Preface to Laurent Vital's visit to Kinsale in Ireland

Preface to Laurent Vital's visit to Kinsale in Ireland

Lough Derg--Travelogue--Kinsale--Pilgrimage

A sixteenth-century account by Laurent Vital of information gathered during the visit of Archduke Ferdinand to Kinsale

Laurent Vital

Laurent Vital, Archduke Ferdinand's visit to Kinsale in Ireland, Preface

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

1517-18

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork. Translated into English and donated to CELT by Dorothy Convery.

Citation for the purposes of criticism

Electronic text translation

English, translated from French

Travelogue

DD_0559

51.705477,-8.523765

https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T500000-001/

"Much of what Vital reported about Ireland came from the French-speaking brother of his landlady in the town [of Kinsale]. This man provided him with the usual Anglo-Irish townsman's viewpoint. Outside the towns the country was inhabited by the wild Irish whom Vital called les sauvaiges and whom his informant claimed were cave-dwellers. They lived by pillage and rapine and what law there was came from rival warlords who required passports and charged tolls on those passing through their areas. Kinsale was apparently in a particularly lawless region and had been under constant threat until in recent years the townsmen had evolved a modus vivendi with the countrypeople through a system of petty bribery. However this relationship also enabled Vital to ask for information and explanation. He could not help noticing that the wild Irish men had smeared their faces with blood and was told that, because they went bareheaded, it was done to prevent them getting freckles during the summertime. Vital was also anxious to know about St Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg which was famous as a pilgrimage site throughout Europe. Even though it was 180 leagues away in what was referred to as 'the Scottish quarter', it turned out that his hostess had been there as a girl, undertaking it seemingly as some form of a pre-marital penance. He was disappointed to hear that she, like a rather blasé teenager, had seen no visions. Her detailed account, albeit mediated through her brother and possibly written up by Vital as a result of further reading, is one of only two by native Irish pilgrims and the only one given by a woman."

Archduke Ferdinand's visit to Kinsale in Ireland, an extract from Le Premier Voyage de Charles-Quint en Espagne, de 1517 à 1518. Dorothy Convery (ed), Electronic edition, CELT Project, Cork (2012)