The Colleen Bawn, or The Brides of Garryowen is a melodramatic play written by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault.
One evening, not long after the Octoroon incident, in the spring of 1860, Boucicault was walking home when he felt the sudden urge to venture into a bookstore he had passed a hundred times before.
He told her that they should start the rehearsal/build process immediately and he would finish the play as they rehearsed, so basically, the definition of theatre on the fly.
Thus, Boucicault took his playwriting back to his Irish roots and The Colleen Bawn came to life and opened at the Laura Keene Theatre in May 1860.
The novel was based on the true story of Ellen Scanlan (née Hanley), a fifteen-year-old girl who was murdered on 14 July 1819.
The play begins with Hardress Cregan planning his trip across the lake to see his wife, Eily O’Connor, with his noble follower Danny Mann.
The play then switches back to Hardress as he enters the house in which he has placed Eily, well away from anyone who would notice his regular comings and goings.
Danny wrongly believes that Hardress had agreed to give him the glove, and, seeking only to obey his master, takes off in his boat to fetch Eily for slaughter.
Eily and Hardress stay together, Anne gives the Cregans the money they need to save their land and runs off with Kyrle, happily in love.
Sir Julius Benedict composed his opera The Lily of Killarney from a text provided by Boucicault and John Oxenford based on The Colleen Bawn.
In Kobbé's Complete Opera Book, first published in 1922, it still merited a full summary of the plot, which remains in the current edition.