Bibliography

Colin A.
Ireland
s. xx–xxi

12 publications between 1986 and 2022 indexed
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2022

work
Ireland, Colin A., The Gaelic background of Old English poetry before Bede, Publications of the Richard Rawlinson Center, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2022.  
Front matter -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Contents -- List of figures -- Introduction -- 1. Early vernacular poetic practice -- 2. Early historical poets before Bede -- 3. Professional poets and vernacular narratives -- 4. The church and the spread of bilingual learning -- 5. The ethnic mix of Anglo-Saxon empire -- 6. The long century of Anglo-Saxon conversion -- 7. Cædmon’s world at Whitby -- Afterword -- Bibliography -- Index.
abstract:

Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede’s description of Cædmon’s production of Old English poetry. This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian “Golden Age”, its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.

Front matter -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Contents -- List of figures -- Introduction -- 1. Early vernacular poetic practice -- 2. Early historical poets before Bede -- 3. Professional poets and vernacular narratives -- 4. The church and the spread of bilingual learning -- 5. The ethnic mix of Anglo-Saxon empire -- 6. The long century of Anglo-Saxon conversion -- 7. Cædmon’s world at Whitby -- Afterword -- Bibliography -- Index.
abstract:

Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede’s description of Cædmon’s production of Old English poetry. This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian “Golden Age”, its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.

2020

article
Ireland, Colin, “Lutting of Lindisfarne and the earliest recorded use of Dionysiac Anno Domini chronology in Northumbria”, Peritia 31 (2020): 147–163.  
abstract:

An Anglo-Saxon named Lutting composed three Anglo-Latin poems that praise his magister Bede, who died 9 February 681. The epitaph for Bede contains the earliest recorded use yet identified in Northumbria, perhaps even in the Insular world, of Anno Domini chronology derived from the use of Dionysiac Paschal tables of the kind favoured by the ‘Roman’ party at the ‘synod’ of Whitby (664).

abstract:

An Anglo-Saxon named Lutting composed three Anglo-Latin poems that praise his magister Bede, who died 9 February 681. The epitaph for Bede contains the earliest recorded use yet identified in Northumbria, perhaps even in the Insular world, of Anno Domini chronology derived from the use of Dionysiac Paschal tables of the kind favoured by the ‘Roman’ party at the ‘synod’ of Whitby (664).

2015

article
Ireland, Colin, “Some Irish characteristics of the Whitby life of Gregory the Great”, in: Pádraic Moran, and Immo Warntjes (eds), Early medieval Ireland and Europe: chronology, contacts, scholarship. A Festschrift for Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, 14, Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. 139–178.  
abstract:
The anonymous Vita Gregorii produced at Whitby is among the earliest of the hagiographical works to come from Anglo-Saxon England. It is the first vita written of Pope Gregory the Great. The traditional dates for its production are between AD 704 and 714. It relates Gregory’s works and emphasizes his role as originator of the Christian mission to the Anglo-Saxons centred at Canterbury. In terms of Anglo-Saxon matters it highlights the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria by Bishop Paulinus. In so doing it avoids mention of the successful Irish mission in Northumbria from Iona, the famous ‘synod’ that was held in AD 664 at Whitby and, by extension, Bishop Wilfrid and his ‘Roman’ legacy. It has been described as one of the most ‘idiosyncratic’ of the Anglo-Saxon vitae with ‘numerous (and spurious) miracles involving the great pope’. Despite its emphasis on the contribution of Rome and Pope Gregory to the conversion of Anglo-Saxons generally, and Northumbria specifically, many of the vita’s episodes and their topoi are more typical of Irish hagiography and reveal the Whitby hagiographer’s debt to Irish learning and teaching. This paper will examine some of those Irish narrative features.
abstract:
The anonymous Vita Gregorii produced at Whitby is among the earliest of the hagiographical works to come from Anglo-Saxon England. It is the first vita written of Pope Gregory the Great. The traditional dates for its production are between AD 704 and 714. It relates Gregory’s works and emphasizes his role as originator of the Christian mission to the Anglo-Saxons centred at Canterbury. In terms of Anglo-Saxon matters it highlights the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria by Bishop Paulinus. In so doing it avoids mention of the successful Irish mission in Northumbria from Iona, the famous ‘synod’ that was held in AD 664 at Whitby and, by extension, Bishop Wilfrid and his ‘Roman’ legacy. It has been described as one of the most ‘idiosyncratic’ of the Anglo-Saxon vitae with ‘numerous (and spurious) miracles involving the great pope’. Despite its emphasis on the contribution of Rome and Pope Gregory to the conversion of Anglo-Saxons generally, and Northumbria specifically, many of the vita’s episodes and their topoi are more typical of Irish hagiography and reveal the Whitby hagiographer’s debt to Irish learning and teaching. This paper will examine some of those Irish narrative features.
article
Ireland, Colin A., “Where was King Aldfrith of Northumbria educated? An exploration of seventh-century Insular learning”, Traditio 70 (2015): 29–73.  
abstract:
The superior learning of King Aldfrith of Northumbria (685–704) was acknowledged in both Anglo-Saxon and Gaelic contemporary sources by such renowned scholars as Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, Adomnán of Iona, Stephen of Ripon, and Alcuin of York. Both Aldhelm and Adomnán knew him personally, and texts composed by these two scholars and presented to Aldfrith help delineate the breadth of his educational background. He was educated among the Gaels, and their records described him as sapiens. By examining texts of other seventh-century Gaelic sapientes, and the comments of Aldhelm and Bede about Gaelic intellectual life and educational opportunities, we can expand our purview of the scope of his education. The nature of seventh-century schooling was peripatetic, and Aldfrith's dual heritage requires a broad search for locations. Many scholars accept Iona as the likely source of his learned background, but this essay will argue that, among other likely locations in Britain and Ireland, Bangor in Northern Ireland is best supported by surviving evidence. His benign reign is placed at the end of the first century of the Anglo-Saxon conversion, but his education benefited the kingdom of Northumbria through generations of Gaelic scholarship, as exemplified by peregrini such as Columba and Columbanus, and sapientes like Laidcenn mac Baíth, Cummíne of Clonfert, Ailerán of Clonard, Cenn Fáelad mac Ailello, and Banbán of Kildare. Aldfrith's rule ushered in a period of cultural florescence in Northumbria that saw the first hagiography and earliest illuminated manuscripts produced in Anglo-Saxon England and that culminated in the extensive library authored by Bede (d. 735).
abstract:
The superior learning of King Aldfrith of Northumbria (685–704) was acknowledged in both Anglo-Saxon and Gaelic contemporary sources by such renowned scholars as Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, Adomnán of Iona, Stephen of Ripon, and Alcuin of York. Both Aldhelm and Adomnán knew him personally, and texts composed by these two scholars and presented to Aldfrith help delineate the breadth of his educational background. He was educated among the Gaels, and their records described him as sapiens. By examining texts of other seventh-century Gaelic sapientes, and the comments of Aldhelm and Bede about Gaelic intellectual life and educational opportunities, we can expand our purview of the scope of his education. The nature of seventh-century schooling was peripatetic, and Aldfrith's dual heritage requires a broad search for locations. Many scholars accept Iona as the likely source of his learned background, but this essay will argue that, among other likely locations in Britain and Ireland, Bangor in Northern Ireland is best supported by surviving evidence. His benign reign is placed at the end of the first century of the Anglo-Saxon conversion, but his education benefited the kingdom of Northumbria through generations of Gaelic scholarship, as exemplified by peregrini such as Columba and Columbanus, and sapientes like Laidcenn mac Baíth, Cummíne of Clonfert, Ailerán of Clonard, Cenn Fáelad mac Ailello, and Banbán of Kildare. Aldfrith's rule ushered in a period of cultural florescence in Northumbria that saw the first hagiography and earliest illuminated manuscripts produced in Anglo-Saxon England and that culminated in the extensive library authored by Bede (d. 735).

2012

article
Ireland, Colin, “From protected to protector: some legal language in Cú Chulainn’s boyhood deeds”, in: Martin E. Huld, Karlene Jones-Bley, and Dean Miller (eds), Archaeology and language: Indo-European studies presented to James P. Mallory, 60, Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 2012. 15–22.  
abstract:
Sport was the foundation of Cú Chulainn’s early training, and through sport one can see the makings of the great warrior he was to become. In his sporting and gaming activities one sees the application of early Irish law in terms of protection for the young Cú Chulainn and, subsequently, for his legal protection of others. This paper examines legal terminology that demonstrates how the young Cú Chulainn not only physically overcomes his opponents but also manages to place them legally under his protection.
abstract:
Sport was the foundation of Cú Chulainn’s early training, and through sport one can see the makings of the great warrior he was to become. In his sporting and gaming activities one sees the application of early Irish law in terms of protection for the young Cú Chulainn and, subsequently, for his legal protection of others. This paper examines legal terminology that demonstrates how the young Cú Chulainn not only physically overcomes his opponents but also manages to place them legally under his protection.

2005

article
Ireland, Colin, “The poets Cædmon and Colmán mac Lénéni: the Anglo-Saxon layman and the Irish professional”, in: Joseph Falaky Nagy, and Leslie Ellen Jones (eds), Heroic poets and poetic heroes in Celtic tradition: a Festschrift for Patrick K. Ford, 3, 4, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005. 172–182.

2003

edited work
Tymoczko, Maria, and Colin A. Ireland (eds), Language and tradition in Ireland: continuities and displacements, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.

1999

work
Ireland, Colin A. [ed. and tr.], Old Irish wisdom attributed to Aldfrith of Northumbria: an edition of Bríathra Flainn Fhína maic Ossu, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 205, Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999.
Internet Archive: <link>

1997

article
Ireland, Colin, “Penance and prayer in water: an Irish practice in Northumbrian hagiography”, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 34 (Winter, 1997): 51–66.
article
Ireland, Colin, “The ambiguous attitude towards fosterage in early Irish literature”, in: Dorothy Disterheft, Martin Huld, and John Greppin (eds), Studies in honor of Jaan Puhvel, 2 vols, vol. 1: Ancient languages and philology, 20, Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997. 93–96.

1996

article
Ireland, Colin, “Aldfrith of Northumbria and the learning of a sapiens”, in: Kathryn A. Klar, Eve E. Sweetser, and Claire Thomas (eds), A Celtic florilegium: studies in memory of Brendan O Hehir, 2, Lawrence, Massachusetts: Celtic Studies Publications, 1996. 63–77.

1986

article
Ireland, C. A., “Boisil: an Irishman hidden in the works of Bede”, Peritia 5 (1986): 400–403.