Geoffrey Keating: Commentary & Quotations

Commentary

Memoirs of the Marquis of Clanricarde (1722; Dublin Edn. 1774): ‘It fell out very unluckily, that to one of his sermons came a Gentlewoman, whose Maiden Name was Elinor Laffan, then married to Squire Moclar[?], an eafy good sort of Gentleman. She was very handfome, and fomewhat vain from hearing much of her own Praifes, and the Perfections of her Beauty. This the Libertines, who knew her weak fide, never miff’d of filling her Ears with, as the Mufick fhe lik’d best, and of getting into a greater Freedom and Familiarity with her, might possibly have improv’d some few Minutes to her Difadvantage; in of much that she became the common Subject of Difcourfe in those parts. To make the Accident more fatal to her, and the Preacher, his Sermon was chiefly upon Morality, and the Bleffings which commonly attend it, with the relation to either Sex. In the Detail, as he fpoke of Modefty on the one fide, he touch’d upon Lubricity and Vice on the other; and even enlarge’d upon the laft, as if of fet purpofe to work a prefent Reformation in this Gentlewoman. Whether he levell’d at her in this Difcourfe, is now hard to be rightly guefs’d at; nor is it very material, fince fhe took it of, and would not be perfuaded to the contrary [...] [&c.]’ In the ensuing paragraphs, Clanricarde narrates how a particular admirer, the Lord President of the Province [Munster], who, feeling the risk of ‘losing a Conversation that was dear to him’, ordered his men to arrest Keating: ‘This so scar’d the poor man, that immediately he chang’d both Garb and Name, kept in close Retirements for some Months, and at length quitted the whole Province. In this Misfortune, he lurk’d, sometimes in one Place, and sometimes in another, but mostly at the Abodes of the Poets with whom he had contracted a Friendship in his Youth; where meeting with good Store of old Books, and Manuscripts, to divert his Thoughts, he would now and then look over some, and copy out what he took a Fancy for. Which being Continued for about two Years, and in several Places, at last compleated this Collection, which now goes under his Name[s]. The Bards and Poets, indeed, extremely lik’d it [...] [cxxvi-cxxix]. [Note old orthography f for modern s in this transcription.]

Charles Vallancey [on Keating:], ‘Many of these MS. were collected into one volume, written in the Irish language, by Father Jeoff Keating. A translation of this work into English appeared many years ago, under the title of Keating’s History of Ireland. The translator, entirely ignorant of ancient geography, has given this history an English dress, so ridiculous, as to become the laughing stock of every reader!’ (Collectanea; q. ref.; quoted in James Wills, Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen [...] (1839-1847; uniform edn. 1847), “Introduction to the First Period” - as attached.

James Hardiman, Irish Minstrelsy (1831), Vol. 2, contains a copy of “Doctor Keating to His Letter”, trans. by John D’Alton (here p.219), together with the original Irish version (see Notes, p.377ff.). Hardiman calls also for printing of Keating’s poems in any new edition of the History (p.378). A footnote on the current translation calls it as ‘an irreparable loss to Irish history that Doctor Keating did not continue his work after the Anglo invasion’ (p.378) and further characterises the English translation of Foras Feasa [by Dermod O’Connor, 1723] as ‘a burlesque on translation’ in which ‘innumerable passages [are] as much a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth, as of Geoffrey Keating’ (p.378.)

E. A. D’Alton, in his History of Ireland (1911) draws on Keating’s History [Foras Feasa] for the genealogy of the ethnic inhabitants and Gaelic rulers of Ireland - as supra.

P. W. Joyce, A Short History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to 1608 (London: Longmans 1893): ‘The first history of the whole country was the Forus Feasa ar Erinn, or History of Ireland - from the most ancient times to the Anglo-Norman invasion, written by Dr. Geoffrey Keating, a learned Roman Catholic priest of Tubrid in Tipperary, who died in 1644. Keating was deeply versed in the ancient language and literature of Ireland; and his history, though uncritical and containing much that is fabulous and legendary, is very interesting and valuable for its quaint descriptions of ancient Irish life and manners, and because it contains many quotations and condensations from authorities now lost. The work was translated in 1726 by Dermod O’Connor; but he wilfully departed from his text, and his translation is utterly wrong and misleading: “Keating’s History is a work which has been greatly underrated in consequence of the very ignorant and absurd translation by Mr. Dermot O’Connor.” [J. H. Todd, St. Patrick Apostle of Ireland, p.133, note.] A complete and faithful translation by John O’Mahony was published, without the Irish text, in New York in 1866.’ (p.32.)

David Comyn, Díonbhrollach foras feasa ar Eirinn; or, Vindication of the Sources of Irish History, being the introduction to ‘Groundwork of Knowledge of Ireland’ (Dublin: Gill 1898), Preface to Edn. 1901: ‘Our author concludes his vindicatory introduction by affirming that if there be anything in his history inviting censure, it is there not from evil intent but from want knowledge or ability. Being a descendant of the old foreign settlers, Keating cannot be said to have inherited a prejudice in favour of the native Irish; and his testimony on their behalf, as he himself argues, ought on that account to be the more readily received. While indignantly refuting the calumnies of ignorance and malice, his honesty of purpose is yet such as impels him to relate some strange facts which his keenly sensitive regard for his country’s honour must have induced him to wish could be related differently. But not less is this the case with the native annalists of Ireland. Having had the advantage of writing their own history, for their own people, in their own language, they did not attempt to make the facts bend to preconceived theories, but, to the best of their ability and according to their lights, they delivered the stories as they found them, not condescending to pander to any mistaken patriotic zeal, or to insert and omit with a purpose in view, and so colour their narrative as to place the ancestors before their own fellow-countrymen and the world in any better light than they felt was warranted by the authorities available. Though occasionally vain-glorious, and by no means free from clan predilections, they do not conceal faults or errors, or extenuate crimes: they are, in general, too candid. In this way the ancient history of Ireland often appears to the modern reader at a disadvantage, compared with the nicely adjusted narratives told by historians of remote times in other countries.’ (p.xviii; see full text in RICORSO Library - as attached; see also RICORSO Library > Irish Classics > Index > Keating for a larger selection of copies -incl. whole text - infra. )

Constantia Maxwell, The Stranger in Ireland (1954), ftn. to Ch. I, [Keating] points out that there was no country in Europe without a ‘rabble’ and, that a whole country should not be judged by them. He refers to the valour and piety of the chiefs, the number of abbeys they had founded, and of their provision for the poor. Of the old Irish customs he says, ‘Though these are not suitable for Ireland now, they were necessary at the time they were established.’ Keating wrote before the days of scientific history, and his work is uncritical, but his point of view is worth preserving. [315].

Russell K. Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP 1959), Chap. 4: ‘Keating and Dermod O’Connor’; earliest mention of a translation found in Peter Walsh’s Prospect (1682); further, gives details a translation of Foras Feasa by Michael Kearney, as recounted by John Daly [O’Daly]; a plate of the translation is included in Sir John Gilbert’s Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Ireland, viz., Pt. IV, pl. LXXXIII; Commencement of Preface, transcribed by John O’Maelchonaire; text and tran. Plate LXXIV, Michael Kearney’s English version, 1668; Irish and English; further, a translation is noted in T. K. Abbot and E. J. Gwynn, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, as No. 1443, H. 2. 14, p.322: ‘Keating’s History of Ireland translated into English. Transcribed by Humphrey Moynihan and Thomas Moynihan. Purchased from Thomas Moynihan nr. Killarney, by Edward Llwyd [Lhuyd], A.D. 1700’; further cites David Comyn’s translation spoken of by Theophilus O’Flanagan in 1786, deemed to have been ‘fatally lost’; notices also extended reference in Harris’s edn. of The Works of Sir James Ware, mentioning a ‘Manuscript Copy of a Translation of this work [Foras Feasa], done by another Hand; but much inferior to Mr. O’Connor’s; yet it appears from it, that Mr. O’Connor had taken an unjustifiable Liberty in abrdiging his author’s work in some particulars, or this other Translator, on the contrary hath been too bold in enlarging it.’ (Harris, Ware, 1809 edn., III, 2, p.106; Alspach, p.82-83). [See also quotations from the translation by Dermod O’Connor below and also under O’Connor.] NOTE also, Charles O’Conor criticised Keating in these terms: ‘Keating’s work is a most injudicious Collection; the historical Part is degraded by the fabulous, with which it abounds. Keating was one of those laborious Readers, who, in making Extracts, do it without Selection or Discernment; and such Works [...] ought never to be published.’ (Dissertations on the History of Ireland, 2nd edn. 1766, Preface, p.x.; Alspach, p.96.)

Lord Killanin, ed., Shell Guide to Ireland (1966), notes a picture of an engraved stone at Tubrid [sic]: the inscribed plaque (1644) to Frs Eugene O’Duffy [his co-adjudicator] and Keating at the ruined mortuary chapel [...] is situated on an unclassified road 5 miles s. of Cahir. In the gazette the orth. Tubbrid [sic].

Herbert V. Fackler: ‘Nineteenth-Century Sources for the Deirdre Legend’, i n Éire-Ireland, 4, 4 (Winter 1969), pp.56-63, writes that ‘[t]he greatest pseudo-historical source, however, [for the Deirdre Legend] is undoubtedly Geoffrey Keating’s History of Ireland (1634?), a work so fine it is difficult to relegate it to the status of mere pseudo-history.’ (p.59.)

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Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam: Blom 1986): Keating, Hiberno-Norman corruption of Mac Etienne [son of Stephen?], French name with Gaelic patronymic. Foras feasa ar Eirinn, the linguistic and stylistic lodestar of modern Irish prose. Authors enumerated as false historians by Keating include Cambrensis, Spenser, Stanyhurst, Camden, Moryson, Davies, Campion’, ‘agus gach Nua-Ghall eile d’á scríobhann uirre [i.e. Ireland’] ó shoin amach’, who like a beetle on a bright day are only interested in finding dung (Vol. 1, 4 [var. 5]). [317] Leerssen’s extract from Forus feasa ar Eirinn, ‘they have displayed no inclination to treat of the virtues or good qualities of the nobles among the old foreigners and the native Irish who then dwelt in Ireland; such as to write on their valour and their piety, or the number of the abbeys they had founded [...] on the privileges they had granted to the learned professions of Ireland, and all the reverence they manifested towards churchmen and prelates.’ (Vol. 1., 4f.) Quotes Preface to Forus feasa ar Eirinn: ‘It is not for hatred nor for love of any set of people beyond another, nor at the instigation of anyone, nor with the expectation of obtaining profit from it, that I set forth to write the history of Ireland, but because I deemed it was fitting that a country so honourable as Ireland, and races so noble as those who have inhabited it, should [not] go into oblivion without mention or narration being left of them [...] being steadfast to the Catholic faith.’ (Forus feasa ar Eirinn/The History of Ireland, ed. & trans. by D. Comyn & P. S. Dinneen, London: Irish Text Society, 1902-04; here pp.317-18; see longer extract, as infra.] In Keating, the native Irish race is called Gaedhil, Sean-Ghaedhil, or Fior-Gaedhil (true Gaels), as distinct from Sean-Ghoill and Nua-Ghoill, while the Old Irish and the Old English together are called Eireannaigh, replacing a racial appellation with geographical one. (Leerssen, 1986, p.318); Bibl., Anne Cronin, ‘Sources of Keating’s Foras feasa ar Eirinn’, in Éigse, 4 (1943-4), pp.234-78; (1945-47), pp.122-35.

Norman Vance, Irish Literature: A Social History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1990), p.22: An English translation [of Keating’s history] was published in 1723, ostensibly by Dermot O’Connor though there are grounds for ascribing the project to the notorious Donegal deist and learned adventurer, John Toland; [also] an English version owned since before March 1689/90 by Sir Robert Southwell, Secretary of State for Ireland; another translation apparently made by Timothy Roe O’Connor for Lord Orrery about 1668; though this version seems to have disappeared it is possible that it survived unidentified in Marsh’s Library; the MS translation ‘A Defence of the True History of Ireland … by Jeffry Keating’ preserved there bears no resemblance to Dermot O’Connor’s published text. Bibl., D. Berman and A Harrison, ‘John Toland and Keating’s History of Ireland (1723)’, in Donegal Annual (1984), p.25-29; Diarmaid Ó Catháin, ‘Dermot O’Connor, translator of Keating, Eighteenth Century Ireland 2 (1984), pp.25-29; Marsh’s Library, MS Z3.1.17.

Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape 1995), p.14: ‘If colonialism is a system, so also is resistance. Postcolonial writing, in a strict sense, began in Ireland when an artist like Séathrun Céitinn took pen in hand to rebut the occupier’s claims. He had been reading those texts which misrepresented him, and he resolved to answer back. He represented the Old English, those Gaelicised Normans who were especially demonised as hybrids in Spenser’s View: but his ambition was to clear the reputation of the native Irish as well. This gives his comments a certain objectivity: and he is honest enough to tell much that is not flattering. His scholarly scruple is dear in the tentative title which he appended to his text Foras Feasa ar Eirinn (A Basis for the Knowledge of Ireland) [ital. sic.], which was assembled mainly after the publication of Spenser’s View in 1633. A Tipperary man who was born in 1570 and educated at Bordeaux, Céitinn returned in 1610 to witness Gaelic Ireland dying on its feet after the crushing defeat of O’Neill at Kinsale a decade earlier and the subsequent Flight of the Earls. He might properly be seen as one of the first counter-imperial historians, in that his object was not only to reply to Spenser, Stanyhurst and the English writers, but more particularly to save the lore of ancient Ireland from passing into oblivion. Like the revivalists of three centuries later, Ceitinn feared that the national archive had been irretrievably disrupted and that his country, to all intents and purposes, was about to disappear. He mocked the ambitious young English historians who had endlessly recycled the same clichés current since the time of Cambrensis, in a tyranny of texts over human encounters: [Kiberd here quotes “Díonbrollach”, as infra]. […/] In his Díonbrollach or introduction, Céitinn (sounding at times like the Edward Said of his era) laments the fact that “truth” has now become a function of learned judgement rather than the sum of a whole people’s wisdom. “Ireland” [sic], he complains, is never to be seen in itself, but as a flawed version of England, as a country still entrapped in the conditions from which England liberated itself in 1066. / With devastating wit, Céitinn proceeds to show how, even on a purely textual level, the English writers have been amazingly selective in what they have culled from one another, and he unsparingly exposes the contradictions which mar their testimonies.’ (&c.; p.13-14); ‘A major part of Céitinn’s project was his demonstration that the Irish were not foils to the English so much as mirrors.’ (p.15.)

Seán Ó Tuama, ‘Gaelic Culture in Crisis: The Literary Repartee’, in Repossessions (Cork UP 1995), pp.119-33: ‘And it was a work, it should be noted, which sought above all else to enhance the old Irish aristocratic order, and to bewail its passing.’ (p.123.)

S. J. Connolly, ‘Cultural Identity and Tradition’, in Brian Graham, ed., In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography of Ireland (London: Routledge 1997): ‘The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the development of a new sense of Irish Catholic identity … strongly influenced by the militant spirit of the Counter-Reformation, this sought to divert attention from the ethnic and cultural barriers that had for centuries divided the Gaelic Irish and the English of Ireland, emphasising instead the new bond of a shared religious allegiance. The redesignation of pre-Reformation settlers as Old English, an established part of Irish society, helped to smooth over centuries of warfare and mutual hostility. The invention about this time of the pseudo-medieval formula, “more Irish than the Irish themselves”, was part of the same process. So too was the production of what was to become one of the founding texts of Irish historical writing, Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Eireann [sic]. Written in Irish by a priest of Old English descent, this created an elaborate composite of existing origin-legends in order to present the English invasion of the twelfth-century as only the latest in a series of episodes of conquest, settlement, and cultural assimilation.’ (p.46.) Bibl., cites B. Cunningham, ‘Seventeenth-century interpretations of the past: the case of Geoffrey Keating’, in Irish Historical Studies 25 (1986), pp.116-28.

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Quotations

Foras Feasa ar Eirinn [History of Ireland], “Díonbrollach” [Preface]: ‘Whosoever proposes to trace and follow up the ancient history and origin of an country ought to determine on setting down plainly the method which reveals most clearly the truth of the state of the country, and the condition of the people who inhabit it: and forasmuch as I have undertaken to investigate the groundwork of Irish historical knowledge, I have thought at the outset of deploring some part of her affliction and of her unequal contest; especially the unfairness which continues to be practised on her inhabitants, alike the old foreigners who are in possession more than four hundred years from the Norman invasion down, as well as the native Irish who have had possession during almost three thousand years. For there is no historian of all those who have written on Ireland from that epoch that has not continuously sought to cast reproach and blame both on the old foreign settlers and on the native Irish.’ (Comyn, ed. & trans., 1902, London: ITS, p.3.).

[ See full-text copy in RICORSO Library > “Irish Classics” - as via index or as .pdf and .doc. See the same text including Latin sentences cited by Keating with their English translations omitted from the pdf/doc versions- as attached. ]

Forus feasa ar Eirinn - “Díonbrollach” [cont.]: ‘[...] It is not for hatred nor for love of any set of people beyond another, nor at the instigation of anyone, nor with the expectation of obtaining profit from it, that I set forth to write the history of Ireland, but because I deemed it was fitting that a country so honourable as Ireland, and races so noble as those who have inhabited it, should [not] go into oblivion without mention or narration being left of them, and I think that my estimate in the account I give concerning the Irish ought thereafter to be accepted, because it is of the Gael I chiefly treat. Whoever thinks it much I say for them, it is not to be considered that I should deliver judgement through favour, giving them much praise beyond what they have deserved, being myself of the old Gall as regards my origin [... T]he race is dispraised by every new foreign historian [...] the extent of the pity I felt at the manifest injustice which is done to them by those writers [...] I know not why they should not be put in comparison with any nation in Europe in [...] valour, learning, and in being steadfast to the Catholic faith.’

The dung-beetles: ‘For it is the fashion of the beetle, when it lifts its head in the summertime, to go about fluttering, and not to stoop towards any delicate flower that may be in the field, or any blossom in the garden, though they be all roses or lilies, but it keeps bustling about until it meets with dung of horse or cow, and proceeds to roll therein.’ (Foras Feasa ar Eirin [1634], Comyn trans., 1902, p.5 [sect. VII]; cited in John Brannigan, ‘“A Particular Vice of that People”: Giraldus Cambrensis and the Discourse of English Colonialism’, in Irish Studies Review, 6, 2, August 1998, p.121; also in Melissa Fegan, review of William H. A. Williams, Tourism, landscape, and the Irish character: British travel writers in pre-Famine Ireland, in Journal of Tourism History, 2, 1, April 2010, pp.58-60.)

“At the news from Fal’s high plain”: ‘Óm sceol ar ardmhagh Fáil ní chodlaim oíche / ’s do bhreoigh go brath mé dála a pobail dílis/gé rófhada atáid ’na bhfál ré broscar bíobha, / fá dheoidh gur fhás a lán den chogal tríothu. // A Fhódla phráis, is náir nach fóllas díbhse/gur córa tál ar sháirshliocht mhodhail Mhile;/ deor níor fagafh i gcláir do bhrollaigh mhínghil / nár dheolsad ál gach cránach coigriche. // Gach treod gan tásc tar sál da dtogair síneadh/go hóirlios álainn ársa Chobhthaigh Chaoil chirt,/is leo gan ghráscar lamh ar ndonna-bhruine,/’s gach fód is fearr dár n-aitibh eochar-aoibhne. // Atáid foirne ag fás san gclarsa Logha liofa/dar chóir bheith táir gé hard a rolla-scaoileadh;/síol Eoghain tláith ’s an Tálfhuil bodhar cloite / ’s na hóig ón mBantsrath scainte i gcoigríochaibh. // Na tóisigh thaisc ón Nas gan bhogadh bhrí-nirt / i ngleo gér gháifeach ágh na lonna-bhuine - / fá shróin an stait ba ghnath a gcogadh i ndíormaibh; / ní dóibh ba nár ach cách gan chomhall dlí ar bith. // Dá mba beoga ardfhlaith Áine is Droma Daoile/’s na leoghain láidre ón Maigh do bhronnadh maoine,/dar ndóigh niorbh áit don táinse in oscaill Bhríde/gan gheoin is gártha os ard dá dtoghaildíbirt. // Muna bhfóiridh Ceard na n-ardreann pobal chrích Chuirc/ar fhoirneart námhad ndána n-ullamh ndioltach/ni mór narbh fhearr gan chairde a bhfoscamdíolaim / ’s a seoladh slan i bhfán tar tonnaibh Chlíona.’

Trans., “At the news from Fal’s high plain”: ‘At the news from Fal’s high plain I cannot sleep. I am sick till doom at the plight of its faithful folk. Long have they stood as a hedge against hostile trash but a lot of cockle has grown up through them at last. / O brazen Fódla, it is shameful you do not see it were fitter to nourish Mile’s sweet high race. Not a drop is left in the plain of your smooth white breast - drained dry by the litter of every alien sow. / Any worthless crew that thought to cross the sea to the fair, gold, age-old lios of Cobhthach “the just” - theirs without struggle of hands our mighty mansions and the choicest swards of our lovely-bordered places. / There’s a new sort growing in the plain of Lugh the lithe Who are base by right, though they flourish their rolls” on high Eoghan’s seed exhausted, Tal’s blood troubled and broken, And the youth of BanBrath scattered in foreign lands. / From the worthy chiefs of Nas not a stir of strength, Though fierce that awesome army’s fire in battle - manoeuvring often under the nose of the State. (Not theirs the shame that the law is honoured by none.) / If that high prince lived, of Aine and Drom Daoile, or the great gift-generous lions of the Maigh, this horde would have no place in the bend of the Bride - smashed, driven out, with outcry and loud wails. / If the Craftsman of stars protect not Ireland’s people from violent vengeful enemies, bold and ready, better gather and winnow them now without delay and sail them out wandering safe on the waves of Clíona.’ (Translated by Thomas Kinsella, in Poems of the Dispossessed, Seán Ó Tuama, Dublin 1981.)

Colloquy of the Ancients: ‘I must own [he says] there is a very good reason for me to believe that there was a very old Man in the time of St. Patrick, who lived some hundred years before; and gave him a particular Account of the History of the Island. [...] The Name of this Person was Tuam the son of Carril, if we believe some Antiquaries, or, if we give credit to others, Roanus, that is, Caoilte Mac Ronain, who was above three hundred years old.’ (Dermod O’Connor, A General History, trans. of Keating’s Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn, 1723, p.107.)

The Fianna: ‘If it should be objected, that it is not to be supposed some particular Transactions relating to O Foinn and his Fianna Erion, or the Irish Militia, can obtain belief, because some of the Circumstances are impossible in Fact, and therefore must be absolutely False, I confess that the History Ireland, in some degree, labours under the same Misfortune, with most of the old Chronicles that were written in the Times of Idolatry and Paganism; and there is scarce a Country upon Earth, I suppose, whose primitive Records are not disguised with Fable and some incredible Relations; and even since Christianity appeared in the World, and the Clouds of Superstition and Ignorance were, in some Measure, dispell’d, many strange and romantick Accounts have been delivered with an Air of Truth […] But it is an unjustifiable Consequence to conclude from hence, that the old Records and Chronicles of all Nations are Fables and Rhapsodies; as if Antiquity were a sure and infallible Mark of Falsehood, and that the antient Writers were a Gang of Cheats and Imposters, who conspir’d together to transmit Lies and to impose upon Posterity.’ (Dermod O’Connor, trans., A General History of Ireland [Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn] 1723, p.268; all cited in Russell Alspach, Irish Poetry, 1959, p.91f.)

Youth & Eld: ‘I am old and a number of these people are young. I have seen and understood the chief books of history, and they have not seem them, and if they had seen them they would not have understood anything. It was not for hatred or love of any tribe beyond another, not at the order of anyone, not in the hope to get gain out of it, that I took in hand to write the history of Ireland, but because I thought it was not fitting that a country like Ireland for honour, and races as honourable as every race that inhabited it, should be swallowed up without any word or mention to be left about them.’ (Seathrun Ceitinn [Geoffrey Keating], Foras Feasa ar Eirinn 1 [‘Díonbhrollach’], ed. David Comyn, London 1902, p.76; cited [with Irish original] in Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation, London: Jonathan Cape 1995, p.14.)

Poetry

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