Views of the Past in Irish Vernacular Literature, 1650–1850

Abstract

The Irish Magazine, published monthly between 1807 and 1815 and edited by Watty Cox, was perhaps the earliest periodical to articulate a consistently nationalist view of Ireland's history. Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies, like the Irish Magazine, evoked a strong response from the Irish public. Was their popularity an early manifestation of the romantic nationalism that would be so ubiquitous a generation later? It is hardly possible to open a discussion of historiography in Irish without referring to the synthetic history of Ireland entitled Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (‘A basis of knowledge about Ireland’) written by Geoffrey Keating around the year 1634. None of the factors that would have hindered the propagation of Keating's history applied to the poem Tuireamh na hÉireann. This chapter looks at a number of historical poems that strongly resemble Tuireamh na hÉireann and each other in both form and content, including those composed by Seán Ó Gadhra, Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín, Mac Cumhaigh, and Nicholas Kearney.