Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire or the Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire is an Irish keen, or dirge written 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.[1]
The late eighteenth-century epic poem is one of the greatest laments ever written, and one of the greatest love poems of the Irish Language. Eibhlín composed it capturing the life and death of her husband Art on May 4, 1773.
It details the murder at Carraig an Ime, County Cork, of Art, at the hands of British official Abraham Morris, and the aftermath. It is one of the key texts in the Irish oral literature corpus. 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 the two prominent families concerned.
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