The Food Trope in Literature, Poetry, and Songs from the Irish Tradition

The food trope is discernible in the earliest recorded poems and songs within the Irish tradition. In 1948, Robert Graves dubbed it the most ruthless and bitter description in all European literature of an obsessed poet's predicament. This chapter presents an overview from Irish mythology, to the goliardic poetry of the medieval monks, through to the bardic poetry of Gaelic Ireland prior to the Flight of the Earls, and the defeat of the last Gaelic families at the Battles of the Boyne and Aughrim. Hasia R. Diner suggests that Ireland failed to develop an elaborate national food culture and that, unlike writers of other countries, "Irish writers of memoir, poems, stories, political tracts, or songs rarely included the details of food in describing daily life. There has been steady growth in scholarship on Irish food history in recent years providing a more nuanced approach to the dominant narrative which all too often begins and ends with potatoes and famine.