Latest news with #TheWildSwansatCoole
Irish Independent
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Yeats poem was inspiration behind Sligo student's work at unique medieval exhibition in Dublin
The exhibition explores early medieval Ireland's cultural impact on Europe and includes the largest-ever loan of manuscripts from the Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland—many of them contemporaries of the Book of Kells. As part of its legacy element, students from Ireland and Switzerland took part in a collaborative schools project, working with calligrapher Tim O'Neill and museum staff to create manuscripts using traditional techniques such as insular script and handmade dyes. An important legacy of the exhibition is an international school project led by the National Museum of Ireland and the Abbey of St. Gall involving second-level students from Irish schools (Eureka Secondary School, Kells, Co. Meath, Coláiste Muire, Ballymote, Co. Sligo and St Gallen/Gallen Community School, Offaly) as well as the Catholic Cantonal Secondary School 'flade' in St. Gallen. Students produced their own manuscripts inspired by the world today, using the techniques of the past through a process of creating dyes, materials, and insular script and art. They were all instructed by attended workshops online, in their classrooms and at the museum, with calligraphy expert, Tim O'Neill, and museum staff, and their work will feature in the exhibition. Shauna said: 'W.B. Yeats' 'The Wild Swans at Coole' was the inspiration for my piece. I was captivated by the symbolism of partnership evident in Yeats' portrayal of the swans and their sultry vitality as they remain free-spirited amidst the constant hustle and bustle of life.' The exhibition was launched by the President of the Swiss Confederation, Karin Keller-Sutter and Minister for Arts, Culture, Communications, Media and Sport, Patrick O'Donovan TD. Words on the Wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe focuses on early medieval Ireland and its profound impact on ideas in Europe. At the exhibition's heart are 17 manuscripts on loan from the Abbey Library of St. Gall in Switzerland, a seventh-century library - in a city named after the Irish monk, St. Gall - that is home to one of the world's most significant collections of early medieval manuscripts. This exhibition is a world-first, marking the largest-ever loan of these manuscripts. New research commissioned by the National Museum of Ireland for the exhibition, using advanced scientific techniques, has provided evidence for the first time that the four most decorated manuscripts on loan from the Abbey Library of St. Gall were made using the hides of Irish cattle. While the role of Irish monks in writing the manuscripts was already known, this research reveals that that the books travelled from Ireland to St. Gallen with them, on their journey over a thousand years ago. Employing techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and multispectral imaging in both ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, researchers working with University College Cork's Inks and Skins project were able to identify elemental components of the inks, pigments, and parchment—many of which are not visible to the naked eye. The analysis revealed that the manuscripts were written with iron gall ink made from the nests of wasps in oak trees, a distinctive and well-documented feature of Irish manuscript production during the early medieval period. Furthermore, the method by which the animal skins were prepared, along with the presence of specific chemical elements such as sulphur and potassium, closely aligns with known Irish techniques of parchment manufacture. The Inks and ADVERTISEMENT Learn more Skins project team also collected surface DNA samples from the manuscripts to identify the genomes in the skins of the cattle used in their production. These priceless, handmade manuscripts reflect the journeys of Irish monks like St. Gall and St. Columbanus, who travelled to Europe seeking exile, refuge, and learning. Their journeys involved not only the movement of people but also ideas and artistic traditions, connecting the small island of Ireland to a much larger continent. It mirrors a 1,400-year-old connection between Switzerland and Ireland that started with the arrival of St. Gall in St. Gallen in 612. Scientific analysis of this DNA conducted by the School of Genetics in Trinity College Dublin, indicates that the cattle were of Irish origin. Using a technique pioneered by the team in 2017— a non-invasive genetic analysis of the parchment on which the manuscripts are written in which DNA is gently extracted from the surface of manuscripts using a rubber eraser—the team successfully recovered genetic material from the animal skins used in manuscript production. The results, interpreted using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), demonstrates that the cattle, from whose skin the parchment was made, were of Irish origin.
The Guardian
24-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
A swan: ‘I have looked upon these brilliant creatures, and now my heart is sore'
This morning I learned the word 'limn'. It looked at first like a typo, and I almost ignored it. But I pressed on the letters on my phone, which caused its meaning to pop up in a little box, like a window appearing in a wall. To limn is to 'depict or describe in painting or words'. I was drinking cold coffee in my kitchen, and preparing to write this column – my last. Because I knew that I would do the swan, a large, long-necked water bird had started gliding around my mind, so it seemed clear that the word limn looks like a swan: the tall l with the tiny flick of a dipped head, and the letters after. It can also mean 'to suffuse with light', or outline: the full moon limned the dark river and the white feathers of a swan upon it. Limn: it comes from luminare, to make light, and illuminate, as in to illuminate, or decorate, a manuscript. It was only much later, when I read the words 'Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes! / More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise.', that I suspected I had written about swans in this column before. I had, in November 2022. Recently my mother told me she was worried that in the last two years or so, I had 'lost some of my innocence'. This is the sort of thing mothers say as you are walking, perfectly innocently, to the movies, thinking of nothing but popcorn and wine. And it is the sort of thing they tend to be right about. Over the course of writing these columns, I have had a child, have lost someone important to me and have lost, then rebuilt, my sense of self. The swan song I wrote in 2022 was by a person who feels familiar, but separate, from the one that stood in my kitchen this morning. So it is exactly right that there should be two depictions of a swan: one before, and one after. After all, the most famous swan poem, Yeats' The Wild Swans at Coole, is about this feeling of having changed between one year and another, and realising it because you see swans: I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Swans, quite obliviously, sent Yeats into despair. And that is one of the very many magical things about people thinking about animals. Pick one – some will speak to you, others not, and you will know instantly – and it acts like a key or a guide. It will illuminate (limn) your own memories, otherwise doors wedged closed or opened at random, and poems, or books, or passages, or lyrics, or cartoons you once loved, or hated, or were confused by: all of these are living in your head, along with all of the animals. To think about a given animal, or insect, or the moon, or fish that sing or fish that portend doom is to remember old selves, to connect your heart to your tongue: Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can Her heart inform her tongue, –the swan's down-feather, That stands upon the swell at full of tide, And neither way inclines. I have learned that people can feel so strongly about daddy long legs or Komodo dragons or a lemming that if you insult that animal in your headline, people will defend it in the comments in their hundreds. That people will write to you to tell you the story of one particular spider that inhabits one particular shower, or to admit that they, too, have always pronounced anemone incorrectly. Will send you emails about the frogs, robins, snails and slugs in their gardens or tell you the price of a beaver in Canada ($2,000). Now, I am off to a new job. Writing these on a Monday morning, staring an animal in the eye, devouring all I can about an oyster, being paid to contemplate, for hours, the significance of an egg, has been meaningful and delightful. I hope it has been something like that for you. Thank you for reading. This is Helen Sullivan's last Nature of column (for now). She is writing a novel for Scribner Australia. You can still write to her, here.
