IRISH LITERARY SOCIETY. A society for the study of the Irish language, literature, history, music. and art, founded in London in 1892 by a small coterie of young Irish men and women, with the eniiperation of leading Irish lit erary men in England and Ireland. The society has a large library of Irish books, and during each season provides lectures on Irish subjects, and social entertainments fur its members and their friends. The membership is. about Six hundred, and includes the names of many promi nent among whom may be men tioned Bev. Stoptord Brooke, \V. 13. Yeats, Justin McCarthy, and Barry O'Brien. The society, though located in London. is well represented in Ireland.
IRISH ((:Awe) LITERATURE. Irish lit erature shows an unbroken, if varying, con tinuity front the seventh ur eighth century until the nineteenth. in its earlier periods it is of especial interest, mid in some kinds of production ranks with the richest literatures of median-al Europe.
Three periods are regularly recognized by scholar- in the history of the Irish language: old Irish, from the time of the (mrliost monu ments through the tenth Middle Irish, from the eleventh century to the seventeenth; and Modern Irish• from the seventeenth century to the present time. It is convenient to follow the same divisions in treating the history of Irish literature, though there is 110 such well defined distinction between the literary produc tions of successive periods as between the cor responding stages of the language.
OLD Inistl. There is an abundance of material for the study of the Old Irish language. The most archaic stage is represented by the Ogam ipseriptions. some of which date front the MIL and sixth centuries. They contain little besides proper names. but these an- of great interest for the light they throw upon the beginnings of Celtic phonology and inflection. (See 0oAsi.) From the period between the seventh and the tenth century a score or more of manuscripts have been preserved containing thousands of Irish glosses, and on the basis of these a very complete grammar of the Old Irish language has been constructed. Unfortunatel•, only a few
continuous Irish texts exist in any of these early manuscripts. An ancient. Latin-Irish sermon, a short sketch of Saint Patrick's life, a few- poems and incantations—this is about. all that is pre served of the oldest Irish literature in contempo rary copies. We have to wait for the Aliddle Irish manuscripts before we find much direct evidence of its character. However, many of the texts in these later manuscripts are com posed in a language only half contemporary with the writers; they abound in an-hi:lie forms, which make it safe to set them down as being substantially Old Irish, in spite of the circum stances of their preservation. The reason for the scarcity of early literary ill0r111111ellis is to be found in the political conditions of Ireland from the eighth to the tenth century. This was the Viking age. and Ireland with the rest of Western Europe sulTered from the ravages of the Norse men. Monasteries were repeatedly sacked and burned by the Scandinavian invaders, and few libraries survived the struggle. Nearly all the manuseripts of the Old Irish period have been preserved on the Continent.
Minni• lnIsn. In 1014 the Scandinavians were defeated in the battle of Clontarf, and limn that time forth their power in Ireland declined. From the period between about 1100 and about 1500 there has come clown to us a great body of manuscripts containing a vast variety of writings, in both prose and verse. Among the most important of these Middle Irish manuscripts arc the Liter Hymnorum, and the Book of the Dun, written about 111)0; the Book of Lcinster, of the twelfth century; the Yellow Book of Lccan, the Leabliar !treat. (Speckled Book), and the Book of Bullyneolc, all of the fourteenth century; and the Book of Lccan, from about the beginning of the fifteenth.