Song of Duiske E-Book

John A. Ryan

• Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1989

Beschreibung

In south Kilkenny, where Duiske stream joins the river Barrow at Graiguenamanagh, lies one of Ireland's many Norman-Cistercian abbeys. Song of Duiske is a novella set amongst this monastic community in the year 1304, a century after the abbey's foundation. It evokes the textures and rhythms of a medieval religious settlement, its peaceful routines as well as occasional trials, and celebrates with quiet lyricism the seasons and their solaces, 'the open sky, the fields and the woods'. 'A little bouquet of beauty … every page throws up a gem' - Vincent Lawrence, Sunday Press 'Vision-like in its effect, to be savoured rather than gulped … a small classic of Irish literature' - Seán Dunne, The Cork Examiner 'A tiny masterpiece … like a miniature painting. If I were forced to live on a desert island, the little book I would want with me would be Song of Duiske' - Pat Donlon, RTE's 'First Edition'

Leseprobe

Seal of Duiske Abbey

John A. Ryan

SONG OF DUISKE

THE LILLIPUT PRESS 1989

CONTENTS

Title Page

IllustrationsandAcknowledgments

HistoricalNote

DramatisPersonae

Map

I Dark

II Seed

III Earth

IV Harvest

V Home

Glossary

Copyright

IllustrationsandAcknowledgments

The ship depicted on the map on p. ix is the common medieval cargo ship called a cog. This drawing, dated 1329, is based on the seal of the Baltic port of Straslund.

The frontispiece shows a late thirteenth-century seal of Duiske Abbey affixed to a charter now in the National Library of Ireland. It depicts the standing figure of an abbot holding a book and crozier. The inscription reads ‘SIGILLABBATIS DE [SALV]ATORE.’ (Photograph courtesy of Roger Stalley.)

The decorated initial letters on pp. 3, 9, 25, 33 and 47 are taken from a manuscript of the Epistle of St Gregory which once belonged to Duiske Abbey and is now in the British Library, London. (Re-drawn courtesy of Frank Gaule.)

The publisher would like to thank Dr John Bradley, Director of the Urban Archaeology Survey, for his professional advice and interest in the work.

HISTORICAL NOTE

The great Cistercian abbeys of Ireland were built between the years 1100 and 1300. Mellifont was the earliest and is probably the best known. Among the many kings and chieftains who founded abbeys in their territories was Dermot Mac Murrough, King of Leinster, who founded Baltinglass. His vassal, Diarmaid Ó Riain of Uí Dróna, founded Kilenny, or VallisDei, near the present-day Goresbridge, and gave land for another abbey about six miles farther south where the little river Duiske flows into the Barrow and where the town of Graiguenamanagh now stands. Both sites were on the western bank of the Barrow in County Kilkenny, which may indicate that Uí Dróna was at that time more extensive than the present baronies of Idrone East and Idrone West in County Carlow. Plans for the founding of the second abbey were disrupted by the Norman invasion of 1169.

County Kilkenny was acquired by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and it was he who renewed Ó Riain’s grant of land and founded the abbey of Duiske, or VallisSanctiSalvatoris. The first community came from Stanley in Wiltshire, and Duiske remained very Norman, in personnel and in spirit, compared with other abbeys such as Killenny or Killenny’s mother-house Jerpoint, ten miles away to the west near the river Nore.

There was further cause for bad feeling between Duiske and Jerpoint: when Killenny was reduced to the status of a grange by the Cistercian General Chapter of 1227, it was put under the control of Duiske, and, Jerpoint naturally resenting this, a long feud followed between the two abbeys.