Kildare Poems, Kildare

The Kildare Poems or Kildare Lyrics are a group of sixteen poems written in an Irish dialect of Middle English and dated to the mid-14th century. Together with a second, shorter set of poems in the so-called Loscombe Manuscript, they constitute the first and most important linguistic document of the early development of Irish English in the centuries after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. The sixteen poems contain both religious and satirical contents. They are preserved in a single manuscript, where they are scattered between a number of Latin and Old French texts. The conventional modern designation "Kildare poems" refers both to the town of Kildare in Ireland, which has been proposed as their likely place of origin, and to the name of the author of at least one of the poems, who calls himself "Michael Kildare". The poems have been edited by W. Heuser and A. Lucas. ()