Cover art is ‘Grey Abbey in County Down’ by F.C. Varley

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Book of Leinster

Notes: This is an extraordinary example of Middle Irish satirical verse (áer), written by Fland Manistrech deploying rapid-fire lists of grotesque names, insults, and mock-descriptions to lampoon the Tromdám, the legendary band of poets led by Seanchan Torpéist whose excessive demands on hospitality became notorious in Irish literary tradition. The poem revels in invented or distorted names, sound-play, and deliberate obscurity, making it one of the most challenging texts in the corpus. Many of the “names” are likely comic coinages rather than real individuals, and the cumulative effect is one of gleeful, piling ridicule. Fland Manistrech (died 1056) was one of the great bardic poets of medieval Ireland.

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Fland Manistrech sang:

1. O Gilla, caller of many grades, among troops and gathered companies — what are the names, enumerated, of the household of the Tromdám?
2. Let us count their chosen pursuit — fitting their wounded portion — dark, swift, wretched, the crooked, quarrelsome, answering tribe.
3. Froechán of the many-headed rabble, with a following of disease-ridden, sickly kin — the crew of the filthy book-satchels: Biniet and Lebarcham.
4. Lomm Lúath — no great landowner — a stooped, crooked figure at his wretched pursuits, heavy and miserable after affliction, worthless and slack.
5. […] of Clíach, cramped, cup-dry — a wretched four […] they shall be in the land of deceitful hell — these are their three young lords.
6. The trio of noisy women, against whom summer’s sacred feasting is sharp-sided — Doerdrec, Dardul the hot-tempered, Caelchret of the black bones and the belted waist.
7. The three fools of their following — close was their ugliness — Broimm is not a gentle word — Ochsud and Ersaire.
8. Death is grey and many-battled — of the belching, swelling calamities — the branch of the crooked, worm-eaten crabapples — the thin oat-gruel of Cappall the mad.
9. The trio of strong, wretched, stubborn men — submitted to by clear, habitual, gripping deeds, for the grasping of dark, habitual crimes — Sond, Sacc, and Sappad the hollow.
10. Their three women fit for cursing — whatever gnaws at them with crooked destruction — Gloedad, Garrmar, Gerrchostlud — overcome, dragged, heavily prostrated.
11. The trio of smiths of the rough, dirty bellows — a brightness of sickness, of vocal abuse — Gin, Grot, the screaming, shriek-working — Bir, Brot, the hot-carrying, scalding ones.
12. The wife of every man, with her due — she was no tangle of great license — Srianbalc, Slúagbalc, Sennalud — Mianat, Gualdat, the dark-grasping.
13. The wife of the boor, without bloom — a degree upon our crooked, grabbing ones — Bangnuis, Burdond the lively, and Srubdond of Sligo.
14. Carróc — she was no yellow-head — she was the great, cursed she-lump — over the ridge-sod of the known, dark company — and Corróc the stooped, the conspiring.
15. Their people of equal ugliness — against every sharp, sectioned brightness — long toward the labored west — Gat, Brat, Ruidiud the lawful.
16. Their women of angry dignity — there is no stable witness for them — their traveling expedition returns — Liag, Cíar, Cingit the quarrelsome.
17. The swift distributors — for the snatching of withered scraps — Goll, Scicg, Genán of the rough martyrdom — Neman and Dergslecta.
18. The destruction of grain with its blight — a territory without famous plundering — a rod for the steady dripping in rows — a son for the ruining of a multitude.
19. Olc Aí — he was a man of great terror — dealing wounds every day in bookish rambling — he raised Scipul of the scruple-cry at the son of Gigur of the grinding groan.
20. Mang — by whom his memory was defeated — Bel of the prophetic field with its crawling — the two foster-sons of the throat-bound pair — his two foster-daughter girls.
21. They were an accursed household — not earning their driven reckoning — no polished, smooth-famous trim was there — they were no troop of lads.
22. Gruc, Grác — ugly, groaning — Grungat the loud-mouthed, fork-limbed — brittle, crashing, blundering, spike-mouthed — honied, bitter, greatly dishonorable.
23. The belching, lively, small-chanting — she is the turbulent, pilfering one — a framework of harbors, of dog-chanting, of first-singing — a surly, pilfering host.
24. Twelve hags of fitting rank — for that fine household — without the deserving of householding — the household of the Tromdám.
25. Destruction of the lump-backed host of Eochaid overtook them — by whom the fair sword was found — it was a hollow of treacherous, sinful laceration for the rough, lad-like host.

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