Constant warfare and the absence of a University hindered the growth of a literary class in Ireland. Native chiefs were content to patronise bards who sang their achievements, and annalists who recorded their genealogies. But the English language was just attaining its full stature, and men could not but feel a pleasure in writing it sometimes. Of letters and treatises describing the state of Ireland there is no lack, and many of them show considerable literary force. But the cultivation of letters for their own sake was scarcely to be looked for. Sir Geoffrey Fenton, who had translated many books from the French, including the French version of Guicciardini, appears to have given up such work after he became Secretary for Ireland. Nathaniel Baxter, a long-forgotten poet, seems to have produced something while teaching a school at Youghal. Ludovic Bryskett, born in Italy, or of an Italian mother, translated Italian books directly, and not through the French. Bryskett was an official, like most of the English then in Ireland, and at his house near Dublin we find the first germ of literary society. It was here that the ‘Fairy Queen’ was promised by Spenser himself to a company consisting of Archbishop Long, and of several lawyers and soldiers, among which Sir Thomas Norris was perhaps the most distinguished. Raleigh, who visited Spenser at Kilcolman in 1589, saw the early part of the poem before it appeared, and he encouraged the poet. At court Spenser was befriended both by Raleigh and Sidney, and the poet seems to have thought that such kindness as he did receive from the Queen was owing to his intimacy with the latter, whose influence long outlived him. But Spenser was not a successful suitor, and he has left a bitter diatribe against the courtier’s profession. He learned to look upon Ireland as his home, and to praise the country’s natural beauties, while sighing for the peace and refinement of England. No doubt the woods and glens, with their wolves and robbers, furnished the poet with much of his imagery, if they did not suggest his great work; but it must be remembered that he was an undertaker and official as well as a writer. The lady whom he made so famous by his pen, and whom he married at Cork, was Elizabeth Boyle, Richard Boyle’s cousin, and so connected with Secretary Fenton. Raleigh and the rest of his friends were engaged in forming estates, and his sympathies were necessarily with the settlers and not with the natives. He tries to raise the Irish rivers to a level with those of England:
Sith no less famous than the rest they be,
And join in neighbourhood of kingdom near,
Why should they not likewise in love agree?
But he can never forget that the woods upon their banks were haunted by men who wished him only death and destruction. He felt the weakness of his own position, and so was ready to praise Arthegal, or any other, whose severity might make the land reasonably safe. If the readers of Spenser’s verses, and still more of his treatises, find fault with his truculence, they should forget that he was a poet, and remember that he was trying to improve forfeited lands.[434]
FOOTNOTES:
[422] There is a valuable paper on hawks and hounds in Ireland by Mr. J. P. Prendergast in vol. ii. of the Irish Arch. Journal, p. 144. Perrott to Walsingham, Oct. 25, 1585; Sir S. Bagenal to Cecil, MS. Hatfield, Nov. 1, 1602. In the second edition (1888) of Dalziel’s British Dogs there is a very full dissertation on the Irish wolf-hound. In Payne’s Brief Description of Ireland, 1590, we read that a red-deer skinned could be had for 2s. 6d., twelve quails for 3d., twelve woodcocks for 4d., and all other fowl rateably. The abundance of corncrakes is mentioned by both Moryson and Payne, and the latter says grouse (heathcock) were plentiful. Sixteen landrails (or corncrakes) were shot at Colebrooke in Fermanagh on one September day in 1884.
[423] Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary, part iii. book iii. chap. v. Sir N. White to Burghley, July 22, 1580. For ploughing by the tail, &c. see Dineley’s Tour, p. 162. The Scotch Highlanders bled their cattle even to the 19th century, see the Duke of Argyle’s Scotland as it was and as it is, vol. ii. p. 123. Cæsar says of the Britons: ‘pecorum magnus numerus.... Interiores plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt.’ (B.G. lib. v. cap. 12-14.) Payne says a fat sheep could be had in 1590 for 2s. 6d. and a fat beef for 13s. 4d. ‘Filthy butter,’ says Moryson; ‘hairy butter too loathsome to describe,’ says Andrew Trollope.
[424] Several notices are collected in Ulster Journal of Archæology, iii. 186, 187. See Grose’s Antiquarian Repository, iv. 627. The lax-weir at Limerick preserves the Norse name for salmon.
[425] Moryson, III. iii. 5; Dymmok’s Treatise of Ireland, about 1600; Petty’s Political Anatomy, 1672; Sir T. Heneage to Carew, Dec. 22, 1590, in Carew. On July 19, 1602, the mayor of Waterford sent Cecil ‘a pair of bed coverings and two rendells of aqua-vitæ.’—MS. Hatfield.
[426] Irish Statutes, 3 and 4 Ph. and Mary, cap. 7; Moryson, III. iii. 5; Dymmok; Bodley’s Descriptio itineris in Lecaliam, ann. 1602; Barnaby Riche’s Treatise delivered to Lord Salisbury 1610. After the journey described further on, Captain Bodley and his friends warmed themselves with sherry ‘with burnt sugar, nutmeg, and ginger.’
[427] Dymmok and Moryson, ut sup.; Andrew Trollope to Walsingham (from Dublin), Sept. 12, 1581. Trollope had then been over two months in Ireland. There are some curious details in the Travels of Nicander Nucius, a Corfiote, who visited England in Henry VIII.’s time, printed (Greek text and translation) by the Camden Society.