The Irish Book of Bog
You’ve heard of the Book of Kells - or at least of Kansas City’s Cow of Kells - and you know how important old Irish books are in the formation of Celtic kitsch. I mean what would authentic Irish pubs look like if we had no Book of Kells (or Durrow or An Cathach)?
Looking for Psalm 83, I mean 84, the King James version, Israel, photos, the vale of tears, and the Bekaa Valley?
And if you were one of the twelve who turned up last time O’Dowd’s authentic Irish pub on the Plaza showed the All-Ireland Football final live you will have spotted the trophy handed to the winning captain.
The Sam Maguire Cup is based on the Ardagh Chalice, my favouite metal artefact from Ireland’s history - though I’m very fond of St. Patrick’s Bell Shrine, and the sumptuous Derrynaflan hoard.
I mention these things because they turn up everywhere. Kind of. Irish brooches hold the world together, and all of them based on the Tara Brooch, rather than any of the thousand other Irish brooches from the middle ages.
Crosses hang around necks, little metal crosses, crude likenesses of the crosses of Monasterboice, Moone, Ahenny, and the rest of them. The countryside of Ireland is littered with the jewellery and menu illustrations of the world.
Last Thursday, in what can only be described as ’sensational’, fragments of what’s believed to be an ancient Book of Psalms, were uncovered by a man on a bulldozer in a bog in the Irish midlands.
Possibly between 1,000 and 1,200-years-old, its discovery was an Irish equivalent to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, staff at the National Museum of Ireland said yesterday:
According to Raghnall Ó Floinn, head of collections at the museum, there are about 45 letters per line and a maximum of 40 lines per page.
While part of Psalm 83 is legible, the extent to which other psalms or additional texts are preserved will be determined only by painstaking work by a team of experts. It is possible that the manuscript will be put on public display in the museum’s early Christian gallery within a couple of years
Whatever is on those pages could well dictate the decor of your next authentic Irish pub, or cow. Even if it’s only letters, you’ll be seeing them on festival posters and Irish menus in no time. Unless they’re too difficult to follow, in which case you’ll keep on seeing those German ones you’ve been seeing.
Incidentally if you have time to visit just one room on your trip to Dublin (because you think the real Ireland is sixteen counties to the west) make it a visit to the National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology and History - The Treasury. And until you embrace all twenty-six notional counties of the Republic don’t bother yourself arguing about the other six.
We should all be grateful that the finding farmer is a friend to Irish archaeology, so the book in the bog went straight to State authorities, even if the law was changed to nationalize Ireland’s past following the difficulties with the Derrynaflan find of 1980.
UPDATE: The Museum has released the first photos of the book
UPDATE 2: The Museum has clarified that the Book of Psalms is the Vulgate version and not the King James version, so the Psalm 83 that is visible does not relate to wiping out Israel, but instead to the “Vale of Tears” which is Psalm 84 in the King James bible
UPDATE 3: You could of course equate the ‘Vale of Tears’ with the Bekaa Valley and we can all go back to where we started. If you’re mad, that is, and are the kind of person who sees messages from god in your burnt toast.
See Also:
• Irish Hares and Graces
• Eddie Delahunt Plays Guitar TONIGHT
• Irish Immigrant Makes Good, Leaves America, Comes Back, Builds Very Big Building
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