Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire

Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire or the Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire is an Irish keen composed by his wife Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. It has been described as the greatest poem written in either Ireland or Britain during the eighteenth century.

Contents

• Caoineadh airt ui laoghaire irish version
• Caoineadh airt u laoghaire
• Adaptations of the Caoineadh
• References

The late eighteenth-century poem is one of the greatest laments ever written, and one of the greatest love poems in the Irish language. Eibhlín composed it on the subject of the death of her husband Art on 4 May 1773. It details the murder at Carraig an Ime, County Cork, of Art, at the hands of the British official Abraham Morris, and the aftermath. It is one of the key texts in the corpus of Irish oral literature. The poem was composed ex tempore and follows the rhythmic and societal conventions associated with keening and the traditional Irish wake respectively. The caoineadh is divided into five parts composed in the main over the dead body of her husband at the time of the wake and later when Art was re-interred in Kilcrea.

Parts of the caoineadh take the form of a verbal duel between Eibhlín and Art's sister. The acrimonious dialogue between the two women shows the disharmony between their two prominent families.

Thomas Kinsella made an English verse translation which was published in An Duanaire - Poems of the Dispossessed: an anthology of Gaelic poems, edited by Seán Ó Tuama (Dolmen Press, Portlaoise 1981 ISBN 0-85105-363-7). Another verse translation was the work of Frank O'Connor and this was included in Brendan Kennelly's anthology The Penguin Book of Irish Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970; pp. 78–86).