A View of the Present State of Ireland by Edmund Spenser
Channel: My Outcast State
Date: 25/12/2011

This is a dramatic reading from 'A View of the present State of Ireland', a propagandistic pamphlet written in 1596 by Edmund Spenser.  This reading focuses narrowly on a particularly chilling section of the pamphlet, and the imagery and sound effects used seek to highlight the modern reader's revulsion from its genocidal implications.

However, this is not a political video.  If you want to understand the pamphlet better, you can read it in full, free of charge, online:

http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E500000-001/index.html

Here is the text, which also appears in the subtitles.  Elizabethan spelling takes a little getting used to, but if you read it whilst listening to the video it's not hard to understand:

Iren: The end I assure mee will be verie shorte, and much soner then cann bee, in soe great trouble (as yt semeth) hoped for, although there should none of them fall by the sword, nor be slaine by the soldier, yett thus beinge keepte from manurance, and theire cattle from runinge abroade, by this hard restrainte, they would quicklye consume themselves, and devoure one an other. The proof whereof I saw sufficientlye ensampled in those late warrs in Mounster; for notwithstandinge that the same was a most ritch and plentyfull countrye, full of corne and cattell, that you would have thought they could have beene hable to stand longe, yett eare one yeare and a half they weare brought to such wretchednes, as that anye stonye herte would have rewed the same. Out of everye corner of the woode and glenns they came creepinge forth upon theire handes, for theire legges could not beare them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spake like ghostes, crying out of theire graves; they did eate of the carrions, happye wheare they could find them, yea, and one another soone after, in soe much as the verye carcasses they spared not to scrape out of theire graves; and if they found a plott of water-cresses or shamrockes, theyr they flocked as to a feast for the time, yett not able long to contynewe therewithall; that in a shorte space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentyfull countrye suddenly lefte voyde of man or beast: yett sure in all that warr, there perished not manye by the sworde, but all by the extreamytie of famyne which they themselves hadd wrought.