Life
?1720-1803; b. [Lattin], Co. Tipperary; blind from birth; studied at bardic
school in Co. Limerick; life of poverty; poetry, Ar Bruach Coille Muaire,
ed. Risteárd Ó Foghludha (Dublin 1939). DIW OCIL
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References
Robert Welch, ed., Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (Clarendon Press:
Oxford 1996), gives information: probably albino; used conventional amhrán metre;
deals mostly with love; sympathies being strongly Jacobite; invented the
personification of Ireland as Cathleen Ni Houlihan (Caitlín ní
hUallacháin). Risteárd Ó Fughludha ed. ‘several
of his poems’, in Ar Bruach &c. (1939).
Absit: There are no entries on Ó hIfearnáin in Henry Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988); Dictionary of National Biography; The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed. Seamus Deane (Derry: Field Day 1991); Charles A. Read, The Cabinet of Irish Literature (London, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast & Edinburgh: Blackie & Son [1876-78]) or Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904).
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Notes
‘[W. B. Yeats] tried, though Henley’s entrée, to contribute
a life of a blind Gaelic bard named Hefernan [sic] to the Dictionary of National
Biography. No such biography appeared.’ (See John P. Frayne, The
Uncollected Prose of W. B. Yeats, Vol. I, 1970; Pref., p.24.)
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