Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig
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Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig (c.1580-c.1652) was a scholar and poet of noble descent from Ossory. Only a handful of his poems are still extant. With its cry of despair against the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and its consequences for the world and class which he belonged to, his Faisean Chláir Éibhir bears a striking resemblance to the poetry of the great Dáibhí Ó Bruadair: 'A trick of this false world has laid me low: servants in every home with grimy English but no regard for one of the poet class save "Out! and take your precious Gaelic with you!" [1]
Mac Giolla Phádraig was ordained a priest in 1610. Around the year 1651 he was appointed vicar general and apostolic vicar of the diocese of Ossory. He was executed by Oliver Cromwell's forces shortly afterwards.[2] A memorial to him lies in the village square of Durrow.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Faisean Chláir Éibhir in full
- ^ Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella, An Duanaire 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed, p. 89.
