IRISH LANGUAGE: Cérbh í Meg Russell? By Máire Mhac an tSaoi, with Máire Mac Conghail and Lis Ó DromaLeabhar Breac, 132 pp, €15
THIS BEAUTIFULLY illustrated book concerns a romantic interlude in the shared history of early 17th-century Ireland and England. At the heart of the matter is a graceful syllabic poem in Irish by Piaras Feiritéar (1653), accomplished poet of Catholic Old-English stock in West Kerry. Feiritéar wrote it in honour of Meg Russell, the ógh Ghallda or “foreign girl” identified therein as a relation of the contemporary earl of Bedford. This was Francis Russell, the 4th earl.
Máire Mhac an tSaoi makes the case that she was in fact a daughter of Francis Russell. She details the circumstances in which a poem in Irish by a person of “middling rank” might conceivably have been presented to an earl’s daughter born and raised in England.
Previous critics were apparently wrong in assuming that Feiritéar’s poem was meant to advance his own suit with this high-born girl. The gulf between him and Bedford’s daughter was immense. Feiritéar paid a half-yearly rent of £9 for his lands at Baile an Fhirtéaraigh and Baile Eaglaise, west of Dingle. Bedford’s annual income was in the region of £5,000-£10,000. He had a string of grand residences, including Bedford House in the Strand, and Woburn in Bedfordshire. His draft will of 1634-5 lists estates all over the south of England. Feiritéar was Catholic. Bedford’s circle, though ecumenist, did not embrace such “heretickes”.
Following the Desmond rebellions, Feiritéar’s family became tenants of the arriviste earl of Cork, Richard Boyle. Boyle showed increasing intolerance of Catholicism during the 1620s. In 1632 he ordered the destruction of St Patrick’s Purgatory, one of his most infamous acts. Yet his tenancy arrangement with Feiritéar continued, despite efforts by rivals to displace him.
In fact, Feiritéar’s poem for Meg Russell points to a rather special relationship between the Kentish earl and the poet, if one adopts Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s exciting suggestion that it materialised out of Boyle’s strenuous efforts to arrange a marriage for his son and heir, also Richard, with one of the leading families of the realm. These efforts were rewarded in 1633 by the marriage of young Richard to Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Clifford, earl of Cumberland. But in the late 1620s, Boyle’s attentions were still directed at the unmarried daughters of the earl of Bedford, including the lovely adolescent Margaret, or Meg. Surviving portraits, some of which are reproduced in the book, vouch for her beauty.
Máire Mhac an tSaoi locates the poem in this context. She imagines a self-possessed Feiritéar bringing a cultural cachet to the upstart earl. She points to evidence that Feiritéar visited Boyle in London on the business of his tenancy around the time that the earl was pressing his son’s suit with Bedford. She suggests that this was advanced vicariously by Feiritéar’s poem.
The language issue here is intriguing. Meg Russell almost certainly knew no Irish, but her father may have acquired some competency in it when, as a child, he attended his father who was Lord Deputy of Ireland in the 1590s. Young Richard Boyle too may have been pleased to show off whatever Irish he had. Unlike his younger brothers, he was raised in Ireland and heard the language continuously. It is telling that his father arranged for his Eton-educated sons to have an Irish-speaking tutor.
To the significant few, Feiritéar’s poem may have sounded pleasantly familiar rather than outlandish. Contemporary sources credit him with poems in English too, though none has survived. A deliberate decision to compose this one in Irish, if it was aimed at furthering the match in question, is revealing of Boyle’s sense of identity.
A question not raised by the author: was Feiritéar’s poem performed to music? One of his extant poems gives thanks for the gift of an exceptional harp. Another celebrates an outstanding harper. A slow air attributed to Feiritéar was collected in the 19th century. Perhaps music is the real key to his relationship with Boyle, who records the existence of an Irish harp at his home in Lismore Castle, and his gift of “a fair new Irish harp” to the Lord Keeper of England in 1632.
This book recalls from long silence the tuning in to different languages, the sound of music. As the author points out, hard evidence to support the imagined scenario, plausible as it is, is in short supply. It is all the more regrettable that her book is not furnished with a thoroughly reliable edition of the pivotal poem. Nonetheless, it greatly enhances our understanding of Feiritéar and of 17th-century literary culture in the two islands.
Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha is professor of old and middle Irish at NUI, Galway