This anthology of poetry from 16th- and 17th-century Ireland overturns the accepted view that very little English language poetry was written in Ireland between Spenser and Swift.

Among many memorable and moving poems in this extraordinary book are love songs, laments, death-bed repentances, accounts of military life in Ireland, ballads marking natural calamities, dedicatory poems, elegies, political lampoons, theological speculations, coarse poems, gentle poems, angry poems, mad poems. There are verses from well-bred coteries in Dublin Castle and verses scratched on gateposts; there are hymns and curses, echoes and allegories, prayers and squibs. The book proves triumphantly that, from the beginning of the Tudor period until the Battle of the Boyne, much of Ireland was alive with the sound of verse in English. Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland is a major contribution to Irish cultural history, which introduces to the modern reader a wonderful range of original and previously unknown Irish poetic voices.

Introduction
A Note on the Texts

Part I

1485-1603: Verse from Tudor Ireland

Part II

1603-1641: Early Stuart Verse

Part III

1641-1660: From the Rising to the Restoration

Part IV

1660-1685: The Reign of Charles II

Part V

1685-1702: Jacobite and Williamite Ireland

Sources of the texts
Index