Máire Bhuí Ní Laoghaire (1774–c.1848) was an
Irish poet.
Ní Laoghaire was born in Túirín na nÉan in Uibh Laoghaire (Iveleary), near Ballingeary,
County Cork.
She was from a family of five sons and three daughters who lived on her father's fifty acre farm.
In 1792, she married Séamus de Búrca, a
Skibbereen horsetrader and the couple settled on a holding they purchased near Céim an Fhia/Keimaneigh.
While they were known for their generosity, their fortunes had declined by 1847 and they were unable to pay their rent.
Mounting debts and their arrest for membership of a secret agrarian organisation led to their eviction. Ní Laoghaire died soon after and was buried in
Inchigeelagh
Inchigeelagh () is a small village, townland and civil parish in County Cork, Ireland. The village is just outside a Gaeltacht area. Inchigeelagh is part of the Dáil constituency of Cork North-West.
The River Lee passes through the villag ...
.
Career
She was illiterate in both English and Irish, and learned through the
oral tradition in the
ceilidh houses. Her poems sometimes allude to
classical mythology, as is often seen in the
Munster Irish oral poetry
Oral poetry is a form of poetry that is composed and transmitted without the aid of writing. The complex relationships between written and spoken literature in some societies can make this definition hard to maintain.
Background
Oral poetry is ...
of the era. Her songs and poems survived via the oral tradition of the area, as did compositions by her contemporaries such as
Antoine Ó Raifteiri
Antoine Ó Raifteirí (also Antoine Ó Reachtabhra, ''Anthony Raftery'') (30 March 1779 – 25 December 1835) was an Irish language poet who is often called the last of the wandering bards.
Biography
Antoine Ó Raifteirí was born in Killedan, n ...
.
Her best-known composition is ''Cath Chéim an Fhia'' (The Battle of Keimaneigh), which provides an account of a fight between the local yeoman militia and the
Whiteboys in 1822.
Further reading
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References
1774 births
1848 deaths
18th-century Irish-language poets
19th-century Irish-language poets
People from County Cork
Irish women poets
Irish poets
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