Fiction and History in the Song of Dermot and the Earl

Fiction and History in the Song of Dermot and the Earl 'Facts are indispensable servants but blind guides; they do not speak for themselves, and historians w h o suppose they do are either too boring to be readable or gutity of unconscious ventriloquism. Historical research has suffered, I suspect (in value if not in volume) from hitching itself to a conception of scientific method which scientists themselves have not always followed and are now ready to abandon'. These remarks preface W.L. Warren's article on 'The Interpretation of Twelfth Century Irish History'.1 Warren goes on, to pursue the ventrilocutory metaphor, to put his intellectual currency where his mouth is by challenging the generally held view that early medieval Ireland, Scodand and Wales can be described as 'Celtic' societies and he characterises Ireland as a society in which a Celtic military ascendancy, comparable to the Normans in post-Conquest England, were 'ligurianised' by the conquered pre-Indo-European indigenes in the same way that the Normans in England were eventually anglicised. It was this matrix that produced early medieval Ireland's distinctive 'social conservatism [and] lack of centralised political and administrative institutions'. This lack of cohesion is seen as one explanation for the apparent absence of resistance to the Norman invaders. Warren is thus able to challenge established views of history, represented by the imperialist Orpen on the one hand and the nationalist M a c Neil on the other by attacking their shared premise. According to this perspective, Diarmuid mac Murchadha (Diarmuid na nGall) is neither the traitor of nationalist demonology nor the decent native of British imperialism, but a 'moderniser' in conflict with the traditionalists of his day. This example from the writings of a respected Irish historian, serves to tilustrate the proposition that even a well-documented, ostensibly clear-cut set of historical 'facts' is susceptible of different interpretations especially if it involves issues like conquest and subjugation, colonialism and independence struggles. Nor can it be assumed that the passing of time tempers the acerbity of conflicting judgements and lends a Jovian detachment to the pronouncements of later observers. Professional historians, among them the most reputed of specialists, are still debating the significance of the nucleus of facts which constitutes the historical event known as the Norman Conquest of Ireland. N o less an authority than F.X. Martin in the long awaited second volume of the New History of Ireland,2 admits that his own view of these events has changed historical Studies 1, 1969, 1-19. 2 F.X. Martin et al., edd., New History of Ireland, Oxford, 1987; F.X. Martin, 'Diarmait mac Murchada and the coming of the Anglo-Normans', in vol. 2, 43-66 (Medieval Ireland 1169-1534, ed. A. Cosgrove). 124 WA. Trindade over the last fifteen years. H e no longer sees thefirstNorman arrivals as invaders but as 'an auxiliary force ... to restore a displaced local king'. Henry II's arrival a couple of years later was not primarily to establish conquest but to curb his over-ambitious Anglo-Norman (or Cambro-Norman) subjects and, Martin concludes, 'he was, if anything, an ally of the native Irish rulers'. Other commentators reject the term invaders and see the Cambro-Norman forces as freebooting adventurers with little political interest in or understanding of the situation. These brief examples must surely encourage caution on the part of anyone approaching either of the two 'inside accounts' of the events of 1169 and following. These two accounts, one from the pen of a well-known contemporary chronicler, 'a wayward but trained historian' and the other from an otherwise unknown poet 'a skilful but naive craftsman'3 complement each other and together present a detailed and on the whole factually accurate picture of the external events, names, places and to some extent, dates. The former, the Expugnatio Hibemica of Giraldus Cambrensis4 is the second of the author's works dealing with Ireland. It has often been compared favourably with our second text, the Song of Der mot and the Earl5 as being a more accurate historical record, though the prejudices of its author - his partisan treatment of his own kinsman, the powerful and influential...