Aisling

She laments the current state of the Irish people and predicts an imminent revival of their fortunes, usually linked to the restoration of the Roman Catholic House of Stuart to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland.

The form developed out of an earlier, non-political genre akin to the French reverdie, in which the poet meets a beautiful, supernatural woman who symbolizes the spring season, the bounty of nature, and love.

Another source was a tradition rooted in Irish mythology in which a god or goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the pre-Christian pantheon, is seen weeping for the recent death of a local hero.

[2] According to Daniel Corkery, the first aisling poems in the Irish language were composed during the early 17th century by the Roman Catholic priest, historian, and poet Geoffrey Keating.

Keating awakens from a slumber that has overtaken him along the banks of the River Slaney and is confronted by a vision of the pre-Christian Irish goddess Cliodhna weeping for the death of John Fitzgerald.

[3] In Corca Dhuibhne in 1653, an anonymous bard composed a lament over the recent death by hanging of Irish clan chief, poet, and folk hero Piaras Feiritéar at Cnocán na gCaorach in Killarney, for leading his clansmen in war against the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

[2] According to Daniel Corkery, "The Aisling proper is Jacobite poetry; and a typical example would run something like this: The poet, weak with thinking of the woe that has overtaken the Gael, falls into a deep slumber.

The wildly popular sean-nós song "Mo Ghile Mear", which was composed by County Cork bard Seán "Clárach" Mac Domhnaill, is a lament for the defeat of the Jacobite rising of 1745 at the Battle of Culloden.

The poem is a soliloquy by the Kingdom of Ireland, whom Seán Clárach personifies as the goddess Erin bewailing her state and describing herself as a grieving widow due to the defeat and exile of her lawful king.

Ó Súilleabháin emigrated to the United States in 1905 and settled in the heavily Irish-American mining city of Butte, Montana, where he continued to both collect and compose Modern literature in Irish until his death in 1957.

[11] In his pre-Easter Rising aisling poem Cois na Tuinne ("Beside the Wave"), Seán Gaelach describes pondering the woes of the Gael when he encounters the goddess Érin.

[12] In the 1917 aisling poem Bánta Mín Éirinn Glas Óg ("The Lush Green Plains of Ireland"), Seán Gaelach describes meeting Érin again, proposing marriage to her, and trying to convince her to emigrate with him overseas to tíribh an cheóil ("the land of music").

The portraits were painted by her husband Sir John Lavery and appeared on bank notes in numerous forms over the course of the 20th century in Ireland as they were commissioned by the government of the Irish Free State.

The winner of the contest was Dublin-born author Liam mac Uistín, whose poem An Aisling ("We Saw a Vision"), is now written in Irish, French and English upon the stone wall of the monument.

In 1751, Jacobite war poet Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair, whose poetry remains an immortal part of Scottish Gaelic literature, poked fun at the aisling genre in his anti-Whig and anti-Campbell satirical poem, An Airce ("The Ark"), which was published for the first time in Edinburgh as part of its author's groundbreaking poetry collection Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich ("The Resurrection of the Old Scottish Language").

The ghost then prophesies that Clan Campbell will be punished for committing high treason against their lawful King during the Jacobite rising of 1745, first by a repeat of the Ten Plagues of Egypt and then by a second Great Flood upon Argyllshire.

In around 1780, County Clare poet and hedge school teacher Brian Merriman similarly parodied aisling poetry in his comic masterpiece Cúirt An Mheán Oíche ("The Midnight Court").

After self-justifying arguments by the morally bankrupt lawyers for both genders, the judge, the pre-Christian goddess Aoibheal, rules that all men except Roman Catholic priests must marry before the age of 20 on pain of flogging at the hands of Ireland's understandably angry and frustrated women.

In his poem Aisling an t-Saighdeir ("The Soldier's Dream"), Scottish Gaelic bard and World War I veteran Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna recalls seeing a full-grown red deer stag in the rush-covered glens of North Uist and how he scrambled over rocks and banks trying to get a clear shot at the animal.

[16] In Paul Muldoon's 1983 satirical poem Aisling, which was written in response to the 1981 hunger strike campaign by Bobby Sands and other incarcerated members of the Provisional IRA, the goddess Erin was recast to symbolize Anorexia.