A Learned Mistress

It is part of the legend of Irish history that the Renaissance missed
Ireland completely, but Ireland was a part, however minute, of Europe,
and in their dank and smoky castles, the Irish and Anglo-Irish
aristocracy lived a life that fundamentally differed little from the
life that went on in the castles of the Loire. Isobel Campbell, the
great Countess of Argyle, wrote a poem to her chaplain’s—but really, I
can’t say what—and the joke was taken up by her Campbell kinsmen, who
still wrote classical Irish. She might have written this little poem,
and who will dare to say that it does not breathe the whole spirit of
the Renaissance?

Tell him it’s all a lie;
I love him as much as my life;
He needn’t be jealous of me—
I love him and loathe his wife.

If he kill me through jealousy now
His wife will perish of spite,
He’ll die of grief for his wife—
Three of us dead in a night.

All blessings from heaven to earth
On the head of the woman I hate,
And the man I love as my life,
Sudden death be his fate.


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An Anthology
from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; p.57