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“Mo ghrá go daingean thú” — “my steadfast love.” With these words begins one of the greatest works ever composed in the Irish language: Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (The Lament for Art O’Leary). More than two centuries after it was created, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s extraordinary lament remains one of the most powerful expressions of grief, love, and loss in European literature.
In May 1773, Eibhlín Dubh received news that no wife should ever have to hear. Her husband, Art O’Leary, had been shot dead while travelling home. A mare returned to the family home at Ráth Laoich, County Cork, without its rider, the saddle empty, the reins hanging loose, and blood marking the animal’s side. Eibhlín did not wait for the story to be softened or explained. She mounted the mare and followed the path back to where Art lay dead beside a low furze-covered mound near Carraig an Ime.
That moment became one of the defining images in Irish literature: a woman encountering the body of the man she loved and beginning a journey through grief that would become immortal in song.
Art Ó Laoghaire’s death was rooted in the political and social realities of eighteenth-century Ireland. He had been outlawed and killed after refusing to sell a prized horse for five pounds, the amount imposed under the Penal Laws that a Catholic was forced to accept for a horse, regardless of its true value. His death was followed by another injustice: his burial was later challenged by the English Authorities as he had been an outlawed Catholic. After first being buried at Kilnamartyra, his body was disinterred and moved to Kilcrea Friary.
Eibhlín Dubh’s lament grew across this period of repeated loss. It was not simply a poem composed in one moment of sorrow, but a living act of mourning shaped over months, at the wake, over the body, and again at the reburial. Through the traditional form of the caoineadh, she transformed personal devastation into a work of extraordinary artistic power.
The Irish caoineadh was never simply a speech about the dead. It was a communal practice, a ritual language formed over generations to give expression to grief that could overwhelm the individual. The keening tradition provided a structure through which families and communities could voice sorrow, praise the dead, and begin the difficult work of living with loss.
What makes Eibhlín Dubh’s lament remarkable is how she took this inherited form and made it completely her own. She filled the traditional structure not with general praise but with the details of a particular love: Art himself, his presence, their marriage, their shared life, and the violence of his absence. She created a deeply personal work within a communal tradition, transforming ritual into one of the great achievements of Irish literature.
That same tradition was brought vividly into the present last week with Tórramh Art Uí Laoghaire, (Art O’Leary’s Wake), a newly composed musical work designed and directed by Lorcán Mac Mathúna. The special preview performance took place in the recently opened Irish language theatre, An Scioból, located in the heart of Tallaght Village, ahead of its presentation in Kerry on 19 June.
Inspired by the customs of the Irish wake (tórramh), the performance presented Eibhlín Dubh’s powerful lament through newly composed music, narration, and the atmosphere of the traditional mourning gathering. The work was commissioned by Éigse na hAoine in Doire Fhionáin, County Kerry.
The performance brought together Sorcha Ní Scolaí (voice), Lorcán Mac Mathúna (voice), Éamonn Galldubh (uilleann pipes), Máirtín Tourish (accordion), and Diarmuid de Faoite (storytelling), creating a dramatic encounter between eighteenth-century poetry and contemporary musical expression.
Framed as a traditional wake, Tórramh Art Uí Laoghaire explored the haunting and communal nature of Irish mourning customs, where grief was never carried in isolation, but held by music, story, ritual, and the presence of others.
Nearly 250 years after Eibhlín Dubh first gave voice to her loss, her lament continues to reveal something profound about the human experience of grief. It is not only the story of one woman mourning her husband; it is a testament to the power of tradition to preserve memory and to give shape to emotions that are otherwise impossible to express.
Through Tórramh Art Uí Laoghaire, that ancient cry of love and loss finds a new voice, reminding us that the songs created to honour the dead can continue to live, move, and speak across generations.
Yeats illustration used here for non-commercial purposes
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