‘Whence is the Origin of the Gaels?’: Remembering the Past in Irish Pseudohistorical Poems

This article explores the construction of Irish identity in the pseudohistorical poems of two authors, Máel Muru Othna and Gilla Cóemáin. In their poems, the memory of the past - real or imagined - is used to establish a continuity for the Irish as a clearly delineated people from the dawn of time to the authors’ medieval present.