Piaras Feiritéar (; 1600 – 1653), or Pierce Ferriter, was an

Irish clan Irish clans are traditional kinship groups sharing a common surname and heritage and existing in a lineage-based society, originating prior to the 17th century. A clan (or in Irish, plural ) included the chief and his patrilineal relatives; howe ...

Chief, and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

. Although best known for his many works of

Bard In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's a ...

ic poetry in the

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

, Feiritéar is also a widely revered

folk hero A folk hero or national hero is a type of hero – real, fictional or mythology, mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in Folk music, folk songs, folk tales ...

in the

Dingle Peninsula The Dingle Peninsula (; anglicised as Corkaguiny or Corcaguiny, the name of the corresponding barony) is the northernmost of the major peninsulas in County Kerry. It ends beyond the town of Dingle at Dunmore Head, the westernmost point of m ...

for his role as a leader of the nascent

Irish Confederacy Confederate Ireland, also referred to as the Irish Catholic Confederation, was a period of Irish Catholic self-government between 1642 and 1652, during the Eleven Years' War. Formed by Catholic aristocrats, landed gentry, clergy and military ...

, which led to his 1653

summary execution In civil and military jurisprudence, summary execution is the putting to death of a person accused of a crime without the benefit of a free and fair trial. The term results from the legal concept of summary justice to punish a summary offense, a ...

Killarney Killarney ( ; , meaning 'church of sloes') is a town in County Kerry, southwestern Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The town is on the northeastern shore of Lough Leane, part of Killarney National Park, and is home to St Mary's Cathedral, Killar ...

for resisting the

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653) was the re-conquest of Ireland by the Commonwealth of England, initially led by Oliver Cromwell. It forms part of the 1641 to 1652 Irish Confederate Wars, and wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three ...

Early life

Feiritéar was the last

Chief of the Name The Chief of the Name, or in older English usage Captain of his Nation, is the recognised head of a family or clan ( Irish and Scottish Gaelic: ''fine'') in Ireland and Scotland. Ireland There are instances where Norman lords of the time like ...

of the completely

Gaelicized Gaelicisation, or Gaelicization, is the act or process of making something Gaelic or gaining characteristics of the ''Gaels'', a sub-branch of Celticisation. The Gaels are an ethno-linguistic group, traditionally viewed as having spread from Ire ...

Norman Clan Feiritéar and

Lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...

Ballyferriter ( Irish, meaning 'Ferriter's Townland' ) unofficially anglicised as Ballyferriter, or also known as , is a Gaeltacht village in County Kerry, Ireland. It is in the west of the (Dingle) peninsula and according to the 2002 census, about 75% of ...

Corca Dhuibhne The Dingle Peninsula (; anglicised as Corkaguiny or Corcaguiny, the name of the corresponding barony) is the northernmost of the major peninsulas in County Kerry. It ends beyond the town of Dingle at Dunmore Head, the westernmost point of ma ...

. Feiritéar was a harpist as well as an extremely sophisticated

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

poet in the

. He was known for his blend of laments, eulogies and satires in the Bardic tradition and for composing love poetry with much wider European influences. His best known work, ''Leig díot t’airm, a mhacoimh mná'' ("Lay aside thy arms, maiden"), is a poem about a beautiful woman. It is believed that he may have written poetry in English, but none of this has survived. Some critics have argued that his Irish poetry shows the influence of the English

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The Roman symbol of Britannia (a female per ...

Warrior

A leader during the Confederate Ireland wars, Feiritéar was wounded during an attack by

Oliver Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English statesman, politician and soldier, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in British history. He came to prominence during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, initially ...

Roundheads Roundheads were the supporters of the Parliament of England during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Also known as Parliamentarians, they fought against King Charles I of England and his supporters, known as the Cavaliers or Royalists, who ...

on Clan Feiritéar's stronghold of

Tralee Castle Tralee Castle was a medieval strategic castle in Tralee, Kerry, owned by the Denny family from 1586. It is now a ruin. The castle was built by the Desmond family, likely in the mid-thirteenth century at a similar time to the constriction o ...

in 1641. Feiritéar and his

Clan A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, a clan may claim descent from a founding member or apical ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity. Many societie ...

smen held the castle until the fall of

Ross Castle Ross Castle () is a 15th-century tower house and keep on the edge of Lough Leane, in Killarney National Park, County Kerry, Ireland. It is the ancestral home of the Chiefs of the Clan O'Donoghue, later associated with the Brownes of Killarne ...

to the Cromwellians in June 1653. Granted safe passage by Cromwellian commander Brigadier Nelson, Feiritéar travelled to arrange surrender terms. Instead, he was seized at Castlemaine and hanged alongside others, including his brother-in-law, Dominican

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders in the Catholic Church. There are also friars outside of the Catholic Church, such as within the Anglican Communion. The term, first used in the 12th or 13th century, distinguishes the mendi ...

Tadhg Ó Muircheartaigh, on Cnocán na gCaorach in Killarney on 15 October 1653.

Legacy

Piaras Feiritéar remains a

for the Irish-speaking people of the

, particularly in his native

Ard na Caithne Ard na Caithne (; meaning "height of the arbutus/ strawberry tree"), sometimes known in English as Smerwick, is a bay and townland in County Kerry in Ireland. One of the principal bays of Corca Dhuibhne, it is located at the foot of an Triúr ...

, where the ruins of his family's castle can still be seen, and his poetry still lives as the

oral literature Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used v ...

. Writing in 1926, Daniel Corkery revealed that Piaras Feiritéar's 1653 execution helped give birth to the ''

Aisling The , , approximately ), or vision poem, is a mythopoeic poetic genre that developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries in Irish language poetry. The word may have a number of variations in pronunciation, but the ''is'' of the first s ...

'' tradition within Irish poetry, in which a ''spéirbhean'' (a beautiful and queenly woman from the

Otherworld In historical Indo-European religion, the concept of an otherworld, also known as an otherside, is reconstructed in comparative mythology. Its name is a calque of ''orbis alius'' (Latin for "other world/side"), a term used by Lucan in his desc ...

, symbolizing Ireland) laments her state and, in later versions, prophesies a better future. In 1653, an anonymous County Kerry

composed a lament in verse over Feiritéar's death. The lament, which begins, ''Do chonnac aisling are maidin an lar ghil'' ("I saw a vision on the morning of the bright day"). The vision was the Pre-Christian goddess Erin bewailing the death of a man who had overthrown hundreds. In ''The Western Island'' Robin Flower relates a story told by Seanchai

Tomás Ó Criomhthain (; commonly anglicised as Tomás O'Crohan and occasionally as Thomas O'Crohan; 29 April 1855 – 7 March 1937) was a native of the Irish-speaking Great Blasket Island near the coast of the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. He wrote two Irish-langu ...

, who alleged that Piaras had a stronghold upon

Great Blasket Island The Great Blasket () is the principal island of the Blasket Islands, Blaskets, County Kerry, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It was home to a small fishing community of Irish speakers until the island was abandoned in 1953 when living there bec ...

that he used to evade the English. In 1934,

Pádraig Ó Duinnín Patrick Stephen Dinneen (; 25 December 1860 – 29 September 1934) was an Irish lexicographer and historian, and a leading figure in the Gaelic revival. Life Dinneen was born near Rathmore, County Kerry. He was educated at Shrone and Meentogue ...

edited a book entitled ''Dánta Phiarais Feiritéir: maille le réamh-rádh agus nótaí'' which contained 23 of Piaras's surviving poems. In the book, Ó Duinnín devotes a chapter to the influence of Feiritéar's poetry and life on the folklore of the area. In 2001,

Munster Irish Munster Irish (, ) is the dialect of the Irish language spoken in the province of Munster. Gaeltacht regions in Munster are found in the Gaeltachtaí of the Dingle Peninsula in west County Kerry, in the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, in ...

poet and writer

Máire Mhac an tSaoi Máire Mhac an tSaoi (4 April 1922 – 16 October 2021) was an Irish civil service diplomat, writer of Modernist poetry in the Corca Dhuibhne dialect of Munster Irish, a memoirist, and a highly important figure within modern literature in I ...

published an award-winning novel ''A Bhean Óg Ón...'' about the relationship between Piaras and Meg Russell, for whom he wrote much of his love poetry in the

. There is a memorial to Piaras Feiritéar and three other Kerry poets from the Early Modern period, Séafraidh Ó Donnchadha an Ghleanna,Dictionary of Irish Biography https://www.dib.ie/index.php/biography/o-donnchadha-ghleanna-seafraidh-odonoghue-glens-geoffrey-a6348 Aodhagan Ó Rathaille and

Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin (174829 June 1784), anglicized as Owen Roe O'Sullivan ("Red Owen"), was an Irish poet. He is known as one of the last great Gaelic poets. A recent anthology of Irish-language poetry speaks of his "extremely musical" p ...

in the form of a sculpture of a ''spéirbhean'' (a dream woman, symbol of Ireland) with the names of all four poets carved into it in Killarney town.

References

External links

(130) - Matheson Collection > Gleanings from Irish manuscripts - Early Gaelic Book Collections - National Library of Scotland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feiritear, Piaras 1600s births 1653 deaths 17th-century Irish-language poets Irish male harpists People from the Dingle Peninsula Executed people from County Kerry Irish soldiers in the Irish Confederate Wars 17th-century Irish male musicians Irish-language writers 17th-century Irish harpists

Early life

Warrior

Legacy

References

Further reading

See also

External links