Hanged Harpers and Incinerated Instruments: Tudor Government Policies Towards Irish Poets in the Sixteenth Century

The filid of Ireland, also known as harpers, bards, and rhymers, are a mysterious group, who have gone relatively uncelebrated in history despite the large amount of influence they had in their own time. Their eventual downfall has generally been attributed to the dearth of patronage that resulted from the Flight of the Earls in 1602, though in fact they had been the targets of a gradually escalating English legal campaign for at least a half a century prior to that. The filid were a highly educated, highly influential presence in Irish culture. Their influence in nurturing Irish resistance to Anglicization and militant rebellion to English encroachment made them a threat to the New English regime, as did their effect on the loyalties of the Old English. As a result, the filid became targets of the English government, facing legal attacks that intensified as the century progressed