Not even the great Shakespeare placed as much importance on poems as the Irish in the medieval times. To a large extent, great epic poems about life, love, and death dictated Irish history and culture. In fact, the Irish used poems to teach their children the proper ways to conduct themselves as well.

The majority of Irish poetry of the Middle Ages reflected the harsh realities of life, which meant they were about wars and the heroes who died honorably. Bards, the men who composed and then passed on these poems, would use them to teach life lessons to others. In those times, children were expected to grow up to be great leaders and warriors so they needed to learn wisdom, patience, honor, strength, and a host of other qualities. When a boy was fully-grown, he would know all the great stories of his ancestry by heart and he would be encouraged to strive to be like the heroes in those epic poems. The poems that weren’t about wars were almost always about family. Some good examples include Táin Bó Cúalnge , one of Ireland's most famous epic poems, as well as A Mhuireadhach, meil do sgín, a poem about a king and a poet taking up monkhood.

However, bards were not solely poets. While a poet wrote verses on inspiration, a bard was a combination of poet, chronicler, and satirist. From an early age, bards were taught the intricacies of composing inspirational verses. The poems they wrote were usually extremely long. When bards were employed, their job was to sing their employer’s praises to the heavens as well as to discredit anyone who crossed them. Some bards were also responsible for the entire oral history of their clan. Since most peasants could not read or write, the only way they were able to learn their history at all was to listen to bards tell the stories. Most bards had memorized verses and poems that were hundreds of years old praising the deeds of heroes long dead.

Most Irish poems encouraged audience participation as well. Bards were not just reciting poetry, they were telling colorful stories, and they always worked their charms to draw their audience into the tales. The spontaneous give-and-take between a bard and his listeners was a magical connection as people would sit awake all night, singing along to the songs, cheering when the heroes were victorious, and sobbing in desperate times, totally captivated by the bard.

Although it may sound odd today, poetry was pivotal in medieval Ireland’s society. Without these medieval Irish poems, much of Ireland’s rich history would now be lost because none of it was recorded until well after most of the battles had taken place. The poems also preserved many of Ireland’s oldest legends so the present generation can read about them. Without those poems and the influence they had on the Irish people, Ireland would be a very different place today.