Aitchison, Nick, “The Brude list: a panegyric to a Pictish king”, North American Journal of Celtic Studies 3:1 (2019): 18–46.
- journal article
This paper sheds new light on an enigmatic text preserved within the Pictish regnal list. Traditionally known as ‘The 30 Brudes’, the Brude list is the longest surviving Pictish text and is usually interpreted as a regnal list, genealogical record, or list of Pictish territories. By contrast, analysis of its textual history, structure, and contents reveals that the Brude list is, instead, a panegyric, in the form of a catalogue poem in the Insular Celtic tradition, to a Pictish king named Brude, the Irish or Gaelic form of the Pictish personal name Bredei or Bridei, a name shared by several Pictish kings. The contents of the Brude list are compared with cognate terms in other Insular sources, its format reconstructed, an edited text proposed, and a provisional translation made. The mode and possible contexts of performance of the Brude list as a call and response chant poem are then inferred.
page url: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Aitchison_(Nick)_2019_najcs3ucb
redirect: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Special:Redirect/page/47313
numerical alternative: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/index.php?curid=47313
page ID: 47313
page ID tracker: https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/index.php?title=Show:ID&id=47313
