Digital Medievalist: Scéla

Merry Christmas!

Lisa Spangenberg — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 01:24:00 +0000

The angel Gabriel from heaven came, his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame; "All hail," said he, "thou lowly maiden Mary, most highly favored lady," Gloria!

"For know a blessed Mother thou shalt be, all generations laud and honor thee, thy Son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold, most highly favored lady," Gloria!

Merry Christmas.

Carol Dana Lanham requiescat in pace

Lisa Spangenberg — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 04:38:00 +0000

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine:
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Carol, the beloved wife of Richard A. Lanham, died November 5, 2007 of a brain hemorrhage at age 71. Her husband of fifty years was at her side when she died. Carol was born in Englewood, NJ on January 18, 1936, the daughter of Irma P. and David W. Dana. She was educated at Marblehead High School, Marblehead, Massachusetts; and at Connecticut College for Women, New London, CT, where she graduated, in 1957, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She took her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1973, with a special field in Medieval Latin. She subsequently was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Brown University and tutored in Latin at the Getty Center. From 1978-87, she was Senior and then Principal Editor at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She was a member of the American Philological Association, the Medieval Latin Association of North America, and the Medieval Academy of America, where she served as a Council member, 2002-2005. She is the author of Salutatio Formulas in Latin Letters to 1200: Syntax, Style, and Theory (1975) and the editor of Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice (2002). Her best essay, in her husband's estimation, is "The Bastard at the Family Reunion: Classics and Medieval Latin," which appeared in Classical Journal in 1975. Although her name does not appear on the title pages of her husband's books, her learning and good sense appear on almost every page of them. She is survived by her husband, Richard; by her aunt, Marion Spear; and by her cousins, Kathryn Spear Lacey, Robert Spear, and Stephen Spear. A memorial will be held Tuesday, November 13, 2007, 5 p.m., in the Hacienda Room of the UCLA Faculty Center, 480 Charles E. Young Drive, East.

I can't begin to describe how much Carol affected my life, as friend, mentor and role model. She taught me more about editing and scholarly ethics than anyone, just by watching how she worked. This is a sample of the kind of thoughtful, intelligent, and solid scholarship she routinely produced, with care and joy.

In paradisum deducant te Angeli:
in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
Chrous Angelorum te suscipiant, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.

Bridget Cleary, Sex, Death, Fairies and Other

Lisa Spangenberg — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:32:00 +0000

This is the third in a series of posts about fairies as other. I promised, in my first post, to concentrate on fairies as other, particularly in the context of sex and death, because, as MacAllister Stone notes "other is all about sex and death." Last time I looked at the tragic death of Bridget Cleary, burned because her husband Michael thought Bridget was the victim of a fairy abduction. This time I want to look at the story of Bridget Cleary in the context of sex and death.

In Bridget Cleary we have a woman who is seen as other, an outsider in her community because of her differences, differences which are particularly marked for a woman in nineteenth century Ireland where an assertive, opinionated and financially independent woman without children is very much seen as an anomaly. In the March 29, 1895 Cork Examiner special report on her death, the reporter, having interviewed locals, describes Bridget as

"a bit queer" in her ways, and this they attribute to a certain superiority over the people with whom she came into contact . . . Her attire . . . is not that of every woman in the same social plane (Bourke 2000, 43).

Bridget was perceived as an outsider, "a bit queer," even by another outsider.

The attention paid to Bridget Cleary's clothing and body in the descriptions of her "cure," in the careful details about the extent of her clothing in the court testimony (presumably, as Bourke suggests, to remove any thought of sexual impropriety) underscore the sexual subtext of the situations. Bourke observes that despite the "prudery" in the eye witness accounts

the violence meted out to Bridget Cleary before her death has an unmistakeably sexual character. On Thursday, when he used a metal spoon, and again, on Friday, when his weapon was a burning stump of wood, Michael Cleary's actions amounted to a kind of oral rape. On both occasions Bridget Cleary was pinned down and prevented from struggling free, while a substance was forced into her body. . . . [the inquest revealed signs of injury to her mouth and throat] The violence used in holding Bridget down was certainly not sufficient to kill her, but its scale and ferocity would have been enough to terrify her, and to show her and anyone watching just who was master (Bourke 2000, 120).

Michael Cleary may very well have felt he needed to assert himself, not only against the uncanny malice of fairies, but as a man with an assertive, financially independent wife, a wife who may well have had a lover. Most of all, he may have felt it was imperative to assert himself given community pressure regarding his relationship with a wife who had not born him any children, which would have been very much seen as a failing by the community. One reason Bridget was taken by the fairies might have been her childless state; the unvoiced assumption being that since she had no children, that there was some sort of sexual failure, a situation that wasn't helped in the least by the fact that Michael was nine years older than Bridget and that they spent most of the first few years of their marriage apart except on weekends (Burke 2000, 96).

The standard academic way to refer to fairies taking mortal women is to call it fairy abduction, or, more commonly, fairy rape, particularly in medieval texts. Corinne Saunders, writing about Middle English romances that involve fairy abductions and rapes points out that "What is most striking in all these works is the association of the otherwold with sexual violence or desire for possession of the woman's body" (Saunders, Corinne J. Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001. 233).

Both Bridget Cleary and Heurodis are perceived as victims of a fairy rape.The fairy king threatens to tear Heurodis limb from limb if she doesn't come willingly, and tells her that she'll be taken to the otherworld even if they take her in pieces. Bridget is mistreated physically, dosed with "cures," verbally abused, then doused with human urine before being burned. The overt physicality of the way Bridget Cleary was treated, the man-handling of her, is an inversion of the customary fairy threat to a mortal victim; with Bridget Cleary, we see mortals abusing what they think is a fairy changeling, though she is a mortal woman—her sex is a huge part of the reason she is treated his way.

Women who are assertive, and independent, who dress better than their peers, women who are financially independent, women who have no children, forthputting women who approach men, fairy mistresses and otherworld women like Rhiannon, these are other. They are potentially dangerous to the community, because they disrupt the natural order, or the perceived natural order. These women who like Heurodis are in the right place and the right time, and who, like Bridget, go to the forbidden liminal areas, are just as disruptive as the ostensible external agency, the fairies, who take them. It's bad enough to have a child or lover taken by the otherworld, but what's worse for those left behind are the mortals who go off with their fairy wooer, quite happily, and the abducted mortal women who choose to stay in the otherworld, rather than return to their mortal husband and children.

Bridget Cleary was perceived as dangerous and engaging in risky behavior; Michael Cleary objected to her going to the rath, and did all he could to "bring her back." Underlying his frantic, desperate efforts, almost certainly, was the fear that Bridget might not want to come back. In court testimony from Johanna Burke, Bridget is said to have told her husband, shortly before he set her on fire, "Your mother used to go with the fairies, and that is why you think I am going with them." Michael Cleary asked Bridget, "Did my mother tell you that?" She said, "She did; that she gave two nights with them" (Folklore 1895, 375). There's a very definite sexual connotation to "she gave two nights with them," particularly given the numerous references to fairies taking mortal lovers in medieval literature and folklore.

Otherworld folk are not shy about making sexual conquests. Rhiannon is very much seeking Pwyll as her spouse when she comes to the gorsedd in the first branch of the Welsh Mabinogi, Pwyll Pendeuvic Dyfed. The fairy queen in Thomas of Erceldoune is more than willing to take Thomas as her lover, keeping him mute but with her in the otherworld for seven years, before returning him to the tree where she found him, saving him from becoming a human sacrifice. She leaves him with an unwelcome gift, the ability to prophesy, thus converting him from dangerous other, to magical other with a redemptive gift for the community.

In Sir Orfeo, Heurodis returns from the fairy otherworld because Orfeo rescues her, and both return to Orfeo's kingdom. At the end we are told Orfeo leaves the kingdom to his faithful steward since Heurodis has no children and Orfeo has no heir. We rarely hear or read of otherworld folk having progeny, and when we do hear about fairy offspring, say the child of the Grey Selchie, the offspring are the result of liasons between mortals and fairies, or other otherworld residents, and the children usually come to a bad end. Pwyll's otherworld bride Rhiannon is scorned by Pwyll's people because she is childless. Later, when Rhiannon has a child, the child mysteriously disappears. Rhiannon is typical in being less than fecund; otherworld folk are seemingly sterile, and, perhaps consequently, obsessed with taking fertile mortal women, and young children. Just as with other Others, say Gypsies, or whatever a given community's racial/ethnic minority is, or queers, in stories about fairies and otherworld intruders it's a case of "They want our women, and our children, and our women want sex/more sex/better sex, and so they voluntarily go with these Others, and leave us, and sometimes, they refuse to come back."

I think that fear--the fear that Bridget wants to be with the fairies, with the other, is what's underlying the Bridget Cleary horror. It's interesting to note, as Bourke does, that in the spring of 1895 that the Irish papers, and some of the English papers too, were carrying stories about the "witch burning" in Clonmel, Oscar Wilde was on trial for sodomy. It's also the date of the first attested use of "fairy" to mean queer. Both the OED and the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang cite the following reference from the American Journall of Psychology as the first use of fairy to mean queer, or as the OED has it " A male homosexual":

"The Fairies of New York" are said to be a similar secret organization. The avocations which inverts follow are frequently feminine in their nature. They are fond of the actor's life, and particularly that of the comedian, requiring the dressing in female attaire, and the singing in imitation of the female voice, in which they often excel" American Journal of Psychology VIII (1895): 216.

I've been looking at the connection between fairy and queer for a long time, and I think there are a couple of reasons for fairy being used to mean queer. First, I think it works because there's an association between fairies and an absence of progeny despite their overt eroticism, and the assumption, for many, that being queer has to do only with sex, that it's all about sex, and that it's sex without fear of progeny, just like real fairies.

Next time, I'm going to look again at medieval fairies as ways of dealing with other, and sex, and death.

Here are some references to match my citations.

"The 'Witch-Burning' at Clonmel." Folklore. Vol. 6, No. 4. (Dec., 1895): 373-384. JStor link.. This is an anonymous article that reprints the newspaper coverage of the court testimony.
Thomas of Erceldoune. Scroll down to the Appendix for the text as printed by Francis Child, as part of the versions of Child Ballad 57 "Thomsas the Rhymer." You can find Murray's 1875 edition of the romance here.
Ford, Patrick K. trans. The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
Bourke. Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary. New York: Viking Penguin, 2000. This really is the best study; there's another slightly more recent book that's vastly inferior.
Saunders, Corinne J. Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001.
Sir Orfeo with text and ms. page images from the Auchinleck ms.
Anne Leskaya and Eve Sedgewick's annotated Middle English edition of Sir Orfeo.
A .pdf of a lightly modernized Sir Orfeo from the Norton Anthology of English Literature

Bridget Cleary: Fairy Intrusion in Nineteenth Century Ireland

Lisa Spangenberg — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:14:00 +0000

Are you a witch?
Are you a fairy?
Are you the wife
Of Michael Cleary?
—Children's rhyme from Southern Tipperary, Ireland

I promised in my first post on fairies as other to look at a fairy intrusion in nineteenth century Ireland, specifically, the fairy burning of Bridget Cleary.

In March of 1895 Bridget Boland Cleary was a trained seamstress, with a good eye for fashion, who owned her own Singer sewing machine. She lived with her husband Michael Cleary and her father Patrick Boland in a small cottage in Ballyvadlea, Tipperary, Ireland. Michael, like his wife, was atypical in that he could read and write; he worked as a cooper. In 1895 they'd been married about eight years; Bridget was 26, and Michael was 35. On the fifteenth of March, Michael Cleary, believing his wife Bridget had been taken by the fairies and that they had left a changeling in her place, having spent three days in various rituals that were intended to force the changeling to leave and bring his wife back from where the fairies had taken her, set fire to her. He and nine others of Bridget Cleary's relatives and neighbors were tried for her death.

On Monday March 4, Bridget walked to the house of her father's cousin, Jack Dunne, to deliver some eggs. It was an extremely cold day, and Bridget caught a cold. She spent the next day in bed, and complained of "a raging pain" in her head, and shivers and chills (Bourke 2000, xi, 65). A few days later Jack Dunne came to visit, and, upon seeing the markedly ill Bridget in bed, said "That is not Bridgie" (Bourke 2000, 70). Jack Dunne was well acquainted with fairy folklore, and tales of fairy abductions and changelings, and the remedies and protections against them— as was Bridget's own mother. By March 9, Bridget's condition had worsened, and she told her cousin Johanna Burke that she thought she'd caught another cold. Despite the rain and cold, Bridget's father Patrick Burke walked four miles to the doctor's and asked him to come (Bourke 2000, 71). When the doctor hadn't come by the following Monday, March 11, Bridget's husband Michael walked four miles to Fethard and requested that the doctor come, and then, again, with a more forceful summons in hand from the local health authority, he made the trip again on Wednesday March 13. He also requested that the priest visit. While Michael Cleary was out, the doctor arrives and examines Bridget; he describes her as "nervous," and prescribes some medicine. The priest gives her the last rites, just in case.

Michael Cleary, in the meantime, concerned, perhaps even despondent over his wife's condition, has gone back to the doctor. On his way back, he purchases some herbs from a woman in Fethard that were said to be efficacious as a fairy remedy. At the trial Bridget's cousin Johanna Burke testified that when Michael Cleary told Jack Dunne that he'd purchased herbs as a remedy against fairies, Jack Dunne said: "It is not your wife is there. You will have enough to do to bring her back" (Bourke 2000, 82).

The next day, Thursday March 14, Michael Cleary went to another herbalist; this time, to the locally known "fairy doctor" Dennis Ganey. He purchased more herbs as a "fairy cure." Traditionally a remedy for someone "taken" by fairies is to boil specific herbs in "new" milk (new milk has properties associated with purification), and then the mixture administered to the patient, which Michael Cleary did. According to the testimony of Johanna Burke, she and William Simpson, and his wife Minnie, met outside of the Cleary's door that evening.

Witness asked for admittance, but Michael Cleary said they would not open the door. While they remained outside they stood at the window. They heard someone inside saying: "Take it, you bitch, or 'witch.' When the door was opened, witness went in and saw Dunne and three of the Kennedys holding Mrs. Cleary down on her bed by her hands and feet, and her husband was giving her herbs and milk in a spoon out of a saucepan. They forced her to take the herbs, and Cleary asked her: 'Are you [Bridget] Boland, the wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of God?" She answered it once or twice, and her father asked a similar question. Michael Cleary [witness thought] then threw a certain liquid on his wife. They put the question to her again, and she [refused] to repeat the words after them. John Dunnne then said: "Hold her over the fire, and she will soon answer." Dunne, Cleary and P. Kennedy then lifted Mrs. Cleary off the bed, and placed her in a kind of sitting position over the kitchen fire, which was a slow one. Mrs Cleary had greatly changed. She seemed to be wild and deranged, especially while they were so treating her (Folklore 1895, 374).

This was the third dose of the herbs in milk; earlier, before Johanna Burke and the Simpsons arrive, Bridget had been forced to swallow two earlier doses, encouraged to do so by being threatened with a hot poker, a poker which left a small burn mark on her forehead (Bourke 2000, 91). Fire, particularly applied to iron, is a traditional method of warding off a fairy, or frightening a changeling into leaving so that the "real" person can return. The "certain liquid" was urine, traditionally believed to force the changeling to flee; Bridget was repeatedly doused with human urine. The neighbor, Michael Simpson, testified that after the third dose of herbs, while Bridget was still lying on the bed, the men "holding her arms on both side, and her head, they lifted her body and wound it backwards and forwards" (Bourke 2000, 92).

On the morning of Friday March 15th, Michael Clary fetched the priest, who performed mass in Bridget's bedroom, where Bridget was lying in bed. That night, according to Johanna Burke's testimony, Bridget was dressed, and brought to the kitchen, where, Johanna says

Her father, my brother and myself, and deceased and her husband sat at the fire. They were talking about the fairies, and Mrs. Cleary said to her husband, "Your mother used to go with the fairies, and that is why you think I am going with them." He asked her, "Did my mother tell you that?" She said, "She did; that she gave two nights with them." I made tea, and offered Bridget Cleary a cup of it. Her husband got three bits of bread and jam, and said she should eat them before she should take a sup. He asked her three times: "Are you Bridget Cleary, my wife, in the name of God?" She answered twice, and ate two pieces of bread and jam. When she did not answer the third time he forced her to eat the third bit, saying, "If you won't take it, down you will go." He flung her on the ground, put his knee on her chest, one hand on her throat, and forced the bit of bread and jam down her throat, saying "Swallow it. Is it down? Is it down?" . . . I said, "Mike, let her alone, don't you see it is Bridget that is in it" meaning that it was Bridget his wife, and not the fairy, for he suspected that it was a fairy and not his wife that was there. Michael Cleary then stripped his wife's clothes off, except her chemise, and got a lighting stick out of the fire. She was lying on the floor, and he held it near her mouth (Folklore 1895 373-76).

Johanna Burke testified that she heard Bridget's head strike the floor, and then a scream. Her chemise, we learn from the inquest and trial, was ordinary calico; it would have caught fire quite quickly. Mary Kennedy, who was in the back bedroom, rushed to the kitchen where she saw Bridget Cleary lying on the hearth, her clothing on fire. According to Mary Kenndy's testimony, Michael Cleary said "Hannah, I believe she is dead." It is at this point that Mary Kennedy saw Michael Cleary reach for the lamp from the table, and drench his wife with paraffin oil, until she was consumed with flames.

James Kennedy testified that when he cried out to Michael Cleary "For the love of God, don't burn your wife!" Cleary replied:

She's not my wife. . . . She's an old deceiver sent in place of my wife. She's after deceiving me for the last seven or eight days, and deceived the priest today too, but she won't deceive anyone any more. As I beginned it with her, I will finish it with her! . . . You'll soon see her go up the chimney! (Bourke 2000, 124).

According to court testimony, at about 2 am the following morning, Michael Cleary asked Johanna Burke's brother, Patrick Kennedy, to help bury Bridget's twisted, and partially incinerated corpse. They wrapped the body in a sheet and carried to a boggy area about a quarter of a mile from Bridget's home. On the 22nd of March, after a week of speculation, newspaper reports, and intensive searching, the Royal Irish Constables discovered the body in a shallow grave. In the intervening time, Michael Cleary, once in the company of his father in law and neighbors, spent three nights at the fairy rath at Kylenagranagh, convinced that he would see his wife emerge on a white horse, at which point he would cut her free, and rescue her from the fairies, much as Janet rescued Tam Lin.

I am absolutely positive that Michael Cleary, and most of not all of the relatives and neighbors who, like Michael, served time for their part in Bridget Cleary's death, genuinely believed that Bridget Cleary had been taken by the fairies just as Heurodis was taken by fairies in Sir Orfeo. But I think that there are characteristics or aspects of this tragedy that would have provided cause for that belief, in the context of traditional fairy folklore. I've already cited MacAllister Stone's definition of Other as

a term to describe the phenomenon of the outsider, particularly in fiction, who represents some kind of threat to the community—but often, also serves as the agent for the community's salvation/redemption.

Bridget Cleary very much was an outsider in the tiny community of Ballyvadlea. She was attractive, and forthright, with a reputation for a quick wit, a sharp tongue, and a direct gaze—none of which were common characteristics of young Irish Catholic women in Ballyvadlea. Her wardrobe was much more fashionable than that of her peers, not unreasonable given her talent as a milliner. In addition to her income from sewing, Bridget, like most other women, kept hens, and sold their eggs; egg money, like milk money, was traditionally the property and income of women. Bridget was, then, fairly well off, and hence more independent because of it.

She was known to go for long walks in order to deliver eggs, and to visit the fairy fort at nearby Kylenagranagh. These "fairy forts," or raths, are remnants of neolithic structures that dot the landscape of Ireland, where they are still seen as dangerous, liminal places, places frequented by fairies in search of mortal game and prey. Moreover, Bridget was married to a man who was nine years older than her, and, at the time of her death, though they had been married for eight years, they had no children; this would be very much seen as odd in an era and culture where women were valued for their fecundity, and men for their ability to get children and hence heirs to work the land in their own turn. In her extremely thoughtful study of Bridget Cleary, Angela Bourke observes "A suggestion that [Bridget] was away with the fairies was a serious reflection on [Michael Cleary] and on their marriage" (Bourke 2000, 96). Bourke builds a careful and well-supported case for Bridget as an outsider in Ballyvadlea, a woman who didn't know her place, a woman who might even have had a lover, a suggestion that emerged early in the court testimony, but was soon dropped.

In my next post, I'm going to look at the story of Bridget Cleary in terms of fairies as other, and in the context of sex, and death. If you want to read more, and you have access to JStor, here are some references to match my citations.

Bourke, Angela. "Reading a Woman's Death: Colonial Text and Oral Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland." Feminist Studies. Vol. 21, No. 3. (Autumn, 1995): 553-586. JStor link.
Bourke. Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary. New York: Viking Penguin, 2000. This really is the best study; there's another slightly more recent book that's vastly inferior.
"The 'Witch-Burning' at Clonmel." Folklore. Vol. 6, No. 4. (Dec., 1895): 373-384. JStor link.. This is an anonymous article that reprints the newspaper coverage of the court testimony.

Technorati Tags:fairy-as-other

Medieval Fairies as Other

Lisa Spangenberg — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 05:00:00 +0000

MacAllister Stone has been posting a series about the roles of the other in spec fic. You can find Part I Magical Negroes, expendable queers, and other well-worn tropes here, Part II here, and Part III, or, The Magical Other here. Part IV is likely to appear real soon now, but I wanted to pick up on two observations MacAllister makes that particularly intrigued me because they deal with the role of fairies as the other in medieval literature. It's something I've been thinking about quite a lot.

First, MacAllister defines Other as

a term to describe the phenomenon of the outsider, particularly in fiction, who represents some kind of threat to the community—but often, also serves as the agent for the community's salvation/redemption.

The best example of medieval fairy other I know of is the c. 1400 Middle English anonymous poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Green Knight rides into King Arthur's hall on New Year's day, while the court is at table. He rides a horse that, while elaborately caprisoned and saddled, is entirely green, as is the equally expensively garbed and very large knight. The knight has green hair, green skin, and green clothes, bears a giant axe in one hand, and a holly bob in the other, and is shockingly uncanny, and other.

Indeed, the courtiers recognize the Green Knight for what he is, immediately:

For wonder of his hwe men hade,
Set in his semblaunt sene
He ferde as freke were fade (ll. 147-49).

[Cawley translates line as 149 "He behaved like an elvish man" (Everyman 1962, 56). Vantuono has "He acted like an elvish knight" (12 l. 149). Tolkien's translation reads "as a fay-man fell he passed" (1982, 23). Garbáty glosses "were fade" as "were fey"-"He fared as man (that) were fey" (Garbáty 1984, p. 260).]

The courtiers identify the Green Knight, quite correctly, as an otherworld intruder, clued in to his origins in part by his color. Keep in mind that other than being large and very green, the Green Knight is in no way monstrous; he is in fact quite a handsome figure. Having identified the intruder as what Professor Carnicelli called "a big green fairy," they then begin to contemplate the meaning of his arrival "For vch mon had meruayle quat hit mene myȝt / Þat a haþel and a horse myȝt such a hwe lach, / As growe grene as þe gres" (ll. 233-35).

Al studied þat þer stod, and stalked hym nerre
Wyþ al þe wonder of þe worlde what he worch schulde.
For fele sellyez had þay sen, bot such neuer are;
Forþi for fantoum and fayryȝ e þe folk þere hit demed (SGGK ll. 232-240).

To the courtiers and serving folk, waiting in the hall, the Green Knight is not just clearly other, he's fairy other. They're not an unsophisticated audience, either; they've seen other sellys, other marvels, but he is very very different, and quite clearly a magical creature; "for fantoum and fayryȝ e þe folk þere hit demed" (SGGK l. 240). They are cautious and silent, wary of risking the dangers of speech with something so different. Consequently, they're not terribly surprised when the Green Knight issues his bizarre challenge and invites any of the knights to take the axe he carries and strike off his head, in return for the promise to allow the Green Knight to return the favor a year and a day later. Nonetheless, when Gawain takes him up on the challenge, and the Green Knight picks up his severed head where the courtiers have been kicking it around under the table, and rides off, they're pretty sure that Gawain is for it when he has his rendezvous to receive the Green Knight's return blow in a year and a day at the mysterious Green Chapel. The court watches on All Souls Day the following November 1 as Gawain departs in search of the Green Knight and the Green Chapel. They lament that Gawain is to be "Hadet wyþ an aluisch mon, for angardez pryde" (l. 681 ).

The courtiers have good reason to assume the worse; not only because the Green Knight can happily survive decapitation, but because, well, he's a fairy. Fairies and otherworld folk in general are dangerous in the extreme, prone to kidnap mortals simply because the mortals were in the wrong place at the right time, like Hereudis in Sir Orfeo. She falls asleep under an ympe tree, a grafted fruit tree, in her own orchard around noon, and sees the fairy king and his knights. The king tells her:

"Loke, dame, tomorwe þatow be
Riȝt here vnder þis ympe-tre,
& þan þou schalt wiþ ous go
& liue wiþ ous euermo;
& ȝif þou makest ous ylet,
Whar þou be, þou worst yfet,
& totore þine limes al {f.300vb}
Þat noþing help þe no schal;
& þei þou best so totorn
Ȝete þou worst wiþ ous yborn" (Sir Orfeo ll. 165-74).

Notice that the king explicitly threatens her; if she does not make the assigned rendezvous, and go with the king to the fairy otherworld, she's to be torn limb from and still be taken by the fairies. Despite the best efforts of Orfeo, and his hundred knights, the next day Heurodis is taken from them by the fairies. Despondent, Orfeo resigns his crown, turning his reign over to his steward, and exiles himself as a wanderer with a harp in the wilderness. In his exile he manages to see the fairies engaged in fairy pursuits, including a group of women hawking, with Heurodis a silent member of the party. He follows them "in at a roche," into the otherworld. There, in the otherworld, he sees a chamber of horrors, filled with other mortals taken by the fairies.

. . . Of folk þat were þider ybrouȝt & þouȝt dede, & nare nouȝt.
Sum stode wiþouten hade {f.302ra}
& sum non armes nade
. . .
& sum lay wode, ybounde,
& sum armed on hors sete
& sum astrangled as þai ete
& sum were in water adreynt
. . .
Wiues þer lay on childbedde,
Sum ded, & sum awedde;
& wonder fele þer lay bisides
Riȝt as þai slepe her vndertides.
Eche was þus in þis warld ynome,
Wiþ fairi þider ycome.
(ll. 389-92; 94-97; 99-404).

These are mortals taken in various liminal states. They were not quite dead, nor quite alive, not quite sactified, not quite unfit. These are explicitly, despite the assertions of some, not dead people; they are, the poet tells us, "folk þat were þider ybrouȝt / & þouȝt dede, & nare nouȝt" (ll. 389-90). They are maimed, and wounded, headless, armless, some bound and mad, some armed on horseback, some strangled, some drowned, or burned. There are examples of special liminal cases, too, like wives taken in childbed, as well as those, like Heurodis, taken as they slept in the heat of the day.

Keep in mind that these fairies are the same fairies that, when Heurodis first sees them,

"Al on snowe-white stedes;
As white as milke were her wedes,
Y no seiȝe neuer ȝete bifore
So fair creatours ycore (ll. 145-48).

The fairies who abduct Heurodis are no more monstrous than the Green Knight is, yet they still threaten Heurodis, and take mortals at will. Indeed, their strikingly beautiful appearance marks them as other just as much as the Green Knight's color does. The actions of the fairies, however motivated, or rule-based they may be, appear arbitrary and unmotivated to the mortals of the communities where the fairies intrude. Fairies are capricious, unknowable, and, given the threats made to Heurodis, and the Green Knight's ability to suffer decapitation in good cheer, quite possibly malicious in intent. Certainly they are "other," with all its connotations of dangerous, incomprehensible, and alien. Both the fairies who kidnap Heurodis, and the Green Knight fit MacAllister Stone's definition of other: they are outsiders, and they represent a threat to the community.

I'm going to skip forward about fifteen hundred years in my next post, to look at a fairy otherworld intrusion in nineteenth century Tipperary, Ireland, in 1895, and the burning of Bridget Cleary. My third post is about Bridget Cleary, too, in the context of fairies, sex, death and the other.

In the meantime, here are some links for the curious:

Jesse Weston's prose translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Tolkien and Gordon's Middle English edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Orfeo with text and ms. page images from the Auchinleck ms.
Anne Leskaya and Eve Sedgewick's annotated Middle English edition of Sir Orfeo.
A .pdf of a lightly modernized Sir Orfeo from the Norton Anthology of English Literature

Anniversaries

Lisa Spangenberg — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:45:00 +0000

I created the first version of my Web site, Celtic Studies Resources, on June 1st of 1997. I didn't know any HTML, and the site was a few pages hosted at AOL. You can see what it used to look like, sort of, here. In 1999 Michael bought the digitalmedievalist.com domain for me, and I expanded the site quite a lot. Celtic Studies Resources is ten years old now, and this blog, started in January of 2002, is five.

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Tolkien's 'game with rules',

Lisa Spangenberg — Thu, 17 May 2007 22:13:00 +0000

I've posted my Kalamazoo paper "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Tolkien's 'game with rules'," here, such as it is. There's a handout, too!

Technorati Tags:Gawain, Kalamazoo

Kalamazoo 2007 Schedule

Lisa Spangenberg — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:41:00 +0000

I'm off. I'll present my paper "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Tolkien’s “game with rules" on Thursday morning, in the very first session. I'll put the handout and my transcript up here after the fact. I'll be at the medievalist Blogger breakfast on Friday, and participating in the Saturday 3:30 Weblogs and the Academy roundtable, in Sangren 2210. I'm hoping folks might be interested in adjourning to the Radisson bar post panel.

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Kalamazoo 2007

Lisa Spangenberg — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:47:00 +0000

The 2007 International Congress on Medieval Studies takes place May 10–13, 2007 in Kalamzoo. And I'm going. I'm presenting a paper and participating in a panel discussion on blogging and pedagogy. You can still register, and the schedule of sessions with paper topics has been posted by the fabulous Elizabeth Carnell.

This conference is both genuinely helpful in terms of scholarly information and network, and just plain fun; people are just plain nice at Kalamazoo, for the most part, and it's a lovely campus and a well-run conference.

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Coyote Wild Vol. I issue 1

Lisa Spangenberg — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:33:00 +0000

I'm very very pleased to announce that the inaugural issue of a new speculative fiction, poetry and essays Web zine, Coyote Wild is available. Some lovely pieces; do take a look.

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Luke 2:1 in Gothic

Lisa Spangenberg — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:04:00 +0000

Warth than in dagans jainans. urrann gagrefts fram kaisara Agustau gameljan allana midjungard. soh than gilstrameleins frumista warth at wisandin kindina Swriais raginondin Saurim Kwreinaiau. jah iddjedun allai ei melidai weseina. hwarjizuh in seinai baurg. urrann than jah Iosef us Galeilaia. us baurg Nazaraith in Iudaian. in baurg Daweidis sei haitada Bethlaihaim duthe ei was us garda fadreinais Daweidis. anameljan mith Mariin. sei in fragiftim was imma qeins. wisandein inkilthon. warth than miththanei. tho wesun jainar. usfullnodedun dagos du bairan izai jah gabar sunu seinana thana frumabaur. jah biwand ina jah galagida ina in uzetin. unte ni was im rumis in stada thamma.

Via Jim Marchand, medievalist extraordinaire.

Technorati Tags:xmas

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- In Performance

Lisa Spangenberg — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 02:09:00 +0000

Via YouTube (and thanks to The Spouse) a Sir Gawain and the Green Knight inspired performance. The credits are here. And, there's another whack, so to speak, here.

Technorati Tags:SGGK

CFP K'zoo 2007: Society for Hiberno-Latin Studies

Lisa Spangenberg — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 03:03:00 +0000

The Society's session at the 2007 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 10–13, 2007, "will include papers on all aspects of the Latin literature of medieval Ireland, its monolingual and bilingual texts and manuscripts,as well as one paper on an interdisciplinary topic." Queries and abstracts by Sept. 15, 2006 should be addressed to Jean Rittmueller jeanritt at bellsouth. net.

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Welsh, Cyclists, and Bladder Disease

Lisa Spangenberg — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 19:27:00 +0000

A temporary sign on the side of the road at Barons Court roundabout between Penarth and Cardiff correctly reads "cyclists dismount" in English, but the Welsh translation, "llid y bledren dymchwelyd," isn't, actually, a translation. In fact, strictly speaking, it isn't even Welsh, since the syntax is all wrong. Llid y bledren means "bladder disease," while dymchwelyd means "return." So, ignoring the syntax problem, the sign reads something like "Bladder disease [has] returned." You can read the story and see a picture of the sign here.

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A Psalter in the Bog

Lisa Spangenberg — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 21:33:00 +0000

A driver of a backhoe in Ireland's midlands has discovered a small psalter. He was digging peat for use in commercial potting soil. The tannin in the peat preserved the vellum, or specially prepared cow hide, used to make the medieval manuscript much as the Irish bogs preserve bodies for hundreds of years. Once the backhoe operator realized what he had found, he immediately covered the medieval psalm collection with moist peat, very cleverly preventing it from being destroyed by exposure to air. Bernard Meehan, the curator of manuscripts at Trinity College Library, Dublin (the eventual home of the psalter), said

Initial impressions place the composition date of the manuscript at about 800AD— but how soon after this date it was lost we may never know.

The psalter is bound in leather, with a fairly common style of thick wrap-around leather cover (often compared to a wallet) and contains about twenty large folios, with about 45 letters per line and a maximum of 40 lines per page. The actual ms. is now loose within the cover. When it was found, it was open to Psalm 83, in the Vulgate, or 84, in the modern numbering system (modern English Bibles follow the Masoretic or Hebrew numbering of the Psalms). In other words, it's part of this:

In finem pro torcularibus filiis Core psalmus quam dilecta tabernacula tua Domine virtutum concupiscit et defecit anima mea in atria Domini cor meum et caro mea exultavit in Deum vivum etenim passer invenit sibi; domum et turtur nidum sibi ubi ponat pullos suos altaria tua Domine virtutum rex meus et Deus meus beati qui habitant in domo tua in saecula saeculorum laudabunt te diapsalma beatus vir cui est auxilium abs te ascensiones in corde suo disposuit in valle lacrimarum in loco quem posuit etenim benedictiones dabit legis dator ibunt de virtute in virtutem videbitur Deus deorum in Sion Domine Deus virtutum exaudi orationem meam auribus percipe Deus Iacob diapsalma protector noster aspice Deus et respice in faciem christi tui quia melior est dies una in atriis tuis super milia elegi abiectus esse in domo Dei mei magis quam habitare in tabernaculis peccatorum quia misericordiam et veritatem diligit; Deus gratiam et gloriam dabit Dominus non privabit bonis eos qui ambulant in innocentia Domine virtutum beatus vir qui sperat in te

News reports keep mentioning the Book of Kells, probably because it's the most famous Irish manuscript; a better comparison would be the Cathach of St. Columba, R.I.A. MS 12 R 33, c. A.D. 560-630. This is not the same period as the bog find, but it's a better match in terms of the type of ms. than Kells is. The text of the Psalms is in Latin, but there are glosses and rubrics in Old Irish, making this the earliest extant example of Irish (exclusive of ogham inscriptions). Kells is a huge book, containing the text of the Gospels, and extensively ornamented; not something to be used daily. Kells is and was an exhibition piece; this new find looks to be a working psalter.

UPDATE 8/5/2006: More fragments of the psalter have surfaced in the bog owned by Kevin and Patrick Leonard in Faddan More in north Tipperary. Pieces of the cover, and a leather bag used to carry and protect the book were also located. Some years previously a fine leather bag was located in the same bog, which perhaps lends credence to the current theory that the psalter was deliberately hidden by someone who intended to collect it later, some thousand or so years ago.

Lisa Spangenberg — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:13:00 +0000

Jeffry Jerome Cohen, medievalist and blogger at In the Middle, is on vacation, so guest blogger JKW who usually blogs at Pistols in the Pulpit is filling in. JKW says of himself:

My dissertation, which I’m beginning this summer, is about political language, specifically the language of kingship, in England and Wales in the age of Chaucer.

Thus far he's blogged about Culwch ac Olwen and the implications of the "oldest animals" here.

Technorati Tags:tagtext

John Donne Portrait Appeal Successful

Lisa Spangenberg — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:42:00 +0000

I posted about the National Gallery's efforts to raise funds to purchase a fabulous portrait of John Donne. They raised the funds, and the future of the portrait is secured; you can read about it here. There's also some more background about the painting here.

Technorati Tags:Donne

Rant: Twenty Worst Literary Agents

Lisa Spangenberg — Thu, 25 May 2006 05:13:00 +0000

Absolute Write is both a Web site, and a community for writers. Perhaps the most well-known part of the site is the forum, known as the Absolute Write Water Cooler. Don't try to go there; you can't right now, because of a malicious scammer with a bad temper.

Among other things, the Absolute Write Water Cooler has been vital in informing new and naive writers of various cons and scams, ranging from fake publishers like PublishAmerica, to scam agents who don't actually ever get anything really published by a commercial consumer publisher.

Recently, Absolute Write's Water Cooler had a thread about a list of the Twenty Worst Agents. This list is

a list of the 20 literary agencies about which Writer Beware has received the greatest number of advisories/complaints over the past several years.
None of these agencies has a significant track record of sales to commercial (advance-paying) publishers, and most have virtually no documented and verified sales at all (book placements claimed by some of these agencies turn out to be "sales" to vanity publishers). All charge clients before a sale is made--whether directly, by levying fees such as reading or administrative fees, or indirectly, for editing or other adjunct services.

The original source of the list of worst agents, information which was very very carefully collected, verified, and documented, is another writers' advocacy site, Writer Beware, a service of the Science Fiction Writers of America's Committee on Writing Scams. One of those "agents" is Barbara Bauer, of the Barbara Bauer Literary Agency. On Tuesday May 24, Barbara Bauer made a telephone call to the tiny ISP who hosted Absolute Write, and bullied them into taking the site off-line. You can read all about it here. The ISP blocked access to all of Absolute Write after giving the owner of Absolute Write a mere hour to backup the forum and other files, in response to idiotic threats from Bauer. Threats related to the content of a single thread about the Twenty Worst Agents. Please notice; there was nothing in that thread that was untrue. Bauer really isn't a genuine, successful professional agent. I mean, it's not like Barbara Bauer has actually placed real clients with real books with real editors who see that they're published and placed in real stores where people can buy the books. The nonsensical content on her Web site makes it pretty clear that she's totally clueless about publishing and editors.

But right now, Absolute Write is temporarily off the Web, as they seek a new host with some spine and a little nous.

And just because Bauer thinks she's bigger than the Net, I'm going to post Writers Beware's list of the Twenty Worst Agents here.

The Abacus Group Literary Agency
Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to "book doctor" Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
Benedict & Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
Sherwood Broome, Inc.
Desert Rose Literary Agency
Arthur Fleming Associates
Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
Brock Gannon Literary Agency
Harris Literary Agency
The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:

Children's Literary Agency
Christian Literary Agency
New York Literary Agency
Poets Literary Agency
The Screenplay Agency
Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency)
Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)

Martin-McLean Literary Associates
Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
B.K. Nelson, Inc.
The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency and Simply Nonfiction)
Southeast Literary Agency
Mark Sullivan Associates
West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

Technorati Tags:BarbaraBauer, Top 20 Worst Agents

Weblog Roundtable at Kalamazoo 2006

Lisa Spangenberg — Mon, 08 May 2006 16:43:00 +0000

Shana Worthen did an excellent job of moderating the roundtable discussion, with fellow bloggers Elisabeth Carnell, Michael Drout, Richard Nokes, Michael Tinkler, Alison Tara Walker, (the moderator of the Medieval Studies Community), and me, as participants in a discussion that ranged over why we started blogging, why we blog now, what blogging offers that other forms of online interaction don't, why we think blogging is important to medievalists, the value of anonymous blogging, and the uses of blogging in terms of scholarship and pedagogy.

The observations made included the following, in no particular order, and without attribution:

We all appear to find value in the existence of, and contributions, of, anonymous bloggers.
Several panelists suggested that often the anonymous bloggers were able to say things that they would say if they felt they could, but that for professional or personal reasons they could not.
All of the panelists spoke about the community aspects of blogging. The Medieval Studies Community is a conscious effort to create a community of medievalists to share information, ranging from calls for papers, to questions from students contemplating a medieval studies program or graduate school, to requests for resource suggestions or research help.
Several panelists mentioned advantages of a Web log over other digital forms of communication, like email, listserves or static Web pages.

Entries are published and archived and may be read when the user finds it convenient.
The use of categories or tags to describe individual posts in the archives makes it easy to search for a particular post, or all posts on a specific topic.
At least one panelist mentioned using a Web log as a way to store and annotate links, making it easy to share them and use them from any computer.

Several participants spoke about using Web logs as teaching tools.

The use of Comments on Posts/Entries allows students to communicate with each other, as well as with the instructor (the resulting conversation is often easier to follow than it would be on a discussion board, says this poster).
When it's possible to make the Web log (or Wiki) public, students become engaged with their writing and take it more seriously than they might if it were merely written to satisfy a requirement.
Several people spoke about the value of Web logs in making scholarly contacts, sometimes leading to collaboration or, quite frequently, resource sharing.
The use of blogging systems (Blogger, MovableType, TypePad, Live Journal or any number of others) makes it easy to mix text and images on a page, an excellent way to teach art history or other image-reach subjects.

One of the things I found most interesting about the roundtable was that, although I had linked to, and read, and sometimes even commented on, the blogs of all the participants, I'd never actually met most of them before Kalamazoo. Meeting people I read with my coffee every day was one of the highlights of the conference, even though I missed Really Good Coffee.

I'm still very very tired, so I'm hoping that others will comment to fill in the enormous gaps I've left in my much truncated summary. And I'll likely be adding links later.

Update:You can read Michael Drout on the roundtable here. Shana Worthen posted here, Cranky Professor here, and Richard Nokes of Unlocked Wordhoard here. Another Damned Medievalist also comments on the panel.

Technorati Tags:Kalamazoo, Medieval bloggers

Celtic Wine

Lisa Spangenberg — Fri, 05 May 2006 02:52:00 +0000

The drink of choice among the wealthy is wine brought from Italy or the region of Massalia. It is normally drunk unmixed with water, although sometimes water is added.

Athaneus (fl. c. C. E. 200) Deipnosophistae trans. Phillip Freeman. (John T. Koch and John Carey eds. The Celtic Heroic Age. Celtic Studies Publications:
Maldon, MA, 1995).

There are a number of similar references in Classical sources to the Celts' fondness for wine. Most references emphasize that the wine was unwatered, and that drunkenness was common. Drunkenness is one of the most common slurs cast at any "barbarians, yet there does seem to be some corroborating evidence regarding Celtic fondness for wine. There are the many amphorae found pretty much everywhere the Celts were found, including Britain.

And now, thanks to Luca Sormani, from Como, and Fulvio Pescarolo, from Robbio near Milan, both part of Italy's northern region, you can buy a replica clay wine flask containing 80 centilitres of Uinom Laevum made with ancient recipes from grapes grown on a farm using ancient Celtic agricultural methods, and ancient Celtic for 140-160 euros ($170-$195). You can read Reuters' take on the story here.

The Celts in question are the Insubri, the Boii and the Senoni, who migrated to the northerm Italian area known as Liguria (as in the Continental Celtic langauge Ligurian) during Rome's Tarquin era, around 500 B. C. E. The region is the same area where the real Lambrusco is made. The techniques used to make the wine are based on the "Arbustum Gallicum" described by Roman historian Columella, in De Re Rustica. The soil, deposited by river, is sandy, and swampy, creating very specific growing conditions. There's a reasonable description of the horticultural methods, in particular the way the vines are deliberately kept low, and the use of wooden casks (a Celtic innovation) here, in Italian.

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Gawain and Gough

Lisa Spangenberg — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 04:34:00 +0000

In a 1990 seminar Derek Pearsall made a passing reference to the Gough Map, in a discussion of the journey Gawain makes across the realm of Logres, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The Gough Map is the oldest surviving road map of Great Britain, dating from around 1360. It's roughly oblong in shape, made of two pieces of vellem, and is half map and half sketch. Not much is known about its provenance; the map was given to the Bodleian library in 1809 by its owner, Richard Gough. The dating is based on the inks and materials used to make the map, and on the place names.

691. Now rideȝ þis renk þurȝ þe ryalme of Logres,
692. Sir Gauan, on Godeȝ halue, þaȝ hym no gomen þoȝt.
693. Oft leudleȝ alone he lengez on nyȝtez
694. Þer he fonde noȝt hym byfore þe fare þat he lyked.
695. Hade he no fere bot his fole bi fryþez and dounez,
696. Ne no gome bot God bi gate wyþ to karp,
697. Til þat he neȝed ful neghe into þe Norþe Walez.
698. Alle þe iles of Anglesay on lyft half he haldez,
699. And farez; ouer þe fordez by þe forlondez,
700. Ouer at þe Holy Hede, til he hade eft bonk
701. In þe wyldrenesse of Wyrale; wonde þer bot lyte
702. Þat auþer God oþer gome wyþ goud hert louied.
703. And ay he frayned, as he ferde, at frekez þat he met,
704. If þay hade herde any karp of a knyȝt grene,
705. In any grounde þeraboute, of þe grene chapel;
706. And al nykked hym wyþ nay, þat neuer in her lyue
707. Þay seȝe neuer no segge þat watz of suche hwez

Thanks to the exceedingly excellent S. Worthen, I know about the exceedingly excellent interactive version of the Gough map.

Technorati Tags:Gawain Gough

Gift Music Meme

Lisa Spangenberg — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 18:51:00 +0000

This is the first meme I've created; I'd been thinking about it for a while, and with help and collusion from my friend MacAllister Stone, I think I've figured out how it might work. Won't you play too?

The purpose of this meme is to gift a friend with a single song you've chosen from the iTunes store, and to have the friend blog about the song, and, if they like tag one or more of their friends. You have to have Apple's free iTunes software for Mac or Windows to use the iTunes store.

Pick one or more of your friends who listens to digital music; preferably someone who already has iTunes and an iTunes account, and who has a blog or Live Journal or something similar.

Songs are .99 cents on iTunes; if people want to send MP3s directly, that's up to them, but post the song title, artist, and album anyway. I suspect it's possible to do this with other music services, but I don't know. There are also lots of good sources for free music on the net; feel free to use those, or to publicize indie artists you like a lot. Oh, and there are free songs at Amazon too.

Select the song you want to give.
Post this meme on your blog or Live Journal, and list your friends, the songs you've chosen for them, (keep the song a secret until after you friend receives it, if you'd like), a link to their blog, and these instructions. Feel free to add a comment about why you chose the song.
Purchase the single song for each friend, one at a time, (that is don't buy three songs for three friends.) If you want to use the iTunes store Give music feature, find the song, then click the Gift button that's included in the link for the album the song is on (near the top); then click the Gift button for that song. When you check out, you'll be shown a form with spaces for your name, your friend's name and email address, and a short message. This will be emailed to your friends, with instructions about how to download their gift songs. Use the message to send them a link to the permalink for your blog post about the meme so they'll know to blog about the song. Use "Gift music" as the Tag if you tag posts.
If you decide to "gift back" someone who tags you, please also tag someone else, so we can have a variety of musical tastes, journals, and people.

Troubleshooting: You do need to have the iTunes application installed before you try to download the song; it wouldn't hurt to have it open either. If the URL in the email from the iTunes store doesn't seem to work, try copying it, line by line to a new document, deleting any return characters or extra spaces your email program may have inserted as it "broke" the URL into separate lines.

I'm tagging the following innocent victims:

MacAllister Stone "John Barleycorn" by Traffic from John Barleycorn
Ancrene Wiseass "Portland, Oregon" by Loretta Lynn from Van Lear Rose

Updated: I've managed to find songs for some other people--that's both hard and fun--so here are some others I'm tagging:

Dori Smith"Come on a My House" by Rosemary Clooney from 16 Most Requested Songs: Rosemary Clooney
Kip Manley "Avanti" by Corvax Corus from Mille Anni Passi Sunt

gift music meme

National Gallery John Donne Portrait Appeal

Lisa Spangenberg — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:48:00 +0000

There aren't that many portraits of John Donne, and one of the best, the one you see here, has been in various private collections and less than accessible. This portrait was painted in Donne's twenties, around the 1590s, the period when Jonson said "Donne wrote wrote all his best poetry," the era in which we think most of the love poetry was written. The portrait was almost certainly done with Donne's supervision. It's Donne done as a melancholy lover, complete with disheveled and pricey expensive lace collars undone, and a Latin epigram. Donne is wearing an exceedingly romantic black floppy hat, and there's a certain earnest directness to his gaze that suggests the suffering lover. You can read about the portrait here, and you should because it's interesting.

This is more than likely the portrait Donne described in his will and left to Robert Ker, later 1st Earl of Ancrum (1578–1654):

I give to my honourable and faithful friend Mr Robert Karr of his Majesties Bedchamber that Picture of myne wch is taken in Shaddowes and was made very many yeares before I was of this profession [i.e. a minister].

England's National Portrait Gallery is trying to raise funds to buy the protrait for the Gallery's collection. You can read about the appeal here, and donate, very easily even from North America. The National Portrait Gallery must raise £1,652,000 by the end of May.

While I'm on the topic of Donne, I want to point to this nifty .pdf chart you can download and print: John Donne on Maps and the Microcosm. There's even intelligent commentary. It's an effective and nicely done exploration of the two motifs, and quite useful in teaching. The broadsheet is a production of the University of Wisconsin's The History of Cartography Project, which has a series of downloadable broadsheets on "Literary Selections on Cartography."

The First Annual Kalamazoo Bloggers' Guild Meeting: What Say Ye?

Lisa Spangenberg — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 16:24:00 +0000

Dr. V and Ancrene Wiseass are beginning to plan the First Annual Kalamazoo Bloggers' Guild Meeting, but they're running into some logistic difficulties and would like your input on several matters. To wit:

If you're thinking of coming, please let them know in the comments thread here. If you're thinking of bringing a friend, colleague, significant other, familiar, or minion, please let them know that as well. We'd like to get a sense of how large the gathering will be.
We've been told that it would be best to meet early in the conference so's we can keep meeting and greeting over the weekend. This means we should probably aim to converge on either Thursday or Friday evening. Which night would you prefer, and what time frame would be best?
The location of our guild-hall has yet to be determined, and we'd very much appreciate your suggestions. The shelter in the park near the pond is one possibility, but we'd have to cross our fingers and hope for good weather. Any other nominations?

N.B. I'm planning to be there. I know Ancrene Wiseass and Dr. V. are sensitive to issues of anonymity, so do feel free to let them know, even privately, if you can attend. As for me, I'm blind as a bat, and currently semi-deaf, and can't remember faces, but please do introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you.

Technorati Tags:Blogging Kalamazoo

Using Medieval Latin: A Toolbox of Resources

Lisa Spangenberg — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 04:27:00 +0000

I know the author is planning an update, but I wanted to point to the exceedingly helpful collection of annotated and explained resources by Dr. Carol Dana Lanahm: Using Medieval Latin: A Toolbox of Resources.

Technorati Tags:Latin