So all embracing a mind as that of the greatest English dramatist could not fail to be interested in the gossip that must have been current in London at the time of the wars in Ulster.  References to kerns and gallowglasses are fairly frequent.  He had evidently heard of the marvellous powers with which the Irish bards were credited, for, in As You Like It, Rosalind exclaims: 

“I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.”

Similarly, in King Richard III, mention is made of the prophetic utterance of an Irish bard, a trait which does not appear in the poet’s source.  Any statements as to Irish influence in Shakespeare that go beyond this belong to the realm of conjecture.  Professor Kittredge has attempted to show that in Syr Orfeo, upon which the poet drew for portions of the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Irish story of Etain and Mider was fused with the medieval form of the classical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Direct influence is entirely wanting, and it is difficult to see how it could have been otherwise.

Even in the case of the Elizabethan poet who spent many years in the south of Ireland, there is no trace of Hibernian lore or legend.  Spenser, indeed, tells us himself that he had caused some of the native poetry to be translated to him, and had found that it “savoured of sweet wit and good invention.”  But Ireland plays an infinitesimal part in the Faerie Queene.  The scenery round Kilcolman Castle forms the background of much of the incident in Book V.  “Marble far from Ireland brought” is mentioned in a simile in the second Book, where we also read: 

      As when a swarme of gnats at eventide
      Out of the fennes of Allan do arise.

But Ireland supplied no further inspiration.

The various plantations of the seventeenth century produced an Anglo-Irish stock which soon asserted itself in literature.  As a typical example, we may take the author of The Vicar of Wakefield.  At his first school at Lissoy, Oliver Goldsmith came under Thomas Byrne, a regular shanachie, possessed of all the traditional lore, with a remarkable gift for versifying.  It was under this man that the boy made his first attempts at verse, and his memory is celebrated in The Deserted Village: 

      There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
      The village master taught his little school. 
      A man severe he was, and stern to view.

Unfortunately Goldsmith was removed to Elphin at the age of nine, and although he retained an affection for Irish music all his life, his intimate connection with Irish Ireland apparently ceased at this point.  “Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain” is doubtless full of reminiscences of the poet’s early years in Westmeath, but the sentiments, the rhythm, and the language are entirely cast in an English mould.  We may mention, in passing, that it has been suggested that Swift derived the idea of the kingdom of Lilliput from the Irish story of the Adventures of Fergus macLeide amongst the leprechauns.  All that can be said is that this derivation is not impossible, though the fact that the tale is preserved only in a single manuscript rather points to the conclusion that the story did not enjoy great popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.