'Oh, How Unlike Unto Orpheus':

Those discriminated against may be instantly recognized, but they also force a recognition of the immediacy and articulacy of authority - a disturbing effect that is familiar in the repeated hesitancy afflicting colonialist discourse when it contemplates its discriminated subjects.

Homi Bhaba (1985, 154)

1. In the Ars Poetica, Horace wrote: 'Orpheus, a Priest, and speaker for the gods, / First frighted men, that wildly liv'd in woods, / From slaughters, and foule life' (Blakeney, 1928, 128: 557-9). Such a potential was not lost upon the Elizabethans in Ireland and, in fact, serves as one of the distinguishing ways in which the conquest was to be depicted for English audiences from the time of Shane O'Neill's rebellion until the Plantation of Ulster during the first decades of the seventeenth century.

2. Through references to Orpheus, English writers on Ireland sought to bridge between their humanistically rooted notions of English civilization and the recalcitrance they encountered from Gaelic Irish society. John Warden has written: 'As a tamer of beasts he [Orpheus] is the champion of humanism, symbol of the power of the word to soften the wild hearts of man and bring civilization' (Warden 1982, viii). For its advocates, poetry stood as one means through which to pass from savage, solitary being into proper member of a collective, civil nation. All of the Elizabethan poetic treatises see the poet in the Horatian context as a shaper of civility. Sir Philip Sidney, George Puttenham, Samuel Daniel, Sir John Harington, and even Stephen Gosson, attributed to poetry the power to move men and influence nations as illustrated by Horace. By emphasising this 'improving' potential, English writers could, in the words of Louis Grundy, propose 'poetry as a form of learning, and learning as the great civilizing force' (Grundy 1969, 20). As self appointed harbingers of civilization unto the 'savage' Irish, the English adventurers and colonists of the late sixteenth-century had frequent recourse to this original myth of 'civilizing conquest', as Milton later characterised the English efforts in Ireland (Milton 1953, 1:304). As Ireland became more familiar to the English and as the Gaelic resistance intensified, English writers were forced to re-evaluate and re-apply a number of their own founding myths in this colonial context. Through the adaptation of the civilising myth of Orpheus in early modern writings on Ireland, we witness an unfolding of an important, developmental moment within the complex ideology of conquest which underlies subsequent colonial writings. 1

3. The 'civilizing' power of poetry upon which the Elizabethan poetic treatises were premised was an integral aspect of the Tudor humanist education. Heavily influenced by writings such as Sir Thomas Elyot's The Book named the Governor (1531) and Roger Ascham's The Schoolmaster (1570), the aesthetics of this 'active minority' of Elizabethan courtiers and statesmen was markedly outward looking, and integrally related to the identity of their own developing English community. 2 For instance, George Puttenham claimed that not only was poetry 'th'originall cause and occasion' for civilization, but that the first reformation of English verse was made possible through an act of cultural conquest by Wyatt and Surrey, whom he depicted as 'two cheiftains who...travailled to Italy...[and] crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch' (Smith 1904, 2:62). With the same sort of confidence, Samuel Daniel observed the achievements of both antique and English poets and wondered 'What worlds in th'yet unformed occident / May come refined with th'accents that are ours?' (Lamson 1956, 640). These writers portrayed the 'antique' poets as the intellectual ancestors of the Elizabethans, while they portrayed the 'barbarous' poets of Ireland and the Americas as not the heirs, but the potential audience of this knowledge. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, Daniel concluded in his poetic treatise: 'The universall argues the general power of it [rhymed poetry]: for if the Barbarian use it, then it shews that it swais th'affection of the Barbarian, if civill nations practice it, it proves that it works upon the harts of all civill nations: If all, then that it hath a power in nature on all' (Smith 1904, 2:133). Echoing earlier defenses of poetry, this comparison necessitates an almost syllogistic duty to bring other cultures toward the civil state of England and its poetry. The Humanist-Ciceronean programme so apparent in these poetic treatises was similarly an intellectual basis for the Tudor conquest of Ireland. 3 In the case of English discourse on Gaelic Ireland, this aesthetic confidence was bolstered by characterizations of the Irish bardic order. Since much responsibility for cultural resistance was attributed to the Irish poets, the political efficacy of poetry in the English tradition was affirmed through these derogatory portraits of non-English poets. The writings of Thomas Smyth the apothecary, John Derricke, Edmund Spenser, Sir William Herbert, Fynes Moryson, Barnabe Riche, and Sir John Davies all comment upon the disruptive influence of the Irish poets and collectively present a unique point of intersection between poetry and colonization.

4. As early as 1366, the Statutes of the Kilkenny parliament outlawed the use of the Irish language, laws, and customs, and particularly prohibited the receiving or entertaining of Irish poets (Cosgrove 1984, 168). Two centuries later, Sir John Perrot passed similar proclamations outlawing the activities of the bards, and precluding their interaction with the English settlers (Maxwell 1923, 166-7). The importance of such measures, as Joseph Th. Leerson points out 'is the fact that the national division of Ireland is defined by (rather than defining) the adoption of cultural patterns and of a political stance. A pattern of societal behavior is the defining criterion of nationality' (Leerson 1986, 39). The constructed, culturally determined nature of 'civilization' in the Irish political theater gained added emphasis as the Tudor conquest continued. As Ciaran Brady points out, 'the experience of recent Irish history was profoundly disturbing. In Ireland, England's law, culture and religion had been exposed as the most delicate of organisms, difficult to plant and more difficult to maintain....Ireland, in other words, provided both the symbol and the actuality of the threat that hung over the humanists' world' (Brady 1986, 42-3). The disturbing recognition of the cultural autonomy of a foreign, barbaric nation, and the power of that autonomy apparently to shape the nature of the Irish and threaten the identity of the English, is an important aspect of the Tudor experience of colonization.

5. What is particularly striking about the English written experience in Ireland is how the Irish Bardic poets became stigmatised as a sort of anti-Orphic presence; as an institutional structure which was prescribed by the earliest barbarian portraits provided by Herodotus, Caesar, Strabo, and Tacitus. Nicholas Canny has remarked that 'many of the colonizers came to Ireland with a preconception of what a barbaric society was like, and they found features in Gaelic life to fit this model' (Canny 1973, 587. The original model of barbaric society provided by various Greek and Latin texts significantly prefaced English writings on Ireland. Peter Hulme has observed '[a]s European nations, especially England, took on their imperial roles, the classical world of the Mediterranean grew in importance as a repository of the images and analogies by which those nations could represent to themselves their colonial activities' (Hulme 1986, 35; see also Jardine 1993). These classical depictions often focused on the particularly oral and war-like nature of the 'barbaric' societies and their poets. The Druids, according to Caesar, controlled the intellectual and social direction of the people he had come to conquer:

   The Druids officiate at the worship of the gods, regulate public and private sacrifices, and give ruling on all religious questions. Large numbers of young men flock to them for instruction, and they are held in great honour by the people. They act as judges in practically all disputes, whether between tribes or between individuals....All the Druids are under one head, whom they hold in highest respect. (Caesar 1951, 140).

   The unseen Druids, the keepers of the barbarian culture, provide the imaginative core for the resistance Caesar anticipates. They are the instigators of a sort of institutionalised, popular resistance, but their leader, 'the one head', is significantly absent. In English discourse on Ireland, the societally-determined nature of that nation was also emphasised, but with added attention given to the part played within that society by the Irish poets, who as opposed to the Druids, were all too present.

6. The first English testament to the political power of the Irish poet comes from Thomas Smyth, the apothecary, whose treatise Smyth's Information for Ireland appears in the Calendar of State Papers (5 May 1561). Inaccurate as it is in many respects, his treatise provides some idea of the link between the resistance and the cultural position the English perceived the Irish bards as holding. Smyth emphasises at every point that the bards have mobilised forces at their disposal, and groups them according to their potential to do damage to English rule in Ireland. The first order, the Brehons, he claims 'harbour many vacabons and ydell persons....[and] they will take appon them to judge matters, and redresse causes...although they are ignoraunt; they which is a great hinderans to the Queen's Majesties lawes, and hurtfull to the whole English Pale' (Smyth 1858, 166). D. B. Quinn has described the Brehons as 'hereditary jurists, holding land as the judges of the principality and transmitting offices in their family' (Quinn 1966, 17). Smyth was right in attributing a great deal of destructive potential to this group since, like Caesar's Druids, they were the judicial basis of the resistance.

7. This same disruptive attribute is given to the Shankee ('seanchaí' - Gaelic: story-teller and historian) and Aeosdana ('men of learning'). The derision which both of these orders earn from Smyth hinges upon their ability to affect the Irish populace in a more immediate way than the Brehons. Where the Brehons apparently provided intellectual guidance, the Seanchaí are supposed to provide actual sustenance for the rebels. Furthermore, they 'make the ignorant men of the country to belyve that they be discended of Alexander the Great, or of Darius, or of Caesar, or of some notable prince; which makes the ignorant people to run madde' (Smyth 1858, 166). The Aosdana's means of transmogrifying their Irish audience is again poetry:

   Their furst practisse is, if they se anye younge man discended of the septs of Ose or Max, and have halfe a dowsen aboute him, then will they make him a Rime, wherein they will commend his father and his aunchestors, nowmbrying howe many heades they have cut of, howe many townes they have burned, and how many virgins they have defloured, howe many notable murthers they have done. (Smyth 1858, 166)

   These poets provide a sort of 'anti-heroic' verse through their spurious genealogies and praises. 4 Instead of moving their listeners to virtuous action, their art makes their listeners, like the Bacchae, run mad and devour the English.

8. Smyth's fourth group, the filidh, actually stood just below the Brehon in Gaelic society and formed the highest order of the poets. Working from a wide range of Gaelic source material, Bernadette Cunningham has proposed a significantly more 'political' role to the filidh. She writes: 'the poet's function as a legitimiser of the authority of the existing lord was a particularly important one. Legitimacy was prompted through the medium of praise poetry, attributing appropriate qualities to the existing ruler as the requirements of society demanded, indicating that his genealogy entitled him to his exalted position, and outlining the standards to which the chief was expected to conform' (Cunningham 1986, 149-50).The filidh fulfill a role which bears an uncanny similarity to that which was wished for by the Elizabethan court poet (Javitch 1978, and Montrose 1986). The difference between the English and the Irish poet, besides their hereditary status, was their ability - feigned or otherwise - actually to mobilise the polity. At the time when Sidney and his contemporaries were seeking to justify the art of poetry as an active and politically efficacious endeavor, the Irish (according to both recent historical and to Elizabethan colonial accounts) already possessed such a model.

9. The inaccuracy of Smyth's account is in itself revealing. By positing so many different, specialised orders of Irish bards, he presents of highly-organised resistance to counter what, at that time, was at best a loosely-conceived English policy. In regard to this sort of factual and ideological discrepancy, Peter Hulme points out: 'One of the ways in which ideologies work is by passing off partial accounts as the whole story. They often achieve this by representing their partiality as what can be taken for granted, 'common sense', 'the natural', even 'reality itself'. This in turn often involves a covering of tracks: if something is to appear as simply 'the case' then its origin in historical contingency must be repressed' (Hulme 1986, 15). As English depictions continued throughout the last quarter of the sixteenth century, this 'common sense' connection between the poets and the increasing Gaelic resistance is repeatedly emphasised and echoed throughout nearly all English discourse on Ireland.

10. Even an apparently 'artistic' example, like John Derricke's Image of Ireland, with a Discovery of Woodkern (1578), a long verse epistle followed by a woodcut and doggerel verse portrayal of Sir Henry Sidney's three-year campaign against the O'Neills (1575-8), addressed the issue of poetry and cultural resistance. Derricke's Discovery provides a narrative of the Irish Woodkern from their 'bodrags' (ritual cattle-raids) to the entertainment of the 'Bard and Harper' before The MacSweeney. Derricke writes: 'Both Barde and Harper is preparde, which by their cunning art, / Doe strike and cheare up all the gestes with comfort at the hart'. The 'comfort' to which the Bards lend themselves continues: 'And when with myrth and belly cheere, they are sufficed well, / Marke what ensueth, a playne discourse of Irish sleightes I tell' (Plate 4). The progression seems to lead logically from the activities of the bard and harper to the 'spoyling and destroying of her grace's loyall men'. For Derricke, the Irish poets are the inciters of rebellion, and the means between the Irish nobility and popular resistance. Derricke's own descriptions of the bard and harpers's 'cunning art' is contrasted to his 'plain discourse' of the Irish 'sleights', or plots and deceptions. In the woodcut portraying the triumph of Sidney's forces over the Irish, in the precise center of the illustration, 'a pyper' is shown prostrate before the advancing English forces (Plate 9). Derricke's doggerel verse, which accompanies these twelve woodcuts, are plain descriptions which are to move the English readers in ways very different than the bardic stanzas of the reacarí or the now defunct piper.

11. All of these aspects were later encapsulated in Edmund Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland (c. 1596). He also depicts the Irish bards as the source of disorder and resistance in the country. The immediate results of Irish poetry - the rebellious progression from speech act to action - is evident within Spenser's dialogue. Structurally, Spenser's lengthy discussion of the bards poses an answer within the dialogue for why otherwise capable, Irish soldiers undertake such consistently evil actions. Within A View, the poets stand as intermediaries and purveyors of resistance, popular knowledge, and Brehon law. Spenser's primary speaker, Irenius, defines the task of the bard as

    to sett forth the prayses and disprayses of men, in theire Poems or rymes the which are had in so high regard and estymacion amongst them, that none dare displease them...for their vearses are taken up with generall applause, and usuallie sounge at all feastes and metinges, by certain other persons [rhymers] whose proper function that is, which also receyve for the same greate rewards, and reputacion besides. (Spenser 1934, 94)

    With only slight modification, this description might be applied as well to Spenser's alterego, Colin Clout. Yet, the Irish poets employ poetry as the photo-negative of the art which England's 'New Poete' presented in his own previous efforts and the Letter to Ralegh. Spenser's early work envisioned the poet as in possession of a national audience and significantly affecting the moral and political direction of that audience. Ironically, in Spenser's writing, the Irish Poet enjoys just such a national audience which he is capable of moving to action. Spenser's first description supports such a reading, as is indicated by the naive response of Eudoxus who asks,

    Doe you blame this in them, which I would otherwise have thought to have bene worthie of good accounte....for I have redd that in all ages, Poetes have bene had in speciall reputacion...many brave yonge myndes have often tymes, thorough the hearinge, the praises of famous Eulogies of worthie men songe and reported unto them, bene stirred upp, to affect like commondacions, and to strive unto the like deserts. (Spenser 1934, 95)

    In the process of analyzing Irish bardic poetry, Eudoxus recounts English Humanist arguments in support of poetry dating back at least to Sir Thomas Elyot. 5

12. Irenius' rebuttal does not argue against the virtue of poetry, but instead carefully classifies what kind of 'poet' is acceptable. He points out that 'such Poetes as in theire writynge, doe laboure to better the manners, and through the sweete baite of theire numbers to steale into the yonge spirites a desire for honour and vertue [are wourthie] to be had in great respect' (Spenser 1934, 95; emphasis mine). Although the ancient poets Eudoxus cited employ the same means as the Irish bards, those means are re-inscribed significantly as written. Orality, Ireland, and incivility, are placed in opposition to literacy, England, and civility. The oral nature of the Irish bardic art is emphasised quickly by Eudoxus who marvels 'what kynde of speaches they can fynde or what face they can putt on to prayse such lewd persons as lyve so lawleslie and lycenciouslye' (Spenser 1934, 96). The Irish bard is the underside of what Castiglione and Puttenham proposed. He is Castiglione's 'cunning prince-pleaser', but one who 'dissembles' tyrants and ignorant people. In the absence of a centralised court, the skills of the poet present the greatest challenge, rather than accouterment, to the monarch. Irenius makes it clear that the Irish bards favor those who 'for the most parte...[do] hurte...the Englishe'. The indeterminacy of the ends of poetic art is highlighted by the fact that the Irish bards employ 'goodlie glose and painted shew' which is 'borrowed, even from the praises which are proper unto vertue yt self' (Spenser 1934, 97). Their poetic art, like so many other aspects of the English colonial experience in Ireland, turns out to be the evil twin of that for which the English domestically strive. Wheras at the end of the sixteenth century, English poets were still working to prove the humanist claims that poetry moved men to virtuous action within the political arena, the Irish were envisaged as being so successful in this project that one of the premises for cultural conquest rested upon dismantling the bardic order.

13. This aspect is evident in the writing of Spenser's fellow Munster planter, Sir William Herbert, who likewise stressed the importance of suppressing the bards in his Croftus Sive de Hibernia Liber (c. 1590). In his treatise, Herbert highlights the need for 'the repression of those evil triflers whom / they call 'poets' or 'rhymers' and who excite / the unstable minds of fierce men to / rebellion and crime' (Herbert1992, 105). In his analysis, Herbert goes so far as to conclude his treatise by returning to the question of the bards and providing his own pseudo-orphic distich of versus rapportati to replace the bardic poetry and reform the polity. 6 Although English poets and poetry seemed to be waning in political importance near the end of Elizabeth's reign, their offices in Gaelic Ireland were inversely perceived by these same authors as gaining in importance.

14. After the final breakdown of Gaelic law and society in Ireland, these writers' insights were to be emblematised for English audiences in the picture of the Irish anti-Orpheus, the anti-heroical poet of the colonial frontier. It is the frequency with which, without qualification, later writers were able to refer to Irish colonial efforts through Orpheus that testifies to the determinacy that representation was to gain as English policy gained coherence and direction. These writers used Orpheus to allude to something their audience 'already knew'. As the political and military dangers in Ireland lessened throughout the first two decades of the sixteenth century, so lessened the indeterminacy of the metaphoric representation of the Irish poets. When the Gaelic poets were no longer perceived as being able to move the Irish polity, or no longer in possession of such a population to move, they could finally be depicted in a succinct, fixed way.

15. In 1610, three years after the Flight of the Earls, the unforetunately tireless polemicist and soldier Barnaby Riche wrote:

    These lying authorities, do evermore engender ignorance, & there is nothing that hath more led the Irish into error than lying Historiographers - their Croniclers, their Bardes, their Rythmers, and such other their lying Poets; in whose writinges they do more relie than they do in the holy Scriptures....This is such a whetstone to their ambitious desires, and being thus made drunke with these lying reportes of their Auncestors worthinesse, that they thinke themselves to be reprocheded for ever, if they should not be as apt & ready to run into al manner of mischief, as their fathers were afore them....being thus drowned in ignorance, they think it to be the true high-way to happinesse for every man to do what hee list, and do therefore seek to free themselves from Lawe, Justice, and reason because they would not be brideled or compelled to obey, either to duty or honestie. (Riche 1610, 3).

    Instead of cordoning off the bards as an oral, Irish tradition versus an English, written one, Riche groups the whole of the Irish cultural tradition - written and oral - together and places them over against the written tradition of England, Protestantism, and the Bible. By couching the cultural conflict between the English and the Irish in such terms, Riche can finally portray the Irish as completely beyond reformation. Riche's imaginative triumph may be seen in his ability to transform the frequently employed 'Scythian' characteristics of the Irish towards a more expedient end. Bridging between the classical writings of Herodotus and the recent accounts of the New World, Riche declares: 'The wilde, uncivill Scythians doe forbeare to be cruell the one against the other. The Canibals, devourers of mens flesh, doe leave to bee fierce amongst themselves, but the Irish, without all respect, are ever most cruel to their very next neighbours' (Riche 1610, 18). 7 By returning the Irish to the classical texts from which their descriptions first arose and relating them with the 'canibals' of the native Caribbean (Hulme 1986, 45-87), Riche is able finally to dismiss them altogether from the scheme of civilization. Law, justice, and reason which were undone by Irish poets have proved universal and, according to Riche, need to be properly applied in the absence of the Irish now that their age of orphic sedition had come to an end.

16. A similar optimism is evident in the writings of Fynes Moryson. Recounting his service under Lord Mountjoy during his triumphant campaign in Ireland (1600-1603), Moryson characterised the Irish bards activities in significant past tense, writing:

    The wild or mere Irish have a generation of poets, or rather rhymers vulgarly called bards, who in their songs used to extol the most bloody, licentious men, and no others, and to allure their hearers, not to the love of religion and civil manners, but to outrages robberies, living as outlaws, and contempt of the magistrates' and King's laws. Alas, how unlike unto Orpheus, who, with his sweet harp and wholesome precepts or poetry, labored to reduce the rude and barbarous people from living in the woods, to dwell civilly in towns and cities, and from wild riot to moral conversation. (Moryson 1983, 202)

    The English colonial Orpheus 'labors' with 'precepts or poetry' in this instance. In a metaphoric shift similar to that found in Francis Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients (1609), Orpheus passes easily from the poetic to the judicial realms. For Bacon, Orpheus is 'a man admirable and truly divine, who being master of all harmony subdued and drew all things after him by sweet and gentle measures' (Bacon 1905, 834). Poetry, philosophy, and civility remained linked, but 'law' now begins to replace these three distinct aspects through a heightened specificity of the metaphoric representation of the Irish poets and the powers of poetry in general. Signifying this change, Moryson concludes his treatise on a new note, 'If Orpheus himself could not make those stones and trees dance after his harp, then Hercules and Theseus must make them follow with their clubs' (Moryson 1983, 235). With Smyth, Derricke, Spenser, and Herbert, the political success of bardic poetry had been depicted as the failure of civilization in Ireland. With the 'civilizing conquest' complete, the aesthetic failure of Irish Poetry now marks the political failure of Ireland.

17. The final colonial appropriation of this metaphor may be seen when it is successfully applied far off the declared paths of poetry. In the triumphant conclusion of Sir John Davies's True Discovery he claimed 'the clock of the civil government is now well set, and all the wheels thereof do move in order. The strings of this Irish harp, which the civil magistrate doth finger, are all in tune...and make a good harmony in this commonweal' (Davies 1988, 223). The English magistrate has finally taken the place of the Irish bard, and he has done so with the instrument of the common law. Writing to Lord Burleigh in 1589, Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, Sir Robert Gardiner prefaced this sort of transformation during an earlier cessation of violence. Gardiner related the success of the recent judicial circuits through Ulster in significantly orphic terms:

    If it would please his Lordship to continue yearly the sending of justices in circuit...I stand persuaded that it would spare much blood and more treasure breed peace and bring knowledge even to the most barbarous; as eyewitness...I do affirm, I saw a most rare obedience, even amongst the best yet most wild, yielding to and calling for justice, each with marvelous patience, though to loss of life. (Hamilton and Atkinson 1867-1905, 4:289).

    The easy adaptation of this myth throughout these Elizabethan writings attests to the slow unfolding of the fact that 'moving men to virtuous action' means something very different in a colonial context such as Elizabethan Ireland.

18. Outlining the textual intersections between nascent English poetics and the Tudor conquest of Ireland as it was presented to an English readership highlights precisely the 'articulacy of authority' about which Bhaba writes in the epigraph to this discussion. Investigating the articulations of English poetry against the characterizations of non-English, in this case Gaelic, poets may ultimately illustrate as much about the assumptions underlying colonization as they do about the civilising assumptions underlying poetry written within this humanist tradition. In an early post-colonial discussion, Albert Memmi surmised: 'The characterization and role of the colonized occupies a choice place in colonialist ideology; a characterization which is neither true to life, or in itself incoherent, but necessary and inseparable within that ideology' (Memmi 1957, 88). The depiction of the Irish bards at the conclusion of the Tudor conquest of Ireland provides one important instance of such a characterization. Through their 'anti-Orphic' activities, the Irish bards provided a significant example of the political efficacy which English poetry sought during this brief period of time. Because of its colonial context, though, the English representation of the Irish bard affirmed these wishes for political power while simultaneously declaring the untenability of a foreign culture where such a situation actually existed.

Notes

1. Humphrey Tonkin has written: 'Perhaps because we know so much about the imperial ideal in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and because we understand how historical and political myth was mobilized to justify British Empire, we fail to appreciate that the idiom of British imperialism, and the myths and images supporting it, were the creations, at least in part, of the Elizabethans' (Tonkin 1989, 21). One of these myths was the civilising potential and responsibility of the poet as represented by Orpheus. Thomas H. Cain writes: 'Orpheus - the musician who charms, controls, and transforms the world - offers the ambitious Renaissance poet an apt symbol of himself....it is the Renaissance humanists who bring Orpheus to his fullest development as prototype of the compellingly articulate man, the glorified orator or poet. It is the humanists who promote the idea of a primarily literary culture; who shift the emphasis in the trivium from logic to rhetoric; who make the formal oration the goal of education; who equate eloquence and civilization. And it is the humanists who quite naturally find in Orpheus a convenient culture-hero triumphantly symbolizing the goal of their rhetorical programme' (Cain 1971, 24-5). In Elizabethan Ireland, these same poets saw that programme in a concomitantly literary and political context.

2. In their insightful study of the development of educational theories and practices throughout the early modern period, Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton have observed that 'wherever humanists educators set about providing further education for a minority of the population, the goals of that education were as Cicero had defined them: the production of a small, politically active minority who were heirs to a mature foreign culture, and who were thereby (it is claimed) hallmarked as of the requisite moral and intellectual caliber to make substantial contributions to their own developing communities' (Jardine and Grafton 1986, 220). Another important study of the educational, humanist view of Orpheus is provided in the Kirsty Cochrane's useful study, 'Orpheus Applied: Some Instances of His Importance in the Humanist View of Language' Review of English Studies 29.73 (1968): 1-13.

3. A representative list of the texts which have followed the important publication of D. B. Quinn's Elizabethans and the Irish includes: Canny 1983, Brady 1986, Bradshaw 1978, Coughlan 1989, Bradshaw, Hadfield and Maley 1993, Ellis 1995, Fogarty 1996 McCabe 1991 and Hadfield 1997.

4. Sidney defined 'heroical verse' as that which 'doth not only teach and move to a truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high and excellent truth; who maketh magnanimity and justice shine throughout all the misty fearfulness and foggy desires'(Sidney 1965, 119).

5. Elyot wrote that youths 'inflamed by the reading of noble poets, daily more and more desireth to have the experience in those things that they so vehemently do commend in that they write of...[hence, they] do run into battle, regarding no peril, as men all inflamed in martial courage' (Elyot 1907, 33).

6. At the conclusion of his treatise, Herbert suggests that certain poems and hymns be translated into Irish and circulated throughout the country. As one example of such a song, he offers: 'The dreadful underworld I subdue with my singing; / bloodstained monsters I soften with my sweetness; / savage men I govern with my lyre' (Herbert 1992, 115).

7. R. F. Jones makes reference to a 1584 translation of Herodotus' Histories by 'B. R[ich]', perhaps providing a solid textual link between Riche and these classical texts (1953, 25). Yet, by the time Riche contributed to early modern English discourse on Ireland, this classical connection had already been well established.

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