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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

(Full quote: "A morwyn oedd i anwyla ddisgybl Ieuan vyngylwr" - "And the beloved disciple, John the evangelist, was a virgin.")

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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Very late to this, and can't think of anything about St Llyr off the top of my head, but re the use of "morwyn" for male saints, I see an example cited in the GPC entry for "morwyn", from 1552 (MS Peniarth 403), which I think is referring to John the Evangelist as a "morwyn"!

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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

But since the digitised version does state that the MS was unbound and rebound for digitisation, I suppose it's possible it could have been rebound in the wrong order as well. Probably worth contacting NLW about?

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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

If you're still looking into this, this edition of the Life of Samson may be helpful (click through to the Manuscripts section): saints.wales/wp-content/u.... The order of the actual pages in the manuscript is given in Huws' "Medieval Welsh Manuscripts", p. 127 - at least circa 2000!

saints.wales

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Farleigh Hanchet @farleigh.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

This absolute icon at Canterbury Pride 🩷🤍🩵

Person dressed as a knight with a trans flag and a cape with a trans flag shield that says “Trans Knights are human Knights”

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Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

My book, "Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain" (or "True Britons and Celtic Empires", if you'd prefer) is now AVAILABLE FOR HARDBACK PREORDER Your library needs more about bardic antislavery, imperial complicity, and druids with telescopes, no? boydellandbrewer.com/978183765195...

Book cover for "Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819: True Britons and Celtic Empires". Cover shoes a painting of a Welshman with a gilded leek in his wide-brimmed black hat, warming a (seemingly alcoholic...) drink at a candle flame

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Myriah Williams @myriahwilliams.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

The text, from the Welsh Law of Hywel Dda, concerns the rights of the bakeress. 🍰 The eighth additional officer of the court (and second of only three female officers), she was entitled to “a cake from every type of flour which was baked” and to protection for “as far as she may throw her spatula”.

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Llewelyn @llewelynhopwood.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

🇺🇸 📚 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 📜 Just got my copy of the most recent issue of the North American Journal of Celtic Studies, which includes my article on Welsh books in the Huntington Library, L.A. Available to read (with sub) here muse.jhu.edu/pub/30/artic... Diolch i’r golygyddion a’r darllenwyr am y cyngor a’r cymorth!

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Dr Ella Hawkins @ellamchawk.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

One more bookish set for good measure. These biscuits are inspired by the weird and wonderful world of medieval illustration.

9 square biscuits decorated with illustrations from medieval manuscripts, including Reynard the Fox, a dog, a knight fighting a snail, a peacock, a hedgehog, a bat, and a fish. The set features shades of rich russet red, cobalt blue, gold, brown, turquoise, and green. Some biscuits include small sections of blackletter calligraphy.

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Alicia Spencer-Hall @aspencerhall.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Hello friend www.aup.nl/en/book/9789...

Two copies of the book Disability and Sanctity in the Middle Ages

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Myriah Williams @myriahwilliams.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Ogma’s ogham workshop, cutting edge since c. 700

Cartoon with an ogham stone in the foreground with “ogma ⁊ sons ogham carvers our work is cutting edge” on the front and ogham on the right edge. A roundhouse is in the background with three stones piled in front and a small fire visible inside. A fence is behind the roundhouse with a small bird perched on one post and two other birds flying in the distance.

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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Marginal notes from past readers are something I miss in ebooks, for all their convenience.

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Adam Chapman @adamchapman.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

And this is one of the underestimated effects of increasing AI use. What ChatGPT spews out is mangled out of actual sources, but without any understanding or clarity. At the same time, it stuffs access to that material because the servers are overburdened.

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Catherine Clarke @cathamclarke.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

If M.R. James wrote safety signage

Museum display recreating a Saxon burial, with a notice reading:
For your safety, please do not touch the items in the Saxon burial or attempt to climb into the grave.
(Red House Museum, Christchurch)

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David Stifter 🍵📄🦊 @davidstifter.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

My article on "Old Irish Healing Charms and Protective Spells" is now openly accessible online on the @brepols.net website at: www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1...

brepolsonline.net

Old Irish Healing Charms and Protective Spells | Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World

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Francesca Tinti @francescatinti.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Bob Berkhofer announcing the winner of the 2025 Otto Gründler Book Prize: Rory Naismith. Congratulations @rorynaismith.bsky.social !!

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University of Wales Press @uniwalespress.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Are you attending @kzooicms.bsky.social this week? Stop by the Waldo Library today for Katharine K. Olson's paper! Discover more of Katharine’s writing in her upcoming co-edited title 'Memory and Nation': www.uwp.co.uk/book/memory-... #MedievalSky #KzooICMS #KZoo2025 #ICMS2025

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Irish Script On Screen (www.isos.dias.ie) @dias-isos.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

1/5 Delighted to announce a new collaboration with Kilkenny Mile Museum to digitise the Liber Primus Kilkenniensis, Kilkenny’s oldest civic record. 📜 #LiberPrimus #Digitisation @dias.ie @scs-dias.bsky.social #DIASdiscovers #IrishManuscripts

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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

These posts are getting more and more belated on my part, but tomorrow I'm speaking at the ASNC Research Seminar at 5 pm! If you're in the area, come by to see a lot of examples of medieval handwriting and a lot of speculation about them by me.

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Dr Basil Arnould Price @basilaprice.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

New work from me in The Sundial, all about Greenland and imperial fantasies, old and new.

medium.com

Sagas and Sovereignty in Kalaallit Nunaat, Grænland, and Red, White, and Blueland

by Basil Arnould Price

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Manchester University Press @manchesterup.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Today marks the start of #TransHistoryWeek, a new initiative by @wearequeeraf.com 🏳️‍🌈 This year we've launched our new QUEER & TRANS HISTORIES series - and we want your proposals! Ed. by Matt Cook, Jennifer V Evans & @psimonetto.bsky.social #TransRights #TransHistories

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

I’m mid cleaning this up again after a small technical glitch and close to 2000 signatures from just UK academics! Would be great to get over that line before it’s published…

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Elizabeth Boyle @thecelticist.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

"Curious Cures, opening on Saturday at Cambridge University Library, is the culmination of a project to digitise and catalogue more than 180 manuscripts, mostly dating from the 14th or 15th centuries, that contain recipes for medical treatments ..." #MedievalSky www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

theguardian.com

Why the weasel testicles? Cambridge show explains medieval medicine

Exhibition aims to help visitors get inside the minds that thought mercury and roasted apples would cure lice

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Steffen Hope @hopesteffen.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Mary Magdalen is so done with your shit. [Anonymous Flemish-Spanish artist; Museo de Salamanca]

Centre-field of a fifteenth-century retable featuring the life of Mary Magdalen. The centre-field image depicts the Magdalen seated, dressed in a long red robe over a green kirtle. Her auburn hair flows in rivulets down her shoulders. She wears a white turban-like headgear with a jewel in front. In her right hand she is holding up the alabaster jar that is her main attribute - held between thumb and index finger - and her left hand is pressing a book against her left knee. The book has a red cover and the cover is kept together with a clasp. She looks angrily into the air.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

In our new research blog, @rhyskamjones.bsky.social tells the story of how Thomas Pennant brought Horned Gods to Welsh Hillsides Read on for witchcraft, Reformation martyrdom, and the enlightenment's unintended consequences curioustravellers.ac.uk/horned-gods-...

A black and white illustration of the a bearded figure with animal-like ears and horns, with rings decorating the horns, and bearing the inscription 'CERNVNNOS'

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Clare Kirk @digupyourancestors.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

In 2022 I wrote about 'female parish clerks' from the late 1700s to the early 1900s for @friendlesschurches.bsky.social. While some saw it as 'unseemly and unbecoming to appoint a female to such an office', many of these women were highly respected in their local communities. #WomensHistoryMonth

friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk

"A Female Parish Clerk?!"

Until the 20thC parish clerks and churchwardens were almost always men. But a few women broke with that convention, like Mary Flint, female parish clerk of Caldecote, Herts

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Myriah Williams @myriahwilliams.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

A poem composed early in the 16th century in a margin of the Black Book of Carmarthen begs God for protection from a series of enemies, including the English and the Irish, but the worst of all is saved for last: kerdd Wiliam Sion ‘the poetry of Wiliam Siôn’ #WorldPoetryDay

Image of a Welsh poem in the bottom margin of NLW, Peniarth MS 1, fol. 28r. A translation of the poem below this reads: “May the highest lord, lord with a glimmering golden sword/ protect our goods for a short while and protect our people/ against false English and Irish and against the wrath of butchers/ and against a clamour and enchantment and against wolves and thieves/ against that one yonder who is evil, against rabid dogs/ against sheet lightning and thunder and against bad crwth-players/ and against the barren darkness of the Devil and against the poetry of Wiliam Siôn”

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Dr Gillian Kenny @medievalgill.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Read a nice little blog on the Bonnacon today so thought I’d share. If you have never before heard of this mythical creature who attacked with its farts and poo then…enjoy blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-bon...

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Natasha Simonova @philistella.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

I could not be more proud that my article on Elizabeth Elstob, precarity, scholarship, teaching, women's time, and having toast for dinner has now been published in this special issue on 'Precarity.' This one was personal and meant a lot to me. academic.oup.com/english/arti...

academic.oup.com

Precarious and Fatiguing: Elizabeth Elstob and Women’s Intellectual Careers as Tragedy

Abstract. The eighteenth-century Anglo-Saxonist Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) has often served as both a positive and negative example of what was historica

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Dr Nina Cnockaert-Guillou @ninacnock.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Glad to finally see this article in the flesh: my edition and study of 'Finn and Mac Lesc', including the poems 'Fuitt co bráth' and 'Tánic sam' in the latest Celtica! Abstract below.

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Kathleen E. Kennedy @themedievaldrk.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

important conservation-based counterpoint to arguments for academic sustainability

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Erica Steiner @ericasteiner.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Another day ... another #CelticStudies programme under attack. Please sign the petition to send a strong message to the University of Western Brittany that Breton is highly valued internationally: chng.it/cdStWfKmbz The Master's of Celtic Languages and Cultures in Contact blog: l3c.hypotheses.org

chng.it

Avez-vous une minute pour aider cette campagne?

Sauvons les études celtiques de Brest ! / Save the Celtic studies in Brest !

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Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Purrfect initial 'P'(arabole) at the beginning of Proverbs Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 048; Bible; c. 1170 CE; St Albans; f.154v @parkerlibcccc.bsky.social @corpuscambridge.bsky.social

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National Trust Archaeology @nattrustarch.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

This morning we’re re-sharing a fabulous discovery for #MedievalMarch – a medieval seal matrix from Mottisfont in Hampshire. It's believed this is the only one in the UK to be reunited with its original home, 500 years after it left, and the first Mottisfont seal to be discovered! bit.ly/4klvSN3

An oval cast copper-alloy seal matrix with the legend "sigillu[m] officii prioris p[ri[oretas sce trinitat[is] de Motesfont" (Seal of the Official of the Prior of the Priory of Mottisfont)

A person wearing blue gloves holding the seal matrix

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Tanya Kirk @tanyakirk.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Exciting job opportunity to become St John's College's Special Collections Librarian www.joh.cam.ac.uk/special-coll... - permanent post, salary £41,944-£47,208 (depending on experience) plus benefits. Working with a great collection and a friendly team. @ciliprarebooks.bsky.social #LibraryJobs

joh.cam.ac.uk

Special Collections Librarian | St John's College, University of Cambridge

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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

This was so fun! A really engaged and supportive audience and then a delightfully long manuscript conversation afterwards (and by delightfully long I mean it went on until they closed the building for the night).

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medievalgender.bsky.social @medievalgender.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Please encourage your graduate students to submit to this year’s GMS essay prize! Deadline 30th April. medievalgender.co.uk/prizes-bursa...

medievalgender.co.uk

Prizes & Bursaries – Gender and Medieval Studies

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Adam Chapman @adamchapman.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

That's literally everyone I know who works at Cardiff: all good people, excellent teachers and researchers, friends, colleagues, people whose work has informed my own. And for Welsh as a discipline, that's a substantial proportion of the scholarly community on the planet. Absolutely catastrophic.

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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

"The image of the painter and illuminator of this work. Hugh the painter" Hugh, the 11th century artist of Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 717, goes meta and paints himself at work on the manuscript itself.

A zoom in on a manuscript page. On the left some text is visible and on the right, in a geometric and floral frame there is a monk at a writing desk. The tones are green and red with a blue robe of the monk.

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dr. Nike @naoicea.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Cú Chulainn is mad! #StopDeSloop

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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Happy to pass along script/slides etc!

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Dr Eleanor Smith @englynsmith.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Really excited to be speaking at the London Society for Medieval Studies seminar tomorrow night at 5.30 pm! I can promise copious saints and even more copious manuscript images.

An image of the event webpage, giving the title ("Devotion on the Margins: The Late Medieval Readers of Gotha I. 81"), the date and time (11th March, 5.30--7 pm), and the location (IHR Wolfson Room NB01 in Senate House, Malet Street, London, and online).

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Emily Corran @emilycorran.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

A 3-year medieval history teaching post @uclhistory.bsky.social to replace me during maternity and research leave. A wonderful place to work. I’m happy to talk to anyone interested in applying. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

ucl.ac.uk

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

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