Modern Irish - Tarla gné dhaoldatha d’fhoiligh gach rian

A chafer-like blackness that has hidden every path

Pádraig A. Breatnach (ed. and trans.), ‘Togha na hÉigse 1700–1800: 7. (Séamas Mac Coitir)’, Celtica 30 (2018), pp. 38-45.

One of the obligations of the Irish poet was to compose a marbhna ‘elegy’ upon the death of his patron or members of his patron’s family. This well-known elegy, which survives in numerous manuscript copies, was composed on the death of Tadhg (mac Conchubhair) Ó Briain (†1731) from Coill na Cora (Kilcor), Co. Cork. Tadhg was the son of Conchubhar Ó Briain, a patron of learning.  His death was due to smallpox, as stated in the inscription. It has the form of an artistic acrostic, where the first letter of each quatrain spells out the name ‘Tadhg Ó Briain’, a tribute to the subject's illustrious Ó Briain lineage. In the opening quatrain, the darkness that descends upon the earth is compared to that which occurred when two heroic Ó Briain ancestors, Brian Bóroimhe, High King of Ireland, and his son Murchadh, fell in the Battle of Clontarf (A.D. 1014). Tadhg Ó Briain is praised as their equal, and his death causes a failure of crops, herds, bees’ wax and honey. His dwelling, once filled with poets, harps and the clamour of cups and goblets, is now a silent cave. The elegy is a fine example of a literary composition in the rhythmic accentual or ‘song’ (amhrán) metres.  The pattern of stresses which distinguishes accentual verse can be heard in quatrains 1–12.

(‿) │á ‿ é  │é ‿ ‿ │ i/o ‿ ‿ │ia.

The ceangal, or last quatrain, introduces variations but is linked to the main text by the final accented ia, which marks the monosyllabic word at the end of every line and gives force to the lament. The poem is read by Professor Pádraig A. Breatnach in the Munster dialect. A full critical appreciation of the poem (published along with a reissue of text and translation) is included in an analysis of related Irish laments from the eighteenth-century: see P. A. Breatnach, '"This late blossoming of poetic eloquence": An mianach liteartha i roinnt marbhnaí comhghaolmhara ón 18ú haois' in Léann na Sionainne, eds. Aengus O Fionnagáin & Gordon O Riain (Cló Léann na Gaeilge, Aistí Léannta III), Baile Atha Cliath (2018), 189-220 (pp. 204-15).