The sixteenth century cannot properly be said to mark a transition period in Irish literature, as it does in the literature of so many other European countries. It has, indeed, left far more numerous documents behind it than the preceding one, but this is mainly due to the fact that less time has elapsed during which they could be lost. Their style and general contents differ little, until the very close of the century, from those of their predecessors. O'Reilly chronicles the names of about forty poets whose surviving pieces amount to over ten thousand lines. But so many MSS. which were in O'Reilly's time in private hands, or which, like the Stowe MSS., were unapproachable by students, have since been deposited in public libraries or become otherwise accessible, that it would, I think, be safe to add at least half as much again to O'Reilly's computation. I have even in my own possession poems by nearly a dozen writers belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries whose names are not mentioned at all by O'Reilly; and the O'Conor Don has shown me a manuscript copied at Ostend, in Belgium, in 1631, for one Captain Alexander Mac Donnell, from which O'Curry transcribed a thousand pages of poems "of which with a very few exceptions," he writes, "no copies are known to me elsewhere in Ireland." A considerable number of these poems, nearly all of them unknown to O'Reilly, were composed in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, so that this one manuscript alone would largely swell O'Reilly's estimate for this period.
Enormous quantities of books however, belonging to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have been lost, and are still being lost every day. It is an accident that Friar O'Gara's[6] and the O'Conor Don's collection—both compiled abroad—have escaped. If, during the middle of the sixteenth century, a collector of poetry had gone round transcribing the classical poems of that age, he would have found large collections preserved in the houses of almost every scion of the old Gaelic nobility, with scarcely an exception. On the break-up of the houses of the Irish chiefs the archives of their families and their manuscript libraries were lost or carried abroad. An excellent example of what may be called tribal poetry, such as every great Gaelic house possessed, is contained in a manuscript in Trinity College, which a Fellow of the last century, called O'Sullivan, luckily got transcribed for himself, and which is now in the college library.[7] The collection thus made, from about 1570 to 1615, goes under the title of the "Book of the O'Byrnes," and contains sixty or seventy poems made by their own family bards and by several of the leading bards of Ireland, for the various members of the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh near Dublin, and of the O'Byrnes of Wicklow, who for three generations maintained their struggle with the English, only succumbing in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Other family records of this nature, which were once possessed in every county by the bardic families and by the chiefs, have perished by the score. A glance at a few typical poems belonging to the O'Byrnes will give a good idea of the functions of the sixteenth-century bards, and the nature of their poems. They are composed on all kinds of subjects connected with the wars, genealogy, and history of the tribe and its chiefs. Many are eulogiums, some warnings, some political poems, some elegies. Here are two or three specimens; the first a poem of fifty-six lines, by Angus O'Daly, on the head of one of the chiefs of the clan spiked on the battlements of Dublin.
"O body which I see without a head,
It is the sight of thee which has withered up my strength,
Divided and impaled in Ath-cliath [Dublin],
The learned of Banba [Ireland] will feel its loss.[8]
Who will relieve the wants of the poor?
Who will bestow cattle on the learned?
O body, since thou art without a head
It is not life which we care to choose after thee."
Another poem, by John O'Hĭginn asks who[9] will buy nine verses from him. By his hand he swears, though high the fame of the men of Leinster, they are all cowed now. The O'Tooles of the once heavy gifts have consented to the peace of the English, and till they revoke it they will not give one white groat for twenty-marks-worth of a poem. The Cavanaghs are as bad, the Fitzgeralds and the O'Mores, too, are afraid of the foreigners to buy a poem. One man alone is not obedient to foreign English custom, Aodh [O'Byrne] son of John, the true sweetheart of the bardic schools of the race of the plain of Conn. Except him, the grandson of Redmond alone, the poet sees not one who will buy his nine stanzas—or if such exist, he knows them not.[10]
Another poem of 180 lines by Eochaidh [Yohee] O'Hussey is on the extreme winsomeness and beauty of a certain lady of the O'Byrnes, Rose by name, probably the famous wife of Fiach O'Byrne, who, poor thing, was afterwards captured by the English in 1595 and by them burned alive in the yard of Dublin Castle. The English statesmen who record this piece of work in the State Papers, did not in the least understand the civilisation or customs of Lady Rose, her bards and her clan, and it is only at the present day that it is possible for the scholar through the medium of the State Papers on one side and native Irish documents on the other, to put himself en rapport with both parties; it is a process both absorbing and painful. "What is troubling the ladies of the Gael?" asks the poet, "is it want of gold or lack of jewels, wherefore is the dear troop downcast? Why are the queens of princely race disquieted? Why rise they up heavy at heart? Why lie they down discomfited? Why are their spirits troubled? It is because one lady so excels them all, she is the troubler of the hosts of the men of Inisfail, the one cause of the sorrow of our ladies. Let me," adds the poet gallantly, "have the singing of her."[11]
Another is by Maoilsheachlainn [Malachy in English] O'Coffey, on seeing one of the O'Byrnes' strongholds, probably Ballinacor, occupied by a stranger.[12] Another by one of the O'Mulconrys warns Fiach O'Byrne, that whether he likes to hear it or not, the axe of the English is raised above his head to strike him down.[13] The poet points to the Leinster septs who had been exterminated or escaped destruction by making submission, and how is Fiach to escape, and specially how to escape treachery?
Another poem composed by Donough Mac Eochaidh, or Keogh, with high political intent, is intended to bring about a closer feeling of friendship between the sons of Fiach O'Byrne and John son of Redmond O'Byrne, who had been alienated, designedly, as he intimates, by a lying story propagated by a foreigner, whereas the O'Byrnes of Ranelagh ever sought to avoid giving offence, and no evil story calculated to increase enmity should be believed about one by the other.[14]
Another poet of the Mac Eochaidhs, the household bards of the O'Byrnes, sings the generosity of Torlagh, son of Fiacha, "their fame is the wealth of the tribe of Ranelagh, that is the saying of every one who knows them,[15] the bestowal of their jewels, that is the treasure of the tribe of Ranelagh, of the numerous incursions." "Small is their desire to amass treasures, nobler is the thing for which they conceive a wish; every single man of the blood of Fiach O'Bryne has taken upon himself to distribute his riches for Fiach!"[16]