Reporting Scotland in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Eolas 8 (2015), 20-38 How does Bede represent the Irish in his eighth-century work, the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum? How does this Anglo-Saxon monk conceive of them as a people, and how does this influence his use of them in his narrative of the development of the Anglo-Saxon Church? Ireland and the Irish are very visible elements in his account, and Bede’s description of the gens Scottorum and his depictions of the individual Irish who populate his work feed into his interest in ethnicity. Aspects and indicators of this, such as origin tales, language, and common customs, can be discussed in the context of the Irish in the Historia ecclesiastica to great effect. However, ethnicity alone does not define the Irish who appear in Bede’s text. They are not a homogeneous group for Bede: they are scholars and missionaries, penitents and kings, and he inserts them throughout the work, making them an integral part of his story.

Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Language, Literature, History, ed. Alice Jorgensen, 141-60 (Turnhout; Brepols, 2010)

2024

This paper dismisses the theory of a common archetype for the different versions of the Saxon Chronicle-an edition which extended only to 891-and argues that the shared source was a 'Base Text', perhaps from the Winchester Old Minster, which was copied at various times between 909 and 920, and sent out to the newly-formed sees at Ramsbury, Crediton, Wells and the New Minster-and, probably, to the existing one at Sherborne. An examination of the extant Chronicle-texts, and a simultaneous consideration of their purported sources, suggests that there was a degree of interaction between these establishments around 946, and again in the 970s, as the different manuscripts came to be updated. Two major corrections are necessary: 1. For 'working both alone in unison' (p. 12), read 'working both alone or in unison'. 2. For 'appointment as Suffragan to Archbishop Eadsige in 1043' (p. 29), read 'appointment as Suffragan to Archbishop Eadsige in 1044'.

Anglo-Saxon England, 2015

Lexical and stylistic features indicate that the Preface to the Old English Bede was composed by a writer different from the anonymous Mercian who translated the body of the text. The Preface, therefore, cannot be taken to reveal aspects of the original translator's aims or attitude to the text. Recently discovered collations of the burnt manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Otho B.

2008

For many years, there has been debate over the authorship and origin of the annals of Manuscript E of the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle', in the years between 1080 and 1121. This paper starts a little earlier, however, examining the changes of authorship within the entries of MS. E between 1070 and 1121, and comparing them with those of MS. D, as applicable. The conclusions are that a northernised text, reaching to 1084, was used in the compilation of D and in the updating of the exemplar of E, and that the text behind E was later continued on to 1090, to 1110, and to 1121. The article also raises the possibility of an ongoing Canterbury connection for the 'Chronicle'. Indeed, given that the annals between 1070 and 1084 appear to have existed in an earlier source as a discrete block, then it would seem that MS. D (which arguably contains only part of that block) is a copied text in its later parts. And, considering that some of its entries have been drawn directly from MS. E, it would seem that both D and E were together at Canterbury, during the compilation and/or updating of the two texts. One further implication would be that MS. D was compiled as an exercise in scribal training -- given that the blocks of text do not match up with the various blocks of handwriting.

2017

International Review of Scottish Studies, 2007

Journal of Scottish Names Studies, 2007

The Innes Review, 2018

This is an Author's Original of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in The Innes Review, Volume 69 Issue 1 (2018), Pages 1-48, ISSN 0020-157x (Available Online May 2018). The Version of Record is available online at: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/inr.2018.0158 This article studies the subject matter, details, and vocabulary of the Irish chronicle record relating to northern Britain from A.D. 660 to 800 in order to establish its sources. It rejects theories that the record from 660 to 740 preserves Applecross, Northern British or Pictish chronicles, arguing that an ‘Iona Chronicle’ accounts for nearly all items for northern Britain, and some, but not all, for Ireland. ‘The Iona Chronicle’ was a contemporary text whose style and interests gradually evolved over the period. After 740 the more limited evidence indicates that Iona and somewhere in southern Pictland probably provided written notices of events, but that the record's final form was produced in Ireland. The combination of common features and regional variation reflects the existence of more multiple ‘centres of recording’ which provided written notices of events to the ‘centres of chronicling’ at Iona and later Ireland, where the surviving chronicle text was produced.