c.1743–c.1800
Originator of one of the most famous death laments in Irish, ‘Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire’ (‘Lament for Art O’Leary’)
Eibhlín was born in Derrynane, County Kerry, one of the twenty-two children of Dómhnall Mór Ó Conaill, grandfather of Daniel O’Connell. When Eibhlín was fifteen years old she was unwillingly married off to an elderly man named O’Connor, from Iveragh, who obligingly died six months later. She then met and fell in love with the rumbustious, charming and handsome Art O’Leary of Rathleigh, near Macroom, County Cork. Art was a captain in the Hungarian Hussars, but he had little to his name except a bad reputation. He and Eibhlín were married against the wishes of her family.
The couple lived in Rathleigh and all went well until the high sheriff of Cork, Abraham Morris, laid criminal charges against Art O’Leary. Art defeated the charges in court in 1771, but the incident left bad blood between them and they were at feud with each other. Two years later matters came to a head when Art’s horse, a superb bay mare, beat Morris’s horse in a race. Under the terms of the Penal Laws, Catholics were not allowed to keep horses valued at more than £5 and, invoking the law, Morris insisted that Art sell him the mare for this insultingly low price. Art refused and then went into hiding to avoid the inevitable backlash.
Not long afterwards, Art became sick of life on the run and decided to settle the matter between himself and Morris once and for all. On a spring day in 1773, Art lay in wait for Morris near the village of Millstreet, County Cork. The attempted ambush did not go according to plan, however, and Morris gave chase and shot and killed Art at nearby Carraig an Ime.
Art’s blood-drenched mare galloped back to Rathleigh to a horrified Eibhlín. Pregnant with her third child, Eibhlín leapt on the horse and galloped back to her husband. She then knelt, keening over the body, and composed a traditional lament of the bereaved – the most famous of its kind to have survived to the present time. The most striking visual image contained in the lament is of Eibhlín bending over her husband’s body and, in her grief, drinking his warm, spilling blood.
Five months later, Abraham Morris was acquitted of the murder of Art O’Leary. The story of Art’s death was kept alive in the oral tradition until it was eventually written down in the nineteenth century. It has been translated many times and by many different writers. The following excerpt is from the translation by Eilís Dillon.
Mó ghrá thu agus mo rún!
Tá do stácaí ar a mbonn,
Tá do bha buí á gcrú ;
Is ar mo chroí atá do chumha
Ná leigheasfadh Cuige Mumhan
Ná Gaibhne Oileáin na bhFionn.
Go Dtiocfaidh Art Ó Laoghaire chugham
Ní scaipfidh ar mo chumha
Atá i lár mo chroí á bhrú,
Mar a bheadh glas a bheadh ar thrúnc
’S go raghadh an eochair amú.
My love and my dear!
Your stooks are standing,
Your yellow cows milking;
On my heart is such sorrow
That all Munster could not cure it,
Nor the wisdom of the sages.
Till Art O’Leary returns
There will be no end to the grief
That presses down on my heart,
Closed up tight and firm
Like a trunk that is locked
And the key is mislaid.
from ‘The Lament for Arthur O’Leary’, Eilís Dillon