"Go West, Young Man!": A Vernacular Anglo-Norman Chronicle from Thirteenth-Century Ireland

The vernacular literary record of the Anglo-Norman invasion and settlement of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Ireland is a sparse one. Leaving to one side the native annals and the more indirect reflection of these events as a stimulus to the compilation of the great codices such as the Book of Leinster and the Book of the Dun Cow, only two documents are extant in the French language. One, little marked by Anglo-Norman dialect features, is a poem from 1265 commemorating the completion of trench and bank fortifications at New Ross. The other, more substantial work is a chronicle of 3459 rhymed octosyllabic couplets in Anglo-Norman French, dated to 1225 or 1230: the single manuscript is incomplete at beginning and end.