Kildare Poems
Encyclopedia
The Kildare Poems are a group of sixteen poems written in an Irish
dialect of Middle English
and dated to the mid-14th century. Together with a second, shorter set of poems in the so-called Loscombe Manuscript, they constitute the first and most important linguistic document of the early development of Irish English in the centuries after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. The sixteen poems have religious and satirical contents. They are preserved in a single manuscript (British Library
, Harley 913), where they are scattered between a number of Latin and Old French texts. The conventional modern designation "Kildare poems" refers both to the town of Kildare
in Ireland, which has been proposed as their likely place of origin, and to the name of the author of at least one of the poems, who calls himself "Michael (of) Kildare" (Frere Michel Kyldare). The poems have been edited by W. Heuser (1904) and A. Lucas (1995).
monks. Scholars have debated whether the poems' likely place of origin is Kildare
in eastern Ireland or Waterford
in the south. The case for Kildare is based mostly on the reference to the authorship of "Michael of Kildare", and a reference to one "Piers of Birmingham", who is known to have lived in Kildare and who was buried in the Franciscan church in Kildare. The case for Waterford is based, among other things, on a reference to "yung men of Waterford" in one (now lost) part of the manuscript, as well as on certain dialectal features. It has also been surmised that a core of the work was produced in Kildare and then copied and expanded with further material in Waterford.
The manuscript was in the possession of George Wyse, mayor of Waterford, during the 16th century. In 1608, the manuscript was noted by the antiquarian Sir James Ware, who described it as "a smale olde booke in parchment called the booke of Rose or of Waterford". Ware made several excerpts from the book, including the "Yung men of Waterford" poem that is no longer found in Harley 913 today. Ware's manuscript copy has been preserved as Ms. Landsdowne 418 in the British Library. Later, the original book came into the possession of Robert Harley, first earl of Oxford, whose library was acquired by the British Museum
in 1754.
A first modern printed edition of the text was published by Thomas Wright in Reliquiae Antiquae I in 1841. A standard philological edition of the text is that by Wilhelm Heuser (1904); a more recent edition was offered by Angela Lucas in 1995.
concerns, including a concern for the poor and a dislike of older, established monastic orders. The Kildare poems comprise the following items:
. Among the conspicuous features are:
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
dialect of Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
and dated to the mid-14th century. Together with a second, shorter set of poems in the so-called Loscombe Manuscript, they constitute the first and most important linguistic document of the early development of Irish English in the centuries after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. The sixteen poems have religious and satirical contents. They are preserved in a single manuscript (British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, Harley 913), where they are scattered between a number of Latin and Old French texts. The conventional modern designation "Kildare poems" refers both to the town of Kildare
Kildare
-External links:*******...
in Ireland, which has been proposed as their likely place of origin, and to the name of the author of at least one of the poems, who calls himself "Michael (of) Kildare" (Frere Michel Kyldare). The poems have been edited by W. Heuser (1904) and A. Lucas (1995).
History
The Kildare Poems are found in a manuscript that was produced around 1330. It is a small parchment book, measuring only 140 mm by 95 mm, and may have been produced as "a travelling preacher’s 'pocket-book'" The authors or compilers were probably FranciscanFranciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
monks. Scholars have debated whether the poems' likely place of origin is Kildare
Kildare
-External links:*******...
in eastern Ireland or Waterford
Waterford
Waterford is a city in the South-East Region of Ireland. It is the oldest city in the country and fifth largest by population. Waterford City Council is the local government authority for the city and its immediate hinterland...
in the south. The case for Kildare is based mostly on the reference to the authorship of "Michael of Kildare", and a reference to one "Piers of Birmingham", who is known to have lived in Kildare and who was buried in the Franciscan church in Kildare. The case for Waterford is based, among other things, on a reference to "yung men of Waterford" in one (now lost) part of the manuscript, as well as on certain dialectal features. It has also been surmised that a core of the work was produced in Kildare and then copied and expanded with further material in Waterford.
The manuscript was in the possession of George Wyse, mayor of Waterford, during the 16th century. In 1608, the manuscript was noted by the antiquarian Sir James Ware, who described it as "a smale olde booke in parchment called the booke of Rose or of Waterford". Ware made several excerpts from the book, including the "Yung men of Waterford" poem that is no longer found in Harley 913 today. Ware's manuscript copy has been preserved as Ms. Landsdowne 418 in the British Library. Later, the original book came into the possession of Robert Harley, first earl of Oxford, whose library was acquired by the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
in 1754.
A first modern printed edition of the text was published by Thomas Wright in Reliquiae Antiquae I in 1841. A standard philological edition of the text is that by Wilhelm Heuser (1904); a more recent edition was offered by Angela Lucas in 1995.
Contents
The religious and satirical contents of the Kildare poems are thought to display ideas characteristic of FranciscanFranciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
concerns, including a concern for the poor and a dislike of older, established monastic orders. The Kildare poems comprise the following items:
- The Land of Cokaygne: a satirical piece about a corrupt community of monks, who lead a life of fantastic luxury and dissipation in the mythical land of CockaigneCockaigneCockaigne or Cockayne is a medieval mythical land of plenty, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life does not exist...
. This satire may be directed against the Cistercian abbey at InislounaghtInislounaght AbbeyInislounaght Abbey, , also referred to as Innislounaght, Inislounacht and De Surio, was a 12th century Cistercian settlement on the river Suir, near Clonmel in County Tipperary, Ireland...
, near Waterford. - Five hateful things: a short, seven-line poem expressing a gnomic sayingGnomic poetryGnomic poetry consists of sententious maxims put into verse to aid the memory. They were known by the Greeks as gnomes, from the Greek word for "an opinion".A gnome was defined by the Elizabethan critic Henry Peacham as...
about human vices - Satire ("Hail, Seint Michel"): a satirical piece about human vices, in twenty short stanzas, each in the form of an incantation to a different saint
- Song of Michael of Kildare: a religious poem, considered the most ambitious literary work among this group of poems, and the only one that names its author ("Frere Michel Kyldare", who also describes himself as a "frere menour", i.e. a minorite).
- Sarmun ("sermon"), Fifteen Signs before Judgment, Fall and Passion, Ten Commandments: four religious verse sermons, in rhymed quatrains
- Christ on the Cross: a religious poem in irregular rhymed long lines
- Lollai, Lollai, litil child: a religious poem in the form of a lullaby song directed to a child
- Song of the Times: a satirical poem criticizing political and social disorder, containing a moral animal fableFableA fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
. - Seven Sins: a religious poem in six-line stanzas
- Piers of Bermingham: an obituary of an English knight, Sir Piers of Birmingham, who is praised for his military exploits against the Irish and whose death is dated to 13 April 1308.
- Elde, a poem about the problems of old age
- Repentance of Love, a brief poem of three quatrains expressing a lover's complaint
- Nego, a moral poem about denial, symbolized by the Latin word nego ('I deny')
- Erth a moral poem about earth, in two parallel versions in English and Latin
Linguistic features
The Kildare Poems show many linguistic features common to the Middle English dialects of the west and south-west of England, from which most English-speaking settlers in medieval Ireland had come, but they also display a number of unique features that point towards an independent development of English dialects in Ireland, either because of levelling between different source dialects of English, or because of the influence of IrishIrish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
. Among the conspicuous features are:
- Occasional replacement of th (þ) with t (e.g. growit for growiþ). This may reflect fortition of /θ/ to a dental stop, as found in some later forms of Irish English.
- Voicing of initial /f/ to /v/ (as in southern Middle English: uadir for father, uoxe for fox), while older /v/ is rendered as <w> (representing [w] or [β], wysage for visage)
- Loss of nasals before coronal stops: fowden for founden, powde for pound
- h dropping in words like is for his, abbiþ for habbiþ
- raising of short /e/ to /i/ in unstressed final syllables
- metathesisMetathesis (linguistics)Metathesis is the re-arranging of sounds or syllables in a word, or of words in a sentence. Most commonly it refers to the switching of two or more contiguous sounds, known as adjacent metathesis or local metathesis:...
in words like fryst < first, gradener < gardener, possibly related to similar phenomena in Irish - epenthesisEpenthesisIn phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
of <e> in consonant clusters in some words like Auerill < April, uerisse < freshe, also possibly related to similar phenomena in Irish and in later forms of Irish English
Text sample
The following is a passage from the Land of Cokaygne, describing the immoral conduct of monks and nuns:| Middle English text | Modern English translation |
|---|---|
An-other abbei is ther-bi, For-soth a gret fair nunnerie, Vp a riuer of swet milke, Whar is plente gret of silk. Whan the somer is dai is hote, The yung nunnes takith a bote And doth ham forth in that riuer, Both with oris and with stere. Whan hi beth fur fram the abbei, Hi makith ham nakid forto plai, And lepith dune in-to the brimme And doth ham sleilich forto swimme. The yung monketh that hi seeth, Hi doth ham vp and forth hi fleeth And commith to the nunnes anon, And euch monke him taketh on And snellich berith forth har prei To the mochil grei abbei, And techith the nunnes an oreisun With iambleue vp and dun. The monke that wol be stalun gode And kan set a-right is hode, He schal hab, with-oute danger, Twelve wiues euche yere, |
There is another abbey nearby, a great nunnery in fact, up a river of sweet milk, where there is great plenty of silk. When the summer's day is hot, the young nuns take a boat, and go forth on that river rowing with oars and steering. When they are far from the abbey, they undress to play, and jump into the water and swim secretly. The young monks who see them get ready and start out and come to the nuns immediately, and each monk takes one for himself and carries his prey away quickly to the great grey abbey, and teaches the nuns a prayer with their legs up and down in the air The monk that can be a good stallion and knows where to put his hood he can easily have twelve wives each year. |
External links
- Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT): Online text of the Kildare Poems, based on the edition of Lucas (1995). Cork: University College.
- Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse: Online text of the Kildare Poems, based on the edition of Heuser (1904). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
- Wessex Parallel Web Texts: The Land of Cockaigne, with modern English translation and image of the manuscript