Brian Merriman
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Brian Merriman (1749 – July 27, 1805) was an Irish language poet and teacher. His single surviving work of substance, the 1000 line long Cúirt An Mheán Óiche (The Midnight Court), is widely regarded as the greatest comic poem in the language.
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Merriman's life
Merriman appears to have been born in Ennistymon, County Clare. His mother was a woman called Quilkeen and his father, whose identity remains unknown, may have been a priest. Shortly after his birth, his mother married a stone mason who was working on the walls of the Deerpark estate in Ennistymon. The family moved to Feakle and some years later Merriman is known to have owned a 20 acre (81,000 m²) farm in the area and to have been teaching in the school at nearby Kilclaren. He married in or around 1787 and had two daughters. In 1797, the Royal Dublin Society awarded him two prizes for his flax crop. Around 1800 he moved to Limerick, where he ran a school until his death. He is buried in Feakle graveyard.
Cúirt An Mheán Óiche
The poem begins by using the conventions of the Aisling, or vision poem, in which the poet is out walking when he has a vision of a woman from the other world. Typically, this woman is Ireland and the poem will lament her lot and/or call on her 'sons' to rebel against foreign tyranny. In Merriman's hands, the convention is made to take an unusual twist.
In the opening section of the poem, a woman appears to the poet and drags him to the court of the fairy queen Aoibheal. There follows a court case in the form of a three-part debate. In the first part, a young woman calls on Aoibheal declares her case against the young men of Ireland for their refusal to marry. She is answered by an old man who first laments the infidelity of his own young wife and the dissolute lifestyles of young women in general. He then calls on the queen to end the institution of marriage completely and to replace it with a system of free love. The young woman returns to mock the old man's inability to satisfy his young wife's needs and to call for an end to the celibacy among the clergy so as to widen the pool of prospective mates.
Finally, in the judgement section Aoibheal rules that all men must mate by the age of 21, that older men who fail to satisfy women must be punished, that sex must be applauded, not condemned, and that priests will soon be free to marry. To his dismay, the poet discovers that he is to be the first to suffer the consequences of this new law, but then awakens to find it was just a nightmare.
The language of the poem is essentially the everyday Clare Irish of the time. In its frank treatment of sexuality, the rights and role of women and of clerical celibacy, Cúirt An Mheán Óiche is a unique document in the history of Irish poetry in either language.
Merriman's heritage
Cúirt An Mheán Óiche was first published in print in 1850 in an edition by the Irish scholar John O’Daly. In the 20th century, a number of translations have been produced, including notable versions by Arland Ussher, Frank O’Connor, Edward Lord Longford, David Marcus, and Thomas Kinsella and a partial translation by Seamus Heaney. Brendan Behan is believed to have written an unpublished, lost, version. O'Connor's translation, which is perhaps the most popular, was banned in Ireland in 1946 because of the sexual frankness of the content.
Cumann Merriman was founded in 1967 to promote the poet's work. They run an annual Merriman Summer School in Clare each August.
External links
- www.merriman.ie (http://www.merriman.ie/BrianMerriman.html)
- Cuirt an Mheán Oíche: text and English translation (http://www.showhouse.com/prologue.html)
See also: Irish poetry, List of Irish poets