World Poetry Day!

Yesterday was World Ballet Day, as you'll have noticed from our last blogpost.  (Ah, ballet - poetry in motion!)  There's something rather nice about World Ballet Day being followed by World Poetry Day.  The Whittaker Library - not surprisingly, in a library for dramatic and musical performers - has plenty of poetry.

• Take a look at our poetry collection HERE.
• Visit the Scottish Poetry Library website HERE.
• We wouldn't want our musicians to feel left out, so here are some musical limericks to brighten their day:- click HERE.
• Karen has a particular interest in bardic things, so let's revive her posting about Welsh bards while we're at it!  HERE.

Winter Wonderland - Cardiff Castle

A propos of nothing in particular, we just had to share this image with you.  If it doesn't make you think of bards and mediaeval banquets, nothing will!

Source: style2000.com via Matthew on Pinterest

Minstrels, metaphors ... and Minstrelsie

Latter-day Minstrelsie

(Shades of Celtic Twilight ...)

A postscript to last year's postings!

Much has been said about images of minstrels and bards in national song collections from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. 'Whittaker' discovered recently that the Whittaker Library also has a quantity of later Minstrelsie song-books, too.

An Edinburgh publisher, T. C. and E. C. Jack, published scores of them at the end of the 19th century and just into the 20th.  (The London firm of Caxton also had a hand in this.)

So - if you're curious, you can see our collection of latter-day minstrelsie books here - Scots, Cambrian, English and British - take your pick!  (Though it has to be said they're art-music collections of popular national songs, and haven't much connection with the earlier ones.)

Worthy of note are the prefatory essays in some (but not all) of the volumes, written by contemporary authorities on such questions as singing the repertoire; the history; and how this generation handled modal melodies.  This paratextual material could prove more interesting than the song-settings themselves. 

Whittaker's pics

Whilst in Cardiff, 'Whittaker' visited Ty Cerdd, the Welsh music information centre, in the Wales Millenium Centre.  (Did you expect holiday snaps?  Oh, fie!)

And of course, collected one of 14 Excellence Awards on behalf of the Whittaker Library - all very exciting!  Here's a quick picture to tide us over until we have the certificate framed and displayed.
Returning to the reality of daily life in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Whittaker discovered that inanimate objects can now speak.  The plants had 'I am not thirsty' notes attached, and one of the books had decided that retirement was long overdue.  It's nowhere near 67 yet, but it really looks past its best, so we can understand its self-promotion to the 'Library in the sky'.


If you're curious what Karen was talking about, down in Cardiff,  do take a look at her powerpoint presentation on Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard.  Not content with her researches into the Scotish Minstrel (sic!), she now knows a fair bit about his Welsh cousins ...


Scottish minstrels and Welsh bards - 'Whittaker' went to Cardiff

Scottish minstrels and Welsh bards

'Whittaker' (Oh, okay - Karen McAulay) has just returned from Cardiff where UK and Irish music librarians held the IAML(UK and Ireland) Annual Study Weekend this year.

Edward Jones's collection

Having done a PhD on Scottish song-collecting c.1760-1888, it came as a bit of a surprise to find myself writing a paper on Welsh bards.  (Not just collecting the repertoire, but the bards themselves.  Oral repertoire is that much harder to pin down, as we all know.)  Scroll down to find the link to my Diigo Welsh music favourites.  Social bookmarking is the way to go, in this Web 2.0 age.  I love it.  I add relevant tags and pull things together into lists that I can share - it's a brilliant idea.

Diigo list - Welsh music links

As promised to the delegates - and IAML (UK and Ireland) members who weren't able to attend - here's the link to my PowerPoint. 


NB   I'm afraid there is no written 'script', but I hope to write up my talk for publication in Brio in due course.

Welsh music - a selection of useful links to the music of our Celtic cousins

• Welsh Ballads Website
  Cardiff University Information Services - Welsh ballads website.
  
• 'History of the British Bards', Iolo Morganwg, front cover
  About the MS for a projected book by Iolo Morganwyg. On Welsh culture website, Gathering the Jewels 
  
  
• Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales, 1740-1918
  Edward Williams (1747-1826), stonemason, writer, literary forger. Contributed to C18th cultural renaissance in Wales. Bardism. Gorsedd of Bards (he established ceremony).
  
  
• National Library of Wales Journal (Welsh Journals Online)
  Digital access back to Vol.1, 1939. Vol.XV (1967) pp.31-54, Daniel Huws, 'Ancient National Airs of Gwent and Morganwg
  
  
• The Bardic Museum : Edward Jones : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
  Vol.2 of Edward Jones' Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards. 1802.
  
  
• Musical and poetical relicks of the Welsh bards/ Edward Jones, 1794. Internet Archive
  
  
• Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard - wiki
  PBworks wiki for collaborative discussion of late 18th and 19th century Welsh songbooks. Administrator Dr Karen E McAulay
  
  
• Crowdsourcing Bard group bibliography
  List of late 18th and 19th century Welsh songbooks for group exploration, part of Crowdsourcing the Bard project.
  
  
• King Edward's folly: crowdsourcing the Celtic bard
  Tiki-toki timeline, Nov 2011
  tags: Timeline bards minstrels metaphors Tiki-Toki
• Times Higher Education - Brunel's academic griot will 'fight dead image of poetry'
  Benjamin Zephaniah takes a new post at Brunel University. He sees himself as a latter-day bard, or "griot" (African word) - a poet and political activist who speaks his work - part of the oral tradition.
  
  
• Thomas Gray Archive : The Bard, a Pindaric Ode (1757)
  Very influential poem, inspired many more writings on bardic themes. Role of bard championing liberty, and many images recur in later poetry etc.
  
  
• People's Collection Wales - Customs and Traditions
  Charity Dove drew my attention to this useful weblink. I'd come across the People's Collection Wales, but not this particular niche.
  
  
• High Hats and Harps: the life and times of Lord and Lady Llanover
  Lady Llanofer, the bee of Twent. Research by Helen Forder. Book forthcoming, soon. Spring 2012.
  tags: Lady Llanover Wales harps 19th Century
• Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales
  
  
• Harp Centre of Wales (Telynau Teifi Harps)
  Harp makers. Includes clip from BBC programme about Telynau Teifi.
  
  
• Fflach Music from Wales
  Welsh music supplier
  
  
• People's Collection Wales - Home
  Successor to the Welsh "Gathering the Jewels" cultural heritage website.
  
  
• People's Collection Wales - Home
  Associated with Culturenet Cymru
  
  
• Chronology of Welsh songbooks (Karen McAulay Tiki-Toki timeline)
  
  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard

For a forthcoming conference paper, "Whittaker" has undertaken to talk about Scottish and Welsh  songbooks.  Welsh?  Now, there's a new venture!  

A Tiki-Toki timeline keeps track of new Welsh discoveries: 21 titles so far. Next problem - getting hold of titlepages/ prefaces!

Tiki-Toki is a brilliant way of organising historical facts.  Ask Music and Academic Services Librarian Karen McAulay to tell you more about it.

Whittaker's Magic Carpet

Welsh songbook update



‘Whittaker’ is checking out 19th Century Welsh song collections to see how they compare with Scottish and Irish. A magic carpet to Wales would be nice, but this isn’t really feasible. In the absence of the carpet, we’re trying crowdsourcing. If a songbook has paratext, and particularly if it’s early, it must be seen!  Whittaker is very grateful indeed to the Welsh librarians who have offered to help here.  Looking forward to what 2012 will bring!

Three cheers for COPAC, Mendeley and Twitter!
I'm also using PBWorks as a wiki: Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard.


In terms of what Whittaker has seen/ not seen:-


SEEN

• Jones, Edward - Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards, 1794
• Jones, Edward - The Bardic Museum, 1802
• Thomson, George (and Haydn) - A Select Collection of Original Welsh Airs, 1809-17
• Williams, Maria Jane - Ancient National Airs of Gwent and Morganwg, 1844
• Richards, Brinley, The Songs of Wales, 1879 (4th ed)
• Parry, Joseph et al, Cambrian Minstrelsie, 6 vols, 1893-5

UNSEEN

• Jones, Edward - Hen Ganiadau Cymru = Cambro-British Melodies, 1820
• Parry, John - Cambrian Harmony, 1809
• Parry, John - A Selection of Welsh Melodies, 1809 & new ed., 1821/2
• Parry, John - A Collection of Welsh Airs, 1810
• Parry, John - A Third Volume of Welsh Melodies, 1829
• Parry, John - The Welsh Harper, 1839, 1848
• Thomas, John, Merthyr Tydfil - Y Caniedydd Cymreig =The Cambrian Minstrel, 1845
• Alaw, Owain (John Owen) - Twelve Popular Welsh National Songs, 1859
• Thomas, John, Thomas Oliphant and; John Jones, Welsh Melodies, 1860
• Owen, John (Owain Alaw, Pencerdd) - Gems of Welsh Melody, 2 vols, 1860
• Hulse, Henry, The beaties of Cambrian Melodies, 1863

Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard - sourcing digital copies of Welsh collections

Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard

PROJECT INTRODUCTION: We are examining late 18th and 19th century Welsh songbooks to see what their prefaces etc tell us about their cultural background.  In literary terms, all the introductory matter is called the paratext.  So, we're looking for minstrels, bards, harps and other symbols of a Celtic Welsh past; also for metaphors which give away clues about what mattered to the compilers of these songbooks, and the audiences they were intended for.

PROJECT LEADER: Dr Karen McAulay, Music & Academic Services Librarian at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

PROJECT MEMBERS: currently, we're a handful of librarians, but interested literary scholars and librarians would be very welcome to join us.

• All good crowdsourcing projects have a wiki - here's our Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard wiki. 

There are also two Tiki-toki timelines:-

• Introducing project: King Edward's folly - crowdsourcing the Celtic bard 
• Chronology of Welsh songbooks .

Help is needed locating digital copies please.  Some are on Internet Archive (see the wiki resource bar), but others remain to be found.

Crowdsourcing the Celtic bard

Subsequent to my "appearance" at the IAML 2011 Conference in Dublin, I've been asked to speak at IAML (UK and Irl) Annual Study Weekend in 2012, and my talk will hopefully have a Welsh flavour. (Any jokers about Welsh rarebit can stop right there, thanks!)

I'd like to combine the Welsh song aspect with a social networking idea that I've been contemplating. I've put together a Tiki-Toki presentation to explain what I mean.

If there are any librarians or Celtic song scholars who think they might be able to help, or would like to join in, then the prime requirement is to be able to access some of the early Welsh songbooks that I'm interested in. I'm putting together a Mendeley list which I'll be happy to share in the next few days.

Many thanks - I look forward to hearing from you!
Dr Karen McAulay
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Benjamin Zephaniah sees himself as a bard

So you thought bards were old hat? Think again!


Benjamin Zephaniah talks to the THE (Times Higher Education) magazine about his new Brunel appointment to lecture in Creative Writing.  Read it here and find out why he sees himself as a latter-day bard.


And here's another interview from the Guardian newspaper, done in 2009.



Benjamin Zephaniah being interviewed for Guardian



Thomas Gray: The Bard: a Pindaric Ode. 1757

Margaret Maclean Clephane, of
Torloisk, Mull (before her marriage)

So why did 18th and 19th century poets and songwriters make so much fuss about bards and minstrels? Blame Thomas Gray. He knew that, according to tradition, King Edward I had all bards massacred. Gray wrote a poem about the last bard bemoaning what had happened, then committing suicide. It was a hugely, massively influential poem! Now read my page on Minstrels and Metaphors.