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The Lament for Art O’Leary

11.95

For Peter Levi, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, it was ‘the greatest poem written in these islands in the whole eighteenth century’. The heartrending story of Eileen O’Connell (Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill) and Art O’Leary (Art Ó Laoghaire) has survived for two and a half centuries in history, folklore and art. It differs from most of the best known narratives of love and loss in the Irish tradition because Eileen and Art were real people. Though they came from families of relative privilege they lived subject to oppressive Penal Laws. Following a public dispute, on 4 May 1773 Art was shot and fatally wounded. Eileen rode to the scene and gave vent to her desolation. Now John FitzGerald, familiar since childhood with the topography of the poem, offers a commemorative translation, The Lament for Art O’Leary, a new slant in language that captures and communicates the physical intensity of Eileen’s love and bereavement. The book contains also Seán Ó Tuama’s edition of the original Irish and, for the first time in monochrome, Jack B Yeats’s illustrations made for the text.

In 1767 Eileen O’Connell from Derrynane in County Kerry set eyes on Art O’Leary in Macroom in County Cork. They married, had children, and lived in Raleigh House. Following Art’s death in 1773 she composed this caoineadh or lament.

‘Short prescriptive lines express urgency, strong verbs piled high add to the sense of mobility, “rise up at this moment, /put on your fine suit of the clearest white bolt,/fix your black beaver,/pull up your gauntlets/and straighten your whip”. Fitzgerald’s unmistakable, strong Cork accent works here like a charm beside Jack B Yeats’s original watercolours which first appeared in Frank O’Connor’s translation almost a century ago.’ — Martina Evans, The Irish Times

“My interest in the story is partly topographical,” says John Fitzgerald in his introduction to his new translation of The Lament for Art O’Leary (Gallery, €11.95). Fitzgerald grew up near Macroom, his feet familiar with the ground covered by the main players, his ear attuned to subtleties of the local accent.

Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s great keen for her murdered husband has been widely translated yet every version of the Lament “tells a different story”. Fitzgerald’s “desire to transfer the grief at the heart of the Caoineadh through the three-stressed line” was sparked by Seamus Heaney’s observation of how the Lament’s “three-stressed line” inspired his translation of Sophocles’ Burial at Thebes.

Primary school was where Fitzgerald first heard the Caoineadh read in the “captivating west-Muskerry baritone” of his teacher, John Brown. His palpable excitement drives this fresh, powerful version, evoking those local accents. According to Angela Bourke, the keen is similar to a rap and Fitzgerald’s version feels exactly like that, physically on its feet, the speaker rocking back and forth on the three-stressed line, gathering momentum as the poem builds from the insistent “you” at the end of every line in the first stanza, echoing the original “thú”.

As the sense of grief and loss builds, the assonance and alliteration so vital to the original Irish is released in exhilarating waves, “your sword ennobled you, your gold-roped hat, /fine leather boots/and double-fold coat,/all fashioned abroad for you.” Short prescriptive lines express urgency, strong verbs piled high add to the sense of mobility, “rise up at this moment, /put on your fine suit of the clearest white bolt,/fix your black beaver,/pull up your gauntlets/and straighten your whip”. Fitzgerald’s unmistakable, strong Cork accent works here like a charm beside Jack B Yeats’s original watercolours which first appeared in Frank O’Connor’s translation almost a century ago.

— Martina Evans, The Irish Times

The Lament for Art O'Leary TEXT

Publication date: 28 April 2023
Details: 64pp
ISBN PBK: 978 1 91133 853 6
ISBN HBK: 978 1 91133 854 3

Cover: ©Estate of Jack B Yeats, DACS London/IVARO Dublin, 2023

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