Now that I am a Real Grown-Up Academic (tm), I have been trying to find a way to support my students and the general public by making medieval Irish literature more accessible to people who, be it a lack of time, disability, or any other factor, find sitting down and reading the original texts challenging.
What I settled on was creating a Podcast where I sit down and read out of copyright translations of Irish legends which I have called Guth: Reading Irish Myths and Legends.
If that's all you need to hear, you can go check it out right now! It is on Spotify (here), Podbean (here), and YouTube (here), and should be on Apple Music in the coming weeks. Alternatively, it is embedded here:
For those of you who need a harder sell, or want to know more about it, check out below!
So, why Guth? Well, I have encountered several different Podcasts and YouTube Channels out there which are doing something similar, recording audio of them reading medieval Irish legends. While several of these are quite cool, there are issues.
In terms of more benign issues, to get around the issues of copyright, people in these alternatives tend to retell stories, and while that is very cool as an example of something like an oral tradition, it means the stories are often being altered and changed by a non-expert audience. Elements that are not very important are being given great importance, areas that are very important are cut, and sometimes things are incorporated from other texts to make an unspoken composite (or, alternatively, sometimes people cut a section of a text out and retell it independent of its broader context).
These aren't bad, but, it means these other Podcasts and Videos aren't really suitable for my purposes of supporting my students and giving people access to the actual stories.
In terms of the big problems, there is at least one Podcast on a similar topic being presented by someone who I have reason to suspect is faking having a PhD. Further, there are at least two people putting out content like this that are actively forging content and passing it off as authentic who just so happen to also be Fascists. So, not ideal.
I hope Guth can serve my students and interested members of the public by providing a solid academic perspective on a text. Each episode I open with a discussion of our manuscript sources and the date of the text (a lot of other pieces out there will describe tales as 'ancient', when in actuality they're a 14th century scribe just vibin'). I then read the text exactly as it is translated, including using reconstructed Old Irish pronunciation for all the names that appear in the text. Lastly, I conclude with a brief discussion of secondary scholarship I think is particularly relevant for the interests of the public.
All of that to say, I hope people enjoy Guth, and that it can serve people who are interested in the actual medieval tales rather than the various retellings that are circulating out there.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…adventures in antiquing
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night, adventures in antiquing, stop us from our Driving for Deco creed. A friend and I were speaking about Anthony and my antiquing adventures. She asked if anything stopped us.
And it got me thinking.
And the answer is: Not usually.
But the creed doesn’t mention blood. My blood, and lots of it. But I’ll get to that later.
Adventures in Snow:
Ontario…
The new document is 16 pages including fancy artwork, updated rules based on playtesting, and new features like "Soaking Off" damage and armor Durability. The PDF document is on a 10% off sale right now because of International GM's Day so it's less than $1.00 for a download right now. So far 76 people have downloaded the document. Why not be number 77?
