Mná na hÉireann" (English: Women of Ireland), is a
poem written by Ulster poet Peadar Ó Doirnín
(1704–1796), most famous as a song, and especially
set to an air composed by Seán Ó Riada (1931–1971).
As a modern song, Mná na hÉireann is usually placed
in the category of Irish rebel music; as an
eighteenth-century poem it belongs to the genre
(related to the aisling) which imagines Ireland as a
generous, beautiful woman suffering the depredations of
an English master on her land, her c...(+)
Mná na hÉireann" (English: Women of Ireland), is a
poem written by Ulster poet Peadar Ó Doirnín
(1704–1796), most famous as a song, and especially
set to an air composed by Seán Ó Riada (1931–1971).
As a modern song, Mná na hÉireann is usually placed
in the category of Irish rebel music; as an
eighteenth-century poem it belongs to the genre
(related to the aisling) which imagines Ireland as a
generous, beautiful woman suffering the depredations of
an English master on her land, her cattle, or her self,
and which demands Irishmen to defend her, or ponders
why they fail to. The poem also seems to favor Ulster
above the other Irish provinces. Ó Doirnín was part
of the distinctive Airgíalla tradition of poetry,
associated with southern Ulster and north Leinster; in
this poem he focuses on Ulster place-names, and he sees
the province as being particularly assaulted (for
instance, he says that being poor with his woman would
be better than being rich with herds of cows and the
shrill queen who assailed Tyrone, in Ulster, i.e. Medb
who attacked Cooley, as the borderlands of Ulster,
which would have lain in ancient Airgíalla). This may
be because, besides being the poet's home, until the
success of the Plantation of Ulster the province had
been the most militantly Gaelic of the Irish provinces
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Although originally written for traditional
instruments, i created this arrangement for a friend as
a duet for Flute and Piano.
