The ‘Conquest of Ireland’ of Giraldus Cambrensis

Summary

Like Walter Map, Giraldus Cambrensis (c.1146–1223) drew heavily upon the Celtic traditions and folklore in which, through a cultural development linked with the extension of Norman and Angevin military power in Wales and Ireland, there was increasing interest to the court of Henry II. Giraldus was himself of Norman–Welsh descent, one of an extended family who formed a patronage network, styling themselves the ‘race of Nesta’ after one of their forebears, a Welsh princess who took a series of Norman lovers and husbands in the early twelfth century. The best-known works of Giraldus Cambrensis are a brace of topographies of Wales and Ireland as well as the Expugnatio Hibernica, an historical account of the invasion of Ireland in 1170–71 in which a number of his Norman–Welsh relatives played a prominent part. As a travel-writer Giraldus had a predilection for reporting upon the fantastic and outlandish. His topography of Ireland has an entire section devoted to the wonders and miracles of the country, which includes such chapters as ‘Of a fish which had three golden teeth’, ‘Of a woman who had a hairy crest on her back’, ‘Of the fleas which were got rid of by St Nannan’. Surprisingly, however, he tells very few anecdotes which could be categorised as ghost stories as such. In the following extracts from the Expugnatio, the first deals with an episode which reportedly occurred during the military campaign in Ireland itself: it has overtones of the Wild Hunt narrative motif which we have already encountered. The second extract is from a chapter in which Giraldus digresses briefly from his account of the military campaign to assess the validity or otherwise of premonitory apparitions, and does so by drawing heavily on allusions to antiquity and classical literature.

The Fight with the Ghostly Army

Book I, Chap. IV

It happened, while the army was in Ossory, that they encamped one night on a certain old fortification, and these two young men [the cousins Robert de Barri and Meyler Fitz-Henry] were lying, as was their custom, in the same tent. Suddenly there was a great noise, as though many thousand men were rushing in upon them from all sides, with a great rattling of arms and clashing of battle-axes. Such spectral appearances frequently occur in Ireland to those who are engaged in hostile excursions.