1 10 44 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/829/Weaponry.png 687d2b340c8f151ab427766976096fe3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Weaponry Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Storage Room and Armory Description An account of the resource Spenser was known for his experience in several wars. His reputation in this regard helped secure him the nomination of Sheriff of Cork soon before his death. The Munster planters were responsible, in part, for their own security, including supplying able-bodied men and equipment for militias in time of need. Many weapons would have been stored in secure levels of a tower house, including areas like this one between main floors. Estates would often have had their own smithies and carpentries that could have made weapons, farm and household goods. Literary Connections The Faerie Queene is full of weapons used for fighting on foot and horseback. In a few cases, we learn about weapons manufacture. Book I.i.8-9 presents a Virgilian catalog of trees described according to their industrial, medicinal and folkloric uses. We read this catalog when the hero of Book I, Red Crosse Knight, and his lady Una are caught by a rainstorm and enter into a forest for shelter at the very beginning of the epic: <blockquote> And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, Ioying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred, Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall, The vine-propp Elme, the Poplar neuer dry, The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all, The Aspine good for staues, the Cypresse funerall. The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still, The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours, The Eugh obedient to the benders will, The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill, The Mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill, The fruitfull Oliue, and the Platane round, The caruer Holme, the Maple seeldom inward sound. (FQ I.i.8-9) </blockquote> The trees listed here have both positive and negative uses and connotations. It is possible that the “Aspine good for staues” refers to barrel staves, but it might also refer to weapon “staves” (such as those held by Irish-looking villains in FQ II.ix.13.7). Images of violence and warfare are clustered in the second stanza in particular: laurel for crowning “mightie Conquerors,” the yew (“Eugh”) for bows, myrrh with its “bitter wound” (an apparent allusion to myrrh’s association with the crucified Christ in the Bible, Mark 15.23), the birch for arrow “shaftes,” and the beech for “war” chariots (cf. Homer’s Iliad 5.839). Spenser opens his epic with images of trees fashioned for heroic and deadly uses. Links: <a href="http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Now_Thrive_the_Armorers:_Arms_and_Armor_in_Shakespeare" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Now_Thrive_the_Armorers:_Arms_and_Armor_in_Shakespeare</a> [accessed 2/22/16] [Folger Shakespeare Library exhibit on arms and armor] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 201, 220. A. C. Hamilton (ed.), The Faerie Queene. By Edmund Spenser. 2nd ed. rev. (Harlow: Pearson, 2007), 33-4n. Thomas Herron, “‘Goodly Woods’: Irish Forests, Georgic Trees in Books I and IV of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene.” Quidditas: JRMMRA 19 (1998), 97-122. Peter Rieman, “Silvan Matters: Error and Instrumentality in Book I of The Faerie Queene.” Spenser Studies 28 (2013), 119-43. Colin Rynne, “The social archaeology of plantation-period ironworks in Ireland: immigrant industrial communities and technology transfer, c.1560-1640.” Plantation Ireland: Settlement and Material culture, c. 1550-c. 1700 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), 248-64. Michael West, “Spenser’s Art of War: Chivalric Allegory, Military Technology, and the Elizabethan Mock-Heroic Sensibility.” Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988), 654-704: 663-4. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/828/Darts.png 16ef5886aa7e5ebee94c523581e70355 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Long darts Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Storage Room and Armory Description An account of the resource These long darts, or throwing spears with finger-loops, resemble those used by the native Irish and are modeled on the weapon held by English Captain Tom Lee in the portrait (c. 1590s) by Marcus Gheeraerts (Tate Gallery, London). In John Derricke’s opening plates to The Image of Irelande (1581), the Irish are pictured holding spears or long darts. They were often used in pairs by light foot-soldiers known as “kern” (Irish caithern). Literary Connections In A View of the Present State of Ireland, Spenser’s spokesman Irenius describes the weapon as deriving from the ancient Gauls, a Celtic tribe on the Continent who used them against the ancient Romans (View 62). In The Faerie Queene, the angry, fiery villain Atin carries “in his hand two dartes exceeding flit,/ And deadly sharp he held, whose heads were dight/ In poyson and in blood, of malice and despight” (FQ II.iv.38.7-9). He attacks Guyon, the hero of Temperance, with one of them: <blockquote> With that one of his thrillant darts he threw, Headed with yre and vengeable despight; The quiuering steele his aymed end wel knew, And to his brest it selfe intended right: But he [i.e., Guyon] was wary, and ere it empight In the meant marke, aduaunst his shield atweene, On which it seizing, no way enter might, But backe rebownding, left the forckhead keene; Eftsoones he fled away, and might no where be seene. (FQ II.iv.46) </blockquote> Atin carries two darts and (unlike those pictured here) each has a forked head: like a snake’s forked tongue, they are emblematic of his treachery and divisiveness, his “malice and despight.” Atin may also allude to the Irish. Not only do his darts point in this direction, but so does his name: tine means “fire“ in modern Irish (Steinberg). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Joan Heiges Blythe, “Ate.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 76. John Derricke, The Image of Irelande (1581). Ed. D. B. Quinn (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1985). Clarence Steinberg, “Atin, Pyrochles, and Cymochles: on Irish emblems in the Faerie Queene.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971), 749-61. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/827/Elk_head.png eff92ce6a59f40afe1b1cc3361f5e8b0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Irish elk antlers Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Storage Room and Armory Description An account of the resource The prehistoric great Irish elk was long extinct by Spenser’s time, but its bones and magnificent antlers would have been found preserved in bogs. Examples can be found today, mounted as trophies, in many Irish castles and museums. Links <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Elk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Elk</a> [accessed 11/30/12] [Wikipedia site with description and many illustrations] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/826/Jack.png 816954f87b28de3c000d34bd0ba4763a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Quilted jack, a.k.a. "checklaton" Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Storage Room and Armory Description An account of the resource Spenser was known for his experience in several wars. His reputation in this regard helped secure him the nomination of Sheriff of Cork soon before his death. The Munster planters were responsible, in part, for their own security, including supplying able-bodied men and equipment for militias in time of need. Many weapons would have been stored in secure levels of a tower house, including areas like this one between main floors. Literary Connections This particular item, a “quilted leather jack,” Spenser describes as an English type of protective garment used by the Irish in his View of the Present State of Ireland (c. 1596). In the same passage in the View, the speaker Irenius confusingly compares it to “Checklaton,” a costly article of clothing worn by the character Sir Thopas in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In The Faerie Queene, the fierce character Disdayne appears in a quilted jacket and checklaton: <blockquote> He wore no armour, ne for none did care, As no whit dreading any liuing wight; But in a Iacket quilted richly rare, Vpon checklaton he was straungely dight, And on his head a roll of linnen plight, Like to the Mores of Malaber he wore; With which his locks, as blacke as pitchy night, Were bound about, and voyded from before, And in his hand a mighty yron club he bore. (The Faerie Queene VI.vii.43) </blockquote> Disdayne wears a turban, like the “Mores of Malaber,” thus making him into a middle-eastern threat as much as an Irish one. There may be yet further confusion intended by Spenser: O’More is an Irish name, and Irish women (if not men) wore turban-like linen wraps on their heads in Spenser’s day. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Rudolf Gottfried (ed.), Spenser’s Prose Works. The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition. Vol. 10 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1949): 121, 352-3. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 201, 220. Carol Kaske, “The Word ’Checklaton’ and the Authorship of A Vewe of the Present State of Ireland.“ Spenser Studies 13 (1999), 267. Paul Piehler, “Disdain.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 220. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/825/Woodcut_St_George.png c80265970381ea472ee60546ac8ae955 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Woodcut of St George Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Study Description An account of the resource The only woodcut to be published in the 1590 and 1596 editions of The Faerie Queene is this woodcut of St George, which appeared facing the opening of Book II. It had been used by the printer of The Faerie Queene, John Wolfe, in earlier publications. George was far from unknown in Ireland. An annual celebration of the saint, complete with procession and dragon, occurred in Dublin until the 1570s. In Munster, a curious artifact of the Desmond lordship —a rare example of something that actually remains— is a sixteenth-century Desmond coat of arms carved on whale-bone, now housed in the National Museum of Ireland. It shows a mounted horseman spearing a dragon. The carving appears to have been tampered with (exactly when is uncertain), so that the mounted horseman has been turned into an image of St George. Literary Connections The hero of Book I of The Faerie Queene, the book of Holiness, is Red Crosse Knight, who becomes St George by fighting against the Dragon in canto xi. St George is the patron saint of England, and the Dragon bears signs that would indicate its identity as Satan (“that old dragon” of the Book of Revelation). It also has features that would indicate topical references to Pope Gregory XIII (whose emblem was a dragon), Spain, and Ireland all wrapped into one. Its black and red scales are compared to an army’s shields, for example (black and red were the colors of the Castillian, i.e., Spanish monarchy), it has “sail”-like wings (shades of the Spanish Armada, which was dispersed by the English and a storm, and which crashed in part on Irish shores) and its tail is wrapped in “boughts and knots” and pointed with a double sting: the words evoke the Irish bonnaught (Irish buanacht), a term for the predatory biletting by mercenary soldiers that squeezed the country and that New English administrators tried to reform or eliminate. When the giant Dragon is slain, it is measured “To proue how many acres he did spred of land” (FQ I.xii.11.9). Accordingly, the downfall of the noble house of Desmond led to its attainder, including the forfeiture, measurement and plantation of its land by opportunists such as Spenser. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 219. Thomas Herron, “An Exhibit in Ireland.” Spenser Review 33.2 (Summer 2002), 41-4. —, Spenser’s Irish Work: Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): 136-7. Belinda Humfrey, “dragons.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 223-4. Robert Kellogg, “Red Cross Knight.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 587-8. Hugh MacLachlan, “George, St.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 329-30. Paul J. Voss, “The Faerie Queene 1590-1596: the Case of Saint George.” Ben Jonson Journal 3 (1996), 59-73. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/824/Helmet_Spanish.png 93bfc0dca59029f25e9617a8e41fadaf Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Helmet, Spanish Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Study Description An account of the resource When the great Spanish Armada was defeated by the English and blown away from the English Channel in 1588, many of its ships sailed homeward by first travelling north, rounding Scotland and Ireland, then travelling out into the open Atlantic on their way southwest to Spain. Many did not arrive, crashing on Irish shores in frightful weather, with thousands of sailors and soldiers lost. Spenser was in Ireland to help administer in the aftermath of the disaster, which offered considerable spoils to the victors (see also Tower House Bedroom: Chest). This helmet, or morion, could represent a trophy and souvenir from that period or from an earlier battle, the siege of Smerwick, Co. Kerry in 1580, which involved both Spanish and Italian troops fighting under the banner of the pope. Another helmet is located in the Great Hall. Literary Connections The lengthy battle between Prince Arthur and the evil, tyrannical Souldan in Book V.viii of The Faerie Queene has long been read as an allegory for the English defeat of the Armada, and more recently as an allegory combining these events in Ireland, as well. The hero of Justice, Artegall, helps mop up the Souldan’s men and drive his frightful wife, Adicia, “like an enraged cow” off into the woods (FQ V.viii.46.1). Both strength of arms and God’s grace help them to victory. Like an ancient Roman general, Arthur takes the Souldan’s armor and shield as a trophy or “eternall token” of his victory: <blockquote>Onely his shield and armour, which there lay, Though nothing whole, but all to brusd and broken, He vp did take, and with him brought away, That mote remaine for an eternall token To all, mongst whom this storie should be spoken, How worthily, by heauens high decree,Iustice that day of wrong her selfe had wroken, That all men which that spectacle did see, By like ensample mote for euer warned bee. (FQ V.viii.44)</blockquote> Links <a href="http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/S108200/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/S108200/index.html</a> (accessed 11/8/12) [contemporary account in Spanish by Armada survivor Francisco de Cuellar, published on the CELT website of electronic texts]  <a href="http://www.sligoheritage.com/ArchSpanishArmada.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.sligoheritage.com/ArchSpanishArmada.htm</a> (accessed 11/8/12) [photographs of Armada wreck sites in Co. Sligo and (unattributed) translation of de Cuellar’s account] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Vincent Carey, “Atrocity and History: Spenser and the Slaughter at Smerwick (1580).” Age of Atrocity: Violence and Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland. Ed. David Edwards, Pádraig Lenihan and Clodagh Tait (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007), 79-94. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 195. Richard F. Hardin, “Adicia, Souldan.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 7-8. Thomas Herron, Edmund Spenser’s Irish Work: Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): ch. 9. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/823/Study_Desk.png 9fa6c35c3f3934ff434661a137584a4d https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/823/Woodcut.png 285c0f3134c16681f7e62036ba981be3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Desk, with paper, pen and ink, and books (including The Faerie Queene) Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Study Description An account of the resource This desk, with various papers on and around it, indicates Spenser’s life as a creative writer. In the Ground Floor Parlor of the castle complex is another desk. That area functions as Spenser’s “office” for administrative writing. Both desks are modeled loosely on that of St Jerome in Albrecht Dürer’s famous print (1514). Spenser would certainly have found inspiration in the early church fathers when writing his own divinely inspired work. Many writers, such as Michel de Montaigne, Friederich Holderlein and William Butler Yeats, were attracted to towers to work in. Perhaps the physical location on high inspired lofty thoughts, just as it removed one from distractions down below. In the castle recreation here, Spenser’s study is adjacent to his bedroom and above the chapel, both powerful places for the heart and mind. Almost all surviving examples of Spenser’s handwriting are in the form of letters written while he was secretary to Lord Deputy of Ireland Arthur, Lord Grey or when writing on behalf of other administrators, such as John Norris, President of Munster and his planter neighbor nearby to the south (at Mallow Castle, County Cork). A few rare examples of Spenser’s annotations to poems [from the Shakespeare Folger Library] do exist, however. On the desk lies Spenser’s magnum opus, The Faerie Queene, open to the title page of the second (1596) edition. As the page declares, it was published in London and “printed for” William Ponsonbie. It shows the emblem (or device) of the printer, Richard Field: the anchora spei or “anchor of hope” that descends from the heavens. Writing epic poetry was both inspired and weighty business, and it took hope for Spenser to make the perilous land-and-sea-journey to London, so as to oversee publication of his work (see the description of such a voyage in Spenser’s poem Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595). It took more hope to return again and to keep writing at Kilcolman, as the political storm-clouds gathered in the north. The name of Spenser’s estate, “Hap-hazard,” indicated its precarious nature. Literary Connections In Book II of The Faerie Queene is found the House of Temperance, a castle based allegorically on the human body, wherein the kitchen is the stomach, private rooms are the heart, and so on. The castle’s turret, a “blessed bowre” (FQ II.ix.47.5) functions as the head. It has many rooms, three of which function as the principle parts of the mind and/or higher soul. “Three honorable sages” (47.8) live there, i.e., foresight, judgment and memory. The first of these sages, named “Phantastes,” has “a sharpe foresight, and a working wit/ That never idle was, ne once would rest a whit” and he imagines all sorts of <blockquote>... idle thoughtes and fantasies, Deuices, dreames, opinions vnsound, Shewes, visions, sooth-sayes, and prophesies; And all that fained is, as leasings, tales, and lies. (FQ II.ix.51.6-9)</blockquote> The other two men represent the sager and more serious aspects of the mind. The second, judgment (who is unnamed in the poem), has walls <blockquote>... painted faire with memorable gestes, Of famous Wisards, and with picturals Of Magistrates, of courts, of tribunals, Of commen wealthes, of states, of pollicy, Of lawes, of iudgementes, and of decretals; All artes, all science, all Philosophy, And all that in the world was ay thought wittily. (53.3-9)</blockquote> The third of these men, “Eumnestes,” represents memory, and <blockquote>His chamber all was hangd about with rolls, And old records from auncient times deriud, Some made in books, some in long parchment scrolls, That were all worm-eaten, and full of canker holes. (57.6-9)</blockquote> Combined, the men could represent a well-rounded (and somewhat satirical) portrait of Spenser at Kilcolman: a man of intense poetic imagination and fancy who philosophized, administered and adjudicated on his estate, while also writing antiquarian histories or chronicles (inserted into The Faerie Queene) based on his prodigious reading and memory. Links: <a href="http://talus.artsci.wustl.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://talus.artsci.wustl.edu/</a> [accessed 11/30/12] [texts and digital editing of Spenser’s work, including facsimiles. Directed by Joseph Loewenstein and hosted at Washington University in St. Louis] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford History of the Irish Book: Vol. III: the Irish Book in English, 1550-1800 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006). Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 226-30. A. Kent Hieatt, “The Projected Continuation of The Faerie Queene: Rome Delivered?” Spenser Studies 8 (1987), 335-42. David Wilson-Okamura, “When Did Spenser Read Tasso?” Spenser Studies 23 (2008), 277-82. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/822/Bookshelf.png f3f9a9f5ab04651e77c12a3916fc127a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bookshelves Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Study Description An account of the resource It is unclear how large of a library Spenser had. Like the “Library” of Eumnestes in The Faerie Queene (II.ix.59.3), it may have been large and full of worm-holes, or small and well-cared for, or anywhere in between. It is hard to imagine Spenser writing The Faerie Queene and whatever else at Kilcolman without some recourse to books and manuscripts at hand, either in his own house or nearby at places like Mallow, the estate with large castle owned by the Norris family, who served as Presidents of Munster. Mallow was a long way to walk, however, to check up on a quotation (see Trade and Travel: Roads). Andrew Hadfield estimates that Spenser had 200-300 volumes in his working library (by comparison, an inventory of Munster planter Sir William Herbert’s seignory at Castleisland, Co. Kerry mentions “of sundry sortes great and little one hundred“ books). These would have been in various languages and of all kinds and genres, ranging from religious to legal tracts to popular and refined works of literature. The space for the conjectured study in our recreation is relatively small, so vertically stacked bookshelves (a design known in the late-sixteenth century) are used instead of shelves angled outwards from the wall (as one might find in a periodicals reading-room today, for example). The latter type were better for displaying the covers of books but the former could hold more. Contrary to modern-day practice, the majority of the books are arranged with their spines facing the wall. The reason for this is that many books were bound haphazardly by the owners, and titles of books were often written in ink on the page-ends of books, as opposed to being stamped onto the leather or vellum of the spines. There was a book trade in early modern Ireland, but how far it reached into the countryside is uncertain. Spenser travelled enough, including to London, and spent enough time in major Irish towns, such as Dublin, and earned enough money, to have amassed a good collection of books for a person of his social status. Many of these books would presumably have been burnt when the castle went up in flames in 1598. Losses may have included unpublished parts of The Faerie Queene. On the top shelf of one of the bookshelves are two objects with threatening significance. One, a skull, is the standard medieval momento mori or reminder of our final end. The other is a Spanish helmet (see Tower House Study: Helmet), the sort of trophy that Spenser could have bought or have picked up as a souvenir after one or another expedition by Spain landed on Irish shores (disastrously so). Spenser was a poet acutely conscious of worldly ruin and of his own mortality, while simultaneously hopeful that a decisive English Protestant victory over Spain (and other foreign Catholic forces) might finally be achieved. Spenser anticipates such a battle in The Faerie Queene, between “that great faery Queene and Paynim king,” which he promises to one day write about (FQ I.xi.7). Spenser’s epic has a godly, anti-Spanish, anti-papal, pro-English militaristic purpose. Ironically, that battle came to Kilcolman too soon, and his book was never finished. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield (eds), The Oxford History of the Irish Book: Vol. III: the Irish Book in English, 1550-1800 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006). Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 226-30. A. Kent Hieatt, “The Projected Continuation of The Faerie Queene: Rome Delivered?” Spenser Studies 8 (1987), 335-42. Rev. Kieran O’Shea, “A Castleisland Inventory, 1590.” Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 15-16 (1982-3), 37-46. David Wilson-Okamura, “When Did Spenser Read Tasso?” Spenser Studies 23 (2008), 277-82. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/821/Privy.png 0ed5335412adf5e47c64346a2ed6191f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Privy a.k.a garderobe or toilet Subject The topic of the resource Privy (garderobe) Description An account of the resource Archaeological remains from Spenser’s privy indicate an ample and healthy diet enjoyed by his household, including various game and high-quality wheat. Moss could have served for wiping. Waste would have fallen down a two-story chute, exiting out the south side (or back) of the castle, where it would have been shoveled away and/or disinfected with a covering of lime. Two-seater privies were not uncommon. An example is found today in Barryscourt Castle, Co. Cork. Newman Johnson refers to modern-day Kilcolman’s missing “stone” privy seat although a wooden seat (as here) could also have been in place in Spenser’s time. Placed on the seat for reading is a treatise on the flush toilet, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called The Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596) by the inventor of the device, the courtier poet and epic translator Sir John Harington. Another privy lies on the east end of the Great Hall. Literary Connections In The Faerie Queene (1590), Spenser describes a castle, the House of Temperance, in figurative terms as like a human body. There is a privy attached by “conduit pipe” to the kitchen, which represents the stomach in Spenser’s allegory: <blockquote>But all the liquour, which was fowle and waste, Not good nor seruiceable elles for ought, They in another great rownd vessell plaste, Till by a conduit pipe it thence were brought:  And all the rest, that noyous was, and nought, By secret wayes, that none might it espy, Was close conuaid, and to the backgate brought, That cleped was Port Esquiline, whereby It was auoided quite, and throwne out priuily. (FQ II.ix.32)</blockquote> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: Eric Klingelhofer, Castles and Colonists: an archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2010): 121 [fig. 5.8 shows cross-section drawing of Kilcolman tower ruin with garderobe and garderobe shaft indicated.] —. “Edmund Spenser at Kilcolman Castle: the archaeological evidence.” Post-Medieval Archaeology 39.1 (2005), 133-54. David Newman Johnson, “Kilcolman Castle.” The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 416-22. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/820/Raleigh_Window.png 089559c9a7c77984465a0618fa69da87 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Object Descriptions from Centering Spenser Subject The topic of the resource Objects Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Centering Spenser, Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Raleigh's window Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Parlor Description An account of the resource Remains of this south-facing, ogee-headed window still exist in the wall of the tower house. For a contemporary picture from the castle exterior. The view from the window would be of the marsh adjacent to the castle. The window is dubbed “Raleigh’s window” today because, as legend has it, Spenser and Raleigh sat here and smoked pipes and conversed when Raleigh visited Kilcolman in 1589 (see Spenser and Raleigh). Literary Connections Raleigh’s visit to Kilcolman is immortalized in Spenser’s pastoral poem, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595). Spenser’s alter-ego Colin Clout describes this encounter as beginning outside, under an alder tree: <blockquote>One day (quoth he) I sat, (as was my trade) Vnder the foote of Mole that mountaine hore, Keeping my sheepe amongst the cooly shade, Of the greene alders by the Mullaes shore: There a straunge shepheard chaunst to find me out, Whether allured with my pipes delight, Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about, Or thither led by chaunce, I know not right: Whom when I asked from what place he came, And how he hight, himselfe he did ycleepe, The shepheard of the Ocean by name, And said he came far from the main-sea deepe. He sitting me beside in that same shade, Prouoked me to plaie some pleasant fit, And when he heard the musicke which I made, He found himselfe full greatly pleasd at it: Yet aemuling my pipe, he tooke in hond My pipe before that aemuled of many, And plaid theron; (for well that skill he cond) Himselfe as skilfull in that art as any. He pip’d, I sung; and when he sung, I piped, By chaunge of turnes, each making other mery, Neither enuying other, nor enuied, So piped we, vntill we both were weary. (Colin Clouts Come Home Againe 56-79).</blockquote> The “shepheard of the Ocean” is Raleigh. Spenser’s description of a “piping” contest is a pastoral conceit, indicating that they shared poetry with one another (whether or not they actually played pipes as well). In the distance is “Mole,” Spenser’s name for Galtymore, the highest mountain in the nearby Ballyhoura Hills to the north of Kilcolman. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dr. Thomas Herron, ECU Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bibliography: William Oram, “Spenser’s Raleghs.” Studies in Philology 87 (1990), 341-62.