Gerald, Earl of Desmond

Gerald FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, called Gearoid Iarla, was a Hiberno-Norman nobleman who wrote verse in Irish. Sigerson, in Bards of the Gael and Gall (1907), calls him Gerald the Bard, notes that he was Lord Justice of Ireland in 1367, and says he composed many Irish and some Norman-French poems.

“Womankind”, a warning against women’s wiles, is taken from the Book of the Dean of Lismore. It is given here in Sigerson’s English version, which keeps the repeating rhyme of the original.