The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #33347   Message #818230
Posted By: GUEST,Philippa
04-Nov-02 - 01:43 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Cathleen ni Houlihan
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Caitlín Ní Uallacháin
Maybe I'll get around to typing out the lyrics, or maybe Jill can supply them. Meanwhile this item,summarising an article in a journal, may be of interest:

http://www.mic.ul.ie/ecis/ECIvolume11.htm

Volume 11

Nic Eoin, Máirín. "Secrets and Disguises? Caitlín Ní Uallacháin and other female personages in eighteenth-century Irish political poetry." Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr 11 (1996) : 7-45.

"This article discusses the use of vernacular names as the female personification of land and sovereignty in eighteenth-century Irish political poetry. The article provides an explanation of the literary and political significance of names such as Caitlín Ní Uallacháin, Síle Ní Ghadhra, Móirín Ní Chuilleanáin /Luineacháin / Ghiobarláin, and Gráinne Mhaol Ní Mháille. Nic Eoin discusses the importance of each of these female figures within the context of eighteenth-century aisling poetry and Irish Jacobite songs. "In using vernacular names, eighteenth-century poets were above all reclaiming the emotive force of the female sovereignty figure which had been denigrated in seventeenth-century political poetry…being less a metaphorical representation of Ireland, and more a metonym for the oppressed Catholic population."