From Dánta Phiarais Feiritéir, edited by Pádraig Ó Duinnin and published by Conradh na Gaeilge, 1903.
When the present writer first announced, a year ago, the forthcoming publication of the Poems of Pierce Ferriter, he was at once inundated, by many who ought to know better, with questions as to who Pierce Ferriter was, when he lived etc. It is a kind of test case to prove the gross neglect of genuine Irish history and Irish literature from which the people of this island are suffering. Considered from a purely historical point of view, Ferriter was one of the most prominent figures in the Irish Civil Wars, and one of the very noblest characters that adorn the pages of Irish history. He was the last Irish chieftain that held out against the Cromwellian army. For over ten years did he maintain his position amid the fastnesses of Corca Duibhne, defending his people against the inroad of the foreign spoilers. In the course of that period he gave proof of the daring and courage, the valour and magnanimity which are the stuff of which heroes are made. The story of the siege of Tralee Castle, which we relate in the Introduction, reveals the spirit in which he fought for religion, for home, and for country. Cromwell, as we know, looked upon his Irish Campaign as a religious war in which the army of God were divinely directed to extirpate the heathen and the Philistine. But Cromwell was a hypocrite. Ferriter, in language more modest as well as more sincere, looked upon the uprising of Ulster, and its subsequent developments, as a religious war in which Catholics, who had been so long and so cruelly persecuted for their religion, made an effort to recover their liberty. Of his loyalty to the Stuart throne there can be no question, but he felt that that throne was being undermined by fanatics and rebels, and not even his friendship for Lord Kerry could restrain his ardour when the smoke of battle began to darken the western horizon. When Ross Castle fell, Ferriter was induced to come to Killarney, to arrange about terms of peace. The terms were not agreed on, and being promised a safe conduct, he was allowed to proceed homewards, as far as Castlemaine, when he was seized and brought back to Killarney, where he was hanged, in company with a priest and a bishop, about the year 1653. All historians of the period give Ferriter credit for the greatest humanity and even magnanimity in dealing with the garrisons who fell into his hands at Tralee. And this was his reward! No more shameless or senseless crime was committed, even in these days of blood and rapine!
Ferriter was not only a soldier and hero, he was a scholar, and a poet of no ordinary kind. He infuses his personal character into his poetry to a greater degree than any Irish poet with whom we are acquainted. Here we have revealed his tenderer and gentler vein. He appears in his verse as the warm friend, the inconsolable mourner, the sighing lover, the devoted cultivator of song and music, the sincere and self-sacrificing patriot. It is a bitter satire on our neglect of historical teaching that one looks in vain for the name of Ferriter in our manuals of school history.