UNCG - MLS610C Global Arts Unit 5 - Texts
Comments to this blog entry are my discussion about Unit 5 texts.
(Note: Chicago citation format for bibliographies)
Listed in the order texts were read.
"The King of Ireland's Son." In Irish Folktales, edited by Henry Glassie,
"Dreams of Gold." In Irish Folktales, edited by Henry Glassie, 171.
"The Birth of Finn McCumhail." In Irish Folktales, edited by Henry Glassie,
"Usheen's Return to Ireland," In Irish Folktales, edited by Henry Glassie,
"The Man Who had no Story." In Irish Folktales, edited by Henry Glassie,
O'Connor, Nuala. "Chapters 5-10." Bringing It All Back Home: The
Dordan. 4th CD review:
Dordan CDs
Who were the Fins?
Cahill, Thomas. How the Irish Saved Civilization. Wilmington, N.C.: Anchor
Uris, Jill and Leon Uris. Ireland a Terrible Beauty. New York: Bantam
O’Connor, Sinéad. Universal Mother. CD Track #12
---. Sean Nós Nua – Track #7
"Sean Nós in Donegal: In Search of a Definition."
O'Connor, Sinéad. Sean Nós Nua (Hummingbird Records, 2002)
Paludan, Marsha. Conversation with Rhiannin [Gibbon]with performance
From a Whisper to a Scream, DVD. Produced and directed by David
Paludan, Marsha. Interview with Scott Walker [fiddle player]. ASP file,
Paludan, Marsha. Podcast #8
Blog assignments:
(1) Write your personal response to each of the Irish Fairytales for this
2) What do the Irish fairytales tell you about the Irish view of space and
3) Write your reaction to "From a Whisper to a Scream."
4) Write a fairy tale about how the Irish learned to sing.
posted by Y @ 5:23 PM
10 Comments:
“The King of Ireland’s Son” in Irish Folktales edited by Henry Glassie.
John Cunningham Roscommon
Douglas Hyde 1890
This was the first Irish folktale I read after having two weeks of reading Rumi’s poetry with its characteristically sparse words conveying huge meanings. I think this is why I thought “The King of Ireland’s Son,” like the rounder song, “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” was never going to repetitiously end.
The Son goes on a quest to find a bride with a specific set of characteristics. His journey takes him to a funeral where he has the chance to show that he’s caring and willing to help his fellow man. He continues on and meets a “short green man” who’s willing to join his search for a bride and they set the price that the Son is willing to pay for the help. This cycle, of meeting, explaining the quest, setting the price, and joining in, is repeated. One by one the Son is joined by different types of people that he meets along the road. In addition, the little green man bumbles three different giants and fools each giant into letting the group spend the night. The little green man just has to be magical!
Finally, the Son meets the woman for whom he’s been searching and she runs him through several trials before she’ll agree to marry. By this time in my reading, I started thinking about traditional Irish dance music with its prescribed time signature formula of 32 bars “within which there are usually two strains or ‘parts’ of eight bars. This usually makes up the tune, which is repeated once again from the beginning…” (O’Connor, Bringing All Back Home 7). At any rate, the King of Ireland is saved at last by the little green man who presents the moral of the story when he reveals he was the dead man for whom the King of Ireland’s Son paid debts which were keeping the body from being buried. The Son’s reward comes because of his good will actions and not because he is the King of Ireland's Son, i.e., everyone can luck out if they act right along the road of life.
Whoops...In the above comment where I wrote "King of Ireland," I meant to type "King of Ireland's Son." The actual King is not a character in this folktale.
“Dreams of Gold” in Irish Folktales edited by Harry Glassie
John Phelan Galway
Lady Gregory 1920
I have to assume that this is an example of recent-times story related to the author and that it’s trying to become a folktale. I get this idea because of the way the tale begins believably – with “a man in Gort, Anthony Hynes, he and two others dreamed of finding treasure within the church of Kilmacdaugh.” Putting the tale into what I can believe as a real life context is, of course, intended by the teller.
So, at first, this folktale reads more like gossipy news, maybe even reflecting how tales enter the folk realm to start with. At any rate, “Dreams of Gold” is about a Mayo man who has a dream about finding a pot of gold under a bridge at Limerick. When he gets to the spot, he finds a cobbler there who says he’s had a dream about a pot of gold in the first man’s backyard. The Mayo man goes back home and “sure enough, there he found a pot of gold with no end of riches in it.”
The teller of this tale concludes, “But I never heard that the cobbler found anything under the bridge at Limerick.” Moral of the story: plunder afield if you will but don’t forget about your own backyard’s riches – empirical or euphemistic or whatever. But there’s one more little message: the cobbler looked under the bridge at Limerick and he didn’t find anything so maybe the treasure is still there! Or translated, there are still quests out there to be taken on and pots of gold left to find!
“The Birth of Finn MacCumhail” in Irish Folktales edited by Henry Glassie
Donegal
Jeremiah Curtin 1887
In essence, this is a creation myth about how the Fenians of Erin began; it’s also about how death is a hopeful state as it precedes birth and renewal. The tale starts with a prophesy of death on the “great champion” Cumbal MacArt if he marries. For a long time he doesn’t until one day he meets the King’s daughter. They consummate the relationship, the next day Cumbal dies in battle as predicted, and within the year the King’s daughter produces a white haired boy. The next events are straight out of the Christian Old Testament. The King orders the infant thrown in the moat where his grandmother rescues him. The King not to be outdone, orders all the newborn boys in the kingdom killed. The grandmother escapes with the boy, and they hideout for years in the forest. The boy learns how to run fast and at age fifteen, the grandmother takes him to a hurling match between the King’s people and a nearby King’s people. The boy enters on the team of the nearby King’s team and helped them to a win. The losing King is furious and wants to know, “Who is that finn cumhal [white cap]?” The name sticks, the grandmother and the boy take flight. Three different horsemen try to chase them down; the third, on a black horse, the grandmother says, is their doom. She jumps in the bog up to her neck and tells the boy to run away because to the black horseman, her white head will serve as proof enough that the King’s horseman killed the boy.
Another set of challenges emerge and the boy has reason to go into his grandfather King’s realm once more. This time the story shows punishment for those who lie and how strong truth prevails and spirit drives to success. The boy uses his victory in the challenge, not to claim the hand of the King’s daughter, who is actually his mother, but barters for the lives of the valiants who failed before him in the challenge. The valiants pledge their allegiance for the favor of the boy saving their lives. The band goes off into the sunset. That’s how the Fenians of Erin began.
The theme and construction of the story is reminiscent of folktales from Beowulf to Galahad. Noticeably, in Irish folktales, the ability to outsmart foes because of knowledge about the forests and the ability to run fast are attributes much admired.
Why would chewing one’s thumb through skin and muscle down to suck marrow from bone be the method that the Finian leader used to know what to do?
I don’t know at this writing but a quick google on “Fenians of Erin” turned up a folktale about Fin MacCumhail’s son doing the same thumb bone sucking. It’s in “Fin MacCumahail and the Fenians of Erin in the Castle of Fear Dubh” online at http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mfli/mfli13.htm
“Usheen’s Return to Ireland,” in Irish Folktales, edited by Henry Glassie.
Galway
Lady Gregory 1926
The original Fianna was an exclusive brotherhood, not quite as dashing as British Knights of the Round Table but still holding a similar kind of relationship to each other, to their leader, and their place in the respective culture’s folk lore. Usheen “was the last of the Fianna and the greatest of them.” He met his demise when he became enchanted in the everlasting life place called Tir-Nan-Oge, he stayed long enough to become homesick, was given a horse to ride back and told as long as he stayed on the horse, he would never change from his youthful self.
Considering this tale in the context of the Irish people’s emigration history, the tale of Usheen’s return to Ireland is heavy with symbolism and has a heart-rending ending. His memories of his comrades and countryside are clear but he’s been gone for hundreds of years. Everything has changed. He realizes that every Fianna is dead and the buildings where they lived are broken to moss covered rubble. He spots a stone trough where they all used to drink and wash-up, a symbolic font as it were. Usheen forgets and jumps off his horse if just once more to relive touching the water and trough of his youth and his friends. As he does, of course, he falls down, an old man and begins dying.
I don’t think I’ll ever look the same way again at a stone I know next to a tiny head of a mountain spring up near Grandfather Mountain.
“The Man Who Had No Story” in Irish Folktales, edited by Henry Glassie.
Michael James Timoney
Donegal
Séamas Ó Catháin 1965
This is a funny story that gives credence to any warnings about fairies ever said or heard. Brian, the main character, is a reed cutter who decides against advice to go into a glen said to be owned by the fairies. He cuts his reeds all right but then he’s fogged in, it gets dark, he’s got no where to go but toward some light, which turns out to be a house with an old couple in it. All they ask for in return for letting him in is for Brian to tell them a fairy story. He protests that he doesn’t have any so he’s sent on an errand to draw some water.
From there, Brian is swept into several situations that rival any nude-in-public kind of dream any one ever had. He’s called on to do everything from fiddle to preach and doctor and each time he’s proclaimed the best. Several times Brian is hurled about by the wind, another image that seems recurrent in Irish folktales. By the time the wind blows him back to the first house he stumbled into, when asked to tell a fairy tale, he’s ready. The moral of the story seems to be that no matter how badly you need something, don’t go steal it from the fairies and if you’re asked to do something beyond your skill level or knowledge, be sure you’re asleep and in a dream. Well, that’s not exactly the moral but this is a funny tale and I don’t want to totally spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it yet.
What do the Irish fairytales tell you about the Irish view of space and time?
There is definitely a feeling of timelessness in the tales as well as compression of time. What could not be physically possible in say, the duration of one human generation, is possible for a bigger than life hero aided by magical powers and enchanted assistance.
There is a continuity feel to the tales, a sort of reaching through time -- and space -- through family blood lines. It's like as long as the son can emotionally touch the father, the son can also emotionally touch the grandfather even if the grandfather is dead.
The countryside is the space in which these tales take place. Within the countryside space, the heroes go from city space toward landmarks seen in the distance. The city or kingdom, with lots of people around, is where the heroes go to show what they've learned while being tested in the forests. They return to the populated areas to reclaim birthrights, complete quests.
These public demonstrations are important. In other words, it's not enough for the hero to pronounce or perform for the forests, streams, reed fields, or wind; the hero must be in a social/people/public space to complete what feels like a circle of events, the cycle of which each generation contributes to make it seem permanent. Even if the physical place has been lost through time, it's not gone forever as long as its name is spoken through the folktale and the name of the hero attached to a living pool of named people gives all a sense of immortality.
My reaction to From a Whisper to a Scream: the Living History of Irish Music
From a Whisper to a Scream reveals how music is of, for, and by the Irish, no matter where they live, work, reproduce, or die.
Irish traditional music remained an oral history for way longer than I could have imagined and Whisper shows that while we in the U.S. were sharing music through additional outlets like “American Bandstand” and “Ed Sullivan Show” as a nation watching television, Ireland didn’t have TV broadcasts until 1962.
The names of current event and internationally recognized bands draw attention to this 155 minute film but it’s the sheer numbers and stature of the musicians and artists that preceded groups like Thin Lizzie and Boomtown Rats that make this documentary almost sacred. When U2 appears, the band is like an encore to fifty years of talent and in many ways is overshadowed by the likes of the Corrs, Sinéad O’Connor, and the cast of Riverdance. At least a dozen performers that I never heard of before are now on my list to find, listen to, and enjoy.
This movie turns Nuala O’Connor’s book, Bringing It All Back Home, into the richest, most informative program guide and keepsake ever disguised as just a textbook. I only own two DVDs and From a Whisper to a Scream is one of them. Hopefully, it is true that DVDs don’t wear out.
How the Irish Learned to Sing
There was a young woman once lived in County Meath in a tumbling down croft. Every day she sat close to the River Boyne. She knew the story about how the Irish learned to sing but the tale was so long that it couldn’t be told in one evening. It couldn’t be told in a week. How the Irish learned to sing was a tale that couldn’t be told in a month!
People stopped asking the young woman to tell the story about how the Irish learned to sing because the telling cut short the evening time for singing and dancing. For a long time, no one wanted to visit her because no matter what time of the day or night, if you visited the woman she was telling the story about how the Irish learned to sing.
The young woman felt lonely and soon she started to age. So she made a little tune, as long as 32 bars we call them now, but back in County Meath in the tumbling down croft, 32 were the number of winters known by the woman who knew the story of how the Irish learned to sing and she set the words of the story into verse. This took her many years and when she was finished not one person had come to see her one single time.
So, she decided to teach the song-tale to a tree. This tree grew out of a cleft in a rock. The rock kept its feet wet in the River Boyne. Again, many years went round and on the day that the rock was to learn the last verse of the song that told the story of how the Irish learned to sing, the woman who once lived in County Meath in a tumbling down croft, who everyday of her life had sat close to the River Boyne and who set an endless number of verses to 32 bars of tune, that woman fell down dead beneath the tree that grew out of a cleft in a rock.
That rock that kept its feet wet in the River Boyne had been, unbeknownst to the tree, listening to and learning by heart the woman’s song-tale, too. And unbeknownst to the rock, the River Boyne had taken the woman’s song-tale to its heart. And the way that the Irish learned to sing was by taking a drink out of the River Boyne.
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