A Dhísirt Uí Thuaithchill, mo Chruadh-Chréachtsa: An Early Eighteenth-Century Poem from Derry

Abstract

I have also searched these Glens for some of the old tuireadhs or elegies sung at the wakes of the old families but I could not find one, except one fragment of an elegy composed for a Manus O’Kane who had lived near Garvagh, but at what time no one could tell me. They cannot recite any of Ossian’s poems except odd lines here and there. These they have, not from a succession of oral traditions, but from hearing old men (Irish scholars now dead) read them out of Mss, now decayed or lost. – John O’Donovan, Clady, August 11th, 1834.1