Hiberno-Latin - Hisperica Famina

The style reaches its peak in the Hisperica Famina, which means roughly "Western orations"; these Famina are rhetorical descriptive poems couched in a kind of free verse. Hisperica is understood as a portmanteau word combining Hibernia, Ireland, and Hesperides, the semi-legendary "Western Isles" that may have been inspired by the Azores or the Canary Islands; The coinage is typical of the wordplay used by these authors. A brief excerpt from a poem on the dawn from the Hisperica Famina shows the Irish poet decorating his verses with Greek words:

Titaneus olimphium inflamat arotus tabulatum,

thalasicum illustrat uapore flustrum . . .

The titanian star inflames the dwelling places of Olympus, and illuminates the sea's calm with vapour.

In these compositions there may be an element of parody, born of the rivalry in the sixth and seventh centuries between Roman and Celtic forms of Christianity. One usage of Hesperia in classical times was as a synonym for Italy, and it is noticeable that some of the vocabulary and stylistic devices of these pieces originated not among the Irish, but with the priestly and rhetorical poets who flourished within the Vatican-dominated world (especially in Italy, Gaul, Spain and Africa) between the fourth and the sixth centuries, such as Juvencus, Avitus of Vienne, Dracontius, Ennodius and Venantius Fortunatus. (Thus the very word famen, plural famina — a pseudo-archaic coinage from the classical verb fari, 'to speak' — is first recorded in the metrical Gospels of Juvencus. Similarly, the word-arrangement often follows the sequence adjective 1-adjective 2-verb-noun 1-noun 2, known as the 'golden line', a pattern used to excess in the too-regular prosody of these poets; the first line quoted above is an example.) The underlying idea, then, would be to cast ridicule on these Vatican-oriented writers by blending their stylistic tricks with incompetent scansion and applying them to unworthy subjects.