Early modern poetry in transcript: a bardic miscellany (Invited Review Article)

The study of bardic poetry was first placed on a scientific footing through the labours of Osborn Bergin and Eleanor Knott little over one hundred years ago. Others have continued in their footsteps to the present day with the result that over 60% of the extant corpus of bardic poetry had appeared in print in one form or another in 1987.2 This figure has, of course, increased in the intervening years. Nevertheless, a substantial proportion of early modern verse still remains unedited, while some published pieces would benefit from new editions.