Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin
A recent anthology of Irish-language poetry speaks of his "extremely musical" poems full of "astonishing technical virtuosity", and also notes that "Eoghan Rua is still spoken of and quoted in Irish-speaking districts in Munster as one of the great wits and playboys of the past.
[2] The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911) mentioned Eoghan Rua in an article on "Celt" § Celtic Literature, calling him "the cleverest of the Jacobite poets" and noting that "his verses and bons mots are still well known in Munster.
"[4] He then discussed at length the way country people came alive at the mention of Ó Súilleabháin's name, and could recite long poems and a hundred stories about him.
Corkery in his turn depended on a book in the Irish language, Amhráin Eoghain Ruaidh Uí Shúilleabháin, or Songs of Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, written by the priest An t-Athair Pádraig Ua Duinnín (Father Dinneen).
Eoghan Rua was born in 1748 in Meentogues, Gneeveguilla, Sliabh Luachra, a mountainous part of County Kerry, in southwestern Ireland.
Ó Súilleabháin asked to be set free from service, but "an officer named MacCarthy, a Kerryman... interposed and said: 'Anything but that; we would not part from you for love or money'.
[9] Corkery writes of the odd contrast between the English view of Eoghan Rua, who must have seemed an awkward rascally fellow to the Admiral, and the Irish author of "perfect lyrics, with the intuitional poet in every line of them!
In spite of his luckless life, Eoghan Rua was well-beloved and legendary in his own time, and his songs and poems have passed down in the Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking regions, of Munster, by word of mouth right up to the present day.
Yeats used aspects of Ó Súilleabháin's reputation[12] in his stories of Red Hanrahan,[13] his invented alter ego,[14] whose given name is "Owen", who carries a copy of Virgil in his pocket, "the hedge schoolmaster, a tall, strong, red-haired young man."
In John Millington Synge's 1907 The Playboy of the Western World, the main female character Pegeen Mike compares the titular character (named Christy) to O'Sullivan: "If you weren't destroyed travelling, you'd have as much talk and streeleen, I'm thinking, as Owen Roe O'Sullivan or the poets of the Dingle Bay, and I've heard all times it's the poets are your like, fine fiery fellows with great rages when their temper's roused.
The Irish musician Seán Ó Riada wrote a play based on the life of Owen Roe, called A Spailpín a Rún ("My Darling Spalpeen").
Translated into English in a book by Petrie (1855),[21] one of its verses goes: My name is Ó Súilleabháin, a most eminent teacher; My qualifications will ne'er be extinct; I'd write as good Latin as any in the nation; No doubt I'm experienced in arithmetic.
He was a brilliant, red-haired, hard-living brawler, called "Owen of the Sweet Mouth" [Eoghan an Bhéil Bhinn], and in Munster I have myself still met Irish speakers who passed down the folk memory of his great charm.
He was most famous for his Aisling poems, set to popular music, about beautiful women, symbolizing Ireland in degradation at a time when the country's fortunes were at its nadir.
The uneducated peasant... did not advert to the fact that he was receiving a lesson in history.... Perhaps there never was a poet so entirely popular-- never one of whom it could be more justly said volitar vivus per ora virum [He soars, alive in the mouths of the people].
's gach ráib d'fhuil Mhíleadh ceannais, l'áidir, laochda, tapa, ba ghnáthach rinnceach, reathach, lán-oilte ar faobhar.
The cause which left broken, in want, prophets, poets, and priests, the scholars and the clergy, --no more poems composed with pleasure, no more telling of witty stories, no more lively musical harp-playing, in tranquil fair mansions!
Every scion of the Milesian chiefs, strong, courteous, quick, used to dancing and racing, skilful with weapons, now without state, without wealth, without land, slaughter and a thousand things worse than John O'Dwyer of the Glens* left without game.
