Contention of The Bards - Perspective

Perspective

The poems of the Contention share a sense of national culture, but their political allegiance is clan-centred. This was a period of decline for the court bards, and the fact that they were addressing each other suggests a realisation that their audience was losing its influence, and that few within the new dispensation were paying heed to them.

In the course of the exchange, the theme of North-South rivalry was developed to include a debate about the struggle between tradition and iconoclasm. This allowed the poets to vent their bitterness at the late conquest and colonisation of the country and at the collapse of the political order upon which they depended.

Throughout the Contention, each side had eagerly and jealously claimed James I of Ireland as a descendant in its Milesian lineage (he being descended from Marjorie Bruce whose ancestors included the Gaelic kings of Scotland such as Kenneth McAlpine). Ironically, his crown authority was precisely the instrument by which the traditional Gaelic order was being destroyed in Ireland. The Ireland that the poems traced in their lore was past, and it seems the bards were incapable of adapting their ways. The Contention proved to be the last flourish of Dán Díreach: within decades the great school metres had been abandoned in favour of the looser Amhrán or Aisling, and the esteem in which the bards had been held in Gaelic Ireland was never regained.