Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry

by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson

First published in 1935, this volume by Kenneth Jackson examines the different types of nature poetry that were produced in Ireland and Wales up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The work is divided into two parts. The first part contains the texts of the Irish and Welsh poems, translated into English and edited with notes. The second part offers a critical analysis of the poems, drawing comparison to the literature of other cultures such as Anglo-Saxon, and considering what sort of people composed the poems and what their purpose was. This volume, which has long been out of print, will be welcomed by medievalists as well as enthusiasts of Irish and Welsh poetry.

204 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Professor Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson CBE FRSE FSA DLitt was an English linguist and a translator who specialised in the Celtic languages. He demonstrated how the text of the Ulster Cycle of tales, written circa AD 1100, preserves an oral tradition originating some six centuries earlier and reflects Celtic Irish society of the third and fourth century AD. His Celtic Miscellany is a popular standard.

In retirement, Jackson continued his work on place-names and Goidelic languages. However he suffered a stroke in 1984 that restricted his work.

An obituary was published in The Times on 8 March 1991 and in the journal Nomina.

Reviews

[dragonhelmuk]

Great book, still not showing its date. I should probably point out that the 1995 edition I read has massacred all the Ú and ú letters into 6s, which is annoying but not fatal. Jackson’s categorising of welsh nature poetry into just gnomes and elegies is simple and pristine. Irish nature poetry is considered to be mainly the work of the ascetic hermit, although this is not considered in nearly so much detail as later books. One interesting avenue for another book to read is a quote by professor Sieper pointing out the elegy shares many features with, and may be an evolution of the straightforward dirge over a dead person which is well attested in Celtic literature. The evidence of the use of the phrases heno, inocht, hediú and indiu is especially good. Three quotes:

(On the Irish anthropomorphism)
P103 “this particular tendency almost to anthropomorphisation throws an interesting light on the psychology of the hermits. A desire for seclusion, abnormally developed in their case, was crossed by the instinctive need for society, and by making the animals their brothers they found themselves a substitute which was without the disturbing influences and temptations of mankind

(The stock figure of the old man)
P115 – The Old Man became a stock figure in Irish and Wellsh elegy; he complains of his lost vigour and of his afflictions from feebleness and cold. The two most notable poems are the elegy of Llywarch Hen, RBH, XI, and the tenth-century Irish poem called the Old Woman of Beare, so similar to it in subject, treatment and poetic feeling.
…
“The theme of the old man lamenting his vanished strength occurs also in Beowulf (lines 2111-14) but the circumstances, a feast, do not allow for any interest in nature.

(on the writers of the welsh gnomes)
With so many observations on the world around, one should be able to form some idea of the milieu in which these poems were composed and of the kind o fpeople who composed them, but they are of such a general nature that they do not give as much information as they might. It appears that the poets lived in a society where the king, chief, chieftain, knight, and the retinue of kings and princes} were political and social factors; that is, perhaps, before the English conquest of 1282. They were familiar with the countryside and many kinds of animals and plants, and so must have lived an outdoor life, perhaps joining in hunting. They felt the contempt of the active man for the cloistered cleric, of the warrior for the coward, and of the leisured class for commerce, but were not above hinting in bardic style that gifts are aeeeptable;1“ honesty and good faith and piety were valued by them;“ they were familiar with the tavern}? they believed in good breeding;13 and finally, they
(p138) may possibly have been North-Walians . The type of person who seems to suit best is the bard at the hall of the country gentleman or small chiefton in the days of Welsh independence. The general outlook is too wide and perhaps not sufficiently aristocratic to be that of an official bard at a king’s court and though there is no reason why these should not have composed gnomic poetry the poems do not read at all like court-bard work. The Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Irish gnomes seem in no case to be the work of epic poets as such or indeed for use in a Heroic milieu; we saw, for example, how the gnomes in the heroic poem Beowulf differ from those in the Anglo-Saxon gnomic poems. The virtues inculcated are not those admired in heroic poetry, not courage r generosity but caution and other qualities conductive to worldly success; that is the virtues of a later stage of society and perhaps a lower class. The Irish Instructions are addressed to princes, but only to advise justice and by their subjects in general. In short it seems that these Anglo-Saxon, Irish and Norse gnomic collections are a kind of folk philosophy adapte by poets in touch with folk ideas and given a literary case and setting and the same is no doubt true of the Welsh.