Medieval Music from the Atlantic coasts of Europe, Britain, and Ireland
In the Middle Ages, the windswept shores of the Atlantic Ocean represented not the periphery but the very heart of European civilization, providing the means by which merchants, sailors, monks, and soldiers shared communication, conquest, scholarship, and trade. Wine from Spain, wool from Ireland, timber from Scotland, and cloth from Brittany, as well as news of kings, tales of saints, and stories, songs, and tunes were carried by coasting sailors to every shore washed by the Atlantic waves. In turn, Celtic songs, tunes, religion, and cultural archetypes made landfall all along the western rim of the known world, from the shores of North Africa, up the coasts of Spain and Portugal, across Brittany and Cornwall, into the Irish Sea and onto the Isle of Man, founding the medieval Irish trading cities of Cork, Limerick, and Galway, and as far north as Scotland, the Shetlands, and Scandinavia, and reached perhaps as far west as the pre-Christian mythical land of Tir na N'Og, the mysterious continent thought to lie beyond the sunset. . . . - Altramar