A recently resurfaced tale from 12th century Ireland is forcing many people to re-evaluate their perception of the Middle Ages as being a time of stagnation, a common misconception of the time.
Medieval literature scholar Erik Wade came across the extraordinary tale in John Boswell’s 1994 book Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. In the story, which is set in the eighth century, a woman goes to the Irish king Niall Frosach “carrying a boy-child”, and asks for his help with an unusual problem.
“For your kingship and your sovereignty,” she pleads, “find out for me through your ruler’s truth who the carnal father of this boy is, for I do not know myself. For I swear by your ruler’s truth, and by the king who governs every created thing that I have not known guilt with a man for many years now.”
The king, after a moment of silence, asks the woman: “Have you had playful mating with another woman?” He tells her to “not conceal” any same-sex romance.
Here's a AMAZING 12th-century Middle Irish story about lesbians accidentally having a baby. A woman asked the king to determine her baby's father, bc she hadn't sex with a man in a long time. The king asked if she'd had sex with a woman. The woman said yes. #MedievalTwitter pic.twitter.com/YbUK314AnR
— Erik Wade (@erik_kaars) August 22, 2020
“I will not conceal it. I have,” she replies.
In a remarkable sequence of events, the king tells her: “That woman had mated with a man just before, and the semen which he left with her, she put it into your womb in the tumbling, so that it was begotten in your womb.
The queer medieval story has shocked many, with some surprised LGBT+ identities were so openly discussed hundreds of years ago.
But according to Wade, this wasn’t totally unusual. In fact, there are allusions to LGBT+ identities throughout medieval literature — but many are not well-known because modern-day translators have tended to stay away from them.