Life
?1708-1795 [anglice Andrew Magrath; ‘An Mangaire Súgach/Merry
Pedlar’)]; b prob. nr. Kilmallock, Co. Limerick; schoolteacher and
leading member of Maigue school of poets with Seán Ó Tuama
[‘An Ghrinn’]; ‘Slán is ceád ón dtaobh
so uaim’, addressed to Ó Tuama bids farewell to the Croom
locality which he had to leave on account of a sexual indiscretion, 1738;
‘A dhatta dhil’ concerns an attempt to join Church of Ireland
ending in rejection on account of his drinking songs; thereafter driven
from Croom by the Catholic parish priest, reacting with the plaintiff
‘Is fánach faon mé is fraochmhar fuar’; wrote
the Jacobite poem ‘Tá Pruise agus Poland fós ar mearathall’
in 1745; ‘Is fada fá smúit gan inscailt Phoebus’
is an elegy for Ó Tuama, 1775; ‘Is tréith mé,
is feas’s is fann’ expresses mocking regrets for a wastrel existence;
‘Cá háit, cia hé, cá taobh’n-ar
ghluais’ is a late poem on the rootlessnes of the poet; prob. d.
at Kilmallock, where he settled after the death of his friends; called
by Hardiman ‘a jovial, amatory, and political nature, which are current
and popular chiefly in province of Munster’. CAB DIW DIB OCIL
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Works
An tAth. Ó Duinnín, ed., Filídhe
na Máighe (1906); Eigse na Máighe (1906), and
Do. [reiss. edn.] with prefatory essay by Daniel Corkery (1952).
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Notes
Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols.,
1876-78), cites bio-dates ?1723-?1790; b. Limerick, known as ‘Mangaire
Sugach’ [here trans. ‘mixture of drollery’, err.]; selects
"Canticle of Deliverance", "Ol Dah - Song to Drink" [in Irish only], and
"A Fragment - Bloghadh" [Irish and English; deemedf esp. popular in Munster];
a witty, high-spirited, author of a mass of songs of ‘a jovial, amatory,
and political nature, which are current and popular chiefly in province
of Munster’ [acc. Hardiman, and further], ‘[...] as a poet he
not only excelled the mob of English gentlemen who wrote with ease, but
also many of those whom Dr Johnson has designated English poets. His habits
and writings resembled those of Prior. Like him, Magrath delighted in
mean company. His life was irregular, negligent, and sensual. He tried
all styles from the grotesque to the solemn, and has not so failed in
any as to incur derision or disgrace.’ Read remarks that the second
two poems selected here have not previously been translated, the first
presumably being from Hardiman’s collection.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)