Early Irish Lyrics: Eighth to Twelfth Century

Edited with Translation, Notes, and Glossary by Gerard Murphy. Irish lyric poetry is unique in the Middle Ages in freshness of spirit and perfection of form. The same formal perfection appears in the professional and learned verse of the period, and in Irish manuscripts chief place has always been accorded to such verse. Nevertheless, the manuscripts preserve also a sufficient number of poems expressing personal emotion or thought in a lyric manner to give a clear idea of the excellence attained by Irish poets in that genre. In this anthology a selection has been made from such of those poems as can with some certainty be dated between the eighth century and the end of the twelfth, that is to say the literary period which covers what is known linguistically as the Old and Middle Irish periods. Irish lyric poetry can indeed in no way be considered as having come to an end with the Norman invasion of 1175. It did, however, then begin to show a change of spirit: convention tended to limit the choice of theme, and the eagerness, spontaneity, or freshness of invention, characteristic of the early period, is henceforward less in evidence.