Project MUSE®: North American journal of Celtic studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in North American journal of Celtic studies.daily12026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2017) through current issueLatest Articles: North American journal of Celtic studiesTWOProject MUSE®North American journal of Celtic studies2472-74902472-7482Latest articles in North American journal of Celtic studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Inventing the tradition of a perpetual fire at Kildare
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989210
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This article examines the tradition that there was a 'sacred' fire maintained at the ecclesiastical settlement of Kildare from the time of its founder, Brigit (ca. 454–ca. 524), until sometime in the thirteenth or even the sixteenth century.1 The source upon which this tradition is founded is a passage in Gerald of Wales' Topographia Hibernica, the product of his two visits to Ireland, one in 1183 and another in the company of Prince John in 1185–1186 (Scott & Martin 1978: xiv–xv). There is general agreement, based on his own autobiographical writing, that Gerald completed the first version of the Topographia no later than 1188 and perhaps in 1187 (Bartlett 2018: 85; Henley & McMullen 2018b: 2; Wadden 2020:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmallInventing the tradition of a perpetual fire at Kildare2026-05-06text/htmlen-USInventing the tradition of a perpetual fire at Kildare2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®1397722026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06Thinking in pairs. Law and language in medieval Wales
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989211
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in today's hyper-charged political atmosphere, binaries abound. One either is or one isn't: young/old, liberal/conservative, a patriot/a traitor, a liar/a truth-teller, a Christian/an atheist, a 'real' man or whatever the opposite is thought to be, a 'real' woman or whatever the opposite is thought to be. Much of our sense of a middle, of points along a continuum, seems recently to have been lost. Underscoring the seeming inevitability of this either/or-ness, this sense that if we are one thing we cannot be anything else, is the way in which so many of these binaries are presumed silently to overlap. A cartoon I came across a few years ago expresses this perspective perfectly.1 Its purported intent is to draw for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmallThinking in pairs. Law and language in medieval Wales2026-05-06text/htmlen-USThinking in pairs. Law and language in medieval Wales2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®2043322026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06How to get to Heaven according to BL MS Egerton 92
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989212
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what follows is an edition and translation of a short anecdote from British Library MS Egerton 92.1 The text is found on f. 29va32–vb2. BL MS Egerton 92 is a fifteenth-century manuscript consisting of five sections (designated A–E by Flower 1926) containing a variety of religious and literary texts all of which once formed part of the Book of Fermoy (Flower 1926: 505–506).2 The brief anecdote edited here is described by Flower 1926: 516 as a 'tale of a seer in Connaught visited by a fer side "fairy" who answered the request of his human foster-mother as to how she might reach Heaven by recommending charity and repentance. At the end are some verses, partly obliterated.' No bibliography accompanies the description.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmallHow to get to Heaven according to BL MS Egerton 922026-05-06text/htmlen-USHow to get to Heaven according to BL MS Egerton 922026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®381802026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06Literary allusion in the Book of Aneirin
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989213
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attempts to trace literary allusions or intertextual references in Y Gododdin, or more generally in texts preserved in the Book of Aneirin (Cardiff, Central Library, MS 2.81), have usually fallen on stony ground.1 Reception of such suggestions has tended over the years to be at best muted, but often dismissive, greeted with the response that they do not reach some level of forensic proof even when it is acknowledged that influence and allusion might be possible. Proposals tend to fall into two categories: general suggestions (sometimes with particular examples offered) and specific suggestions without necessarily implying some more general theory. Into the former fall the general suggestion of Saunders Lewis of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmallLiterary allusion in the Book of Aneirin2026-05-06text/htmlen-USLiterary allusion in the Book of Aneirin2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®721062026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06(Im)mortalising Mongán. The death and resurrection of Mongán mac Fíachnae in the Mionannála
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989214
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Said to have been born of a mortal woman and fathered by both a seventh-century king of Dál nAraidi and the sea-god Manannán mac Lir, Mongán mac Fíachnae remains one of early Irish literature's most enigmatic figures.2 In the words of Koch 2006:
He is remarkable because—though a documented figure of the Christian, literate period—he became a subject of a group of tales in the Kings' Cycles, in which he figures as the son of the god Manannán, is endowed with supernatural vision, and is a self-aware reincarnation of the legendary hero Finn mac Cumaill.
The connection between Mongán and Finn mac Cumaill to which Koch refers is articulated in the Old Irish tale Scél asa mberar combad hé Find mac Cumaill Mongán, which
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmall(Im)mortalising Mongán. The death and resurrection of Mongán mac Fíachnae in the Mionannála2026-05-06text/htmlen-US(Im)mortalising Mongán. The death and resurrection of Mongán mac Fíachnae in the Mionannála2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®1815092026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06Franco-German exchanges in Celtic scholarship. From synergy to estrangement (1870–1921)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989215
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From its violent birth in the aftermath of the 1870s debacle to its very end, one could argue that no nation has challenged the French Third Republic as much as its neighbour across the Rhine River, the just as newly born German empire. Scalded by the harsh defeat and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, convinced it was due to the decay of French science, advocates for deep reforms of universities kept looking East for inspiration, from German primary schools to universities. Ernest Lavisse, the architect of the renewed methods of teaching history in France, praised the symbolic prestige of German universities, while in France their revitalisation was far from complete (1886: 22–23):Les Universités allemandes ont dans
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmallFranco-German exchanges in Celtic scholarship. From synergy to estrangement (1870–1921)2026-05-06text/htmlen-USFranco-German exchanges in Celtic scholarship. From synergy to estrangement (1870–1921)2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®498872026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06Le Breton d'Ouessant, Brezoneg ar'ro by Mikael Madeg (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989216
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I have lost count of the books that Michael Madeg has published, generally but not exclusively in, or on, the Breton of the region of Leon in northwest Brittany. The number must by now exceed 110. This, his latest contribution to the promotion of the Leon dialect, is dedicated to the rapidly fading speech of the island of Ushant (Eusa in Breton, Ouessant in French). This rocky island of some 15 km2 lies around 20 miles west of the mainland of Brittany, and is well-known in the region and among those interested in Brittonic linguistics for several notable dialectal peculiarities. In 1968, it boasted a population of 1,814, which by 2007 had decreased to 848. The Breton language on the island is now sadly moribund
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmallLe Breton d'Ouessant, Brezoneg ar'ro by Mikael Madeg (review)2026-05-06text/htmlen-USLe Breton d'Ouessant, Brezoneg ar'ro by Mikael Madeg (review)2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®106312026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06'Pwyll y Pader'. A medieval Welsh tract on the meaning of the Lord's Prayer by Erich Poppe & Elena Parina (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989217
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Growing attention, over the past quarter-century or so, to medieval Welsh texts translated and adapted from other languages—Latin, for the most part, but French and English, as well—has resulted in significant expansion of our understanding of Wales' relationship to medieval European literary culture, both religious and secular. It has deepened our reading of native texts by pointing to sources that their authors may have known or absorbed indirectly. It has helped us to construe the development of Welsh prose styles and of the Welsh language. Erich Poppe and Elena Parina have been among the most prolific contributors to the exploration of the medieval Welsh (and Irish) translation enterprise. With this edition and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmall'Pwyll y Pader'. A medieval Welsh tract on the meaning of the Lord's Prayer by Erich Poppe & Elena Parina (review)2026-05-06text/htmlen-US'Pwyll y Pader'. A medieval Welsh tract on the meaning of the Lord's Prayer by Erich Poppe & Elena Parina (review)2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®193632026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06Tales of Merlin, Arthur, and the magic arts. From the Welsh Chronicle of the Six Ages of the World by Elis Gruffydd (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989218
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A book for the Arthurianist who has everything, this small volume is a revelation. The Chronicle of the Six Ages of the World by the sixteenth-century Welsh soldier Elis Gruffydd is virtually unknown outside a very small circle of specialist scholars. In its entirety, the Chronicle is vast—'one of the longest works ever composed in the Welsh language' according to Jerry Hunter's illuminating introduction (3). This partial translation by Pat-rick Ford presents only a tiny percentage of the total text, consisting of selections from parts where Elis speaks of Merlin and Arthur (51–103) and 'Tales of magic, prophecy, and the supernatural' (105–153), as one would expect from the title. But there is also a first section
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/787/image/coversmallTales of Merlin, Arthur, and the magic arts. From the Welsh Chronicle of the Six Ages of the World by Elis Gruffydd (review)2026-05-06text/htmlen-USTales of Merlin, Arthur, and the magic arts. From the Welsh Chronicle of the Six Ages of the World by Elis Gruffydd (review)2026-05-062026TWOProject MUSE®124042026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-05-06