It’s a matter for some debate whether the poetry can be taken as a critical source for our history, or for the history of the period. This has been discussed by a number of scholars in recent years and I suppose, as in many things in this area of scholarship too, there is a great deal of disagreement. Some people are more inclined to take them fairly literally as useful reflections of the political situation, than others. Others are inclined to say it’s the same old tale being told century-after-century without any freshness or newness or anything. Others would argue that they do reflect the developing situation, particularly towards the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century.

It’s very difficult to make a generalised statement about them - there are certain poems very definitely which do reflect particular political events. Others have a rather clichéd approach and there’s nothing new about them; and some of them, if they’re written in the 16th century could almost as well have been written in the 13th or 14th - they have the stock phrases praising the chieftain and, in a way, half-begging for more patronage and so on, and praising him and his ancestors and telling his genealogy and all that. That’s kind of the stock-and-trade of these poets, but nevertheless it may be only a small amount but there are some nuggets of gold there among them that are worth examining in more detail.