Ó MUIRGHEASA, Énrí. Céad de Cheoltaibh Uladh.

Átha Claith: M.H. MacGiolla agus a Mhac, 1915. Octavo. An chéad chló. Crown octavo. pp. xxviii, 348. Green cloth, titled in black. Previous owner‟s signature on front endpaper Úna Ní Róibín‟, with two pages of notes by Máire Ní Róibín loosely inserted. A very good copy. Scarce.
Jisc Library Hub locates 6 copies only.
Collected and edited by Enrí Ó Muirgheasa, first edition in old Irish with the introduction in English. “This is the first volume of modern Irish Ulster poetry ever published. Collections of songs and poems by living Irish writers have, no doubt, appeared in recent years, but their contents can not be regarded as Irish poetry. In their ideas, their metres, their petty end-rhyme, and above all, in the complete absence of internal assonance that most essential characteristic of modern Irish verse - they are as English as Moore’s Melodies, and are merely Irish in the accident of the words being Irish. Their writers - good Irishmen and ardent lovers of the Irish Language - are not, withal, men steeped in the wealth of Irish poetic literature of the last three hundred years, and their productions are not a new and natural leafing and branching of that once luxurious tree, but are rather shoots of English origin grafted on to it, and never destined to bear either flowers or fruit. Probably no race ever loved poetry as the Irish race did. The poet was revered, honoured, and not seldom feared, and fabulous prices we are told were often paid for a single poem. Every clan had its poets, and when the clans disappeared every parish and district had one or more poets. Their songs and poems were intensely Irish, and constituted-along with the tales-the mental food of the people, who eagerly learned them, rehearsed them at the fireside, sang them at the plough, the loom, or the spinning wheel, crooned them over the cradle, chanted them at the wake, wept over them at times, and thus handed them down to succeeding generations, until we find, even in our own day, that many an Irish speaker can sing or rehearse over a thousand lines of Irish verse” - Introduction

[L3 3C Two copies]