Medieval and early modern French Texts
There are few literary works in Hiberno-Norman French. The larger work is the Song of Dermot and the Earl, a chanson de geste of 3458 lines of verse. The shorter is the Walling of New Ross of 220 lines, c.1275. There are poems in the early 14th century amongst the customs of Waterford in Cambridge, Corpus Christi MS 405. The work of Jofroi of Waterford also belongs in this context.
Most other Hiberno-French documents are administrative (including commercial) or legal. Municipal customaries extend to about 21,200 words. See Gearóid Mac Niocaill, Na buirgéisí, XII-XIV aois i (Dublin 1964), 1-70.
There is a mass of parliamentary legislation, most of it quite unstudied and some instruments are lengthy. For example, the famous Statute of Kilkenny is about 4,200 words (see Tracts relating to Ireland (Dublin 1843), 27-121).
To our knowledge none of these texts appear in FRANTEXT/Trésor de la langue française/CNRS or in its American incarnation, ARTFL (the major French language text-bases).
Donnchadh Ó Corráin
Select bibliography on Hiberno-Norman French
Texts published
13th century poetry
The Song of Dermot and the Earl
14th century legal documents
A Statute of the Fortieth Year of King Edward III, enacted in a parliament held in Kilkenny, A. D. 1367, before Lionel Duke of Clarence, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland [The Statute of Kilkenny]
15th/16th century legal documents
Bordeaux Notarial Records, ed. Alf O'Brien (unpublished).
A 16th-century travel diary
Premier Voyage de Charles-Quint en Espagne, de 1517 à 1518. Available at CELT is an extract of this work, relating Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg's visit to Kinsale, written by Laurent Vital, secretary to the Archduke, ed. by Louis Prosper Gachard and Charles Piot, Collection de Chroniques Belges inédites, Publiée par ordre du Gouvernement, Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Commisson Royal d'Historie, Collection des Voyages des Souverains des Pays-Bas, tome 3, Bruxelles/Brussels 1881, 276–296.
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