"Footh and credence"

And, having strayed into the twenty-first century, let one make a hasty return to the seventeenth, to learn what an English observer had to say about Irish bards. Campion, in his "Historie of Ireland--The Firft Booke", writing of "the meere (i.e. pure) Irifth", at p. 18, Cap.VI, wrote:

"One office of the houfe of a great man is a tale-teller (bard) who bringeth his Lord on fleepe, with tales vain and frivolous, whereunto the number give footh and credence."

"For fwy wouldn't they?" asks a Kerry acquaintance. For fwy, indeed!