Ugh! Well Beidh me ag déanamh Joint Honours sa Gaeilge and sa Stair Maidir leis na "modúls" ar siúl táim saghas craiceáilte!
Béarla anois:
There was a module on "An Gearrscéal" which I really wanted to do but it clashes with History and I'm fairly p**sed off about it and there's no way there will be a change in the time table. So my module selection, for Irish has become slightly limited and the modules this year are focussed more on Older Irish.There was one that I thought I'd enjoy:
GA2003 Filíocht na hOchtú hAoise Déag
Ábhar an Mhodúil: Baineann an modúl seo le bláthú mór na filíochta aiceanta san ochtú haois déag. Pléitear na cineálacha éagsúla filíochta a fhaightear sna foinsí, cén áit agus conas a saothraíodh iad. Pléitear an idé-eolaíocht Sheacaibíteach a sholáthair an cúlra don fhilíocht pholaitiúil, agus go háirithe don Aisling, agus déantar staidéar speisialta ar shaothar Aodhagáin Uí Rathaille agus ar Chúirt Bhriain Merriman.

I thought it would be interesting as it deals with Cuairt an Mhéan Oíche, but I was in the college bookshop today and picked up the book and my immediate impression was of fear! I might'nt have a clue understanding it at all.

The thing is I don't have much experience with older Irish, and some people have said it's a bit of an acquired taste. I'm finding it very difficult to make decisions, would there be anyone there who could offer advise?

I have made decisions on a few modules:
Logaimníocht na Gaeilge; which I think will be very interesting
Stair na Teanga; I did it anuraidh and found it very interesting.

I need to pick two more;
these two seem somewhat interesting-
GA2032 Tús Staidéir ar Scéalaíocht na Sean-Ghaeilge
GA2006 Litríocht Bhéil na Gaeilge

Do you go to school in Cork? Well, dear Unregistrated Guest, I would try the course with Merriman--I enjoyed reading his poem (with an English crib) and you would have much more of a clue understanding it "straight" than I had.

You are living a dream I had 10 years ago!

I guess there are also Irish people in Ireland who really want to go to San Francisco and study Beat Poetry--ho-hum.

Good luck with those "awful" choices.

Are you being sarcastic?:)
"dream"? "awful"?

No, not really. I just think you are pretty lucky to have those particular "problems". I suppose I was attempting to be lightly humourous.

But I was definitely not being humourous about taking a battery of Irish modules. That is only an dream for me. Such things don't exist in the US. I would positively love it. No sarcasm.

At times I forget how bad internet communication is at conveying nuance. An essentially anonymous and "instant" medium does not register nuance well. Maybe it was "smiley face" time.

My apologies. : )

But I wouldn't miss Merriman if I were you.

No that's okay don't worry, I wasn't offended or anything!:) I was just teasing you:)
You're perhaps right that appreciate the opportunites that are in front of me! It's just I have alot of decisions to make about History as well, so sometimes work can kinda overwhelm me!:) I assume there are good books available on it?

I thought there might have been some teasing going on. But one is never sure in the Twilight Cyber-Zone.

Anyways, there are some very good essays on it and many English translations (if you want to cheat. I used Patrick Powers translation of 1986).

But even better there is one brilliant web page on the "Cúirt an Mheán Oiche" by Mr. Nollaig Ó Fathaigh:

http://www.showhouse.com/welcome.html

Do you need all this help? Well, a major expert on the poem, Seán Ó Tuama, has this to say about the poem:

"It is a mammoth readable achievement with little need of gloss.” (Brian Merriman and His Court, Seán Ó Tuama, pg. 158)

Glosses!--we don't need no stinking glosses!

I think that quote comes from an essay in Ó Tuama's book "Repossessions". I don't mean the one about the stinking glosses. But it can also be found in the journal "Irish University Review". Proper cites are included in the bibliography at the the Ó Fathaigh website. He even has the text in the pre-standardized version! Only Windows though, no Macs--drats!

One thing Mr. Ó Fathaigh did not include is that there is a brand new translation of poem by the poet Ciaron Carson, published by Wake Forest University this year.

I studied History as an undergrad. My finishing thesis was a psycho-history of Patrick Pearse (that's not as bad as it sounds).

For my Law degree thesis I wanted to do a "Linguistic Anthropological Analysis of Central Concepts in Old Irish Law--but my advisor put his foot down on that one--he thought it would be much worse than it sounded. I was probably over my head, but they would have never figured it out!

The two other courses look very interesting, with the Sean-Ghaeilge looking a bit heavy. Are you good running the bull with poetry? I have found that profs tend to give one a bit of slack with the interpretation of poetry, but I have no idea how it would go in Irish, or in an Irish university. If you feel comfortable with poetry, I would take the course. If you don't, I would skip it for something else.

Well, is that more than you ever wanted to know about the Merryman's poem?

I posted 2 times--ARGH! I need more RAM!
Your courses look very UCC. Are they?

(Message edited by William on August 06, 2006)

Yes they are:) Did you go there?:)
You did History too, small world!:)
Pycho-history of Patrick Pearse, that sounds fascinating, did you come to any conclusions?
I don't mind Poetry, I mean I enjoy Nuala Ní Domhnaill's alot and we only did some of Seán Ó'Riordán's An Stoirm, Claustrophia but I found them very atmospheric and gripping. When I'm reading I'm more usually likely to pick up a novel or a short story rather than a poetry book. The reason I thought it would be interesting is that it is one of most important works in Irish Poetry and I remember my Irish teacher speak about Brian Merriman poetry etc and how rivetting she found it, that's why I was intrigued. You seem to have experience with Irish is Sean-Gaeilge tough?

No, unfortunately I have not gone to UCC. : ( I keep track of many of the university course offerings in Ireland to get a flavour of how the scholarship is developing--since my main interests are Irish history and Irish. On occasion they have useful bibliographic sources attached.

I suppose I am also dreaming of the time when I win the lottery, jump the continent, and study for a Masters or Doctorate in History in Ireland.

I came more to a conclusion on psycho-history than on Pearse. I find the approach often petty and verging on gossip. But I did not tell that to the professor--since psycho-history was his specialty!

Pearse has had the great misfortune to have had the major biography written about him penned by someone who is essentially hostile to him--I mean Ruth Dudley Edwards. The book reads as if it was written with a permanent sneer on the author's face. I used to cringe at some of the things she came up with, and then alternately laugh because some of her statements were so absurd.

She uses what I would call “Freudian tools” to accomplish much of the character assassination. This is right up the alley of the psycho-historians--at least the bad ones--not my professor

I didn’t take that approach. I located Pearse's motivations in the cultural environment of the time. He was deeply religious and steeped in the Irish Saga tradition that gripped the imagination of many intellectuals with the flourishing of the Irish Literary Revival. And unlike Yeats, he really knew the sources--he had Irish. I concluded that these two factors had more to do with his espousal of the "blood sacrifice" concept than with some imagined self-castration complex warping his judgement.

As a relevant aside, I think it is interesting that one historian, Brian P. Murphy, has identified one of the main spearheads of the Easter Rising to be one particular branch of the Gaelic League at the turn of the century--the Keating Branch. All sorts of trouble-makers congregated around Irish in that branch. The rest of the the Gaelic League was on the conservative side politically.

Merriman is good--and funny at the same time. I know it may sound weird, but I think it would be worthwhile to memorize the entire poem. People don't do things like that anymore, but they should. When W. H. Auden was teaching Dante he made all his students memorize several Cantos of the Divne Comedy--in Italian. They bitched and griped about it, but later they thanked him.

Since you do have an active interest in the poem, maybe you should take the course. You would be the best type of student for it.

My experience with Sean-Ghaeilge is limited. But that doesn’t stop me from trying! I have managed to build up a small, but powerful, reference library in Old Irish that rivals the collection of the local university. I used to put myself to sleep at bed-time by reading Kim McCone’s Old Irish Verb--that book is like 3 million sheep between paste-boards.

My proposal for the Law thesis on Old Irish was more to scare the Law profs than anything else. They sure tried to scare me with all that recitation play-acting stuff they like to go through. Though if my Latin was better and my paleography was existent, I would love to take a crack at that subject--how the grammatical structure of Old Irish affects the nature of the concepts employed in the corpus of the Old Irish law material.

Poetry is special thing for me too, not something I read everyday. And since i insist on it reading aloud--it is also source of possible annoyance for the un-poetic minded within hearing range.

Those are some good poets you mentioned. Have read anything by Biddy Jenkinson? I have only seen one poem by her but I liked it a lot.

A real favorite of mine is Sorley MacLean--Scottish Gaelic yes, but people in Ireland used to mob his poetry readings when he was alive--so the story goes.

And there is Caitlin Maude. I found an old vinyl (is that how you spell it?) album of her singing some of her poems and I enjoyed it greatly--even though I had to borrow someone's turntable thingee.

I'm glad you came to that conclusion about psycho-history, to me it's all rubbish. I don't know if you heard but there was a book released a few months ago claiming that DeValera and other leading figures in Irish History including Robert Emmet, had Auspergers Syndrome. They had no clear proof of this at all. No Doctor's Diagnosis, nothing. It was just speculation and in some of the tabloids here they have claimed that Pearse was either a homosexual or a paedophile, all as you said based on gossip. I think that psycho-history is nothing to be paid serious attention to at all.


I don't know if I have serious interest in the poem, I know that it is very important in the language, and one of the major works. My father said it was about women castrating men, is that right? I used to think that it was about "A Lady of the Night" paying a gentleman a visit.
I haven't read anything by Biddy Jenkinson, although I'm aware that like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill she is one of leading female poets in the language.
I have read a little by Caitlin Maude, we did "An Lasair Choille" for Leaving Certificate, I don't know if you've read it, it's about entrapment and freedom, some of her common themes.

Hmm.... so maybe I should do that, I was thinking that I might take Litríocht Bhéil na Gaeilge, I felt a bit worried as I had done An Léann Dúchais last year and thought I was being lazy, but it might be interesting as the Professor that's doing it is very good, (lectured us last year) and it might easy things a bit if I'm taking on all new other modules.

Where are you from?:)

A chairde,

I've been enjoying this discussion and I hope you won't be minding someone else writing here. Psycho history is a pile of crap that really should be religated to the psudo/science reject pile along with uegenics and frenology (that thing whare you figure out about people by the ridges and design of their skull.). I don't get why people thought Froyd was so great anyway.

And as for making up stuff about historical figures and writing it in fancy journals, especially not-so-nice things, sure and people need to get a life and not suppose so much about others who can't confirm or deny accusations due to death.

Beir bua agus beannacht

Exactly, I feel it's lazy history, it's just not history really, especially when certain figures have been dead for years, it's ridiculous.

"When W. H. Auden was teaching Dante he made all his students memorize several Cantos of the Divne Comedy--in Italian."

I've read that Michaelangelo had the entire thing memorized...all three volumes.

I've found both as a teacher and in trying to teach myself Irish that some of the older, more boring ways of learning material (rote, memorization, drills, etc) give the richest yield to those most committed to the goal.

quote:

I've found both as a teacher and in trying to teach myself Irish that some of the older, more boring ways of learning material (rote, memorization, drills, etc) give the richest yield to those most committed to the goal.

With just one complete utterance in any language (a proverb, a stanza of a song or poem, a line of dialog) you get a multi-dimensional package of learning:

vocabulary
grammar
syntax
a verb form or two (usually)
and some literature and/or history

... all rolled neatly into one ~ filllte i bpáipéar álainn, agus ribín deas air!

It was Ruth Dudley Edwards who really got the ball rolling on Pearse's private life. I remember this absurd Freudian interpretation of the title of one Pearse's short stories ("An Poll", I think) in her biography of Pearse. It made me laugh when I read it Was she proposing this seriously?

I agree with you and Riona. Psycho-history is mostly rubbish. I have a friend who insists on calling Freud, Sigmund Fraud. He has never been impressed with the Freudian claim to science. But where would the present day rulers of the academy, the post-modernists, be without Freud?--filtered through his evil grand-nephew, Jaques Lacan. They would have nothing to write about.

Well, I think you definitely have enough interest to start. Most students take to poetry the way Dracula takes to garlic.

I think your father is tending toward the psycho-historical interpretation of the poem : )

I see the poem as deeply rooted in the aisling tradtion and even beyond that in the archaic traditions concerning the Goddess of Sovereignty. The course description of GA 2003 mentions it briefly--the aisling tradition. It is overtly political poetry that takes the form of a vision-woman coming to the poet and fortelling a redeemer for Ireland--usually some sort of Stuart.

Some interpreters of the poem emphasize how Merriman was being very different and innovative wtih with the aisling tradtion. I think Seamus Heaney sees it more as "psycho-sexual" than "national-patriotic". He might agree more with your father. I disagee in that I don't think the two can be separated--especially in the Goddess of Sovereignty tradition (But who am I to disagee with a Nobel Prize winner?) The ills that were plaguing Ireland are mentioned in the beginning of the poem. This is traditional aisling material. But some commentators dismiss it as not really being important to the poem. Again, I disagree. I think that catalogue of political ills is an essential part of the poem.

In the Goddress of Sovereignty traditions the sexual and the political were united in one ritual. Though I think the categories of "sexual" and "political" as we know them never entered the experience of the actors in those long lost traditions.

And I see Merriman drawing from that tradition in his own innovative and satirical way.

So if one sees this as an "earth-goddess" calling the shots on what the rulers (men usually) can do, then one might be able to describe the poem as "women castrating men"--symbolically, the Freudian way. But what would the earth-goddess do with a castrated man?

You were not too far off with the "Lady of the Night" idea--in a metaphorical sense. Aoibheall (the fairy queen) does appear to Merriman in a dream. The dream is usually a part of the night. But all that Merriman gets for his dream/aisling is a verdict that he should be beaten (for not fulfilling his relations to the earth-goddess). Kind of the reverse of the usual Lady of the Night scenario. Luckily it was a dream.

Yes, I would agree with Antaine and Dennis on the value of memorization in the literary arts. Not that your professor would make you do that. Getting the classics embedded in your brain makes you a better writer in any language, whatever your classics are.

My favorite poem by Caitlin Maude is "Amhráin Grá Vietnam". Still very relevant today and well worth memorizing. I have never seen "An Lasair Choille". They have recently republished a lot of her work and I have been thinking about getting it.

Right now I am from Seattle, USA. Though my family has moved quite a bit so we are dispersed throughout the country. I did my undergrad and Law degree at Indiana University in the State of Indiana--a big State university, the Harvard of Basketball--at least it used to be!

Well, if you take the plunge with Merriman, you will have to keep us posted on all the poetic developments.

How long do you have to make all your course decisions?

Not until I go back to college really, but I'd rather have an idea now then going back totally blaisé and suddenly putting aload of pressure on myself to decide!
Did you do Irish at University then?:)
Where does the interest with Ireland come from?:)

I guess that's a good question. It reminds me of the title of an article by Thurneysen (of the Old Irish) that I saw somewhere: "Why do Germans study Celtic Philology?" Except I'm not German and I'm not very philological.

It was a process of "reverse rebellion" against my family. My mother is a Kelly and her relatives are always talking up how Irish they are. I just got sick of it. But instead of ignoring the whole thing, I decided to go into it in depth--to see what it was really all about. So I started studying Irish and Irish history on my own, and I got hooked. I wish I could have studied Irish at university, but that is very rare in the US. I also got more and more fascinated with the Easter Rising. It was a unique bridge between the dying Romantism of the 19th century and the emerging forces of Modernism of the 20th. I think it's the most unusual rebellion in history, populated with a cast of personalities that is unequalled in diversity. Labor agitators, women (unusual for the time), poets, mystics, dramatists, mercenaries,occultists and just ordinary folk were all a part of it.

Have you taken any courses with Seán Ó Coileán? There is an interesting article about him in the Lúnasa edition of Beo. Here it is:

http://www.Beo.ie/

So who has been your favorite lecturer in Irish at UCC?

UCC has an interesting Celtic Civilization BA that I would love to take--I would start anywhere they let me.

There was some guy running around Seattle recently who said that he had this degree. I don't how he managed it. He must have a generous trust fund or something.

I just realized that Liam Ó Murchú teaches at UCC. He is THE MAN on Brian Merriman. Is he giving GA 2003? He edited the definitive edition of Merriman's poem. You have to take this course for my sake. : -) If he is indeed giving it, that is.

Yes Liam Ó Murchú is giving the Module, I had Seán Ó'Coiléan this year for Nua-fhilíocht agus Caoineadh Airt Úi Laoghaire, he was excellent, very charismatic and a brilliant teacher. A thing that I enjoyed about him was he was extremely quick to deal with people who were talking, messing or causing disruption for other students. Some had no interest in being there really and it was a relief to have at least one lecturer not stand for any nonsense.
He came into our Ranganna Comhrá one day as our teagascóir was sick. Out of a total of 15 potential, 3 of us showed up. I was the only one who came every week the others didn't care. He spoke to us, and I mentioned that my name was O'Driscoll, and he said (as Gaeilge dar ndóigh) O that's a West Cork name isn't it and then we got onto talking about History, it was great!
The following Monday, he came in and to be honest now, and I don't like saying this but ar aon nós there are some individuals there that shouldn't be there, they have no interest, they talk and annoy others who are interested during the lectures. O'Coileán came in and said that he had attended a Comhrá class and was horrified at attendance, did students care at all anymore, did they realise the time,resources and money involved in organising such classes. He continued on to say that he spoke to students and had a conversation with one about Irish History!:)I
He was a great Lecturer and it's pity I won't have in the years ahead.

My Grandmother was an O'Kelly- BTW:)

What did you do at University?

Oh Sorry forget to answer you,
My favourite Lecturer was Séan Ó'Coiléan and in second place it was Geoffrey Roberts in History for the Age of European Extremes, he was fascinated by the topic he was doing and always tried his utmost to make it interesting and always had his lecturers laid out well.

Here is a not so brief answer to your question if you are still out there in cyber-space, Unregistered Guest of UCC. I alluded to my checked (unfortunately not plaid) academic past above in bits and pieces. I studied Histoy for my BA and then went on to law school to get my JD (Juris Doctor) as they call it here. I tried to drag in Irish history and Irish at every pass with much more success during my days as an undergraduate--the focus on Pearce and 1916 being an example.

The title of that story by Pearse that Ruth Dudley Edwards used to Freudian smear Pearse's character was "Poll an Phíobaire". I have this thing about getting all citations right, something I picked up in law school I think. With that title I guess Pearse was asking for it. I have read that he wanted his literary executor to change the title to "An Uaimh".

Your experience with the not-caring matriculators is probably typical of the undergraduate attitude at many universities. Hey, funnel some of those resources toward me and they would have a fine monograph thrillingly entitiled "A Linguistic Anthropological Investigation of the Key Concepts of Early Irish Law" in about 5 years--maybe. Ah well, undoubtedly it will never be written.

The O'Kellys are indeed everywhere. One of my great-grandmothers was a Welsh immigrant and the Kelly relatives used to tease her mercilessly by calling her "Johnny Bull". There is nothing worse than an enraged Welshwoman.

You find my Unregistered Guest thing very mysterious! Actually I'm a regular board member here- podsers.
I emailed you a few days ago, email me!
p.

Well, that's how you always you posted on this thread, so I thought you wanted to stick with it.

I am not Réics Carló, but I could deduce that your surname was O'Driscoll. Too elementary, my dear Podsers--you revealed it outright. So much for mystery!

I have pretty vicious email filters at MSN, so I will have to go back and check the all the incoming.