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98 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
“Few incomers could have remained uninfluenced by bardic teaching in a country where the man of song and his colleges ranked almost as high in popular regard as the professor of theology and his monastic institutions. We know of at least one celebrated pupil who fell under their influence, Alfred, King of the Northumbrian Saxons, who passed... his time in study while in Ireland... and when leaving it wrote a poem of 60 lines in the Irish language and metre which he must have learned from the bards, upon what he had found there. If this be really his poem, only modified in course of transcription-and it may very well be his,-the intention seems to have been to pay for the hospitality he had received with a song to the whole nation. Alfred was called Flann Fionn by the Irish, and his mother was of Irish descent.”
James Clarence Mangan made a fine translation of the poem a few verses of which are included here:
Alfred’s Itinerary
I found in Innisfail the fair,
In Ireland, while in exile there,
Women of worth, both grave and gay men, Many clerics and many laymen.
I travelled its fruitful provinces round, And in every one of the five I found — Alike in church and in palace hall — Abundant apparel and food for all.
Gold and silver I found, and money, Plenty of wheat and plenty of honey. I found God’s people rich in pity; Found many a feast and many a city.
“I also found in Armagh the splendid, Meekness, wisdom, and prudence blended: Fasting as Christ hath recommended,
And noble councillors un transcended.
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