A catalogue of Irish poets, which has recently been made out, shows that there were more than a thousand of them.  We have lost many of the oldest poems, but the Irish scribes often modernized the texts which they were copying.  Hence the language is not always a sufficient indication of date, and it is possible that, under a comparatively modern form, some very ancient pieces may have been preserved.  Even if the poems attributed to Amergin do not go back to the tenth century B.C., as has been claimed for them, they are in any case old enough to be archaic, and certain poems of the mythological cycle are undoubtedly anterior to the Christian era.

We have reason to believe that there have been preserved some genuine poems of Finn macCumaill (third century), a hymn by St. Patrick (d. 461), some greatly altered verses of St. Columcille (d. 597), and certain hymns written by saints who lived from the seventh to the ninth century.  The main object of the most celebrated of the ancient poets up to the end of the twelfth century was to render history, genealogy, toponomy, and lives of saints readier of access and easier to retain by putting them into verse-form; and it is the names of those scholars that have been rescued from oblivion, while lyric poetry, having as its basis nothing more than sentiment, has remained for the most part anonymous.  After the Anglo-Norman invasion, the best poet seems to have been Donnchadh Mor O’Daly (d. 1244).  Of later date were Teig MacDaire (1570-1652), Teig Dall O’Higinn (d. 1615), and Eochaidh O’Hussey, who belonged to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  The new school, which abandoned the old rules and whose inspiration is now personal, now patriotic, is represented by caoine (keens or laments), abran (hymns), or aislingi (visions), composed, among others, by Geoffrey Keating (d. c. 1650), David O’Bruadair (c. 1625-1698), Egan O’Rahilly (c. 1670-c. 1734), John MacDonnell (1691-1754), William O’Heffernan (fl. 1750), John O’Tuomy (1706-1775), and Andrew MacGrath (d. c. 1790).  The greatest of the eighteenth century Irish poets was Owen Roe O’Sullivan (c. 1748-1784), whose songs were sung everywhere, and who, in the opinion of his editor, Father Dinneen, is the literary glory of his country and deserves to be ranked among the few supreme lyric poets of all time.

If, in order to study the subjects treated by the poets, we lay aside didactic poetry and confine ourselves to the ancient poems from the seventh to the eleventh century, we shall find in the latter a singular variety.  They were at first dialogues or monologues, now found incorporated with the sagas, of which they may have formed the original nucleus.  Thus, in the Voyage of Bran, we have the account of the Isles of the Blessed and the discourse of the King of the Sea; in the Expedition of Loegaire MacCrimthainn, the brilliant description of the fairy hosts; in The Death of the Sons of Usnech, the touching farewell