Antoine Ó Raifteiri

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Antoine Ó Raifteiri (Anthony Raftery) (1784 - 1835) was an Irish language poet who is often called the last of the wandering bards.

A native of Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ó Raifteiri was blinded by smallpox and lived by playing his fiddle and performing his songs and poems in the big houses of the West of Ireland. His work, which draws on the forms and idiom of folk poetry, is widely regarded as marking the end of the literary tradition of the bardic schools.[citation needed] None of his poems were written down during the poet's lifetime, but they were collected later by Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory and others.

Ó Raifteiri's most enduring poems include Eanach Dhuin, Cill Aodain and Mise Raifteiri an file, all of which are still learned by Irish schoolchildren.


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