The history of Irish poetry is complicated by the fact that since at least the 14th century it has been the history of two poetries, one in Irish and the other in English. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English, has produced a set of traditions that are both rich and difficult for the outsider to follow.
The Earliest Irish Poetry
Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe. The earliest examples date from the 6th century, and are generally short lyrics on themes from religion or the world of nature. They were frequently written by their scribe authors in the margins of the illuminated manuscripts that they were copying. Another source of early Irish poetry is the poems in the tales and sagas, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge. Unlike many other European epic cycles, the Irish sagas were written in prose, with verse interpolations at moments of heightened tension or emotion. Although usually surviving in recensions dating from the later medieval period, these sagas, and especially the poetic sections, are linguistically archaic, and afford the reader a glimpse of prechristian Ireland.
Medieval/Early Modern
Bardic Poetry
Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained, learned poets. The bards were steeped in the history and traditions of clan and country, as well as in the technical requirements of a verse technique that was syllabic and used assonance, half rhyme and alliteration. As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they performed a number of official roles. They were chroniclers and satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire could raise boils on the face of its target. However, much of their work would not strike the modern reader as being poetry at all, consisting as it does of extended genealogies and almost journalistic accounts of the deeds of their lords and ancestors.
Metrical Dindshenchus
The Metrical Dindshenchus, or Lore of Places, is probably the major surviving monument of Irish bardic verse. It is a great onomastic anthology of naming legends of significant places in the Irish landscape and comprises about 176 poems in total. The earliest of these date from the 11th century, and were probably originally compiled on a provincial basis. As a national compilation, the Metrical Dindshenchus has come down to us in two different recensions. Knowledge of the real or putative history of local places formed an important part of the education of the elite in ancient Ireland, so the Dindshenchus was probably a kind of textbook in origin.
The Poems of Fionn
Verse tales of Fionn and the Fianna, sometimes known as Ossianic poetry, were extremely common in Ireland and Scotland throughout this period. They represent a move from earlier prose tales with verse interludes to stories told completely in verse. There is also a notable shift in tone, with the Fionn poems being much closer to the Romance tradition as opposed to the epic nature of the sagas. The Fionn poems form one of the key Celtic sources for the Arthurian legends.
The Kildare Poems
British Library Manuscript, Harley 913 , a group of poems written in Ireland in the early 14th century. They are usually called the Kildare poems because of their association with that county. Both poems and manuscript have strong Franciscan associations and are full of ideas from the wider Western European Christian tradition. They also represent the early stages of the second tradition of Irish poetry, that of poetry in the English language, as they were written in Middle English.
Spenser and Ireland
During the Elizabethan reconquest, two of the most significant English poets of the time saw service in the Irish colonies. Sir Walter Ralegh had little impact on the course of Irish literature, but the time spent in Munster by Edmund Spenser was to have serious consequences both for his own writings and for the future course of cultural development in Ireland.
Spenser's relationship with Ireland was somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, an idealised Munster landscape forms the backdrop for much of the action for his masterpiece, The Faerie Queen. On the other, he condemned Ireland and everything Irish as barbaric in his prose polemic A View of the Present State of Ireland.
In A View, he describes the Irish bards as being " soe far from instructinge younge men in Morrall discipline, that they themselves doe more deserve to be sharplie decyplined; for they seldome use to chuse unto themselves the doinges of good men, for the ornamentes of theire poems, but whomesoever they finde to bee most lycentious of lief, most bolde and lawles in his doinges, most daungerous and desperate in all partes of disobedience and rebellious disposicon, him they sett up and glorifie in their rymes, him they prayse to the people, and to younge men make an example to followe."
Given that the bards depended on aristocratic support to survive, and that this power and patronage was shifting towards the new English rulers, this thorough a condemnation of their moral values may well have contributed to their demise as a caste.
The 18th Century
The 18th Century perhaps marks the point at which the two language traditions reach equal weight of importance. In Swift, the English tradition has its first writer of genius. Poetry in Irish now reflects the passing of the old Gaelic order and the patronage on which the poets depended for their livelihoods. This, then, is a period of transition writ large.
Gaelic Songs: the End of an Order
As the old native aristocracy suffered military and political defeat and, in many cases, exile, the world order that had supported the bardic poets disappeared. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that much Irish language poetry and song of this period laments these changes and the poet's plight. The following verse from Caoine Cill Chais (The Lament for Kilcash) serves as an example. The old house of Cill Chais stands empty, its woods gone to serve the needs of the British navy:
Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad,
tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár;
níl trácht ar Chill Chais ná a teaghlach,
is ní bainfear a cling go bráth;
an áit úd ina gcónaíodh an deighbhean
a fuair gradam is meidhir tar mhná,
bhíodh iarlaí ag tarraing tar toinn ann,
is an tAifreann binn á rá.
(What shall we from now on without timber?
The last of the woods is gone.
No more of Kilcash and its great house
And the bells that will ring no more.
The place where that great lady waited
Who for grace put all women to shame
When earls came by sea to meet her
And the Mass was sweetly proclaimed)
However, being practical professionals, the poets were not above writing poems in praise of the new English lords in the hope of finding a continuity of court patronage. This was not generally a successful tactic, and Gaelic poets tended to be folk poets until the Gaelic revival that began towards the end of the 19th century. However, many of the poems and songs written during this period of apparent decline live on and are still recited and sung today.
Cúirt An Mheán Óiche
Cúirt An Mheán Óiche (The Midnight Court) by Brian Merriman (1747-1805) is something of an oddity in 18th century Irish poetry in Irish. Merriman was a teacher of mathematics who lived and worked in the Munster counties of Clare and Limerick. Cúirt An Mheán Óiche, effectively his only poetic work, was written around 1780. The poem begins by using the conventions of the Aisling, or vision poem, in which the poet is out walking when he has a vision of a woman from the other world. Typically, this woman is Ireland and the poem will lament her lot and/or call on her 'sons' to rebel against foreign tyranny.
In Merriman's hands, the convention is made to take an unusual twist. The woman drags the poet to the court of the fairy queen Aoibheal. There follows a court case in which a young woman calls on Aoibheal to take action against the young men of Ireland for their refusal to marry. She is answered by an old man who first laments the infidelity of his own young wife and the dissolute lifestyles of young women in general. He then calls on the queen to end the institution of marriage completely and to replace it with a system of free love. The young woman returns to mock the old man's inability to satisfy his young wife's needs and to call for an end to the celibacy among the clergy so as to widen the pool of prospective mates.
Finally, Aoibheal rules that all men must mate by the age of 21, that older men who fail to satisfy women must be punished, that sex must be applauded, not condemned, and that priests will soon be free to marry. To his dismay, the poet discovers that he is to be the first to suffer the consequences of this new law, but then awakens to find it was just a nightmare. In its frank treatment of sexuality and of clerical celibacy, Cúirt An Mheán Óiche is a unique document in the history of Irish poetry in either language.
Swift and Goldsmith
In Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish literature in English found its first writer of real genius. Although best known for prose works like Gulliver's Travels and A Tale of a Tub, Swift was a poet of considerable talent. Technically close to his English contemporaries Pope and Dryden, Swifts poetry evinces the same tone savage satire and horror of the human body and its functions that characterises much of his prose. Interestingly, Swift also published translations of poems from the Irish.
Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774) started his literary career as a hack writer in London, writing on any subject that would pay enough to keep his creditors at bay. He came to belong to the circle of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds. His reputation depends mainly on a novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, a play, She Stoops to Conquer, and two long poems, The Traveller and The Deserted Village. The last of these may be the first and best poem by an Irish poet in the English pastoral tradition. It has been variously interpreted as a lament for the death of Irish village life under British rule and a protest at the effects of agricultural reform on the English rural landscape.
The 19th Century
During the course of the 19th century, political and economic factors resulted in the decline of the Irish language and the concurrent rise of English as the main language of Ireland. This fact is reflected in the poetry of the period.
Irishing English
Paradoxically, as soon as English became the dominant language of Irish poetry, the poets began to mine the Irish-language heritage as a source of themes and techniques. Probably the first significant Irish poet to write in English in a recognisably Irish fashion was Thomas Moore (1779-1852). Moore's Irish Melodies, his most enduring work, was extremely popular with English audiences and the poet became the toast of London. The poems are, perhaps, somewhat overloaded with harps, bards and minstrels of Erin to suit modern tastes, but they did open up the possibility of a distinctive Irish English-language poetic tradition and served as an exemplar for Irish poets to come.
Paradoxically, as soon as English became the dominant language of Irish poetry, the poets began to mine the Irish-language heritage as a source of themes and techniques. Probably the first significant Irish poet to write in English in a recognisably Irish fashion was Thomas Moore (1779-1852). Moore's Irish Melodies, his most enduring work, was extremely popular with English audiences and the poet became the toast of London. The poems are, perhaps, somewhat overloaded with harps, bards and minstrels of Erin to suit modern tastes, but they did open up the possibility of a distinctive Irish English-language poetic tradition and served as an exemplar for Irish poets to come.
In 1842, Charles Gavan Duffy (1816-1903), Thomas Davis, (1814-1845), and John Dillon (1816-1866) founded The Nation to agitate for reform of British rule. The group of politicians and writers associates with The Nation came to be known as the Young Irelanders. The magazine published verse, including work by Duffy and Davis, whose A Nation Once Again is still popular among Irish Nationalists. However, the most significant poet associated with The Nation was undoubtedly James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849). Mangan was a true poète maudit, who threw himself into the role of bard, and even included translations of bardic poems in his publications.
Another poet who supported the Young Irelanders, although not dirctly connected with them, was Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886). Ferguson once wrote: 'my ambition (is) to raise the native elements of Irish history to a dignified level.' To this end, he wrote many verse retellings of the Old Irish sagas. He also wrote a moving elegy to Thomas Davis.
William Allingham (1824-1889) was an important figure in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Day and Night Songs was illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Millais.
Folk Songs and Poems
During the 19th century, poetry in Irish became essentially a folk art. One of the few well-known figures from this period was Antóin Ó Raiftearai (Anthony Raftery), who is known as the last of the wandering bards. His Mise Raiftearai an file is still learned by heart in Irish schools.
In addition, this was one of the great periods for the composition of folk songs in both languages, and the majority of the traditional singer's repertoire is typically made up of 19th century songs.
The Celtic Revival
Probably the most significant poetic movement of the second half of the 19th century wes French Symbolism. This movement inevitably influenced Irish writers, not least Oscar Wilde (1845-1900). Although Wilde is best kown for his plays, ficion, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, he also wrote poetry in a symbolist vein and was the first Irish writer to experiment with prose poetry. However, the overtly cosmopolitan Wilde was not destined to have much influence on the future course of Irish writing.
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was much more influential in the long run. Yeats, too, was influenced by his French contemporaries but consciously focused on an identifiably Irish content. As such, he was responsible for the establishment of the literary movement known as the Celtic Twilight. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.
Apart from Yeats, much of the impetus for the Celtic Twilight came from the work of scholarly translators who were aiding in the discovery of both the ancient sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent folk song tradition in Irish. One of the most significant of these was Douglas Hyde (1860 - 1949), later the first President of Ireland, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired.
The 20th Century
Yeats and Modernism
In the 1910s, Yeats became acquainted with the work of James Joyce, and worked closely with Ezra Pound, who served as his personal secretary for a time. Through Pound, Yeats also became familiar with the work of a range of prominent Modernist poets. He undoubtedly learned from these contacts, and from his 1916 book Responsibilities and Other Poems onwards his work, while not entirely Modernist, became mush more hard-edged than it had been.
The Celtic school: Hyde, Clarke, Higgins, Colum
After Yeats: Clarke, Higgins, Colum
It was to be Yeats' earlier Celtic mode that was to be most influential. Amongst the most prominent followers of the early Yeats were Padric Colum (1881-1972), F. R. Higgins (1896-1941), and Austin Clarke (1896–1974). In the 1950s, Clarke, returning to poetry after a long absence, turned to a much more personal style and wrote many satires on Irish society and religious practices.