The Lament for Art O’Leary

Arthur or Art O’Leary, a colonel in the Austrian army, outlawed and
killed in Carriganimma, County Cork in 1773 for refusing to sell his
famous mare to a Protestant named Morris for £5.0.0 (Catholics were
not permitted by law to possess a horse of greater value than this),
is buried in the ruined abbey of Kilcrea under an epitaph probably
composed by his wife, the author of this lament, and aunt of Daniel
O’Connell.

    Lo Arthur Leary, generous, handsome, brave,
    Slain in his bloom lies in this humble grave.

She is said to have followed up his murderers as she threatened and to
have had the soldiers who shot him transported. Morris himself is
supposed to have been shot in Cork by O’Leary’s brother. The curious
intervention of O’Leary’s sister in the lament strongly suggests that
she had originally composed a lament for her brother in which Eileen
O’Connell was taunted, and that the widow seized on this as a theme
and developed it into the fine poem we know. There is a defensive note
about even the opening lines.

The members of her family—the O’Connells of Derrynane—whom she
mentions are her father, Donal, her brother Connell, who was drowned
in 1765, and her sister Abby, married to another Austrian officer named
O’Sullivan. Abby is the girl who is supposed to have been the
companion of Maria Theresa. Her twin sister, Maire, also named, was
married to a man named Baldwin in Macroom, who appears to have
surrendered the mare to Morris in order to avoid legal
complications. The markethouse of the first verse is in Macroom, and
the Mill of the penultimate verse is Millstreet, County Cork.

My love and my delight,
The day I saw you first
Beside the markethouse
I had eyes for nothing else
And love for none but you.

I left my father’s house
And ran away with you,
And that was no bad choice;
You gave me everything.
There were parlours whitened for me
Bedrooms painted for me,
Ovens reddened for me,
Loaves baked for me,
Joints spitted for me,
Beds made for me
To take my ease on flock
Until the milking time
And later if I pleased.

My mind remembers
That bright spring day,
How your hat with its band
Of gold became you,

Your silver-hilted sword,
Your manly right hand,
Your horse on her mettle
And foes around you
Cowed by your air;
For when you rode by
On your white—nosed mare
The English lowered their head before you
Not out of love for you
But hate and fear,
For, sweetheart of my soul,
The English killed you.

My love and my calf
Of the race of the Earls of Antrim
And the Barrys of Eemokilly,
How well a sword became you,
A hat with a band,
A slender foreign shoe
And a suit of yarn
Woven over the water!

My love and my darling
When I go home
The little lad, Conor,
And Fiach the baby
Will surely ask me
Where I left their father,
I’ll say with anguish
’Twas in Kilnamartyr;
They will call the father
Who will never answer.

My love and my mate
That I never thought dead
Till your horse came to me
With bridle trailing,
All blood from forehead
To polished saddle
Where you should be,
Either sitting or standing;
I gave one leap to the threshold,
A second to the gate,
A third upon its back.

I clapped my hands,
And off at a gallop;
I never lingered
Till I found you lying
By a little furze-bush
Without pope or bishop
Or priest or cleric
One prayer to whisper
But an old, old woman,
And her cloak about you,
And your blood in torrents—
Art O’Leary—
I did not wipe it off,
I drank it from my palms.

My love and my delight
Stand up now beside me,
And let me lead you home
Until I make a feast,
And I will roast the meat
And send for company
And call the harpers in,
And I shall make your bed
Of soft and snowy sheets
And blankets dark and rough
To warm the beloved limbs
An autumn blast has chilled.

(His sister speaks.)

My little love, my calf,
This is the image
That last night brought me
In Cork all lonely


On my bed sleeping,
That the white courtyard
And the tall mansion
That we two played in
As children had fallen,
Ballingeary withered
And your hounds were silent,
Your birds were songless
While people found you
On the open mountain
Without priest or cleric
But an old, old woman
And her coat about you
When the earth caught you-
Art O’Leary—
And your life-blood stiffened
The white shirt on you.

My love and treasure,
Where is the woman
From Cork of the white sails
To the bridge of Tomey
With her dowry gathered
And cows at pasture
Would sleep alone
The night they waked you?

(His wife replies.)

My darling, do not believe
One word she is saying,
It is a falsehood
That I slept while others
Sat up to wake you—

 ’Twas no sleep that took me
But the children crying;
They would not rest
Without me beside them.

O people, do not believe
Any lying story!
There is no woman in Ireland
Who had slept beside him
And borne him three children
But would cry out
After Art O’Leary
Who lies dead before me
Since yesterday morning.

Grief on you, Morris!
Heart’s blood and bowels’ blood!
May your eyes go blind
And your knees be broken!
You killed my darling
And no man in Ireland
Will fire the shot at you.

Destruction pursue you,
Morris the traitor
Who brought death to my husband!
Father of three children—
Two on the hearth
And one in the womb
That I shall not bring forth.

It is my sorrow
That I was not by
When they fired the shots
To catch them in my dress
Or in my heart, who cares?
If you but reached the hills
Rider of the ready hands.

My love and my fortune
’Tis an evil portion
To lay for a giant—
A shroud and a coffin—
For a big-hearted hero
Who fished in the hill-streams
And drank in bright halls
With white-breasted women.

My comfort and my friend,
Master of the bright sword,
’Tis time you left your sleep;
Yonder hangs your whip,
Your horse is at the door,
Follow the lane to the east
Where every bush will bend
And every stream dry up,
And man and woman how
If things have manners yet
That have them not I fear.

My love and my sweetness,
’Tis not the death of my people,
Donal Mor O’Connell,
Connell who died by drowning,
Or the girl of six and twenty
Who went across the water
To be a queen’s companion——
’Tis not all these I speak of

And call in accents broken
But noble Art O’Leary,
Art of hair so golden,
Art of wit and courage,
Art the brown mare’s master,
Swept last night to nothing
Here in Carriganimma—
Perish it, name and people!

My love and my treasure,
Though I bring with me
No throng of mourners,
’Tis no shame for me,
For my kinsmen are wrapped in
A sleep beyond waking,
In narrow coffins
Walled up in stone.

Though but for the smallpox,
And the black death,
And the spotted fever,
That host of riders
With bridles shaking
Would wake the echoes,
Coming to your waking,
Art of the white breast.

Could my calls but wake my kindred
In Derrynane beyond the mountains,
Or Capling of the yellow apples,
Many a proud and stately rider,
Many a girl with spotless kerchief,
Would be here before tomorrow,


Shedding tears about your body,
Art O’Leary, once so merry.

My love and my secret,
Your corn is stacked,
Your cows are milking;
On me is the grief
There’s no cure for in Munster.
Till Art O’Leary rise
This grief will never yield
That’s bruising all my heart
Yet shut up fast in it,
As ’twere in a locked trunk
With the key gone astray,
And rust grown on the wards.

My love and my calf,
Noble Art O’Leary,
Son of Conor, son of Cady,
Son of Lewis O’Leary,
West of the Valley
And east of Greenane
Where berries grow thickly
And nuts crowd on branches
And apples in heaps fall
In their own season;
What wonder to any
If Iveleary lighted
And Ballingeary
And Gougane of the saints
For the smooth-palmed rider,
The unwearying huntsman
That I would see spurring
From Grenagh without halting


When quick hounds had faltered?
My rider of the bright eyes,
What happened you yesterday?
I thought you in my heart,
When ’I bought you your fine clothes,
A man the world could not slay.

’Tis known to Jesus Christ
Nor cap upon my head,
Nor shift upon my back
Nor shoe upon my foot,
Nor gear in all my house,
Nor bridle for the mare
But I will spend at law;
And I’ll go oversea
To plead before the King,
And if the King be deaf
I’ll settle things alone
With the black-blooded rogue
That killed my man on me.

Rider of the white palms,
Go in to Baldwin,
And face the schemer,
The bandy-legged monster—
God rot him and his children!
(Wishing no harm to Maire,
Yet of no love for her,
But that my mother’s body
Was a bed to her for three seasons
And to me beside her.)

Take my heart’s love,
Dark women of the Mill,


For the sharp rhymes ye shed
On the rider of the brown mare.

But cease your weeping now,
Women of the soft, wet eyes
Till Art O’Leary drink
Ere he go to the dark school—
Not to learn music or song
But to prop the earth and the stone.


Source: O'Connor, Frank (tr); Kings, Lords, & Commons: An Anthology
from the Irish; 1962; London; Macmillan & Co; p.109