Cultures in conflict in late sixteenth-century Kerry: the parallel worlds of a Tudor intellectual and Gaelic poets

Abstract

Demarcated to the north by the Shannon and its estuary and to the south by the Kenmare river and the Caha mountains, the south-western territories of Kerry and Desmond provide a microcosm of the tensions and interactions characteristic of early modern Ireland. Although historically divided into roughly two corresponding halves representing the outcome of thirteenth-century Gaelic/Anglo-Norman conflict, the area approximating to the modern administrative division of Kerry was defined by Gaelic cultural ascendancy and by the similar (though differing in scale) seigneurial ambitions of successive Fitzgerald and MacCarthy magnates. Significantly, a territorial division configured along ethnic lines was not replicated at a cultural level, where a remarkable level of homogeneity prevailed in terms of the currency of Gaelic language and literature. However, the defeat and execution of the fourteenth earl of Desmond and the distribution of his lands among English settlers under the auspices of the government-sponsored Munster plantation inaugurated profound political, social and religious turmoil in the province. In Kerry, also, consolidation of the New English military, social and legal presence in the wake of the redistribution of the earl of Desmond’s lands precipitated levels of political and cultural dissonance unparalleled since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.