Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill

Works

Life
?1743-?1800; author of the 390-line Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire [“The Keen over Art O’Leary”, 1773], purportedly an ex tempore lament in the tradition of mná caointe - though probably a literary production; 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 against her family’s wishes in 1767, with whom 3 children, incl. 2 sons who were sent to Paris for their education;
 
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 five guineas [£5.5.0]; 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 her 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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Works
Editions
  • Seán Ó Tuama, ed., Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (1961);
Translations
  • Frank O’Connor in Kings, Lords and Commons (1962);
  • Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella, eds, An Duanaire, Poems of The Dispossessed (1981);
  • Malachi McCormick, Lament for Art O|Leary, new translation with an introduction (NY: Stone Street Press 2011), 60pp. [full-length 390-line version; bound Japanese 4-hole binding].
Note: McCormick has also issued an edition of The Land of Cockayne [The Irish Utopia], by Michael of Kilda[i]re, 1305.

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Criticism
  • Rachel Bromwich, ‘The Keen for Art O’Leary’, in Éigse, V (1945-47);
  • Brendan Kennelly, ‘Poetry and Violence’, in History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature, ed. Joris Duytschaever & Geert Lernout [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.
See also Sarah E. McKibben, Endangered Masculinities in Irish Poetry 1540-1780 (UCD Press 2010), 208pp. [quotes ‘D’umhlaidís Sasanaigh (dhó) le haon chorp eagla / The English used to bow (to him) for sheer terror’].

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Commentary
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.)

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References
Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares, and Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ire land’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.

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Notes
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.

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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.)

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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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