3 10 581 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/795/Gun-loop.png 3a25363c39e0e36571ffdc2086fae323 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 Gun-loop Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource One never knows who might come calling. Behind the curtain in the Parlor is a gun loop, a hole through which a gun can be fired, and which provides a clear shot at the front door leading into the Great Hall. Spenser lived at Kilcolman under constant threat. Full-scale rebellion against him and the New English was always a possibility, as were sporadic raids by thieving, ambitious and/or disgruntled neighbors who would have borne a grudge or simply wanted his property. Some would have resented the creation of the plantation by the (mostly Protestant) New English settlers. Others, like his powerful Old English neighbor Lord Roche, engaged Spenser in regular lawsuits over property, and this led to violence on both sides. Spenser was eventually burned out when the Nine Years’ War, led by Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, began in Ulster and spread south, reaching the plantation in August, 1599. Appropriately, the name of Spenser’s estate was “Hap-Hazard.” Guns were an early modern innovation in Europe. They are recorded as being in use in Ireland as early as the Battle of Knockdoe in 1504. Even the most mighty and feared Irish lords put gun-loops outside their front doors, as did the 10th earl of Ormond at his Tudor mansion at Carrick-on-Suir. The plantation home of Mallow Castle, occupied by the Norris family of soldiers and administrators, had gun-loops, as did Kanturk Castle, built in the early seventeenth century by the native Irish MacCarthys. Spenser’s fellow planter William Herbert lists cannon and hand-guns among his household inventory at Castleisland, Co. Kerry. Gun-loops are also found at Enniscorthy Castle, Co. Wicklow. Spenser briefly owned property in Enniscorthy in the early 1580s, before he sold it on to Sir Henry Wallop. Spenser’s friend and co-author Lodowick Bryskett lived and wrote in the town of Enniscorthy. Literary Connections Spenser makes extensive use of guns in his poetry. It has been argued that the highly destructive flail of Talus, Artegall’s iron-man enforcer in Book V of The Faerie Queene, could allegorize raking gunfire. Elsewhere in the epic, the character Timias (an allegorical stand-in for Sir Walter Raleigh) blasts open the castle of the giant Orgoglio with his “horne,” and Orgoglio’s forceful response is compared to cannon-fire (FQ I.viii.3-9). Book II contains “hideous Ordinaunce” (or cannon) used by villains who besiege a castle, the House of Temperance (II.xi.14.3). These same villains are earlier compared to “a swarme of Gnats at euentide” that rise “Out of the fennes of Allan” (II.ix.16.1-2), i.e., the Bog of Allen in the Irish midlands. 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: Cyril Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars (NY: Barnes and Noble, 1950). Alistair Fowler, “Spenser and War.” War, Literature and the Arts in Sixteenth-Century Europe, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1989), 147-64. Rev. Kieran O’Shea, “A Castleisland Inventory, 1590.” Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 15-16 (1982-3), 37-46. 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. —. “warfare.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 726-7. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/816/Harp.png 4333d53a2a80955d4a1072a8eebb8424 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 Harp Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Parlor Description An account of the resource The Irish were and are famous for their skill on the harp. The harp is Ireland’s national symbol and became so by decree of King Henry VIII, when it was also featured on Irish coinage. The early modern harp used by the Irish would have been smaller than modern versions used in concerts today. It would have been made of highly decorated wood with wire strings. A representative example from the period is the famous “Brian Boru” harp now held at Trinity College, Dublin. In the woodcuts to John Derricke’s Image of Irelande (1581), a harp is pictured being played to accompany a singer or reciter of poetry at a native Irish lord’s feast. An audio sample of a wire-stringed harp (featuring Patrick Ball playing a composition by the eighteenth-century composer Carolan), can be found here. Music was clearly played at Kilcolman. A lute-key that may be contemporary with Spenser’s occupation of the castle was found in the excavations of the 1990s (see Ground Floor Parlor: Lute). As a local lord, Spenser could well have had native musicians play music for him on various instruments, including the harp. Spenser’s granddaughter, Catherine, married Ludovicus O’Cahill, son of Daniel Duffe O’Cahill, the harper of Queen Anne of Denmark, wife of King James I of Great Britain. Literary Connections In his View of the Present State of Ireland (c. 1596), Spenser’s spokesman Irenius complains of how unruly young Irishmen are incited to violent, disruptive deeds by heroic poetry in Irish. Their bards praise those whose “music was not the harp nor lays of love, but the cries of people and clashing of armour” (View 75). In the House of Pride episode in Book I of The Faerie Queene (1590), the sinfully proud queen Lucifera has at her court “many Bardes, that to the trembling chord/ Can tune their timely voices cunningly” (FQ I.v.3.6-7), which may be a reference to the harp. In his poem “The Ruines of Time,” included in his collection Complaints (1591), Spenser’s speaker in a dream vision sees “th’Harpe of Philisides now dead,” “stroong all with siluer twyne,/ And made of golde and costlie yuorie,” come floating down the “Lee.” The harp is also compared to that of Orpheus, who tamed “Wylde beasts and forrests“ with it (“The Ruines of Time” 603-9; see also Rivers). In the allegory, “Philisides” is the great Protestant hero Sir Philip Sidney (d. 1586), and the “Lee” may or may not refer to the river of that name in Munster (it could also be the “lea” or bank of the river). We might therefore see this dream-vision as Spenser’s nostalgic fantasy, meant to inspire Sidney-type heroes to once again tame Irish “wylde beasts and forrests” with their poetry and heroic deeds. Links: <a href="http://www.irishharp.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.irishharp.org/</a> [accessed 10/30/12] [Historical Harp Society of Ireland] <a href="http://www.folger.edu/Content/Whats-On/Folger-Exhibitions/Past-Exhibitions/Noyses-Sounds-and-Sweet-Aires/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.folger.edu/Content/Whats-On/Folger-Exhibitions/Past-Exhibitions/Noyses-Sounds-and-Sweet-Aires/</a> [accessed 2/22/16] [Folger Shakespeare Library exhibit on music] 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: James Neil Brown, “Orpheus.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 519-20. Ann Buckley, “Representations of musicians in John Derricke’s ’The image of Irelande’ (1581),” Music, Words, and Images: Essays in Honour of Koraljka Kos. Ed. Vjera Katalinić and Zdravko Blažeković (Zagreb: Croatian Musicological Society, 1999), 77–91. Emily Cullen, Meanings and Cultural Functions of the Irish Harp as Trope, Icon and Instrument: The Construction of an Irish Self-Image (PhD thesis, National University of Ireland-Galway, 2008). Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 410. Christopher Smith, “Gaelic and European Interactions on Ireland’s Harmonic Frontiers.” Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c. 1540-1660. Ed. Michael Potterton and Thomas Herron (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), 251-66. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/789/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 Great Hall 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 Tower House Study. 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. Thomas Herron, Edmund Spenser’s Irish Work: Poetry, Plantation and Colonial Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): ch. 9. 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/25/827/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/25/787/Kitchen.png 5b253dedc986da8ae86ad28fc762f397 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 Kitchen Subject The topic of the resource Bawn Area Description An account of the resource Archaeologist Eric Klingelhofer suggests that a kitchen building may have been attached to an interior bawn wall (also hypothetical) that runs roughly SW-NE between the Tower House and the east bawn wall. A small kitchen building is therefore recreated at the intersection of this interior wall and the east bawn wall. A covered servants’ corridor runs between the kitchen and the Great Hall. It is almost certain that Kilcolman also had some form of kitchen garden for growing fruit, vegetables and herbs (see Bawn area: garden and Tower House Parlor: apples). Literary Connections Spenser’s House of Temperance, an allegory for the human body (see also Tower House Study: desk and Tower House Privy), has a huge kitchen, symbolizing the stomach: <blockquote> It was a vaut ybuilt for great dispence, With many raunges reard along the wall; And one great chimney, whose long tonnell thence, The smoke forth threw. And in the midst of all There placed was a caudron wide and tall, Vpon a mightie fornace, burning whott, More whott, then Aetn’, or flaming Mongiball: For day and night it brent, ne ceased not, So long as any thing it in the caudron got. But to delay the heat, least by mischaunce It might breake out, and set the whole on fyre, There added was by goodly ordinaunce, An huge great payre of bellowes, which did styre Continually, and cooling breath inspyre. About the Caudron many Cookes accoyld, With hookes and ladles, as need did requyre; The whyles the viaundes in the vessel boyld They did about their businesse sweat, and sorely toyld. (FQ II.ix.29-30) </blockquote> Links <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/schools/key-stage-3/tudor-kitchens-revealed/%20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/schools/key-stage-3/tudor-kitchens-revealed/</a> (accessed 1/30/18) [the kitchens of the Tudor palace, Hampton Court, near London] 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): 221, 325-6. Eric Klingelhofer, “Edmund Spenser at Kilcolman Castle: the archaeological evidence.” Post-Medieval Archaeology 39.1 (2005), 133-54. 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/25/796/Lute.png fcc043cbde14c39509ed8ffbdf888ce8 https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/796/4-Dowland-Midnight.ogg 5d9beac846b9ecbaf31c377e0c006844 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 Lute Subject The topic of the resource Ground Floor Parlor Description An account of the resource The lute was a popular renaissance instrument similar to the modern-day guitar. Eric Klingelhofer’s excavations of Kilcolman in the mid-1990s uncovered a tuning peg for a lute or similar stringed instrument. The find was located in a stratification level that could be contemporary with Spenser’s occupation of the site. Although its dating is uncertain, it may have been in use in Spenser’s household there in the 1590s. Featured here is “Mr. Dowland’s Midnight” by the Elizabethan lutenist John Dowland (played by Christopher Morrongiello; reproduced with permissions). Literary Connections A poem attributed to Spenser and published posthumously by James Ware in 1633, “Verses upon the said Earles Lute,” is reported to have been carved upon the lute of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork. Boyle was a cousin of Spenser’s second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, who lived with Spenser at Kilcolman. Richard Boyle was involved in the English administration in Munster from the 1580s on, and he eventually purchased (in 1602) the Munster holdings of Sir Walter Raleigh, which helped him (Boyle) to become fabulously wealthy and to buy his earldom from the British monarch, James I. Spenser’s poem reads as follows: <blockquote> Whilst vitall sapp did make me spring, And leafe and bough did flourish brave,0.231.2013 I then was dumbe and could not sing, Ne had the voice which now I have: But when the axe my life did end, The Muses nine this voice did send. (“Verses upon the said Earles Lute”) </blockquote> What does this tell us about Spenser’s life as a poet and a planter? It indicates that the felling of trees is a necessary sacrifice that leads to the making of instruments, such as the lute, which create (or accompany) the “voice” of the “Muses nine.” The nine Muses in classical tradition are the goddesses who inspire learning and the arts, including poetry and history. Spenser refers to the Muses often in his poetry and wrote a set of poems entitled Tears of the Muses, published in his Complaints volume (1591). But the poem does more than praise instruments; it identifies industrial activity on the land as the source of art. Boyle’s lands were famous for their timber, and so Spenser connects tree-cutting, which made things like lutes, with the inspiration of poets who earned their livelihood from the land (and who were, presumably, patronized by wealthy men such as Boyle). The most famous of mythological poets was Orpheus, whose song in nature calmed the beasts and made the trees bend to hear him. Spenser’s famous refrain to his wedding poem, “Epithalamion,” celebrates how the “woods” around him in Munster “eccho” and “ring” to his song. In such a moment the bridegroom-poet, Spenser, is like Orpheus, who is able to charm the landscape and make it harmonize with, or echo, his song. By analogy, whoever played the earl of Cork’s lute would be in the position of Orpheus, making the woods (including the instrument which is made out of wood) echo and harmonize with poetic song. Orpheus was himself torn apart by savage forces (by orgiastic maenads, or female celebrants of Bacchus) and his head and harp floated down a river. But the ideal concept of the power of his song lives on [see the reference to Orpheus’ harp on a river in Spenser’s Ruines of Time 604-9, published in Complaints (1591), wherein the Orphic harp is that of Sir Philip Sidney. See also Rivers]. Not all music was pleasant to Spenser’s ears. Music could also be a luxurious distraction from more virtuous deeds. For example, in The Faerie Queene, in the vainglorious House of Pride, a place ruled by the queen Lucifera, we witness a royal feast “in commune hall.” Here we find <blockquote> … many Minstrales maken melody, To driue away the dull melancholy, And many Bardes, that to the trembling chord Can tune their timely voices cunningly, And many Chroniclers, that can record Old loues, and warres for Ladies doen by many a Lord. (FQ I.v.3.4-9) </blockquote> One can imagine Spenser spending many a long day and evening at Kilcolman playing and listening to songs accompanied by lute, and/or listening to Irish “bards” (as Spenser’s spokesman, Irenius, says he has done in the View, pp. 72-5), and/or writing his own chronicle of “Fierce warres and faithfull loues,” as he calls his historical epic, The Faerie Queene (FQ I.Proem.i.9). Such art was only worthwhile, however, if it led to virtuous action, including work on the land. Links: <a href="http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/</a> [2/19/16] [Lute Society of America] 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: James Neil Brown, “Orpheus.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 519-20. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012): 220. Eric Klingelhofer, Castles and Colonists: an Archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2010): 126. —, “Edmund Spenser at Kilcolman Castle: the archaeological evidence.” Post-Medieval Archaeology 39.1 (2005), 133-54. David Lee Miller, “The Earl of Cork’s Lute.” Spenser’s Life and the Subject of Biography. Ed. Judith Anderson, Donald Cheney and David Richardson (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996), 146-71. “Mr. Dowland’s Midnight“ in the Margaret Board Lute Book, Royal Academy of Music, Robert Spencer Collection, MS 603: f. 26v. Bruce Pattison, Music and Poetry of the English Renaissance, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1970): 65-7, 142-4. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/790/Mantelpiece.png b511518086bdc46de2abc833ba2b92ea 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 Mantelpiece Subject The topic of the resource Great Hall Description An account of the resource This great oak mantelpiece is fancifully modeled after two different early modern wall-pieces found in situ in Ireland today: 1) the allegorical figures in plaster wainscoting in the Long Gallery of Carrick-on-Suir, Co. Tipperary, commissioned in the 1560s by the house’s owner, Thomas Butler, tenth earl of Ormond, and 2) the undated oak mantelpiece in Sir Walter Raleigh’s house at Myrtle Grove, Youghal, Co. Cork. In the Long Gallery at Carrick-on-Suir, the wainscoting running around the room shows the allegorized figures of Justice (holding a sword) and Equity (holding a scale) alternating with busts of Queen Elizabeth I and King Edward VI. In the parlor at Myrtle Grove, a (West-)English-style oak mantelpiece shows the allegorical figures of Faith, Hope and Charity amid other detail-work. The recreated mantelpiece at Kilcolman shows the paired figures of Faith (holding an anchor, an emblem of hope) and Justice (holding a sword). Both are modeled closely on the plaster figures at Carrick-on-Suir. In between them is the rose, a symbol of the English monarch. The rose connotes the Tudor family lineage as well as Queen Elizabeth herself, whose portrait is in the parlor next door. The Great Hall was used mainly for important gatherings and ceremonial occasions. Spenser, a Protestant and lord of the manor (both owner and administrator), would conceivably have administered justice in this room, including arbitration over minor disputes between his tenants and other business on the plantation, all administered in the name of the English crown. Business conducted in front of the mantelpiece would have reminded supplicants of English law, religion and power in Munster. Literary Connections The rose was the Tudor family badge and an apt symbol for the queen’s beauty. In The Faerie Queene, Elizabeth is described in allegorical guise as Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, “that glorious flowre,” from whence her name: “Therefore they Glorian call that glorious flowre,/ Long mayst thou Glorian liue, in glory and great powre” (FQ II.x.76.8-9); she is “that goodly glorious flowre… sprung of the auncient stocke of Princes straine” (FQ IV.viii.33.6-7). Elizabeth was closely associated with other flowers as well, such as the lily, a symbol of virginal purity (Elizabeth never married and carried the sobriquet “The Virgin Queen”), and the fleur-de-lis, either the lily or the iris. The fleur-de-lis in royal English heraldry connoted imperial power. It is figured on the queen’s scepter in portraits, for example, and was a stock symbol of the French monarchy. Elizabeth, like her forbearers, claimed monarchy over England, Wales, France and Ireland. It is interesting in this regard that the Irish word for “iris“ is gloiriam, also spelled gloriam in the early modern period (according the Dictionary of the Irish Language): a word close to glorian. The sword is a symbol of Justice. Artegall, the principal hero of Book V of The Faerie Queene, the Book of Justice, is introduced along with his sword, “Chrysaor, that all other swords excelled” (FQ V.i.9.8). With it, Artegall dispenses a rough justice to villains who oppose him. Queen Elizabeth is allegorically figured in the book as Mercilla, who must not let her sword (i.e., the sword of state) grow rusty out of disuse and excessive mercy. The 1596 edition of The Faerie Queene shows an anchor on its title page, an emblem of hope (anchora spei). The anchor was also the emblem of printer Richard Field. (The title page of the 1596 edition can be seen open on the desk in the Tower House Study.) The character of Speranza (her name meaning “hope”) offers her “siluer anchor” to the sinful hero Red Crosse Knight in Book I.x.22.2-3 of The Faerie Queene. Visitors to the Great Hall recreated here, who were loyal to Queen Elizabeth, would find symbols of faith, hope and justice to comfort them amid the turmoil surrounding Kilcolman. Links: <a href="http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/south-east/ormondcastle/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/south-east/ormondcastle/</a> (accessed 1/30/18) [Carrick-on-Suir town council website on Ormond Castle] 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: Jane Fenlon, “The Decorative Plasterwork at Ormond Castle—a unique survival.” Architectural History 41 (1998), 67-81. —, Ormond Castle (Dublin: Stationary Office, 1996). A. Bartlett Giamatti, “Elizabeth and Spenser.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 238-42. Anna Riehl, The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Mats Rydén, “flowers.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990), 310-11. https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/811/Mantle.png 7c44dae6c66952857d104f6ea738412f https://collections.ecu.edu/files/original/25/811/Mantle_2.jpg 228ab837b2e44ec8bf399f664c5fc19c 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 Mantle Subject The topic of the resource Tower House Ground Floor Description An account of the resource A mantle is a common type of heavy woolen cloak found in medieval and early modern Ireland. Fantastic, colorful and richly woven varieties are described in medieval Irish poetry. Elaborate and expensive mantles would have been worn by the rich and noble. Plainer, more workaday kinds are found here in our reconstruction of Kilcolman, as befits Spenser’s status as a prosperous but not rich English gentleman. If Spenser and his family didn’t wear mantles, their servants likely did. Early modern mantles have been found in modern times preserved in bogs. For example, a plain, semi-coarse example from the sixteenth century is on display in the National Museum of Ireland. The museum also holds a fragment of a different type of mantle, the shaggy woven (or “rya”) kind. A shaggy fringe can be seen at the top of mantles in the sixteenth-century illustrations of John Derricke. Literary Connections In Spenser’s prose dialogue and political policy tract, A View of the Present State of Ireland (c. 1596; pub. 1633), Spenser’s alter-ego Irenius discusses with Eudoxus the ancient and barbaric origins of the mantle, before listing its practical and treacherous uses by the Irish. <blockquote> Irenius They have another custom from the Scythians that is the wearing of mantles and long glibs, which is a thick curled bush of hair hanging down over their eyes, and monstrously disguising them, which are both very bad and hurtful. Eudoxus: Do you think that the mantle comes from the Scythians? I would surely think otherwise: For by that which I have read it appears that most nations in the world anciently used the mantle. […] Iren: I cannot deny but anciently it was common to most, and yet since disused and laid away. But in this latter age of the world since the decay of the Roman empire, it was renewed and brought in again by those Northern nations when breaking out of their cold caves and frozen habitation into the sweet soil of Europe. They brought with them their usual weeds [i.e., clothes], fit to shield the cold and that continual frost, to which they had at home been inured. The which yet they left not of, by reason that they were in perpetual wars with the nations where they had invaded, but still removing from place to place carried always with them that weed as their house, their bed, and their garment. Coming lastly into Ireland, they found there more special use thereof, by reason of the raw cold climate. From whom it is now grown into that general use in which that people now have it. […] Eudox: Since then the necessity thereof is so commodious as you allege, that it is [serving] in stead of housing, bedding, and clothing. What reason have you then to wish, so necessary a thing [to] cast off? Iren: Because the commodities do not countervail the discommodity. For the inconveniences which thereby do arise, are much more many: for it is a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and apt cloak for a thief. First, the outlaw being for his many crimes and villainies banished from the towns and houses of honest men, and wandering in waste places far from danger of law, makes his mantle his house, and under it covers himself from the wrath of heaven, from the offence of the earth, and from the sight of men. When it rains it is his pentice [i.e., “pent-house” or makeshift shelter], when it blows it is his tent, when it freezes, it is his tabernacle. In summer he can wear it loose, in winter he can wrap it close, at all times he can use it, never heavy, never cumbersome. Likewise for a rebel it is as serviceable: for in his war that he makes (if at least it deserves the name of “war”), when he still flies from his foe and lurks in the thick woods and straight passages, waiting for advantages, it is his bed, yea and almost all his household stuff. For the wood is his house against all weathers, and his mantle is his cave to sleep in: therein he wraps his self round and ensconces him self strongly against the gnats, which in the country do more annoy the naked rebels, while they keep the woods, and do more sharply wound them then all their enemies swords or spears, which can seldom come nigh them. Yea and oftentimes their mantle serves them when they are near driven, being wrapped about their left arms in stead of a target [i.e., a small shield], for it is hard to cut through it with a sword. Besides, it is light to bear, light to throw away, and being as they then commonly are naked, it is to them all in all. Lastly, for a thief it is so handsome, as it may seem it was first invented for him: for under it he can cleanly convey any fit pillage that comes handsomely in his way. And when he goes abroad in the night on freebooting, it is his best and surest friend: for lying as they often do, two or three nights together abroad to watch for their booty, with that they can prettily shroud themselves under a bush or a backside, till they may conveniently do their errand. And when all is done, he can in his mantle pass through any town or company, being close-hooded over his head, as he uses [to keep] from knowledge of any to whom he is endangered. Besides all this, he or any man else that is disposed to mischief or villainy may under his mantle go privily armed without suspicion of any, carry his headpiece, his skene [i.e., long knife] or pistol, if he please to be always in a readiness. Thus necessary and fitting is a mantle for a bad man. And surely for a bad housewife [i.e., woman], it is no less convenient. For some of them that be these wandering women, called of them Monashut, it is half a wardrobe: for in summer you shall find her arrayed commonly, but [i.e., “only”] in her smock and mantle, to bee more ready for the light services. In winter and in her travel, it is her cloak and safe-gear, and also a coverlet for her lewd exercise. And when she has filled her vessel [i.e., become pregnant], under it she can hide both her burden and her blame. Yea and when her bastard is borne, it [i.e., the mantle] serves in stead of all her swaddling clothes. And as for all other good women which love to do but little work, how handsome it is to lie in and sleep, or to louse themselves in the sunshine, they that have been but a while in Ireland can well witness. Sure I am that you will think it very unfit for good housewives to stir in or to busy herself about her housewifery in sort as they should. These be some of the abuses for which I would think it meet to forbid all mantles. [A View of the Present State of Ireland, MS Rawlinson B.478 (Bodleian Library, Oxford), 31r-33r. Some words are modernized.]</blockquote> Spenser mentions mantles in various places in his poetry. In The Faerie Queene, for example, the treacherous, shape-changing villain Malengin (or “Guyle”) lives in a “hollow cave” (V.ix.10.1), has “hollow” eyes, long “curled” hair and wears a mantle-like cloak on his back (over his torn pants, or “breech”): <blockquote>Full dreadfull wight he was, as euer went Vpon the earth, with hollow eyes deepe pent, And long curld locks, that downe his shoulders shagged, And on his backe an vncouth vestiment Made of straunge stuffe, but all to worne and ragged, And vnderneath his breech was all to torne and iagged. (V.ix.10.4-9)</blockquote> As such, Malengin resembles a half-starved and dangerous Irish refugee or rebel. In Book I of The Faerie Queene, Spenser associates the personified figure of Night, an evil hag, with a mantle: “griesly Night, with visage deadly sad… in a foule blacke pitchy mantle clad” (I.v.20.1-3). In a standard metaphor for the time, Night covers the world in darkness with her ”mantle” or cloak. The passage has a political tinge, furthermore, in that she hides crimes, including “traitorous” ones: <blockquote> Vnder thy mantle black there hidden lye, Light-shonning thefte, and traiterous intent, Abhorred bloodshed, and vile felony. (III.iv.58.1-3) </blockquote> The description of Night’s “bloodshed” and “traitorous intent” gives it/her political resonances that would align it/her with the rebellious and dangerous Irish, as described in the View. Conversely, Spenser invokes “night so long expected” with its “sable mantle” in his wedding poem, “Epithalamion,” asking that it keep him and his bride safe from the threats surrounding his castle: <blockquote> Now welcome night, thou night so long expected… Spread thy broad wing ouer my loue and me, That no man may vs see, And in thy sable mantle vs enwrap, From feare of perrill and foule horror free. Let no false treason seeke vs to entrap, Nor any dread disquiet once annoy The safety of our ioy: But let the night be calme and quietsome, Without tempestuous storms or sad afray. (“Epithalamion” 315-27) </blockquote> The “mantle” here, while representing dangerous “night,” paradoxically protects the married couple from the threats that might disturb their well-being (including supernatural threats that are listed in the following stanza: they include the “evil” Irish spirit, the “Pouke” or pouca). As such, the poet is asking the evil forces of the night to confound themselves by keeping themselves hidden, which in turn allows the couple to stay safely obscure, perhaps hidden under a mantle used for a bedcovering. In this case, Spenser may have in mind another description of the mantle in the View, where it is described as a garment of Venus lined with stars (as is the night). A mantle could be put to good or bad, ugly or positive uses, depending on the intent of the owner. Links: <a href="http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/ChapterIrishCostume/index.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/ChapterIrishCostume/index.php</a> (accessed 1/30/18) 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: Sheila Cavanagh, “‘Licentious Barbarism’: Spenser’s View of the Irish and The Faerie Queene.” Irish University Review 26 (1996), 268-80. Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser’s Irish Experience: wilde fruit and salvage soyl (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997): 160-64. Elizabeth Wincott Heckett, “Beyond the Empire: An Irish Mantle and Cloak.” The Roman Textile Industry and Its Influence: A Birthday Tribute to John Peter Wild (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2001), 91-7. Thomas Herron, “An Exhibit in Ireland.” Spenser Review 33.2 (Summer 2002), 41-4. Geoffrey G. Hiller, “Night.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1990), 511. H.F. McClintock, “The ‘Mantle of St. Brigid’ at Bruges.” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. 7th series. 6.1 (June 1936), 32-40. Harold Skulsky, “Malengin.” The Spenser Encyclopedia. Ed. A. C. Hamilton (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1990), 450.