The arrest in the development of Irish literature, which has been noted as marking the advent of the Normans, continued during the succeeding two centuries. If original literature worthy of the name was then produced, all trace and record of it has been lost.

Yet our annals clearly show that learning and scholarship flourished and were encouraged. They record, year after year, the names of those who were famous as scholars, bards, historians, and lawyers ; they constantly preserve the names of Gaelic chiefs and Norman lords who were conspicuous for their patronage and hospitality to poets and men of learning. Every Gaelic family, and many Norman ones, still had their hereditary bards and historians occupying honoured and privileged positions.

Learned and famous books were produced, as will be shown, but these were mostly compilations. At the time that the new nations were developing popular literature, the Gaelic voice was suppressed. While England, France, Spain and Italy were creating their national languages, and the Renascence was spreading over Europe, the cultured mind of Ireland was forcibly turned back upon the past.

The old intimacy with the Continent was broken in upon and destroyed. The modern nations of Europe were only then being formed, and with them were being created their national literatures. But in Ireland, with its long and glorious tradition of culture and learning, national progress and literary expansion were alike being thwarted by a foreign element which lacked strength and spirit to provide a substitute.

The only interest of the English Crown in the bards, brehons, teachers, and historians of Ireland was devoted to their persecution and destruction.