A chilly spring?
March 27, 2014
Ane doolie sessoun to ane cairfull dyte doolie: doleful; dyte: story Suld correspond and be equiualent. Suld: should. So begins Robert Henryson’s The Testament of Cresseid, a story of what happened to Cresseid (or Criseyde or Cressida, depending on your preferred version) after she left Troy. Henryson’s …
Literatures of Older Scots and Middle English
February 25, 2014
If there are challenges in establishing Older Scots and Middle English as different languages (see previous blog) those are matched equally in attempting to define an Older Scots literary tradition. The Middle English literary tradition is so multifarious that to insist on separateness for Scotland seems doomed to failure. We can see, for instance, that …
Older Scots and Middle English: mutually comprehensible dialects?
February 24, 2014
The witticism that Britain and the US are countries divided by a common language might equally apply to Scotland and England. To avoid too much controversy, I am neither going to attribute the thought, nor am I going to discuss contemporary linguistic matters, but instead limit my discussion here to the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth …
Love: not for the faint-hearted?
February 14, 2014
The lyf so short, the crafte so longe to lerne, Th’assay so harde, so sharpe the conquerynge The dredful joy, that alwey slyd so yerne Al this meene I be love, that my felynge Astonyeth with his wonderful worchyng So soore ywys, that whan I on hym thynke, Nat wote I wel wher that I …
Undying Love
February 11, 2014
I met my love in the first year: it was one of those strange encounters with a new culture which I had not heard of before. I am talking about my love for all things medieval here – a love that has outlasted almost everything else. I fell for it deeply: ‘the Discreet Charm of …
Past identities: medieval differences between Scotland and England
January 21, 2014
The photo attached to this blog can be replicated in many family albums. The girls here happen to be my goddaughter and her sister, on their way to visit friends and family in Scotland, but they might equally be my children on the same mission north. There remains a slight sense of travelling to a …
What is Robin Hood?
October 28, 2013
I’d never really thought of Robin Hood as jousting. A mean sword fighter, yes; good with the quarter staff, if not as good as Little John; and of course superlative with a long bow. Just not the lance. So it took me a few moments to re-orientate myself at the Robin Hood Pageant at Nottingham …
Prophecies and politics (or: anarchy in ASE)
October 11, 2013
Bob Geldof has joined the ranks of doom mongers when he predicted that the world only has a good 17 years left to go. While there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic, given all the current wars and human tragedy, the idea that the end is nigh has been around for a long time. …
The Far Traveller
September 24, 2013
I have just come back from a range of different research trips which took me to Shetland, Iceland, Germany and Ireland in a very brief time span. While I have really enjoyed the opportunities to talk with my colleagues, I am less keen on the travel itself, especially since flying is not very comfortable, airports …
Comparing technologies of publication
July 25, 2013
About five and a half centuries ago, printing with moveable type became possible, a result of Johannes Gutenberg’s inventiveness, but also because the necessary materials, including the right kinds of metal to make type, became available. Over the subsequent fifty years or so, this technology spread and became commercially viable: more printed books circulated, especially …