Medieval Irish Lyrics

In Medieval Irish Lyrics Professor Carney gives us text and translation of early Irish Poems, both secular and religious. The translations are sensitive and felicitous, the fruit of some thirty years of research in Irish language and literature. Several of the poems have hitherto been known only to a handful of scholars and some appeared for the first time in this book.

Readers of all kinds will find here an introduction to the poetry of Ireland in verse translations which catch the movement of spirit of the originals. Professor Carney has prefaced the whole with an introduction in which he places the medieval Irish lyrics in their social and historical context.

The poets represented here wrote for a society which employed professional poets who could claim to stand in a direct succession from the druidic order of pre-Christian times. This new edition includes The Irish Bardic Poet, Professor Carney's noted lecture to the Celtic School of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (1958) in which he presents a comprehensive picture of the relationship between a Bardic poet, Eochaidh hEoghusa and his patrons, the Maguire family of Fermanagh.