The Poetics and Politics of Legend: Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn and the Invention of Irish History

Abstract

Introduction: Truth and Error in History of IrelandIn polemical introduction to his 1634 Foras Feasa ar Eirinn (Foundation of Knowledge on Ireland, often called History of Ireland), Geoffrey Keating criticizes Meredith Hanmer's late-sixteenth-century Chronicle of Ireland for including early modern Irish narrative Cath Fionntragha (The Battle of Ventry) when it is clear that Ireland 's historians do not regard this tale as staire firinnighe (true history) but assert that it is finnsceul filidheachta (poetic legend ) (1: 50-51).1 Keating accuses Welsh historian of misrepresenting Ireland 's historical records by inserting this less-than-plausible tale as if it were characteristic of Irish history when Cath Fionntragha's legendary status is well recognized. As his refutation of Hanmer suggests, one of Keating's aims in writing Foras Feasa was to correct oft-repeated claim that Ireland had no reliable history and to provide a foundation, or foras, for future histories of Ireland. Without doubt, Keating's text did prove central to writing of Irish history for many centuries to come: it was rapidly translated into Latin and English, enjoyed a wide circulation for a manuscript text, and formed a pillar of Irish historical canon. Today it remains central to study of early mod- ern Irish national identities.The Foras Feasa is a text highly attuned to genre, and Keating was well aware that Irish records frequently mixed historical and legendary ac- counts. Claiming to possess ability Hanmer lacks in distinguishing be- tween genres, Keating occasionally informs his reader that certain episodes included in Foras Feasa are not to be regarded as historical and should in- stead be considered legends. Nevertheless, Keating retains sources he identi- fies as legendary, even those that had been criticized by British writers for their implausibility, such as accounts claiming that Ireland was first settled by No- ah's granddaughter (1: 140-47). The Foras Feasa asserts necessity of includ- ing all of Ireland's seanchas (ancient traditions) in telling of its history by employing chronological organization of annals and chronicles along- side taxonomic organization of tales by theme or type often used to present scela (stories or tales).2 If Hanmer's failing was his inability to distinguish between history and legend, Foras Feasa brings two together on a struc- tural level. The Foras Feasa deploys all of Ireland 's traditions and organiza- tional structures in its anticolonialist reclamation of Irish historical study for Irish scholars who were able, as colonialist writers were not, to read sean- chas.3 By casting Irish legends as rich material rather than defective method of Irish history, Keating makes a claim for a rigorous historicist method that at once honors principles of new humanism and yet pre- serves Irishness in retelling and reframing of Irish past.Keating's foundation for producing Irish knowledge imagines Irish history as incorporating all of seanchas, positing historian as collector and in- terpreter of a variety of texts, both legendary and historical. Keating deploys this generic inclusiveness against colonialist works claiming that Ireland 's chronicles, many of which related island 's independence from Britain until twelfth-century Anglo-Norman invasion, were essentially legends. The Foras Feasa endeavored to refute what Brendan Bradshaw has termed the most damaging of all English calumnies against Irish, namely that their native land constituted a mere appendage of realm of England (Apolo- gist 172). Keating's project is widely accepted as an anticolonial one in that it sought, by attacking scholarship and credentials of writers who could not read seanchas of Ireland, to counter texts written to legitimate Tudor reconquest of Ireland.4Anticolonialism and national identity are closely connected in Keating's work. …