Anonymous (Irish Gaelic, later)

The Irish-language poems gathered here are anonymous songs, laments, prayers, charms, lullabies and working songs, most of them known from oral tradition and from later manuscripts, and placed by Eleanor Hull after the early Christian poems in her anthology, The Poem-Book of the Gael (London, 1913). They include the laments of the dark days, the religious verse of the people, and the love-songs of the west.

The English versions are by many hands, among them Douglas Hyde, Sir Samuel Ferguson, George Sigerson, Robin Flower, P. H. Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Padraic Colum, Lady Wilde and Lady Gregory; each poem records its own translator, and poems the book leaves unsigned are by Hull herself. Most of the poems are undated in the book, so the dates given for the group are approximate.