Is it based on a true stour or made up?
This is a semi-educated guess, based on what I could find:
There is an old irish poem by a poet named Dearmid O'Sullivan called "The Attributes of Erin". In it, the last verse of each stanza goes,
"When the true and gallant Gael were a n-Erin beo."The song lyrics to Erin Beo were written by a man named Daniel Paul Meskell. There is a line in the song that goes,
"The poet's pen laid dry, the beauty left untold..."I'm guessing (and this is just a guess) that this is a reference to Dearmid O'Sullivan and the Erin Beo in his poem, and that the songwriter was inspired by the poem. But again, I can't find confirmation of that. But it seems like a reasonable explanation.
