Seán Ó Coileáin had definitely settled here by 1977 because he states in a manuscript that he was “in Castle Ire House” in that year when he was writing the genealogy of the O’Donovan Clan. It is almost certain that he spent most of the rest of his life in this area, except when he went ‘ar seachrán’ (wandering). We do know that he spent two periods in the Timoleague area; from August 1780 to April 1781 and a period in 1795.
We also know that some of his manuscripts were written in Rosscarbery and that he was friendly with the poet, Diarmuid Ó Dálaigh, from that parish. The so-called hedge schools weren’t permanent; often the teacher taught only in the summer months. So it is possible that Ó Coileáin lived for periods in Rosscarbery. However, folklore connects him almost exclusively with Myross, so it was there, almost certainly, he spent most of his life.
He married a Coughlan girl from the area and they had either three or four children. Séan had the reputation of being “a bit of a ‘réice’ (rake)”; he used to be ‘árramhachán’ carousing in Union Hall, Leap, Rosscarbery and Skibbereen, sometimes not returning to his school for weeks. About a half-mile north of Stookeen Church there was a ‘síbín’ (shebeen) called Poll’s Shebeen where he used to drink. His wife, tired of his irresponsible behaviour, left him and returned to her own family. Séan was soon living with his wife’s sister, with whom he had a daughter. This relationship was also unhappy, probably because of Séan’s behaviour; so angry was she that one day, when Séan had gone missing again, she burned down the house, undoubtedly containing Séan’s books and manuscripts.
In 1814, when he was 60, Séan moved to Skibbereen, where he lived with his daughter (by his second wife). She had married an O’Driscoll man and lived in High Street. Séan Máistir (Master John), as he was always called, taught here for a few years and here he died on April 18, 1817. Séan Ó Driscoll, grandson of Séan Máistir, taught a school in Skibbereen for a while. He became involved in the Fenian Movement with O’Donovan Rossa. Apparently, he lost his job and emigrated to the USA, where he died about 1891. This man or his brother told Peadar Ó hAnnrachain that many of his grandfather’s books and manuscripts were stolen the night of his wake.
In all only eleven complete manuscripts of Ó Coileáin survive, nine of which were written between 1773 and 1781, a copy of his famous poem, ‘Macnamh an Duine Dhoilíosaigh’ that he sent to the poet Donncha Ó Floinn in Cork and some notes that are in the British Library in London. We know that he visited other poets, particularly Micheál Óg Ó Longáin (1766-1837), Donncha Ó Floinn and Séan Ó Mulláin, all from the Cork city area. We also know that Ó Longán and Ó Floinn borrowed manuscripts from him. We know that Ó Longáin visited Ó Coileáin in Myross and that he composed a ‘tuireamh or marbhna’ (lament) for him when he died. Another poet who composed a lament was Dónal Ó hIarfhlaighte (Donal Herlihy) who lived in Rosscarbery.
His fame as a poet, teacher, scholar and wit spread all over Carbery during his lifetime and his poems and doings were kept alive in the oral literature (béaloideas) well into the 20th century, as we have seen. It is said that scholars came from all over Carbery to his school; one of them, Donncha Ó Seachnasaigh from Reavouler, parish of Kilmacabea, became a well-known poet himself and he also wrote a lament for Séan Máistir. Daniel Donovan, in ‘Sketches in Carbery’, refers to him as “The Silver Tongue of Munster”. The great scholar John O’Donovan, translator of the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’, described Ó Coileáin “as the last scholar, poet and historiographer of Carbery”. There were many other poets in West Cork in that era and later but none reached the excellence of Ó’Coileáin’s best work.
He is best known as the authors of two great poems, ‘Macnamh an Duine Dhoilíosaigh’ (The Musing of a Melancholy Man), also known as ‘Caoineadh Tig Molaga’ (Lament for Timoleague Abbey) and ‘An Buachaill Bán’ (The Fair-haired Boy). He translated ‘The Exile of Erin’ by Campbell into Irish and translated ‘Agallamh an othair leis an mBás’ (The Dialogue of the Patient with Death) into English) into English. Among his other writings which survive are: 1. A small Irish grammar, entitled ‘The Elements of the Irish Language’. 2. A dialogue on the invention of letters and the Commencement of the Irish Language. 3. A book on Ogham entitled ‘Of the cryptography or sacred and mysterious writing of the Irish called Ogham’.
He was also interested in history, folklore and genealogy. He wrote an account of the McCarthys of Gleann a Chroim, a branch of the McCarthy Reaghs, whose territory was in the Dunmanway area. He also wrote a history of the genealogy of the O’Donovan clan, particularly the Clan Cahill branch, on whose ancient territory he resided, their main castles being in Castledonovan near Drimoleague, Rahine in Myross and ‘Cloch an tSráid Bhaile’ (Glandore Castle). He entitled this work ‘O’Donovan’s pedigree, from the earliest accounts to the present time, collected from the public records, authentic manuscripts, well-attested pedigrees and personal information. By John Collins, antiquarian.’ He had begun to write a history of Ireland in Irish and had done some work on an English-Irish dictionary.
He also wrote poems of lesser quality than his great poems; among these are ‘O Mo Lao, mo chailín’ (O, my love, my girl) and ‘Bláth na Gréine’ (Myross Wood). In English he wrote ‘The Battle of Ross’ and ‘Sweet Castletownshend Demense’. There are many other short pieces in Irish and English, which the old seanchaithe (storytellers) could relate. These lived on in oral literature. Some were written down, but undoubtedly, many went unrecorded and were forgotten. Much of his work must have been destroyed when his house burnt down.
The ‘Machamh’ influenced the Anglo Irish writers of the 19th century; both James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson translated it into English.
In the poem he contrasts the former glory of Timoleague Abbey with its ruinous state in his lifetime. His passionate feeling, the clarity and fluency of language with which he describes the fate of the Abbey is very powerful and any translation could not do it justice. In the last three verses he comments on his own life and draws parallels between the Abbey’s decline with his own life. Once he was happy and full of life, but now he is old and poor. This is the final verse, followed by Ferguson’s translation:
Atá duaireas ar mo dhreach, / Atá mo chroí ‘na chrotal cnó. / Dá bhfóireadh orm an bás / Ba dhearbh m’fháilte faoine chomhair.’
Woe is written on my visage. / In a nut my heart would lie / Death’s deliverance were welcome- / Father, let the old man die.
Doubt has been expressed about Ó Coileáin’s authorship of the ‘Macnamh’. He was known to be a traditionalist, but it is in this knowledge that the Lament is found wanting. Ó Coileáin would have known of the history of the Abbey and its connection with the McCarthys. Such learning was native to Irish poetry of that era, but not a word is found in the lyrics about the history of the Abbey. The late Pádraig Ó Maidín wrote an exploratory three-part essay in ‘Agus’ (November and December 1962 and January 1963) win which he explores the arguments for and against Ó Coileáin’s authorship. O Maidín concludes that O Coileáin did write the poem. Fr Matt Horgan, who was a priest in Myross and a friend of O Coileáin, visited Timoleague Abbey for the first time on January 14, 1846 and he wrote a letter to the Cork Examiner the following day under the pen-name ‘Viator’. At the end of the letter he wrote: “Timoleague Abbey has been celebrated in recent years by my old, and alas, I must say it, late friend, John Collins, of Myross, one of the best Irish scholars and poets of late times. His musings in the deserted aisles of this ruined Convent are among the finest verses I am acquainted with; they may be seen in Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy and are to the Irish scholar what Gray’s Elegy is to the English. It is a fine, solemn and affecting piece of reflective poetry.
Since the ‘Macnamh’ is so unlike the rest of Ó Coileáin’s writings, it has been suggested that it was a once-off effort, prompted by Ó Coileáin’s reading of Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, which he probably got from the same Fr. Horgan, who challenged him to write something similar in Irish. “If this is so, the Macnamh is just as Irish as Gray’s is English,” writes Daniel Corkery.
The faded glory of Timoleague Abbey described in the Macnamh aptly symbolises the decay of language and culture all over Carbery, indeed over the whole country. The poets that followed Ó’Coileáin, with no patronage, little or no education and a dying language, strove to keep alive the tradition of poetry but they never reached the perfection of Ó Coileáin’s best work. One can only reflect regretfully on the vast wealth of song, folklore and oral literature that disappeared in the rapid retreat of Irish, particularly after the Famine. We must be grateful to people like Peadar Ó hAnnracháin and Micheál Ó Cuileanáin, to name but two, who gathered as much as they could.
to be continued…
