In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

xiv NOTE ON THE TExTS The poems in this anthology are arranged chronologically so that the reader can appreciate the evolving relationship between Irish poets and the natural world from the late Tudor period to the Romantic. Since we aim to present the reader with texts that are both true to their original sources and yet readable, we have retained the original capitalisation, spelling and lineation; proper names are given in their original forms. Obvious misprints have been silently corrected. Some substantive changes have been made throughout: (1) the letters ‘u’ and ‘v’, ‘i’ and ‘j’ have been amended to conform with modern usage; (2) the word ‘it’s’ meaning ‘of it’ has been changed to ‘its’; (3) ‘hir’ is amended to ‘her’; (4) the word ‘least’ is amended to its modern form ‘lest’ and (5) the words ‘than’ and ‘then’, often used interchangeably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are amended to their modern forms. The most considerable change, however, is in (6) punctuation. Until the nineteenth century, many authors expected the compositor in the printing house to supply the punctuation for the printed text; this was often done to a set formula. We have therefore made such changes as are necessary to make the texts intelligible. The sources of the texts are listed at the end of the volume. Notes found in the original text are presented as footnotes, in angle brackets . Many of the texts in this anthology are extracts from longer works. An omission is signalled by an ellipsis before the omission except when the omission is of lines before the first line printed here, in which case an ellipsis is printed at the beginning of the extract. Line numbers are keyed to this printing of the texts. Since it is more likely that the reader will dip into this book than read it from beginning to end, some references are explained more than once. ...

Share