You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'history is whack' category.
I didn’t realize until just now the obnoxious appropriateness of spending St. Patrick’s Day reading chronicle histories of Ireland. Why, pray, was I reading chronicle histories of Ireland for a paper about Wales? Ask the Renaissance. Can’t keep its eye on the damn ball.
Which is why I have this gem to give you, courtesy of Meredith Hanmer, doctor in divinity and collector of weird-ass antiquaria. From his Chronicle of Ireland, collected in 1633 with Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland and [Saint] Edmund Campion’s Historie of Ireland.
Dermot Mac Moragh, King of Leinster, was a long time enamoured with the wife of Ororike, King of Meth, some call him Morice, some other Merdich, she was the daughter of Omalarghlun, whom nature had made faire, the world a Queene, and lust a Harlot: the booke of Howth reporteth at large, how Ororic was old, his Queene young and wanton, and that in derision, when he came from hunting, and being an hungred, she gave Apples to eate, which had beene in some undecent place of her body to be spoken of, so that the scent of them was strong, whereat she smiled; her Lord and husband having secretly learned her lewd practise, tooke with him the day following, two of her foster brothers a hunting, gelded them, baked their stones, brought the Pie hot to his Lady and her Gentlewomen, when hee had commended the rarenesse of the meat, the fond wantons and giglets, fell to it, when they had satisfied themselves, saith Ororic, how like you this Pye, excellent good meat say they; it is (saith hee) the meat which you love raw and rosted, what is that (say they) the stones of your two foster brethren; with that she cast up a wilde look, and never beheld him cheerefully againe. [Ed. note: I'll bet!]
Battles, needless to say, ensued. Hanmer’s next narratorial act is to diverge entirely from his story to tell of Madoc, disgruntled third or maybe fourth son of Owain of Gwynedd, who, despairing of wresting his way into the raging succession battle for the rule of Gwynedd, took off across the sea and settled America. Yeah, that’s right. Three hundred years before Columbus. Yeah, Spain — eat it.
Completely irrelevant for Hanmer; sweet sweet term paper fodder for me.
Ahem. For those of you with EEBO* access, the tale can be found here. For those of you without, this is STC 1014:21, sigs. Ii7v-Ii8r. As for Madoc, more on him – perhaps, this time, with gravitas – later.
* Things I will miss about living close to London: “Screw EEBO, man, I’ll just hop on a train and go look at the thing. And at absolutely anything else I want.”
