[ I notice that my tech-wizard, website-designing daughter Sion is currently high-lighting in this website this book that I put out in December 2001.]

Let me say that I have not sold 100 copies of it in the intervening seven years –it took me the best part of a year to complete the research, write the story, translate the poem from it’s original Middle English (reading Chaucer in the original will give you a good sense of Middle English),

do the calligraphy, design the book, and then make the individual copies of the book.

As is too often the case with Small Presses, no other press –large or small– has done this book.

Which is why The Stone Street Press exists (though also –sadly– barely persists: that is a matter for another day. I will leave to others to figure out the return on a year’s work from the sale of a hundred copies.)

And yet, the rewards could hardly be greater. I am not complaining, but a few others do and I do appreciate their concern.

One such response came to me by email from Switzerland just a couple of days ago. Stephan Burkhardt, of Parnassia, introduced himself: he is very involved in the old ways of printing and making books. The name of his press, Parnassia, gives a good idea of his aspirations.

Stephan has already shared a great deal of diverse bibliophiliac information with me, for which I thank him. [I include his web address here for those interested to learn more of Parnassia: it is www.parnassia.org .] And he ordered some books from me, which was very nice of him. (If you want to do the same, do take a look at my website.)

Among the books he ordered were “The Life of Colum Cille” and “The Land of Cokaygne”. Considering his and Parnassia’s interests, I was not surprised by his choice.

I look forward to learning more about these kindred spirits –Stephan and his partner in Vaettis in Switzerland. And, of course, elsewhere.

I have a new year’s resolution for 2009: to share with my readers more information about my books. I forget how fascinating they all are –but of course I would say that.

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To this end, I reproduce here my Introduction to “Land of Cokaygne”.

Here is Part One of that Introduction:

“THE STORY OF ‘LAND OF COKAYGNE’ (circa 1305) and FRIAR MICHAEL of Kildare, author of the poem”:

“In the middle of “Land of Cokaygne”

a rowboat full of young nuns

suddenly throw off their habits for

a spot of nude swimming in the

river. Some young monks nearby see

the disporting nuns and get all

excited. While their abbot is busy

“ministering” to a local young

woman, the monks spirit the nuns

off to the abbey, where they teach

them, in the poet’s sly suggestion,

a whole new way of praying –with

knees in the air, rather than

classically genuflected.

Because of this irreverent portrayal

of mass clerical error, the poem, writ-

ten circa 1305 and hitherto anonymous, is

often attacked as being “anticlerical”

and “anti-Catholic”. I disagree…. I believe the

author of this extraordinary medieval

Irish poem, “Land of Cokaygne”, far

from being anticlerical, to be himself a

Franciscan Friar, Michael of Kildare, a

deeply religious man, and, further, that

his poem is entirely within the scope

of Franciscan satire and comment of

the early days of the order.

I recently became reacquainted with

“Land of Cokaygne”, when I visited the

New York Public Library exhibition,

“Utopia: The search for the ideal

society in the Western World”, in the

fall of 2000. The exhibition comprised

a long list of imagined futures and

attempted utopias that had over the

millennia crossed Western Mind. For

the most part it was a historical

parade of good ideas turned out bad,

and some evil ideas gone mad and

murderous. (I had survived my own

sixties utopian caper, a flawed idea

that became all-flaw and no-idea,–

which experience now informed my

visit to the exhibition at every turn.)

The message was clear: beware utopias.

But for all that, we still have to

dream, to aspire. The basic utopian

urge is surely an urge to improve. We

have to hope we can make things

better. Just consider the alternative:

now there’s a real sin against nature!

I was surprised at the importance

the exhibition accorded the “Land of

Cokaygne” in the evolution of the

concept of utopia. I knew the poem

slightly. Now I would take a closer look.

The universal and lasting appeal of

the poem is that it expressed the

medieval common man’s “If I ruled the

world” fantasy of heaven-on-earth: a

modern equivalent might be the fantasy

of winning the lottery. The land of

Cokaygne lay beyond the sea, a place

where every need and appetite was

met, where the living was easy –and

it was not boring like Paradise.

But there is much more to this poem

–a powerful satiric comment. But, by

whom? And on what? That is what

peaked my interest.

Dated to about 1305, or slightly later,

“Land of Cokaygne” is among the very

first poems written in English in

Ireland. It is one of some fifty-one

handwritten pieces, all but one of them

anonymous, in a single small (about

four inches by six, a Franciscan

travelling preacher’s manual) manu-

script book: Gutenberg, remember,

was still 150 years in the future. It is

sometimes referred to as “The Book of

Kildare”. It has been in the British

Museum Library since 1753: there it is

known as “Harley 913”. It had been

owned by the bibliophiliac Robert

Harley, (1611-1724), First Earl of

Oxford, and creator of that infamous

Georgian Savings & Loan scam, The

South Sea Bubble. Harley’s huge (but-

sometimes-of-dubious-provenance)

collection of books later helped form

the basis of the new great British

Library when it opened its doors in 1753.

There is only one poem of accepted

authorship in Harley 913: “Sweet

Jesus” was indeed written by the

Franciscan, Friar Michael of Kildare:

it says so in the last verse. It is a

powerful and deeply religious poem

on the very Franciscan theme of riches

and the rich as, at best, dubious

candidates for salvation. (Francis had

forbidden his friars to even touch

money.) As I have already stated, it is

my belief that Friar Michael also

wrote “Land of Cokaygne.”

The Franciscans in Friar Michael’s

day were still a very new organization.

St. Francis had died in 1226, in Assisi, in

central Italy. The Kildare monastery

was founded c. 1260 –a mere 34 years

later– by which time there were

already 30 to 40 Franciscan monasteries

in Ireland. The extraordinary rapidity

of this expansion is clearly an index

not only of the great Franciscan enthus-

iasm but also of its welcome early on. The

order emphasizes its “special connection”

with Ireland in its historical accounts.

As my essay will show, the Franciscans

from the very beginning had been deeply

divided within on issues of poverty,

property and riches. And as a new order

that was founded on Christ’s own

commission of Francis to “rebuild my

falling church,” it was powerfully

critical of clerical excesses, carnal and

venal, where it found them. And they

were not difficult to find: reputable

researchers examining at random papal

curia records of a single day (–July

22nd, 1322, as it happens) have found

484 cases of “priest’s bastards”, one

very palpable consequence of widespread

clerical concubinage. This early Francis-

can history is key to understanding

Friar Michael and the “Land of Cokaygne.”

The “poverty” conflict escalated and

often became violent over the first 100

years. Indeed, in 1322, Pope John XXII

excommunicated some thirty “pro-poverty”

friars and even had four of them burned

at the stake in Marseilles.

Could there possibly be a crueler

irony than that the basic rule of

Franciscan Poverty of founder and

saint, Francis, would become the very

premise of excommunication and the

inquisitional bonfires within a hundred

years of Francis’s death?

Incredibly, the answer is “Yes!” The

irony is doubled by the fact that the

Avignon Popes sought to “out-pomp”

all the kings and princes of Europe.

Pope John’s luxurious palace was “the

talk of Europe.” His court, notoriously

packed with functionaries, flunkies,

lobbyists and handpicked proteges –we

will soon hear of one who is sent to

Ireland– outshone all others in the

“extravagance of it’s style and the

brilliance of it’s feasts,” (to quote

Catholic priest historian Thomas

Bokenkotter’s “A Concise History of

the Catholic Church” of 1979.) Meanwhile,

because of their insane drive to raise

the money for all this, the hated papal

tax collectors were in turn being

hunted down, imprisoned, “mutillated

and even strangled by irate debtors.”

[End of Part One of Two Parts]

[Coming soon: The Franciscans come

to Ireland; fierce ideological split;

division and death; Friar Richard

Ledrede in Kilkenny; fierce Puritanism;

Witch Burnings at the stake

in Kilkenny “for heresy and consorting

with devils.” Friar Ledrede would have

been very much at home in Salem.

But satire would soon be flowing

from the pen of poet Friar Michael of

Kildare, just a few miles up the road

from Kilkenny.

up the road