Chapter 1 - Women in the Medieval Poetry Business

Summary

The Irish vernacular tradition is among the oldest in Europe, but the role of women in this tradition has long been obscured. The public role of the poet in medieval Ireland was considerable, but the poet was invariably male. For evidence of women poets, we must turn to the oral tradition, the ranks of the baird rather than the more elevated filid, and women connected with religious communities, such as St Samthann, abbess of Clonbroney (fl. 730s). Questions of attribution are often tangled, with words attributed to eminent historical personalities, such as Derbforgaill queen of Bréifne (†1193), regardless of the authorship of the text. Further celebrated instances of this include the poems of Liadan and Cuirithir, Queen Gormlaith, and the ‘Hag of Beare’ (an Caillech Béirre). This last work, most likely the work of a ninth-century nun named Digde, is a meditation on age and mortality in the light of the Christian promise of eternity. Despite the penumbra in which they wrote, Irish women of the medieval period left a powerful and enduring poetic legacy.