Medieval Irish Lyrics

This anthology offers modern readers translations of the lyric poetry transcribed or written by mediaeval Irish monks. Irish poets were the first Europeans to write in the vernacular, though few people now read this poetry in its original. Known for her translations of the poetry of classical Greece and Egypt and of mediaeval Portugal, Barbara Hughes Fowler once again makes the poetry of another era accessible to a new generation. The 35 lyrics in this book were composed between 800 and 1200 CE, all of them anonymously, although some are attributed to legendary or historical figures who had died centuries before. Irish monks wrote them in the margins of the manuscripts they were copying, or they interpolated poems they either knew or composed into the pagan tales they were recording. Some of these poems are about what the Irish called "Tir na n'Og", the Land of the Young. This was not a place you went after death if you behaved yourself in life. It was where imaginative Irish longed to go - a paradise of lovely women, bountiful food and drink, and endless treasures of silver, gold and jewels. The monks who composed or recorded such lyrics preserved their Celtic heritage while making concessions to Christianity, as in the stanzas of "Fair Lady, Will You Go With Me?" Lyric poems, rooted so firmly in the expression of human emotion, travel well from an ancient culture to a modern one. Rendered into language and form intended for a general readership, these lyrics help to preserve an ancient and rich culture.