A Survival from a Sixteenth-Century Bardic SchoolNew edition of ‘Artefact of the Month’ published

8 September 2021, by Webmaster

Photo: The Board of Trinity College Dublin

In the latest edition of our series ‘Artefact of the Month’, a Welsh philologist and naturalist travels to late 17th-century Ireland. He collects whatever falls into his hands. In the process, he saves – almost inadvertently – an entire class of verses and versifiers from oblivion.

When Edward Lhuyd came to Ireland in 1699, he found a civilisation in ruins. The old Gaelic order had collapsed under the stresses of the Tudor and Cromwellian conquests. Poetry no longer had a place in this society. The hereditary families of professional praise-poets saw their profession go extinct. Under these circumstances, Lhuyd acquired a substantial collection of Irish manuscripts that otherwise probably would have gone lost forever. One of them is the ‘Seifín Duanaire’. This manuscript is named after a mysterious poet, and today it is the single most important extant source for a whole species of versification.  

Read the full story of the ‘Seifín Duanaire’ here. In every edition of 'Artefact of the Month', an expert in the field shares the unique story behind a particular object in a compelling and approachable fashion. Editorial duties are overseen by Wiebke Beyer and Karin Becker, who greatly welcome ideas for future editions.

'Artefact of the Month' is the successor of 'manuscript of the month', a full archive of which can be accessed here.