PERSONAL: So, Why Did You Choose Medieval Studies? - Music and Lyrics

While the first record (yes, actual vinyl thing) I bought was Iron Maiden’s Run to the Hills, the first album I ever listened to from end to end without any breaks was Clannad: Legend – also known as the soundtrack to Robin of Sherwood.  The second album was also by Clannad, Macalla (Gaelic for Echoes).  

The themes in Clannad’s music, the sense of place, of past and present spoke to me in a way that, at that point, few things really had.  It seemed to bring places alive.  I’d often find myself wandering through places, thinking about all the people who had wandered that way before, what they looked like, how they felt.  Wandering around old churches (pretty easy when you’re a Clergy child – more on that in other entries), I’d find myself wondering about the lives of all the people who had done the same.  The music seemed to do the same thing.  The song which probably summed it up best was the song Poison Glen, also by Clannad from the album Anam (Anam is Gaelic for ‘soul’). 

The second song which influenced my thought processes even at this stage was from the Clannad album, Sirius, the song ‘Skellig’ – a place which I only knew of from books.  Due to various things I spent a lot of my time in the reference section of my local library, Walkman playing the same five tapes over and over, as I read everything I could find on place-names, standing stones, old churches, folklore and local legends.  It was out of this that my early interests in the medieval period grew, and I doubt I would have found it without the accompanying soundtrack. 

In later years other artists would be steadily added, and even though my taste in music would shift around (generally always being described as ‘eclectic’) there would remain a consistent strand of music which was immersed in history, myth and legend. 

On a personal level I believe music has a significance to me, because, for reasons in part relating to my disability, I would often use music as a way to communicate my emotions during my early life.  

My studies have occasionally strayed into medieval music, something I may get around to doing more work on at some point, possibly in relation to my work on sensory disorders.