Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta (c.1647?-1733) was a central figure in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Airgíalla school of poets and songwriters in the Irish language. Like his neighbours, Peadar Ó Doirnín, Art Mac Cumhaigh and Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna Mac Cuarta was part of the Airgíalla tradition of poetry and song.

Mac Cuarta was possibly born in Omeath in Louth although Kilkerley to the north-west of Dundalk is also mentioned as bearing links to his life and appears to have spent most of his life moving around this area and the Boyne Valley. As his name suggests, he was either blind or had seriously impaired vision and, at a time when gentry patronage of the poetic class was on the wane, this placed more emphasis on his literary skills rather than the traditional poetic tools of flattery towards their patrons.

His works displays a close affiliation with the older literary traditions, as well as the influence of contemporary popular song and balladry. His best poems are those in the form of Trí Rainn agus Amhrán- three stanzas in loose syllabic verse and one stanza in song form- where both traditionS are finely merged. Unlike the classic poetry of most of his contemporaries Mac Cuarta work displays a strong feeling for nature, a tendency which marked the Early Irish poets. Some fifty of Mac Cuarta's poems still survive. ^[1]