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XXI. Ancient Norman-French Poem on the erection of the Walls of New Ross, in Ireland, A.D. 1265. Communicated by Frederic Madden, Esq. F.S.A. in a Letter to Henry Ellis, Esq. F.R.S. Secretary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2012

Frederic Madden Esq.
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Extract

Among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, is preserved a highly curious volume, written at the commencement of the fourteenth century, containing a miscellaneous collection of pieces in verse and prose, apparently the production of an Irish Ecclesiastic, and chiefly of a satirical description. Most of these pieces are in English or Latin, and there is great reason to conclude that they are from the pen of Friar Michael Kyldare, who is expressly named as the author of a Ballad, fol. 10, and who is erroneously assigned by Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica, to the fifteenth, instead of the thirteenth and beginning of the succeeding century. But towards the close of this MS. (which, from the folios having been strangely misplaced, is very difficult to follow in the order of contents,) occurs an extremely interesting Poem, written in the ancient or Norman French language, contributing in a remarkable degree to throw illustration on the early topography and history of the town of New Ross, in Ireland, and on this account I trust the Society may not deem it unworthy of its being submitted to their notice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 22 , 1829 , pp. 307 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1826

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References

page 308 note a Sir James Ware calls him Earl of Desmond, and says he was drowned in 1268, whilst crossing from Ireland to Wales; but both these errors are corrected by Cox. The first Earl of Desmond was Maurice Fitz Thomas, created by Edward the Third, the 27th of August, 1329.

page 309 note b Lodge.

page 309 note c Grose, in his Antiq. of Ireland, vol. i. p. 49, repeats an absurd variation of the same tradition, ascribing the inclosure of New Ross with a wall to Rose Macrue, sister of Strongbow, in the year 1310 (!) who is said also to have built Hook Tower, in the Barony of Shelburn, in the same County, and to have been buried at Ross, in the Church of St. Saviour.

page 310 note d From Camden, Young, Seward, and Musgrave.

page 311 note e The flute is mentioned as a musical instrument in the romances of Alexander, Dolopathos, and several others of the 13th and 14th centuries. In a curious poem of Guillaume de Machault, a writer of the 14th century, among other instruments of music is noticed “la flauste brehaigne;” on which Roquefort remarks, “C'étoit probablement une flûte champêtre.” But may we not interpret this the Irish flute, in contra-distinction to the flute traversiére, or German flute? Walker, in his Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, p. 90, has stated, that no record exists to prove the use of the flute among the ancient Irish, but at the same time owns it is highly probable this instrument was known to them, particularly from the length of some of the notes in the early Irish melodies appearing calculated rather for the flute than the harp.

page 312 note f Wainwrights?

page 312 note g The word is illegible in the MS.

page 313 note h See Roquefort, v. Talevas, and Notes and Glossary to the Romance of Havelok, v. 2320.

page 315 note i A similar phrase occurs in the French Poem on the death of Sir Thomas Turbeville, preserved in the MS. Cott. Cal. A. xviii.

“Sire Edeward pur la grant rauye

De France re dona une aylle”

page 315 note k Sic in MS.