Piers Ferriter

Piers Ferriter was a poet of Norman descent and a Kerry soldier. Sigerson, in Bards of the Gael and Gall (1907), describes him as a cultured poet and the last of the Catholic cavaliers to hold out against Cromwell; he was executed at Killarney in 1653, after the fall of Ross Castle.

“Lay Thine Arms Aside, Young Maid” is a gallant love-song in which the poet begs a girl to hide her charms. It is given here in Sigerson’s English version.