page_title: Luke Gernon
section_title: A Discourse of Ireland (1620)
hierarchical_section_title: Luke Gernon / A Discourse of Ireland (1620)
caption_attribution_description: English: Dublin Castle and Black Pool
context_page_description: Luke Gernon was an English-born judge who held high office in seventeenth-century Ireland. He is best remembered today for his manuscript called A Discourse of Ireland. The Discourse was apparently written in 1620, and was first published in 1904. He had several notable descendants, including his grandson, the poet Nicholas Brady, and Maziere Brady, a long-serving Lord Chancellor of Ireland in the nineteenth century.
context_section_description: The  manuscript called  A Discourse of Ireland, first published in 1904, seems  to have been a  long letter which Gernon wrote to an unnamed friend in England. The tone of the Discourse is  generally friendly to the Irish people but it is  also somewhat condescending, and written entirely from the viewpoint of an English colonist. Gernon, unlike many Englishmen of his era, did  not regard the Irish people as being either savage or uncivilised, but believes that they will benefit from English influences; rather coarsely, Ireland is described as a young woman or "nymph" who needs to be "occupied". Significantly he heaps praise on Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, for many years the dominant English settler in Munster, (and whose  son Lord Orrery  was his friend and patron), especially for his improvements to the recently founded town of Bandon (although Lord Cork was not, as he sometimes claimed, the actual founder of Bandon).
  There are short but valuable descriptions the principal  Irish towns (although he admits that his descriptions of Galway, Derry and Coleraine   which he never visited, are based on hearsay). Dublin, which he compares unfavourably to Bristol, is not surprisingly described in more detail than the others: he notes that Dublin is  the most frequented place in Ireland, but gibes that this is  "more for convenience than Majesty".  There is a  sketch of Dublin Castle ("our Whitehall"), by which Gernon was rather impressed: the Castle was  encircled by "a huge and mighty wall four square and of incredible thickness, and  (there are) many fair buildings within".  There are also descriptions of  the two Cathedrals- St Patrick's Cathedral is the more "vast and ancient", but Christchurch is in better repair-  of the University of Dublin. and the original Four Courts (forerunners of the present Four Courts, though they were located on the other side of the River Liffey, near Chistchurch).
  Limerick, his own home for many years, is also described in some detail.  The bridge divides the north town from the south town, the south town (Irish Town) now being largely decayed. He praises the north town (English Town) as "magnificent" in appearance: the High Street  is  built of marble, in the form of a single building from one gate to another, "like the colleges in Oxford, so that at my first entrance it did amaze me", although he cannot resist a gibe about the dirt and foul smells.  (A Spanish visitor in 1584 had given a similarly flattering picture of the city, though without reference to the dirt). He praises St. Mary's Cathedral: "not large but very lightsome, and by the providence of the Bishop (Bernard Adams) fairly beautified within, and as gloriously furnished with singing and organs".   King John's Castle was the seat of the Provincial Court of Munster, of which Gernon was a member (this helps date the document to 1620), and of which he gives a brief portrait.
  He defends the Irish people against the charge of being savages: "be not afraid – the Irishman is no cannibal to eat you up nor lousy Jack to offend you". He does deplore the general standard of cleanliness among the Irish, and dislikes Irish food, although he found the roast mutton tolerable, and enjoyed Irish whiskey. The principal Irish fault in his view is a certain servility of manner, which, perhaps surprisingly, he acknowledges as being natural in a conquered people.  Irish women he praises highly for their beauty, charm and virtue, although he regretted that they age more quickly than English women do.  Their virtue, he noted, does not prevent them from drinking with male guests, while it is customary for the men to kiss all the women present. His use of the terms  Bean Tí  to describe the "woman of the house"   and "deoch ar doras" for "drink at the door" or "the parting glass"  shows that he had picked up some. Gaelic phrases.
  He describes in detail the Irish style of dress, in particular the distinctive fringed mantle worn by the men, and the interior of the typical Irish tower house: "they are built very strong, with narrow stairs, for security"
caption: Dublin Castle
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