The Mary of the Celts is essential reading for anyone interested in
the reality of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in Celtic
spirituality. The book explores themes and images associated with
the Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion, and Assumption, as also
the Blessed Virgin's Joys and Sorrows, through a detailed study of
poetry on Mary from the Celtic regions of medieval Britain and
Ireland. There are haunting images such as the Blessed Virgin Mary
as daughter of her Son and as the chamber of the Trinity, with her
virginity remaining as unstained and pure as glass pierced by a
beam of light, as well as references to popular apocryphal legends,
including those of the Instantaneous Harvest that grew while Mary
and her child were fleeing into Egypt from Herod's men, and of the
girdle thrown down by the Virgin to St Thomas at the Assumption.
Amongst the many poets encountered are Muiredeach Albanach, a
thirteenth-century Irishman who established a dynasty of poets in
the Western Isles of Scotland, and his Welsh contemporary Brother
Madog ap Gwallter, whose poem on Mary and her child at Bethlehem
has been praised for a Franciscan simplicity and freshness. Taking
the original verse in Middle and Early Modern Irish, Middle Welsh,
and Middle Cornish (from medieval Cornish drama), Andrew Breeze
relates their characteristic images to patristic material, other
vernacular poetry (especially in Old and Middle English), Latin
hymns, and medieval painting and sculpture. Indeed, The Mary of the
Celts has been written as a guide to Marian iconography. It will be
useful for students of medieval European literature and art, as
well as for specialists in early Irish and Welsh, all of whom will
find in it much that is new. It should make readers aware of the
wealth of Marian material to be found in Celtic Ireland and
Britain, not all of which has had the attention it deserves beyond
the Celtic lands. In reviewing Andrew Breeze's Medieval Welsh
Literature, Dr Jerry Hunter of the University of Wales wrote in The
Times Literary Supplement, 'he has succeeded where generations of
scholars have failed'. The Mary of the Celts is likely to have a
similar warm welcome from all those concerned with the Marian
devotion of the Middle Ages in the Celtic lands and beyond. Dr
Andrew Breeze (b. 1954), FSA, FRHistS, was educated at Sir Roger
Manwood's Grammar School and the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge. Married with six children, he has been lecturer in
English since 1987 at the University of Navarre, Pamplona. Besides
numerous research papers on philology, he is the author of the
controversial study Medieval Welsh Literature (Dublin, 1997) and
co-author with Professor Richard Coates of Celtic Voices, English
Places (Stamford, 2000).
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