Vocal music in medieval Ireland

Abstract

This chapter considers the evidence of medieval Irish vocal music which can be found in surviving Old and Middle Irish texts. The texts contain many references to public singing in secular contexts and indicate that the normal practice was for songs to be sung by a single man or woman or by groups of either men or women. A prestigious type of chant or song called aidbsiu ‘poetic recitation’ is distinguished from a martial singing mode described as dord (or andord), the basic meaning of which is ‘humming, buzzing’ and which has the capacity to mesmerize those who hear it. In the Fenian tales, the phrase dord fiansa ‘the hum of the war-band’ is used of a type of singing practised by young warriors, accompanied by the rhythmic banging of the shafts of their spears. Extempore group-singing by women is described as cepóc; another category of singing is coíniud ‘keening of the dead’, which regularly incurred the disapproval of the Church, but continued to be practised into modern times.