Hi Pamela,

Pamela Highet schrieb:
>
> I'm very interested in DISCUSSING IE and Celtic connections.  I'm not
> interested in fussing about whether L&M are valid.

Actually, I have seem to have lost track as to who really wrote this, as
the quotation markers seem to have got somewhat mangled oby my system,
as such, if it's not actually your lines, Pamela, to which I'm replying
here, well, then this reply is to whomever wrote the above lines...

Actually, Peter Busse, one of my colleagues here at Aberystwyth, gave a
paper last Saturday at our annual forum about connections between
Sarmatian court poetry and 12th century and later Welsh court poetry and
demonstrated that there are considerable parallels in the metri and the
genres covered, not only between Welsh and Sarmatian court poetry, but
between Sarmatian and all Western European High Medieval court poetry,
including, of course, the French and German Arthurian Romances.
Apart from those literary connections (and also connections in the
serving order of dishes at royal feasts, which ultimatly lead to our
modern civilised "serving order"), which Peter attributes to Muslim
influences (ultimatly derived to a great deal from Sarmatian court
poetry and other court customs) that entered Europe via the Spanish and
Byzantine courts, there also exist quite a number of connections between
the Sarmatians and the Roman Empire and its successors in the "germanic"
West in the archaeological record, especially in decorative art since at
least the late 5th century, if not in fact even earlier, Peter argues.
Interestingly, he did not mention the crusades, which could also have
played a certain role in the transport of "Oriental fine culture" to the
West.
As such, it might well be that quite a number of similarities in the
literature are to be attributed to a strong Eastern influence in
European High Medieval Court culture during most of the 12th and the
following centuries.

RAY
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