Life
?1743-?1800; author of caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire [The
Keen over Art O’Leary]’; b. Derrynane, Co. Kerry, one of the
22 children of Dómhnaill Mór Ó Conaill; aunt of Daniel
O’Connell; married at 15 to an O’Connor of Iveragh, an old man
who died six months after; m. Art Ó Laoghaire (1747-73), of Rathleigh
[var. Raleigh House] near Macroom, Captain in the Hungarian Hussars,
against her family’s wishes in 1767; 3 children; Art Ó Laoghaire
proclaimed ‘notoriously infamous’ by High Sheriff of Cork, Abraham
Morris -charges successfully [?rebutted] in court; his mare beat Morris’s
at Macroom races, 1773; refused to sell to Sheriff’s offer of £5;
shot at Carriganimmy [Ir. Carrig an Ime; var. Carriganima] by Abraham’s
henchman after an attempted ambush on Morris at Millstreet, his blood-drenched
mare returning to Rathleigh; according to the poem, Eibhlín Dubh
rode back to Carrig an Ime to declaim the first parts of the Caoineadh
over her husband, and drink his blood; Ó Laoghaire re-buried in
Kilcrea Abbey in inscribed tomb; the Caoineadh written down from
oral tradition. DIB OCIL
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Criticism
Rachel Bromwich, ‘The Keen for Art O’Leary’, Éigse,
V (1945-47).
Seán Ó Tuama, ed., Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (1961).
Frank O’Connor in Kings, Lords and Commons (1962).
Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella, eds, An Duanaire, Poems of The Dispossessed (1981).
Brendan Kennelly, ‘Poetry and Violence’, in Joris Duytschaever & Geert Lernout, eds., History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature [Conference of 9 April 1986; Costerus Ser. Vol. 71] (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1988), pp.5-27.
Declan Kiberd, ‘Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill: The Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.161-81.
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Notes
Seán Ó Tuama speaks of Caoineadh Airt Uí
Laoghaire as ‘liric mhór chorraitheach [a great moving
lyric]’ and ‘cáipéis chruinn fasnéise [accurate
documentary narrative]’ (cited in Declan Kiberd, review of Repossessions,
1996, in Times Literary Supplement, 17 Sept. 1996.)
Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares, and Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s
Women (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994), adds that the soldiers
who shot him were transported, while Morris was shot by O’Leary’s
brother; various eds. of the Caoineadh.
Eilís Dillon: a translation of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire by Dillon, with comments drawn from Peter Levi in an inaugural
lecture at Oxford, 1984, are cited in P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland (1994), p.176-67.
Bob Quinn made the film Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (1975) in the Irish-language, using Brechtian techniques and written in collaboration with John Arden. The film, commissiooned by Official Sinn Féin, and was the first independently-produced Irish language film in Ireland since 1936. (See Conor McCarthy, Modernisation, Crisis and Culture in Ireland, 1969-1992, Four Courts Press 2000, p.181ff.)
Dermot Bolger modelled his play The Lament for Arthur Cleary, dealing with contemporary Dublin, on the Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)