuries of Christendom,
who were transmogrified into fairies and particle theories
 only to become invisible quarks and muons
in a parallel universe.

12/2000 & 5/2001
another version Oct. 2/2000

The Wallace, Nigel Tranter, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE WALLACE
by Nigel Tranter

Tranter’s modern historical fiction based on the apocrypha surrounding William Wallace weaves together stories of Wallace’s ’s many skirmishes, historical or otherwise. Interesting to see how different the movie, Braveheart was from this novel.

A compelling read it wasn’t; this tedious four-part novel really was ‘homework.’ Give me Mel’s version, or should I say, dramatist Randall Wallace (who relied on Blind Harry)—even though John Balioll wasn’t dead in 1290, the French Princess was 5 or 6 years old, and at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, there was no bridge depicted. 

I love Randall Wallace’s ribald comment: “I try not to let facts get in the way of truth.” (History’s Mysteries, 11/29/00, The History Channel.) “As a dramatist, you need to know why you should tell the story before you decide how to tell it. . . . Blind Harry and I are both dramatists. . . . History is far more than scholars, history lives in storytelling.” Tranter manages to fit in most of the stories of Wallace, but they seem stilted, a chore to read. This is a manly story, no bodice ripper, with incredible attention paid to battle details. He occasionally forgets himself and writes well when it involves scenic descriptions.

Tranter’s story opens with the slaughter of the nobles of Ayr, as does Braveheart, except Wallace is an adult. Wallace and 50 men (commoners) with boulders for weapons, seek revenge on the English captain responsible, Fenwick, who is Wallace’s father’s murderer—with a guerrilla strike at Loudon Hill. This incident is the catalyst to overthrow English oppression. 

With English weaponry, and encouragement from the clergy, John Blair, Thos. Gray, Bishop Wishart and William Lamberton of Glasgow, they continue their guerrilla tactics from their base, Ettrick Forest, Wallace’s “capital.” We read of their taking of strategic cities: Perth, Glasgow, Edinburgh (without a blow taken), Aberdeen, etc. Sir James Steward, Wallace’s overlord, and an official for the English crown, is an example of the crossed allegiances between English and Scots nobility, of which, The Bruce, vacillates the most. 

A nice twist on the tale is when The Bruce knights Wallace when the Privy Council members refuse to accept Wallace as Guardian at Selkirk because he is of lesser rank. The way Tranter handles the council scenes and the way he portrays Wallace’s astute political decisions, makes for a good read. He depicts Wallace as a leader of bands, not a general of an army: his greatest weakness and character flaw is unveiled at Falkirk. 

Tranter does not neglect the significant role the Church of Scotland played in Scotland’s struggle for freedom from the English (spiritual warriors). A tidbit on the drawing & quartering: medieval man was preoccupied with burial for a good reason: he needed an intact body, buried facing east in a churchyard—in order to be resurrected. Edward’s attempt to literally send Wallace to hell only served to make a martyr of him.

Tranter seems unaware of Celtic motifs. However, we can overlay Celtic stereotypes: the clergy function as druids and warriors; Wallace is literally larger than life, warriors are nearly undefeatable (but they’re commoners), they’ re betrayed by nobles (warrior class), and kings. 

Rival Edward is a combination of druid (lawmaker, arbitrator), greedy king (Caesar), and warrior. But Wallace (a Vercingetorix/CúChulainn character), a commoner, is his primary target in an enormous game of chess/fidchell with live knights, bishops, and pawns. In Tranter’s story, we learn of the historical background of the principal players, and their motivations—the visual story of Braveheart is painted more imagistic. 

BUT with the advent of Braveheart, we’ve literally witnessed romanticism in action. Time past and time present. Braveheat resurrected the Wallace icon as a symbol for freedom. A catalyst, it reawakened nationalistic feelings in Scotland and galvanized it into rethinking its political identity. In May, 1977, the Labor Party wins 3:1 on the “Braveheart ticket” (freedom!) 

On Sept. 7, 1997, the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, the Referendum for Devolution was signed, and in July, 1999, a new Scottish Parliament was called to order. Today is St Andrew’s Day, Scotland’s patron saint. Alba go Bragh! Wallace needs no tomb for resurrection, he has risen again in celluloid format. Arthur must be waking.

The Bruce, by John of Barbour, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE BRUCE
by John of Barbour

As I previously mentioned in my review of Blind Harry’s Sir William Wallace, I had trouble reading and (comprehending) the Lowland Scots texts. Prelate John of Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen, then the richest city in Scotland, wrote in 15 “buiks” The Bruce, ca. 1376, within living memory of Bruce’s reign. Celtic motifs: heroic battles, superhero, kings, druids/priests, soothsayers, treachery, revenge, freedom! This story contains more traditional Celtic elements: most battles happen at fords, between worlds, there are mysterious mists.

Robert the Bruce is portrayed as a super hero with no equal rival, save his knights: brother Edward and the black James of Douglas. Though more powerful than the Scots, the English suffer greatly under his hand, especially at Bannockburn.

The story opens with an envoi proclaiming the tale’s veracity, and sets the scene with the interregnal origins of Scotland’s oppression: the competing claims of John Balioll and The Bruce (surely he means the father?) to the throne; Edward Longshanks is invited to arbitrate and gives the crown to Balioll, a puppet king who, in effect, gives Scotland to England. 

The Lowlands are planted with (English) Norman noblemen who don’t rule wisely. Scots are hung for the merest offenses and yearn for freedom in a marvelous rallying speech: A! Fredome is a noble thing! ...all solace to man’s giffis.... And sould think fredome mar to pryss/ Than all the gold in warld that is.

William of Douglas is seized, slain while his son James lives in exile in France for three years. He lands at St Andrews to reclaim his lands and is compared to Ector of Troy. Bishop William of Lamberton presents him to The Bruce as knight. Bruce is betrayed by familial enemy and arch rival to the crown, John of Comyn. Bruce is summoned to London, escapes arrest and returns to Scotland to slay the traitorous Comyn at Dumfries. 

He is crowned at Scone, defeated at Methven, and Dalry by John of Lorn, where he is compared to Hannibal and Charlemagne. A chivalrous scene and feast with the queen, who are made prisoners at the Girth of Tain. Neil Bruce is betrayed, Edward I consults a fiend as to the time and place of his death (shades of Homer!). 

The Bruce returns to Arran and rallies forces with James of Douglas and Edward, his brother, lands at Carrick, holds a council of war. A woman accosts him on the beach and prophesies his victory. Percy abandons Turnberry, the queen is captured, the king attacked by traitors, and fights his way out single-handedly. The Galloway men attack, he routs them. 

A portrait of English Warden Sir Aymer de Valence (worthy opponent?), who attacks; but John of Lorn attacks form the rear, and pursues the fleeing king with bloodhounds. The Bruce slays his trackers, his foster-brother slain. As Edward Bruce makes some headway in Gallwoay, Bruce engages in single-handed combat with Valence and like Arthur, is wounded, and carried in a litter.

He rises again ad routs his enemies (the mist cleared suddenly)s; Perth falls. Douglas overhears plans to betray The Bruce, and attacks. Edward II marches, we get the four battles of Bannockburn in full detail; the taking of Edinburgh castle; Edward Bruce lays siege to Sterling, the governor capitulates.

Bruce address his troops like Caesar, Scottish archers destroy the English Horse, camp followers, some 15,000 strong, come to see the battle. The English mistaken them for enforcement troops and capitulate. Bruce reunites with his queen and daughter traded as hostages. Engram with the king and a laundress (weird—oblique reference to the washer at the ford  = death motif? ) followed by the death of Bruce.

As James Goldman, author of The Lion in Winter said "Historians and storytellers don't have much in common, but they do share this: the past, once it gets hold of you, does actually come alive. For scholars, this is troublesome. For writers, it's the good stuff."

Sir William Wallace, by Blind Harry (Henry) the Minstrel, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

SIR WILLIAM WALLACE
by Blind Harry (Henry) the Minstrel

I found the fascinating stories of Sir William Wallace and The Bruce to be both a technical challenge. I was not prepared for the differences in between Chaucer’s Midlands Middle English and Lowland Scots (tho I read Robert Burns without difficulty). Reading aloud helped somewhat, but I was so distracted, I forgot what I was reading. Without the modern interpretation I was lost.

Interesting to note, in the modern novels of Nigel Tranter and Randall Wallace (Braveheart), the apocryphal stories have all but blurred and the heroes Wallace/Bruce have become divine twins. We have the usual Celtic motifs: heroic battles, larger than lifesuperhero, kings, druids/priests, soothsayers (women), treachery, revenge, freedom!

A traditional romance written in heroic couplets ca. 1460—a century and a half after the death of William Wallace—Blind Harry’s 9 “buiks” opens with A Love Adventure where an amorous outlaw Wallace, disguised variously as a monk or a woman, evades the archvillan English—Butler laid a trap for him on the 3rd night but despite bribes, the maid told Wallace of the plot. 

Wallace, a commoner, is nearly caught slaying the son of Selby, the English Governor. His father and brother are slain; he seeks refuge with his uncle but runs afoul over fish with some Englishmen, whom he slays. He is captured and thrown into prison; near death, he is cast out: his old nanny retrieves and nurses him with her daughter’s breast-milk. 

He rises to rout Lord Percy at Loudoun Hill, ambushes Fenwick, and avenges his father’s murder. Men flock to his fugitive band in order to fight the English, including the brigand traitor Fawdon. In the Forest of Gask, as Wallace is tracked by bloodhounds, Fawdon feints fatigue. Wallace, suspecting treason, smites him, throwing the dogs off his scent He escapes his enemies, swimming the Forth, finds refuge on Torwood, and sends a woman back to spy, and is joined by his uncle.

In Lanark, he meets Marion Braidfute, marries her and has a daughter. Grim scene where the English cut off the horses’ tails (emasculation?) More skirmishes and Marion is put to death aiding her husband’s escape. Wallace seeks revenge. Edward Longshanks, alarmed at the uprisings, journeys to Scotland and is defeated in the fictitious Battle of Biggar and sues for peace and a one-year truce. But two months later, 18 Scottish nobles are killed at the Burns of Ayr. 

Wallace is named Warden; he has a vision of his future, and avenges the deaths of the slain noblemen. In Glasgow he routs Percy and Beck; with The Campbell’s help, he slays Macfaydon, another of Edward’s men. Malcolm of Lennox takes Stirling for Wallace; English strongholds Perth and Dunotar also fall. 

At Dundee, he hears of Edward’s arrival with Cressingham. At the Battle of Stirling Bridge, the English are routed, Wallace’s most extraordinary victory: outnumbered 5:1, he drove the English Horse into the Forth. Most of Wallace’s noblemen are named in this section including Andrew Moray.

Wallace convenes a Parliament at Perth, but Cospatrick refuses to join, so he routs him along with The Bruce and other Norman nobles who’ve sworn allegiance to Longshanks. Wallace invades England, Edward sends the queen and 50 ladies and priests to sue for peace, but Wallace declines, revealing English atrocities; she weeps (and declares her love for him?) It sounds like he also raids London? 

Edward sues for peace; three years later Wallace goes to France, captures Longueville’s pirate fleet, and fights in French wars. Edward invades Scotland (again), Wallace returns to reclaim Lochleven and Dundee. Edward fans fire between Comyn & the Stewart; at the Battle of Falkirk, Stewart is killed, Wallace is wounded by The Bruce, who is fighting for the English. He laments this and the death of John Graham. He resigns as Guardian and returns to France but once again is called back to free Scotland. Bruce finally becomes king, Wallace is betrayed by a servant and is executed in London, a martyr for Scottish freedom.

Review of Billy the Kid & Battle of the Somme (missing text)

THE COLLECTED WORKD OF BILLY THE KID
by Michael Oandaatje
at The Marsh

(Apologia: I found the performance and the newness of the material made it hard to isolate monologue elements. Much of my difficulty had to do with the actors being overwhelmed by the sheer verbiage—talking heads. I was awash in Oandaatje’s poetic language. Since the director veered from the original order of the text, it’s unfortunate that his vision didn’t extend to cutting more of the text—as the second half of the play was drawn out and confusing. But I digress: this is not meant to be a review of the play. . . )


There is very little by way of traditional dialog per se in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Onadaatje (who also wrote The English Patient), as the entire play is comprised of loosely juxtaposed monologues and vignettes—some in the form of prose poems, others as small poems. The director’s vision shaped the format of the play as to what character said which dialogue and where. I chose both a throw-away monologue, and what I considered to be the most essential and riveting monologue for review.

For a non-essential monologue, I focused on John Chisum’s drinking story on one upmanship, where he spins a yarn about his friend Livingstone and his mad spaniel dogs.

The second monologue, a desert scene, I consider absolutely crucial to the structure of the play. As Pat Garrett rides Billy the Kid in for trial under the grueling sun, Billy undergoes an epiphany and comes to terms with both himself and with Garrett’s betrayal. 

When I later saw the text, I discovered that Chisum’s monologue picked up many through lines I didn’t realize were there: themes of animals—especially of dogs and of Billy hissing like snakes; and hidden madness; the role of hunters & assassins; and of strange, primal imagery: red dirt to ease pain, the maddening heat of the sun, the qualities of light, and Billy’s irrational fear of flowers (= death).

This is a story of corruption, greed and betrayal. Billy is a sacrificial lamb being led to slaughter on a trumped-up murder charge, even though everyone was guilty of killing someone during the three-day Lincoln County war, because the law has no other incriminating evidence to convict him of cattle-rustling. This theme becomes a thread throughout the play. The cattle politicians considered Billy’s occupation a hindrance to New Mexico’s new image. “We were bad for progress” says Billy in his opening lines.

The scene: Fort Sumner, New Mexico, sometime before Christmas, 1880. The story unfolds with Billy, on his 21st birthday (Nov. 23—the day before mine) experiencing several flashbacks. It’s hard to tell if he’s having all the flashbacks or if each character is simultaneously having flashbacks as well. The play works well either way. 

Gathered on John Chisum’s front porch one evening are John, his daughter Sallie, Billy, his girlfriend Angela, and Pat Garrett. After we learn that John Chisum’s daughter Sallie, who may or may not be having an affair with Billy, talk about her exotic Basset as being overbred for the fat French nobility, Chisum launches into an unexpected monologue about a singer friend of his from New Orleans. 

Livingstone who, after the Civil War, bought spaniels and bred a race of mad dogs that hissed like snakes. Chisum said, “it was like breeding roses.” The dogs’ eyes were slits and bulged like marbles. Livingstone learned to gauge a dog’s madness by the width of its pupils. Hunger and fornication were their only motivations, they were so inbred they were toothless and hissed like snakes. 

Livingstone hid his madness, but Chisum notes there was a perverse logic in Livingstone’s breeding the worst of the worst. The dogs turn on him and eat him—even his watch—everything except the hand that held the whip. So much for man’s best friend. 

The clock and this hand motif are echoes of an earlier line of Chisum’s about Billy’s shooting hand—how it was so beautiful to watch him unconsciously exercise that slender hand 12 hours a day. He never used it for anything else—even to pick up a cup of coffee. It only had one purpose: to kill. 

In retrospect, the monologue picks up several threads within the larger structure of the play. It was not only effective, it was a riveting attention grabber as the subject matter is unforgettable. Totally unexpected, it prepared the audience for the brutality that was to come: man’s inhumanity to man, and how not all legends are created equal ....that fine line between truth and fiction is stretched and inexorably expanded like verbal angioplasty. 

We learn of existing social structures within the play, the lengths character go to hide aberrant behavior—this is ironic foreshadowing since Pat Garrett will turn Billy in a few weeks hence. Also a complex character, Garrett, with all that self-taught French in his head and nowhere to use it, who meticulously stuffs exotic birds for a hobby, isn’t exactly a model of sanity either, though he is portrayed as such. 

Perhaps this is the metaphoric message: the danger of hidden insanity inbred within us—especially the pup-pets of the nobility, or of those in power. This scene could easily be cut without disrupting the integrity of the play. But Billy’s self-revelatory monologue is the heart of the play.

Billy is being taken across the desert for trial in Messilia. Chained to his horse, Billy begins to hallucinate: On the fifth day the sun turned into a pair of hands. Then it began to unfold my head..The sun ... washed his finger on my tongue..touched my heart with his wrist...followed cul de sacs of bone there when I was born, brushing cobwebs of nerves...down the last 100 miles to my sack of sperm...cock standing out of my head..then he brought his other hand into play. 

Two hands: one dead, one borne from me like crystal...then he let go...I could hear everything on my skin...Pat asking, “What’s wrong Billy?” I’ve been fucked... And a desperate Billy rolled off his horse, legs still chained beneath, to retreat from the relentless sun in the meager shade of the horse’s belly. Three weeks on a horse, at the Polk Hotel he had to be carried into his last white room, his last good bed.

Billy’s desert monologue totally envelops us. We’re right there riding along with him, we feel his pain, the heat of the sun. The lighting supports the language, as he begins to sort it all out, the brightness of the sun increases until we too are melting beneath its relentless gaze. 

The empathy that we feel for Billy despite his dubious profession, is honed, we’re left quivering and raw as Billy. We feel his vulnerability, we empathize with his victimhood. We understand that though he chose the life of a gunslinger, he has no regrets. This scene prepares us for the anticlimactic second half of the play—the Hollywood version of the myth of Billy the Kid where a drunken Frank James, brother to Jesse, is the ticket-taker.

 And the reporters’ final exclusive interview mirrors our modern preoccupation with the schizophrenic debunking and idolizing of the (in)famous. Many of the monologues serve as a framing device; the desert scene is a meta-frame that both gathers up many loose ends and holds the play together. Using metaphors that work on several levels, Oandaatje captures the myth, not fact, though the play poses much of Billy’s life as fact. What’s interesting is why Billy became a legend at all.






OBSERVE THE SONS OF ULSTER MARCHING TOWARDS THE SOMME
by Frank MacGuinness

Viadict Theatre Co.
at The Phoenix and above Kate O’Brien’s

Observe the Sons of Ulster is a menory play where the lone survivor of the Battle of the Somme, an elder Piper, the main character (as played by Earl Kingston) looks back on his life and asks why of all his troop, only he survived. The audience are vouyers. watching a man redreaming the past His long (10-minute) monologue, an angry, forced memory provides the trajectory and opens the play, it sets the scene and transmits vital information about the characters but it doesn’t give away what will happen in the play. You have to wait for it to unfold. All the players and their relationships with Piper, are introduced as ghosts. The monolog invites and anchors them. It’s a well crafted scene in its entirety

(we have ASCII HELL HERE! The rest of article is gone, baby, gone.)

he develops as a character

rebuilt image of his fallen companions

and an act of self-forgiveness,

a projection of his menory so that the audience can see

how aware is he? He’s mentally unstable, seeing ghosts

Piper awakens in an armchair where he’s dozed off, and is forced to remeber that he survived and his friends sidn/t’ He tries to rationalize the suffering.

He rebels against being forced to remember for the benefit of others.

Battle cry history he’s enfranchisinf his struggle for forgiveness with Ulster’s struggle for freedom. He equates himself with William of Orange’s soldiers. He conflates thems and reaches back into myth and legend to reinforce his moral position He reaches back to Hamlet to be or not to be evokes man’s struggle with life and death he reappropriates Cu Chulainn from the fenians to serve his cause. reusurpation of traditon modernizes it with sinn fen and links it to the puritan work ethic of the elect, the chosen ones

dev char background rebel inviting original sin self revolt it is your course upon them

Psych profile assessments I’m a fool a liar, I started out wrong i have to learn the hard way

reationalize and reconcile individual psyche with god with hhom he’s at variance with because he’s in pain

war expereince broke him self aware of inner transformation from punk to reluctant servant of god

earl internal monolog big memory recalled against wishes forced like an advancing army et s emotional tenor someone who’s psychologically tortured

a verbal battle pain of losing friends, loss of family comerafes surviving to assuage the pain

the burden of surviving after the war for you I had to be different. to rebuilt it in an image of my fallen comerades out to make Ulster a better place honor their memory and assuage his won guilt

he was practicca, he managed his fathers estates, he was politically connected

Piper wants to know if his ghosts have an existence outside of his menory. He asks for proof. He asks: why did we do it/ then answers his own questions. hate, deepest hate we wished ourselves to die (the true curse of Adam)Save me! the protestant gods are dead (enniskellen0 I have remarkably fine skin doffor a man dance ot the lord

was it expected? no it provides the scaffolding for the playwright’s conception of the piece, a theatrical convention, it provides the opening shots and motifs, piper’s thorugh lune, those involved, the outcome of war, his torture as a man, sociao-religious political issues of n. Ireland

It hints at the playright’s background even though it’s told form the other side Prot


again? I do not nderstand your insistence terror? I still see your ghost...horror into madness...the irreplaceable ones kept their nerve and died...the stuff heroues were made of...a hero+death...You taught me to believe in you. battle cry No surrender! patriotic echo of Battl of the boyne & sinn fein ourselves alone oceans of blood our inheritacne I did not wish to be chosen... \

Maureen Hurley, 11/15/2000
Justin Chinn, Creatiive Writing 605-01 

The Táin, tr. by Thomas Kinsella, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE TÁIN
from the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cuailnge
translated by Thomas Kinsella

Kinsella’s 1969 translation of The Táin, the “oldest vernacular epic of Western literature,” was 15 years in the making and long overdue, as the other translations were hopelessly antiquarian, whether Lady Gregory’s Kiltartan paraphrased rendition, Dunn’s 1914 translation, or editors Cross and Slover’s (Standish Hayes O’Grady translation? not notated) 1936 edition.

These Celtic Revival translations utilized the 12th c. Lebor Leinster (LL) manuscript while Kinsella used the older 12 c. Lebor na hUidre (LU: Book of the Dun Cow) version, supplementing it with the 14th c. Yellow Book of Lecan where text was missing. (Some language dates to the 7th c.) 

Kinsella includes remscéla to supply the modern reader with foreknowledge necessary to understand the plot and motivations of The Táin—stories that 5th to 15th c. audiences would have already known. His translation is very much a product of the 1970s, more muscular than the fin de siècle versions written in “...a florid adjectival style, running at times to an overblown decadence....” But this is not a literal translation: he also reorganizes and deletes material as he sees fit, especially inconsistencies and repetitions, for the mindset of the modern reader.

Written for an aristocratic Ulster audience of a thousand years ago, The Táin looks back another thousand years to the Celtic Heroic Age. Often cited as “a window on the Iron Age,” this cattle raiding tale of betrayal, intrigue, magic and love—is of, and for the nobility. A tale within a tale, with the aes dána, poets, seers and bards as witnesses, it is peopled with gods, goddesses, half-mortal heroes who rush naked into battle, giants, and monsters. 

Events are set in motion when Connaught’s Queen Medbh and her consort Ailill, compare their possessions and she comes up a bull short. To even things out, they decide to raid Ulster for King Conchobar’s bull. But the bulls are really magic shape-shifting swineherds, enemies since time began: “Two pig-keepers were friends once—now crows will drink a cruel milk.”

The Táin begins with a tropos like the Mahabarata: a king-making tale lost in the antiquities of time, retrieved through magic. A great mist formed around the druid Senchán Torpéist’s son and pupil, the poet Muirgen (of the sea), who for three days and nights, disappeared as the dead Ulster king Fergus mac Roich, a demigod and a protagonist, recited the Táin in its entirety from the grave on Samhain. 

However, the redactor/scribe embellished hard romantic elements to satisfy his medieval Christian audience. The action takes place from Monday (Doomsday) after Samhain to Spring’s beginning (Easter). In other versions (which the scribe refers to),Conchobar, the self-made king, brought down by his own lust and greed, will later die of a brainball lodged in his head by Ulster’s hero, CúChulainn, when he hears of the death of Christ (thus dating the story-frame to the birth of Christ). 

Grave names are written in Ogham, dating it to the 5th c.; but no one in the story (or in the 7th, or 12th Cs. for that matter) actually knows Ogham; Fergus is called in to read the Ogham warning on CúChulainn’s spansel hoop of challenge.

The Táin, AKA the Irish Iliad, preserves elements of Iron Age society—full of intrigue and betrayal. It includes seemly and aberrant behavior and appetites of kings and princes, druids (and -esses) and heroic warriors (and women); it gives genealogical, and naming data for demigod, warrior/hero and king lists. 

 The story offers formulaic, or sympathetic magic, battles and betrayals take place in water at the liminal boundaries of fords, and the heroes are denied success by their gessa. It explains placenames (though they don’t match up). Like the other heroes, Connaught’s Queen Medbh, a landed goddess, with appetites larger than life; she even pees prodigiously, creating gorges and canyons. Its hard romantic elements include in extraordinary detail, the battle accouterments and clothing of every troop as well as the battles. Even the anachronism of chariots, though chariots never existed in Ireland.

Brigid monologue outline for a one-act play in three parts

Subj: Brigid monologue
Date: 11/04/00

Query to Gemma Whelan, Breda Courtney

Wilde Irish Productions

Dear Gemma,

Thank you for your interest in my monologue. Below is the structure I envision for my Brigid monologue piece, and the first piece which I performed (but it doesn't incorporated the structure...since that's newer). The challenge is working within a structure when I'm not sure what impetus is needed to carry a monolog of this length (10--15 minutes...seems like an eternity).

BRIGID I envision a ninefold story in three movements, as it were.

1, Brigit as mythological goddess Creatrix

a) maker of the earth—only she can hear the earth singing—she is wearing a cloak or mantle NSEW
b) as morning star/fire venus / love
3) as darkness/chaos (not sure of this aspect)

2 Brigit as saint

a) childhood Curragh north
b) sainthood Kildare west east, also Wales as St. Ffraid 

 fight w/ imposter Brigid in Sweden?
c) death Ulster??? not sure of this aspect

3 Brigit as mortal

a) as changeling, invoke Brigid Cleary, little brigid/fairies
b) shiva/kali Bridie Murphy story
c) ?? tying in w/ Ulster and the red hand....destruction of the earth/ozone

Then I can work in something on the line of L Gregory's "You have taken the north from me, the south from me--that fabulous poem in Huston's The Dead....

Any other ideas gratefully sought.

as to costume:
wig/crown w/20 cantles (xmas lights)... her mantle...I've some silk pieces I've made, with tendrils hidden beneath it, spreading as she spins to claim the earth.... not just the Curragh. And the evil that escapes to the sea (Bres/Fomorii) will return...armageddon-like...to haunt our own polluted earth. Alpha/omega: ourobouros. At closure, she lifts her red hand to the audience saying "read the hand..." (I borrowed that from Heaney...)

(I edited out much of the middle saint/mortal section out during my performance; part three is very weak as I didn't have an ending, and didn't know where to go with it. What is of interest? What has potential? (It ran away with me, I need to bridle it, but first I need to find a bridle! Was a time I had bridles aplenty.)

One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

ONE BRIEF SHINING MOMENT:
Remembering Kennedy
by William Manchester

William Manchester’s poetic tribute to, and documentation of the Kennedy legend—written twenty years after his death—paints JFK as an Arthurian martyr-messiah. He begins his essay with facts of the assassination and then maps the nation’s psyche. A segue to the official mourning period and the forecast of its rapid passing, versus the nation’s protracted grief, becomes the focus of his essay.

Manchester weaves a scant biography of Kennedy: how Jack, as a child, read about the knights of the roundtable, of his youth as a knight in training, of his political career as king, and of his death as heroic exemplar. He reminds us of how time erased the man, thus replacing him with a legend as old as humanity. 

In the epigram from Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur: “There thou lyest...” he evokes the death of Launcelot and of the roundtable, he compares it to the death of an idyllic era that never was: America in the ’60s. Though it was the age of the antihero, of victim, it was a kinder, gentler nation that might have been. 

 He writes of how we incorporated/ appropriated images of Kennedy into our lives. We are inside Bobby and/or Jack’s heads via the cosmos: “You ...recall...the Southern Cross.... ” Jack as a rising star. Text and sub-text. ... “When he shall die./ take him and cut him out in little stars...” This astral theme is no accident: Jack/Arthur-as-constellation. The title evokes Camelot, the brief star we wish upon.

Manchester retells the historical origins of the Arthurian story through the ages (1500 years!) and of its accretions through the oral tradition. He paints his constellation of a latter-day Camelot with Kennedy as all aspects of the dream: as Arthur, as Lancelot, as Gwenivere (well, maybe, Marilyn/Jackie), as Excalibur, as a messiah, as martyr, etc. 

He evokes the manuscripts of the pseudo-historians: Gildas, Nennius, Geoffrey, Jesus... Manchester’s thumbnail sketch of social commentator David Brinkley as rational versus emotional prophets, seers and oracles is a base form of druidic function, as are the literary agents and pollsters. 

We have many aspects of Le Morte d’Arthur: shrines & pilgrimage, quests & holy relics, pageantry & idolatry. Interesting to note the tchotchkii industry of Kennedy memorabilia (holy relics) was spawned by prolonged national grief. 

Death of a hero-king (whether or not the facts be true) is good for business. How public works were rechristened worldwide, even a section of Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed, became a Kennedy shrine. “Once a leader becomes a martyr, transformation naturally follows.” 

 Kennedy is endowed with a nimbus, clothed in raiment so that we have no choice but to look up and see him as a part of the firmament, and identify him as star of the first magnitude.

Manchester begins his essay in typical journalistic fashion—basic reportage— he jousts with personal perspective so that the reader is both inside and outside the text. Through a misted lens, personal and collective memory and fact blur and merge. Not quite yellow journalism, this filmic essay is in the camp of Gonzo (I, myself & I feel, therefore I am) journalism. 

Don’t get me wrong: I loved the piece but it is personal narrative masquerading as factual journalism. (I can hardly believe that this is the same author who wrote so dark a picture of the Dark Ages., but I digress...)

Le Morte d’Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

LE MORTE D’ARTHUR
by Sir Thomas Malory

Malory’s 1471 version of the story of King Arthur, said to be the first great prose epic to be written in English (I guess Beowulf doesn’t count), is probably the most enduring version of Arthurian legend.

His story follows that of Geoffrey’s but incorporated many motifs of the French Lays. How much is Malory’s own invention, as with Geoffrey’s version, is still under speculation as we don’t know what was still circulating in the oral tradition. 

Said to be written while Malory, a roughish knight and politician of Warwickshire, while he was imprisoned for many civil crimes during the reign of Edward IV, the tale ends with a plea for the prayer of his soul, so, once again, who was his audience? 

Let us look at the motifs: like Geoffrey’s story, this tale focuses on the conception, birth, life, love and death of King Arthur and his knights. A tale of, and for the nobility with adventure, honor, courtly etiquette, chivalry and jousting central to the story—which gives some clue to 14th c. mores and preoccupations. 

Sir Lancelot, a Cú Chulainn figure, is Arthur’s foremost champion. But because of his enduring love for Gwynevere, is impure, he cannot seek the Grail (the Celtic cauldron)—said to be a holy relic brought by Jesus’ father!—only a pure and virtuous knight. 

The only three (pure) white bulls of the Round Table: Sir Gareth, Sir Galahad and the third bull with the black spot (= one sexual adventure) King Pelles. The rest are with blemish. So they find the Grail in the Waste Lands, but since the clergy knew where it was all along, why couldn’t they either help/or get it themselves? 

Does the Grail shrive the knights from their sins or save anybody? Not really. Lancelot repents for his behavior in the end, but it seems to have little to do with the Grail itself. 

Gawain’s revenge (avenging murdered kin is a central motif) upon Lancelot hastens the destruction of King Arthur’s court—with a little help from Sir Mordred, Arthur’s incestuous stepson, who seizes the throne and Gwynevere while Arthur is fighting Lancelot in Brittany. In this blood feud we have the House of Arthur versus the House of Lancelot, in short, we have the War of the Roses in allegorical format with Marcher Lords and the fickle populace switching sides at will.

The role of the ultimate victory and power of the church is a strong story element, much stronger than in Geoffrey’s story, and he, a bishop! The stories of Tristram and the Holy Grail are so allegorical, they seem to be written (or edited) by someone other than Malory—perhaps he was appealing to the clergy? 

Saving souls and repentance play strong roles. The might of the church aside, many of the age-old Celtic motifs are present throughout: the three “F”s (feasting, fighting, and, er, swivving.) 

We have godlike heroes fighting the enemy and in times of peace, each other. We have betrayals, brother killing brother, false identities, incest, magic swords stuck in rocks, feasts, funeral barges, numerology (three days and nights, 15 days, a year and a day, seven years); apple trees, visions, miracles and allegory (seven knights/hermits = the seven deadly sins), 

We have questing beasts, monsters magic wells and rivers where noblewomen ride by on white palfreys, where heroes enter into the otherworld, where battles are fought, where all women are beautiful and are either sorceresses or virtuous. A preoccupation with noble blood, virginity and sex. 

Few commoners mentioned; oblique references to the common soldier, a woodsman, some foresters and hermits but most of these characters seem to have magical powers. As with Geoffrey’s story, Merlin doesn’t play a big role in the story. So many characters are imbued with druidic powers, it’s hard to categorize them. 

Only the clergy can correctly interpret dreams (how did they get this powerful?) Blood magic is a strong element throughout. Naming (or withholding of a name—sometimes with dire consequences—as with Cú Chulainn and Connla ) also prevalent. A virtual crescendo of miracles occur as the clergy take a stronger role toward the heavily moralized end of the story where Lancelot and Gwynevere repent and join monasteries. So many masses are said, I lost count! But God wins in the end.

The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN
by Geoffrey of Monmouth

Whether it be fact or fantasy, Geoffrey’s History is a very readable, gossipy text. Because it is a modern translation from the Latin, it is harder to judge the voice/tone of the text—though Prof. Lewis Thorpe insists he was faithful to the original text—whatever that was.

There were several different texts including a pseudo-Geoffrey text. Geoffrey, who was probably Welsh, claims an earlier text, now lost, for his source material which in 1136, he also claims to have translated into Latin from the British. So we might have a 6 - 11th c. text translated from Welsh/British into Latin in 1136, and then into English in 1966. 

During the 12th c., monks were churning out manuscripts and there already was a tradition of pseudo-historical Latin texts in Britain: Gildas (6th c.), Bede (8th c.) Nennius (9th c), So Geoffrey’s claim is possible. 

Though the text covers 1900 years’ worth of the pseudo-history of British kings, it reminds me of the Irish Lebar Gabala, which is referred to: “Their leader, whose name was Partholoim,” Geoffrey’s dynastic book was meant to be read silently, not aloud after feasts—where everything needs to be repeated—who was his audience? 

If Shakespeare owes much to Geoffrey’s story of King Lear, then Geoffrey owes much to his fellow chroniclers and to Caesar. We have the usual Celtic leitmotifs—battles, single-hand combat, berzerker frenzy, fosterage, revenge, crossed-fealty, broken oaths, treachery, shape-changing. 

We have giants, magic burial stones transported from Ireland, sacred fires, feasts, potlatches, fords and hazel woods, etc. We have new elements of chivalry—though it could be construed that chivalry is merely an extension of Celtic Heroic society. 

Geoffrey’s main characters are the Trojan Brutus (this story stretches credulity but there really were Celts in Asia Minor) who founded and named Britain (“the best of islands”) after himself; his son Kamber who named Kambria/Wales; Brutus’ ancestors, the infamous brothers Belinus and Brennius who sacked Rome (he knows Hellenic writings but not historic dates) who ravage the Franks! 

Cassivelaunus who fights Caesar, and Arthur, who occupies much of the text. Interesting to reread Caesar through a Geoffrey-colored lens. Shades of interpretatio Gaufrido who does wicked things to historical timelines!

Arthur is modeled after Caesar—conquering the Islands, Europe and even Rome. Much of the story is hinged on the prophecies and magic of Merlin and Pallatius, druid winds, etc.; a Druid college is mentioned. 

The Prophecy of Merlin is the weirdest text I’ve read: all those animals—totemic, tribal or kinglists? Merlin disappears after Gorlais’s death and never even meets Arthur! The British are almost always spoken of in a favorable light—though Geoffrey repeatedly reminds us their arrogant and quarrelsome nature works against them—and indeed it eventually is the source of their God-ordained downfall. 

Geoffrey paints the Saxons, Irish, Scots & Picts in a malevolent light—as he does the kings of the East (who were probably Christian!) and of course, evil Mordred. Interesting change of tone with the final chapter on the Saxon as the true inheritors of Britain after it was ravaged by civil wars and plagues—partially due to the introduction of a bad seed? Malgo’s line. 

Geoffrey owes much to Bede here. Interesting to see the doings of Edwin, Cadwallo and Penda fleshed out so. Throughout, the clergy are portrayed in cloying favor—obviously they are of the nobility. Even St Patrick is mentioned. God is wrathful, more akin to the Wheel of Fate than to Reason. 

Once again, this is a story for the nobility, not for the peasant or craftsman. The ultimate insult is that the surviving Britons get demoted to Welshmen.