Ireland by Richard Killeen

Author:Richard Killeen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

Slieve Luachra

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This is an area in the eastern part of Co. Kerry, centred on the town of Castleisland, which has maintained a remarkable musical and literary tradition. It was the birthplace of two of the greatest Irish-language poets of the eighteenth century – indeed, two of the last in a long and noble tradition, as Ireland proceeded to anglicize from the nineteenth century onwards.

They were Egan O’Rahilly, whom we have already encountered (see p. 78) and – from the latter part of the century – Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, or in English Owen Roe O’Sullivan. O’Sullivan was celebrated contemporaneously as ‘Owen of the sweet mouth’ and his poetry is full of technical virtuosity. But he was poor, scratching a living as an occasional teacher and a casual labourer. He even spent some time in the Royal Navy on board HMS Formidable and wrote a poem, ‘Rodney’s Glory’ in English to celebrate his admiral’s victory over the French in a naval engagement in 1782.

O’Sullivan’s rackety life was almost a parody of a poet’s imagined existence. But his verse has survived, much of it set to music and passed down the generations by oral as well as written tradition.

It is no accident that Slieve Luachra was and remains a strong centre of traditional music. Some of its most revered modern practitioners hail from the area. It was also the birthplace of Fr Patrick Dinneen (1860–1934), best remembered for his idiosyncratic Irish–English Dictionary (1927), which drew the repeated withering scorn of Flann O’Brien, writing in the Irish Times under the name Myles na gCopaleen. Dinneen was also the author of the first novel in Irish ever published in book form (1901).

Not far from Slieve Luachra, in north Kerry, lies the town of Listowel which has also produced a number of fine writers: the poet Brendan Kennelly, the playwright John B. Keane, the novelist Maurice Walsh and the short story writer Bryan MacMahon.

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