Story-telling in seventeenth-century Ireland

There were, not longer since than the time I have mentioned,* some remainders of the Runic poetry among the Irish. The great men of their Septs, among the many officers of their family, which continued always in the same races, had not only a physician, a huntsman, a smith, and such like, but a poet and a tale-teller; the first recorded and sung the actions of their ancestors, and entertained the company at feasts; the latter amused them with tales when they were melancholy and could not sleep: and a very gallant gentleman of the North of Ireland has told me, of his own experience, that in his wolf-huntings there, when he used to be abroad in the mountains three or four days together, and lay very ill a-nights, so as he could not well sleep, they would bring him one of these tale-tellers, that, when he laid down, would begin a story of a king, or a giant, a dwarf and a damsel, and such rambling stuff, and continue it all night long in such an even tone that you heard it going on, whenever you awaked; and he believed nothing any physicians give could have so good and so innocent effect, to make men sleep in any pains or distempers of body or mind.

*‘thirty or forty years’ before the time of writing

Sir William Temple (1628–1699)

from ‘Of Poetry’ (1690)


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