Irish Poetic Forms

Irish poetry is a fairly complex topic, covering several eras and different forms.  For now, this page will concentrate on the oldest form of Irish poetry, known as the alliterative period.  Later on, if demand is enough, I will put in some of the later forms, known as the syllabic period.  That is a much more complex subject, though, involving poetic concepts that are extremely difficult to use effectively.

Basic Structure

At its base, early Irish poetry was deceptively simple.  Each line would consist of a fixed number of stressed syllables (usually four), and any number of unstressed syllables.  This, obviously, derives from the early poetry’s use as a means of writing bardic song.  Each stressed syllable would correspond to a major beat in the music.  Each line would be, further, divided into two halves, usually by a pause.  For instance:

Fo-chén Cónall,           críde lícce,

Lóndbruth lóga,           lúchar éga,

Gúss flánd férge          fo chích cúrad.

Another thing you may notice is that all of the half-lines end in disyllabic words.  This should be considered another rule of the poetic form we are discussing.

A second example will show how the number of unstressed syllables can vary:

Fo-chén Lábraid          lúathlām ar chláideb,

Láichdu ōcaib, úallchu múrib!

Mánnraid góssa,         gníid cáthu,

Críathraid ócu,            tócaid lóbru,

Táirnid tríunu, fo-chén Lábraid!

            Alliteration

Alliteration was the primary tool of the poet.  Rhyming did not occur as the means of creating repetitive rhythm.  Irish alliteration occurred according to very specific rules.  These rules of alliteration are quoted (with small changes) from Kuno Meyer’s Primer of Irish Metrics, published in 1909 by the Dublin School of Irish Learning.

• Any vowel may alliterate with any other.
• A consonant can alliterate only with itself repeated, or, except f, s, and p, with its lenited form, so that e.g. c may alliterate also with ch (i.e. χ), and t with th (i.e. þ, later h).
• In Old and Early-Middle Irish poetry, s, and any combination of s with other consonants, such as sc, sl, sm, etc., may alliterate.  In Later-Middle and Early-Modern Irish poetry, s followed by a stop (sc, sp, st) can only alliterate with itself and the same stop, while s followed by a vowel and s followed by a liquid or nasal may alliterate with each other.
• In a word beginning with lenited f (i.e. fh), the following sound counts for alliteration, e.g. d’iarraid fhianbothe, a chrīch uile d’ fholmugud.  However, fh is found occasionally to alliterate with f, as: do fheiss la Feirb, which is an alliteration merely for the eye.
• Lenited s (i.e. sh = h) before vowels should alliterate only with itself repeated.  (But it is also found to alliterate with th, e.g. dēna mo thinchosc di shain.)  However, this is always the case where it precedes a consonant.
• When n- or h occur before vowels (in eclipse), they do not count for alliteration.
• Due to some changes in orthography, and as these rules became traditional, c may alliterate with g, t with d, p with b, b with mb, and d with nd.
• Only unstressed words (called iarmbērla) may stand between alliterating words.

Now, these rules obviously need to see some modification to be used for poetry in other languages, such as English.  They really only apply to Gaelic tongues (Scots Gaelic, Irish, and Manx), and most specifically to the Irish.  Perhaps the easiest would be to use Anglo-Saxon alliterative rules, but that seems unsatisfying to me.  Unfortunately, such a project is beyond my own meager poetic skills, so I will have to leave that to someone else.

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