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Sayers (William)

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Sayers, William, “Irish affinities of De tonitruis, a treatise of prognostication by thunder”, Eolas: The Journal of the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies 10 (2017): 2–15.  
abstract:

Five newly edited manuscripts reveal that the treatise De tonitruis purports to be adapted from the Irish language. In this essay, possible Irish affinities are explored and are found to lie, in increasing order of importance, in the ornate prose style, the recondite and culturally highly significant vocabulary, and the eulogistic citations of unnamed natural philosophers as authorities for thunder prognostics. In all these respects, De tonitruis differs from conventional European brontologies. Although it is surely not translated from the Irish language, the mark of Irish learning is distinctive.

Sayers, William, “Mesocosms and the organization of interior space in early Ireland”, Traditio 70 (2015): 75–110.  
abstract:
In early medieval Ireland, the cosmos was conceived as tripartite, composed of the heavens, earth's surface, and underearth and undersea. Harmonious relations with cosmic forces were assured by just royal rule. Crossing this vertical coordinate, which also had implications for the human hierarchies of rank and function, were the manifold phenomena as known to human life. This external reality was mentally organized as a vast set of homologies, the recognition and maintenance of which contributed to the prosperity and fertility of the kingdom. The literate record displays multiple taxonomies and categories, often expressed in numerical values. Among these are the pentad and, in spatial terms, the quincunx. This fivefoldness and the order it represented were recognized and replicated on a variety of scales: the five provinces of Ireland, the family farm and its neighbors, the house and its outbuildings. Also implicated as mesocosms were the interior arrangements of royal banquet halls, hostels for kings on circuit and other travelers, and law courts. The quincuncial organization of interior space reflects and promotes macrocosmic order but in the great corpus of literate works is the setting for disruptive human dynamics — the stuff of story — often associated with themes of the heroic life and royal rule. This conception of interior space was elaborated in the pagan period and, in formal terms, was readily accommodated in subsequent Christian centuries, with new hierarchies and the perdurable conception of the kingship as stabilizing factors.
Sayers, William, “Birds and brains of forgetfulness: Old Norse óminnis hegri, Old Irish inchinn dermait”, Journal of Indo-European Studies 43:3–4 (2015): 393–422.
Sayers, William, “The laconic scar in early Irish literature”, in: Larissa Tracy, and Kelly DeVries (eds), Wounds and wound repair in medieval culture, 1, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2015. 473–495.
Sayers, William, “Qualitative and quantitative criteria for prosperous royal rule: notes on Audacht Morainn and a Vedic Indian analogue”, Studia Celtica 48 (2014): 93–106.
Sayers, William, “Fantastic technology in early Irish literature”, Études Celtiques 40 (2014): 85–100.  
abstract:
[FR] La technologie fabuleuse dans la littérature irlandaise ancienneLa description d’objets techniquement ingénieux ou complexes n’est pas un thème reconnu de la littérature irlandaise ancienne, mais l’on trouve des exemples de moyens de transport, de pièces d’armement et de procédés pour acquérir ou préparer des aliments qui montrent qu’une intrigue peut impliquer un élément de technologie fabuleuse – ce dernier pouvant apparaître comme un thème quasiment indépendant dans une histoire culturelle foisonnante. Les objets merveilleux ne sont pas surnaturels, ni même magiques ; pourtant, il s’agit d’objets fantastiques qui ont dû avoir plus d’existence dans la littérature qu’ils n’en ont jamais eu dans la réalité historique. La «réalisation» verbale de ces procédés suppose une domestication et une exploitation du langage, dont la complexité potentielle reflète bien celle de ces inventions.

[EN] The description of technically clever or complex objects was not a recognized subgenre in early Irish literature but examples of transport means, weaponry, and food procurement and preparation devices illustrate how a touch of fantastic technology could be implicated in the plot, even in dilemmas of heroic ethics, or be a nearly free-standing item in a rich cultural history. The wonderful artifacts are not supernatural, preternatural, or even magical. Yet these fantastic instruments may have more life in literature than they ever had in historical reality. Language is harnessed and exploited in the literate realization of these devices, the potential complexity of the one reflecting the comparable complexity of the invented others.
Persée – Études Celtiques, vol. 40, 2014: <link>
Sayers, William, “The maritime and nautical vocabulary of Le voyage de saint Brendan”, Neophilologus 97 (2013): 9–19.
Sayers, William, “‘Finn and the man in the tree’ revisited”, e-Keltoi 8:2 (April, 2013): 37–55. URL: <http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi>.
Sayers, William, “The cult of the sacred centre [Review article]”, Studia Hibernica 39 (2013): 155–170.
Sayers, William, “Survivals of Gaulish in French: buta ‘hut, dwelling place’”, French Studies Bulletin 34 (2013): 1–3.  
abstract:
This note examines previously unrecognised evidence for the preservation of Gaulish buta ‘hut, dwelling’ in Middle French, and in so doing illustrates the difficulties attendant on research into the Celtic substratum of Gallo-Romance vocabulary. These difficulties notwithstanding, new discoveries of Gaulish-derived lexis are still possible in legal and other utilitarian texts, and throw important light on cultural preservations of more than simple vocabulary.
(source: first paragraph of the article)
Sayers, William, “Extraordinary weapons, heroic ethics, and royal justice in early Irish literature”, Preternature 2:1 (2013): 1–18.  
abstract:
The synthesis of pagan and Christian cosmologies that informs medieval Irish letters incorporates prestigious and extraordinary weapons, and other such objects into an all-compassing Nature, in which they are preferentially associated with the themes of heroic ethics, legitimate and just royal rule, and the removal of errant rulers through a cosmic deployment of the “instruments of their fate.” Yet only rhetorical effects of literary depiction raise such weapons to a status approximating the preternatural.
Sayers, William, “Extraordinary beings in Chrétien de Troyes and their Celtic analogs”, in: Martin E. Huld, Karlene Jones-Bley, and Dean Miller (eds), Archaeology and language: Indo-European studies presented to James P. Mallory, 60, Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man, 2012. 23–54.
Sayers, William, “Pre-Christian cosmogonic lore in medieval Ireland: the exile into royal poetics”, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 14 (2012): 109–126.
Sayers, William, “Netherworld and Otherworld in early Irish literature”, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 59 (2012): 201–230.
Sayers, William, “Celtic kingship motifs associated with Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica”, in: Morgan Thomas Davies (ed.), Proceedings of the Celtic Studies Association of North America Annual Meeting 2008, 10, New York: Colgate University Press, 2011. 116–134.
Sayers, William, “Irish studies”, in: Albrecht Classen [ed.], Handbook of medieval studies: concepts, methods, historical developments, and current trends in medieval studies, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2010. 727–738.
Sayers, William, “Some disputed etymologies: kidney, piskie / pixie, tatting, and slang”, Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 172–179.
Sayers, William, “Þórgunna of Eyrbyggja saga and the rejection of Christian Celtic models of rule”, Scotia: Interdisciplinary Journal of Scottish Studies 33 (2009): 13–24.
Sayers, William, “Problems with the etymology of English bird”, Indo-European Studies Bulletin 14:1–2 (2009): 42–45.
Sayers, William, “Cei, Unferth, and access to the throne”, English Studies 90 (2009): 127–141.
Sayers, William, “A Swedish traveler’s reception on an Irish stage set: Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning”, Keltische Forschungen 3 (2008): 201–220.
Sayers, William, “Deficient royal rule: the king’s proxies, judges and the instruments of his fate”, in: Dan M. Wiley (ed.), Essays on the early Irish king tales, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008. 104–126.
Sayers, William, “Contested etymologies of some English words in the popular register”, Studia Neophilologica 80 (2008): 15–29.  
Proposes that modern English boondocks (British and later, US slang) may ultimately derive from Irish buannacht ‘billeting’, buannaidheacht ‘experience of billeting’.
Sayers, William, “Fusion and fission in the love and lexis of early Ireland”, in: Albrecht Classen [ed.], Words of love and love of words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008. 95–109.
Sayers, William, “Celtic, Germanic and Romance interaction in the development of some English words in the popular register”, Notes and Queries 54 (2007): 132–140.
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Dennis Groenewegen
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March 2018
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