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if Tumblr bans us from using tags, I will face Staff and walk backwards into AO3

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Missed posting this on St Stephen's Day proper (though it's not quite midnight yet), but it was mainly just an ink test anyway. Loving how old school this dark brown looks.

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Thanks! I'm still practising – only recently returned to calligraphy after over a decade, and the insular minuscule is new. But I just got new inks for Christmas so I'm no longer struggling with very dried-up old ones, and hopefully that's gonna make for lots more scrivenary fun! Up until now I was seriously relating to all the marginalia that says things like "the ink is very bad..." 😅

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I actually base my insular minuscule loosely on a 15th century scribe called Eoghan Ó hAchodeirn, so it wouldn't be inappropriate for this period! Irish manuscripts are remarkably consistent in script – you get insular minuscule even in some very late manuscripts (17th-18th cent). It also forms the basis of the Gaelic script (chló Gaelach) that you still see in modern Irish sometimes and which was widespread until typewriters ruined everything.

But I'm sure both Aed and I would like to share some Christmas joy and gladness with people across time 💚

Christmas calligraphy! With a very pertinent wish from a late medieval Irish scribe.

“May this great plague pass by me and my friends and restore us once more to joy and gladness” – Aed mac Concubair, AD 1350. From this post.

The gold didn’t come out very well, so here’s a side angle to catch the shine:

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Christmas calligraphy! With a very pertinent wish from a late medieval Irish scribe.

"May this great plague pass by me and my friends and restore us once more to joy and gladness" – Aed mac Concubair, AD 1350. From this post.

The gold didn't come out very well, so here's a side angle to catch the shine:

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It turns out that when you're anxious late at night, calligraphy can be a pretty good method of calming down. You can't rush it. The pen won't let you. You have to take each stroke one at a time, slow and steady, forming each letter in its own time, and then the next, and then the next.

So here's an eclectic selection of quotes and phrases I wrote circa 1.30am tonight, when my brain was being unfriendly.

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“fate [...] is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast”

-- The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater

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that trope of copying out your crush's name in your diary over and over again, except it's me trying to imitate how the scribe of Lebor na hUidre writes Láeg's name

he has those very distinctive wedge-shapes serifs that I'm terrible at imitating, and a funky tall E

[image description: "loeg mac riungabra" written twice in insular minuscule, in different sizes pen, on a small yellow square of paper. a calligraphy pen lies on the desk next to it.]

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“and Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war”

-- The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater

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recently I was beta-reading a friend’s sapient robot novel which made me think this post was a good candidate for insularising

all sapient robots r trans bc the gender they were assigned at birth is object and they are transcending it send tweet

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“In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.”

-- The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater

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“Wake up, fuckweasel, it’s your girlfriend.”

-- from The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater.

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heraldry is a scam to make more people learn French words

[quote source: celtic tearooms]

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Christmas is a time for beheadings

— Bertilak, probably

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your handwriting is so beautiful i love the way you write!?!!!!!!

Thanks!

(Disclaimer that I don't write in insular minuscule as a matter of course, it's a deliberate script that I'm imitating here, so this isn't my everyday handwriting.)

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in every scribe’s life, there comes a time when he must ask: how can I make this gay?

— the Stowe scribe of TBC (Táin Bó Cúailnge), probably

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medievalist at work

please bring cats

thank you.