De Airix en de Catalans: transcription challenges

There’s a sign outside Montgat’s C11th Ermita de Sant Martí (this walk) which lists people interred there between 1677 and 1814:

There are several interesting things about this. One is the extraordinary diversity of people getting done in at a time when travel was still quite difficult. Another is the terrible impact of the French on the village, and a third is the miserable time men called Anton were having in the early 1760s. But, as you guessed, I’m most interested in the Irishmen. Patrick O’Connor probably died unable to write his own name, but if you pronounce the transcription attempted by the local clerk then his accent comes floating down the years. Mr Fuit might have been a Faoite, but your guess is as good as mine. Let’s do some more of this.

Ramon de Perellós, before he died in 1419, was a nobleman with land on both sides of the Pyrenees who served the kings of France, Aragon, and Cyprus (briefly), was captured by the Saracens, and rescued from them by Peter III of Constantinople, and … well, that’s where everything gets a bit confused. In 1395 (or 1396 if you believe some people) fun-loving incompetent Joan I of Aragon fell off his horse and died before a priest could get near him. For some reason this was felt in alarmingly significant measure to be Ramon’s fault, so he left behind some very confused politics featuring Antipope (or Pope, as some Catalan historians would have it) Benedict XIII and took to the road in order to clear his name.

Ramon de Perellós’ Voyage to Purgatory details a journey that took him via Paris, Canterbury, Oxford, Dublin and a meeting with an Irish king at a stage when Ireland didn’t have kings to St Patrick’s Purgatory in the middle of Lough Derg up in Donegal. There, making liberal use of other accounts of this pilgrimage, he descended into the cave and found Joan I being tortured horribly by some suspiciously Gallic-sounding demons. This is a happy ending for both Joan and Ramon, because Joan is in Purgatory rather than Hell and can shortly be expected to ascend to Paradise, meaning that Ramon’s alleged failings at the time of the monarch’s death had had no serious long-term consequences. Ramon then made his way back down south, wrote up his story, and was, with some wobbles, a jolly good fellow for ever after.

I think there are enough glaring inconsistencies and blatant lies even in the for-real part of the story to suggest that the author may just have hung around in northern France or southern England while things calmed down and based his account on the stories of members of the Anglo-French ruling class who had actually been over to Ireland. However, there are some very amusing bits - notably a description of the dreadful manners of the Irish - and I was particularly intrigued by transcriptions of English and Irish names in which, this time, a strong French accent is to be heard. Oliet, indeed:

The Belfast Telegraph reports that

Another recent investor in the region is Catalan chanteur, Lluís Llach. It remains to be seen what he and the locals make of Mr McAlindon’s name.

Trevor @ 5 May 2004 12:09 AM

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Comments

1. Den
   9:43 AM on 5 May 2004

   Get this. “Marc Pala is a writer and Vice-President of the Association du Patrimoine Culturel de Sigean et les Corbieres” and he gave a talk on “the journey the 13th Century soldier and troubadour Ramon de Perillos made from Roussillon to Lough Dergh in Ireland, to commune with his dead king Jaime I of Aragon. ” That’s another moron for your collection

2. Trevor
   9:50 AM on 5 May 2004

   I’m not persecuting anyone any more. I’m already in deep trouble according to the Dante Inferno Test, which has me down in the depths.

3. MM
   3:01 PM on 5 May 2004

   I got Level 6, Heretics - were you even worse off?

4. Trevor
   4:00 PM on 5 May 2004

   Yes, because I was honest.

5. quim
   12:02 PM on 28 July 2004

   “Conturberi” appears in Tirant lo Blanc as well,
   and “el ducat” (or whatever) “d’Etcètera”
   (for Exeter) and others. And we say Londres,
   Saragossa, Moscou… and you say Lisbon and
   Seville and Rome. Is anything wrong with that?

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