Historical Facts and Links About the Real Goliards
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This should probably be subtitled: "Don't let a bored Torcail search
the Internet."
For those who may not know, the College of Saint Golias is founded on some very period roots. The original goliards were students and clerics in France, England, and Germany who basically did then what students do now: thumbed their collective noses at the power structure, in their case the Church. Golias was the fictional patron saint (in some cases mentioned as a bishop) of debauchery, created by the students. The College of Saint Golias was founded in AS XII (1977) by Cyot, Sieur de Carnac in an effort to keep alive the traditions of the medieval students. Apparently some of the goliards created their own fictional order, with various ecclesiastical ranks such as abbot. The College of Saint Golias has an unofficial household known as the Brotherhood of the Moth Eaten Order, where everyone is a Brother (even the Sisters); the nominal head is the Abbot (who must reside within the physical boundaries of Saint Golias) who naturally has a Costello. One recent graveyard shift I was bored and poking around on the Internet. I recalled that there was a Compleate Anachronist a while back which mentioned the very real group of people known as goliards who lived in France. As a lark I typed in "Goliard" in the Google search engine, just to see what would appear... Was *I* surprised! A veritable virtual smorgsaboard of information on goliards, ranging from a musical group called The Goliard Trio who have mp3 files available for download at mp3.com, to what I was looking for - information on the historical goliards, including poetry written by actual goliards. An article found at britannica.com begins:
A good beginning! Continuing on, I found a citation in a document on medieval music (scroll down to the "Nonliturgical and Secular Monody" section), which comments upon the fact that goliard songs are apparently the earliest perserved samples of secular music. Interesting. Its nice to know that our ancestors made some contribution to history. Onwards I progressed, scanning through the Google search results, clicking here and there. Then I hit the mother lode! Actual songs and poems written by goliards! It seems that there is a manuscript of goliard songs and poems located in the Benediktbeurn monestary in Germany which is called the Carmina Burana ("Benediktbeurn Songs"). Many of these songs and poems were translated from Latin in the late 1800s by John Addington Symonds into a book titled Wine, Women, and Song(1884). Below are links to some of the goliard songs and poems found in the Carmina Burana:
Goliard Poems Goliardic / Vagabond Verse Goliardic Verse Carmina Burana Translation Latin Literature in Christianity (scroll down to "B. Latin Lyrical Poetry")
There is also one rather humorous site which exemplifies the true
nature of what a goliard should be:
Which is elegantly summed up in the following paragraph:
(Think I'll put in that request to sample whisky from all the forty odd distilleries that can be found in the Spey valley of Scotland.) |
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