BRIAN MAC GIOLLA MEIDHRE, or Merriman, whose poem of the "Midnight Court," contains about a thousand lines with four rhymes in each line, was another native of the County Clare. This amusing and witty poem, one certainly not intended "virginibus puerisque," is a vision of Aoibhill [Eevil], queen of the Fairies of Munster, holding a court, where, when the poet sees it, a handsome girl is in the act of complaining to the queen that in spite of her beauty and fine figure and accomplishments she is in danger of dying unwed, and asking for relief. She is opposed by an old man, who argues against her. She answers him again, and the court finally pronounces judgment. Standish Hayes O'Grady once characterised this poem as being "with all its defects, perhaps the most tasteful piece in the language,"[23] and it is certainly a wonderful example of sustained rhythm and vowel-rhyme. It was written in 1781.
TADHG [TEIG] GAOLACH O'SULLIVAN, of the County Cork, was another of the most popular poets in his day. His earlier poems contained certain indiscretions for which, in later life, he made ample amends by devoting himself solely to religious poetry, and attempting to turn the force of public opinion against vice in every shape, especially drunkenness and immorality. A small volume of his religious poems, probably the best of the kind produced by any of the New School, was printed during his own lifetime in Limerick, and repeatedly afterwards, at Cappoquin, and I believe elsewhere, in Roman letters, and finally by O'Daly, of Anglesea Street, in Dublin, 1868. His poems are very musical and mellifluous, but abound in "Munsterisms," which make them difficult to readers from other provinces. He died in 1800.
Another fine poet of the County Clare was DONOUGH MAC CONMARA, or Macnamara, as he is usually called in English. He was educated at Rome for the priesthood, but being of a wild disposition he was expelled from the ecclesiastical college there, and returning to Ireland, made his way to a famous school in the county Waterford at Slieve Gua, in the neighbourhood of which the people of the surrounding districts had for over a hundred years been accustomed to support "poor scholars" free of charge. He himself also opened a successful school, but a young woman of the neighbourhood, whom he had satirised, put a coal in the thatch and burnt him out. He led a rambling existence after that. He went to America and spent two summers and a winter in Newfoundland, which was then largely planted by the Irish. He appears to have also wandered a good deal about the Continent. The longest of his poems is a kind of mock Aeneid, describing his voyage to America and how the ship was chased by a French cruiser. Eevil, the fairy queen of Munster, brings him away in a dream to Elysium, where instead of Charon he finds "bald cursing Conan" the Fenian acting as ferryman. But he is best known by his beautiful lyric, "The Fair Hills of Holy Ireland," which he composed apparently when on the Continent. He led a ranting, roving, wild life, changed his religion a couple of times with unparalleled effrontery, but becoming blind in his old age, he repented of his sins and his misspent life, and died some time about the beginning of this century.[24] He was, like all these poets, a good scholar, as a Latin epitaph of fourteen verses, which he wrote over the pious Teig Gaolach proves—
"Plangite Pierides, vester decessit alumnus,
Eochades[25] non est, cuncta-que rura silent."
Perhaps the best known at the present day of all the Munster poets is the witty, wicked OWEN ROE O'SULLIVAN from Slieve Luachra, in Kerry, whose sayings and songs have been proverbial for three generations, and whose fame has penetrated into many counties besides his own. All the poets I have mentioned hitherto, except perhaps the pious Teig Gaolach, were almost professional wits, but Owen Roe, to judge from the number of his bons mots that are still preserved, must have surpassed them all. All the poets I have mentioned were also Jacobite poets, but in elaboration of the usual Jacobite theme of the Lady Erin, Owen Roe is easily first. His denunciations of the foreigner were incessant. He was originally a working man, and laboured hard with plough and spade. His poem called the "Mower" is well known. His explanation of a Greek passage, which puzzled his employer's son fresh from a French college,[26] first brought him into repute, and he opened a school in the neighbourhood of Charleville as a teacher of Latin and Greek. As was the case with very many of the Munster bards, his passion for the frail sex was the undoing of him. He was denounced from the altar, and his school was given up. He died, still young, about the year 1784.
WILLIAM DALL O'HEFFERNAN, JOHN O'TOOMY "the Gay," ANDREW MAC GRATH (surnamed the Mangairè Súgach, or Merry Merchant, the frailest and wildest of all the bards), EGAN O'RAHILLY, of Slieve Luachra in Kerry, OWEN O'KEEFE, parish priest of Doneraile, and JOHN MURPHY, of Rathaoineach, are a few of the names that instantly suggest themselves to all readers of the Irish manuscripts of Munster.[27]
The north of Ireland produced a great number of poets also during the eighteenth century, of whom PATRICK LINDON and ART MAC CÚMHAIDH, both of the County Armagh, PHILLIP BRADY, of the County Cavan, and JAMES MAC CUAIRT, of the County Louth, a friend of Carolan's, were some of the best known, but owing to the fatal loss of Irish manuscripts, chiefly those of the northern half of Ireland, and the apparent determination of the Royal Irish Academy not to use any of the funds (granted by Government for the prosecution of Irish studies) in the preservation of any modern texts, it is to be feared that a great portion of their works and of those of at least a hundred other writers of the eighteenth century is now lost for ever.
It would be interesting to take a retrospect of the splendid lyrical outburst produced by our brothers of the Scotch Highlands contemporaneously with that of the poets I have just mentioned, but it would extend the scope of this work too much. There seems to me to be perhaps more substance and more simplicity and straightforward diction in the poems of the Scotch Gaels, and more melody and word play, purchased at the expense of a good deal of nebulousness and unmeaning sound, in those of the Irish Gaels; both, though they utterly fail in the ballad, have brought the lyric to a very high pitch of perfection.
In Connacht during the eighteenth century the conditions of life were less favourable to poetry, the people were much poorer, and there was no influential class of native schoolmasters and scribes to perpetuate and copy Irish manuscripts, as there was all over Munster, consequently the greater part of the minstrelsy of that province is hopelessly lost, and even the very names of its poets with the exception of CAROLAN, NETTERVILLE, MAC CABE, MAC GOVERN, and a few more of the last century, and MAC SWEENY, BARRETT, and RAFTERY of this century, have been lost. That there existed, however, amongst the natives of the province a most widespread love of song and poetry, even though most of their manuscripts have perished, is certain, for I have collected among them, not to speak of Ossianic lays and other things, a volume of love poems and two volumes of religious poems,[28] almost wholly taken from the mouths of the peasantry. This love of poetry and passion for song, which seems to be the indigenous birthright of every one born in an Irish-speaking district promises to soon be a thing of the past, thanks, perhaps partly, to the apathy of the clergy, who in Connacht almost always preach in English, and partly to the dislike of the gentry to hear Irish spoken, but chiefly owing to the far-reaching and deliberate efforts of the National Board of Education to extirpate the national language.