Famed account of Gaelic poets showed riches of a starving people

Daniel Corkery’s ‘The Hidden Ireland’, published 100 years ago, will be celebrated at a conference in his native city next week

 Daniel Corkery. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

Next week, scholars and admirers gather in Cork for a conference to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Hidden Ireland, Daniel Corkery’s famed account of Munster Gaelic poets of the 18th century.

How did a book on what could sound like an esoteric backwater of Irish literary studies achieve such prominence when it was published? Why, a hundred years later, is it still considered worthy of attention?