Pilgrimage, sailing, and saint’s lives

Aldred’s journey homeward as a twenty-something includes a stint at Govan (Scotland), where he joins the pilgrimage of Cathroe.  I ambitiously outlined the ten-year period from Aldred at the Battle of Brunanburh to his return to Northumbria in an earlier post, Ubi Sunt, that set out my spring sabbatical writing agenda.  That was followed by an account of Aldred’s stay at Glendalough (Ransom) detailed in letters between Aldred and his family.  I then began a chapter that starts with Aldred meeting Cathroe in Govan, embarking on a pilgrimage journey that turned into an odyssey, at least for me.  I made great progress, learned a lot, and intended to post a series of queries on the blog, but then Life happened, I was back in the classroom…and this post delayed.

What started out as a road trip story based on the life of St. Cathroe’s pilgrimage turned into a sea journey and then into a series of saint’s lives recounted at each pilgrimage stop.  I had fun writing the chapter (which is not quite done) but also annotated it with a lot of questions about some of my choices and their historical viability.

1.  Languages. Aldred is living and traveling with people of different linguistic abilities:  Latin, English, Norse, Irish, Gaelic (Scots and/or Cumbric), Welsh.  Everyone in this northern region is probably at least bilingual, but in different combinations.  Some languages are related enough to have some mutual intelligibility (English and Norse, potentially).  Clerics raised in a religious community would find Latin a common language across unintelligible boundaries.  In the course of the chapter and Aldred’s encounters with different people, I have to explain how they communicated, in some cases with someone translating for someone else.  For Aldred himself, I am drawing on my own weak experiences with hearing/speaking other languages.  This is the background note I wrote to myself for the chapter:

Aldred may have spent two years in Ireland, and now finds himself in a Cumbric speaking kingdom, but he has no ear for learning languages orally or speaking them.  He grew up bilingual in his native vernacular Northumbrian English and Latin, but has trouble with Celtic languages, never really learns to speak them well, and has trouble sometimes following a story told aloud.  As a budding scholar, he feels stupid, but as a scribe he has discovered he is a visual learner: he sees words spelled.  He speaks Latin primarily with other clerics.  Lay nobles, household servants, ship’s crews are mostly bilingual or trilingual in English, Norse, Irish, or some form of Gaelic (Cumbric is lost to us, but similar to Welsh).

Throughout the chapter, I indicate when Aldred is having difficulty following something, or occasions when someone translates for someone else:  when the Norse serving boy, who can understand English and some Gaelic, doesn’t understand Latin, or stumbles over an unfamiliar English or Gaelic word; or when Irish clerics mix Latin and Irish in macaronic speech, Aldred has to ask questions.

Does this approach make sense? 

 

2.  Seafaring Pilgrimage.  The Life of Cathroe (Vita Kaddroe) indicates that Cathroe of Alba was escorted by Scots King Constantine to Govan, where he was received by Strathclyde (Cumbrian) King Dyfnwal, who escorted the pilgrim saint to his borders at Loida (Lowther).  The obvious way to proceed from Govan to Lowther would be overland, with the king itinerating through his territories and relying on the resources of his holdings there.   While traveling overland would make sense both for pilgrims on foot and for an itinerating king, it presents a transportation problem of horse-riding warriors versus on-foot pilgrims.  Going by ship is faster and easier, even though having to go the long way around Galloway.  And it allows me to have them make pilgrimage stops at Arran (St. Molaise’s island) and Whithorn (St. Ninian), which would not be on the itinerary overland.  This choice also forced me to learn a lot about tides, ships, and aquatic life.

Is this choice of traveling by ship too far-fetched?

More questions to come, but for now these are the two big ones.