William Carleton, Irish song, and the art of keening

William Carleton was evidently familiar with wide traditions of Irish-language song, particularly through the singing in Irish of his mother. and this experience is evident throughout his writings. In addition to the explicit citation and celebrations of song in his work are less immediately recognised ways in which Carleton absorbed traditions of Irish singing into his fiction, particularly the form of caoineadh, or laments for the dead. Relatively few examples of early caointe (keens) have survived from the province of Ulster. However, this chapter argues that the practices of early nineteenth-century keening, as performed in Ulster, can be glimpsed in the novels and short stories of William Carleton. Close comparison of an extended fictional prose description in Valentine M’Clutchy (1845) with various accounts of caointe (Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire by Eibhlín Dhubh and a declamation recorded in 1828 by the County Kilkenny schoolmaster Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin) indicates Carleton’s evident knowledge of Irish traditions of lament. Irish song is shown to be typified by its lyric, non-narrative form and to be marked with particular emotional intensity, elements still visible within the prose recreations in English of Carleton’s fiction.