Iomarbhágh Na bhFileadh – The Contention of The Bards Part I

Cur síos

L. McKenna (foilsithe den chéad uair / first published 1920)

xxx + 177 pp. ISBN 1 870 16620 5

The bardic poems contained in Lambert McKenna’s two-volume edition of the Iomarbhágh ostensibly reflect an argument between groups of Irish poets in the early 1600s as to which was superior, the southern half of Ireland or its northern counterpart.
However, in his new introduction, published in 1994, Joep Leerssen wrote that it represented more than a final display of bardic erudition and eloquence, ‘it was also a unique registration of an ancient literary tradition trying to come to terms with the drastic disintegration of both its social raison d’être and its cultural Weltanschauung’.
This volume contains a new introduction by Joep Leerssen (1994).