[ [165] Nial was son of Aidh Finliath, King of Ireland. O’Flaherty mentions an elegy of Gormlay on her husband, as preserved in the Annals of Donegal.
[ [166] This is another elegy of Gormlay, Queen of Ireland, on her husband, Nial Glundubh. There is something extremely mournful in these compositions of the youthful queen. Mr. O’Curry has kindly furnished the Editor with Irish copies of these two elegiac pieces, which he is about to publish in a second volume of his admirable Lectures.
[ [167] Referring, undoubtedly, to the mode of laying out the dead.
[ [168] The allusion in this fragment is not very clear. Celtic poetry is full of reference to Greece, whence a portion of the race are said to have come; but what this battle with Greeks was, the Editor cannot say. These allusions belong, without doubt, to the period when both Scotland and Ireland were brought into contact with Greek literature.
[ [169] We have here a curious specimen of aphoristic poetry, the idea borrowed probably from the Proverbs of Solomon. These aphorisms throw some light upon the habits and modes of thought of the age in which they were produced.
[ [170] These lines are given as indicative of the state of public feeling at the time with respect to a great social question. The writer of these lines was manifestly no friend to monasteries, and no believer in their purity.
[ [171] We have here another specimen of aphoristic poetry. In the original the lines are in rhyme. The author’s name is not given, though it is probably Phelim M’Dougall.
[ [172] The following is the composition of Gerald Fitzgerald, the fourth Earl of Desmond. He is known in Ireland as Earl Gerald, the poet. There are several of his compositions scattered over the MS.; but as they are mostly of the same character—satires on the female sex—it has been thought that one specimen is sufficient. The Editor thought it desirable to give one of those, with a view to a fair representation of the contents of the MS., although there is not much in the composition itself to render it worthy of being rescued from oblivion.
[ [173] Nothing is known of this poet. The modern M’Intyre, the bard of Glenurchy, has a place second to none among the composers of Gaelic poetry; but it would appear that there was an older poet of the name, and one not unknown to fame. Four hundred years may produce no little change in the place which not a few men of note in our day hold in the temple of fame, and greater stars than the bard M’Intyre may have their lustre dimmed by time. He is another writer of satires on women, a kind of composition wonderfully popular, judging from our MS. at the period. We only give a few specimens of these, but there are several in the miscellany, and some of a character which, in modern days, one wonders the Dean could have admitted to his collection.
[ [174] The only loch of this name with which the Editor is acquainted is Loch Inch, on the Spey, in Badenoch.