ast chieftain
who held out against Cromwell's army, and he was hanged in 1653. His
poems have been edited by P.S. Dinneen (Dublin, 1903). The bard of the
Williamite wars was David O'Bruadar (d. 1697-1698). From this period
date three powerful satires on the state of affairs in Munster, and in
particular on the Cromwellian settlers. They are of a coarse and savage
nature, for which reason they have never been printed. Their titles are
the Parliament of Clan Thomas, the Adventures of Clan Thomas, and the
Adventures of Tadhg Dubh (by Egan O'Rahilly). A description of the
parliament of Clan Thomas is given by Stern in the _Zeitschr. f. celt.
Phil._ v. pp. 541 ff.
A little later we come across a band of Jacobite poets. The gallant
figure of Charles Edward was so popular with Irish bards that a
conventional stereotyped form arose in which the poet represents himself
as wandering in a wood and meeting a beautiful lady. We are treated to a
full description of all her charms, and the poet compares her to all the
fair heroines of antiquity. But she replies that she is none of these.
She is Erin seeking refuge from the insults of foreign suitors and
looking for her mate. The idea of such poems is a beautiful one, but
they become tedious when one has read a dozen of them only to find that
there are scores of others in exactly the same strain. Besides the
Visions (_Aisling_), as they are termed, there are several noteworthy
war-songs, whilst other poems are valuable as giving a picture of the
state of the country at the time. We can do no more than mention the
names of John O'Neaghtan (d. c. 1720; edition of his poems by A.
O'Farrelly, Dublin, 1908), Egan O'Rahilly, who flourished between 1700
and 1726; Tadhg O'Naghten, Andrew MacCurtin (d. 1479), Hugh MacCurtin,
author of a grammar and part editor of O'Begley's _Dictionary_; John
Clarach MacDonnell (1691-1754), John O'Tuomy (d. 1775); Andrew Magrath,
Tadhg Gaolach O'Sullivan (d. c. 1795), author of a well-known volume of
religious poems, a valuable source of information for the Munster
dialect; and Owen Roe O'Sullivan (d. 1784), the cleverest of the
Jacobite poets (his verses and _bons mots_ are still well known in
Munster). These poets hailed mostly from the south, and it is chiefly
the works of the Munster poets that have been preserved. Ulster and
Connaught also produced a number of writers, but very little beyond the
mere names has been preserved except in the case of the Conn
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