Máire Mhac an tSaoi: A scholar and poet unparalleled

Then-President Mary McAleese and Máire Mhac an tSaoi who presented the president with a book of her poems in 2011. The poet was said to have 'dragged Irish-language poetry screaming and kicking' into the 20th century. Photo: Maura Hickey

Máire Mhac an tSaoi was born in 1922, making her The Same Age as the State, as the title of her 2003 autobiography says. 

Both her life and her work were remarkable. One of the finest Irish 20th-century poets in either language, she published five collections of poetry in Irish between 1956 and 1999, starting with Margadh na Saoire [“The Hiring-Fair”].

This striking volume broke new ground in its frank and forceful voicing of women’s sexual experiences. It anticipates by more than two decades the achievements of poets writing in English such as Eavan Boland and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. It helped significantly to clear the ground for later Irish-language poets such as Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, who said that Mhac an tSaoi “dragged Irish-language poetry screaming and kicking” into the 20th century, together with Ó Ríordáin and Ó Direáin.

Writer and poet Máire Mhac An tSaoi was one of the State’s first three women diplomats. Photo: Kieran Clancy

Mhac an tSaoi always lived close to Irish public life, as her autobiography recounts. She came from a prominent nationalist family. Both her parents had been active in the revolutionary period.

Her father Seán MacEntee, a Belfastman, fought in 1916 and in the Civil War. Later, he held prominent government ministries between 1932 and 1965. Her mother Margaret Browne was a scholar of classical Irish poetry and her maternal uncles were distinguished churchmen, one a Cardinal. 

The best-known was another national figure, the prominent intellectual Monsignor Pádraig de Brún, who lived in the Kerry Gaeltacht. Máire was close to him and spent much time there, gaining a knowledge of spoken and written Irish unparallelled among her contemporaries. She was considered the foremost authority on the Corca Dhuibhne dialect.

As an adult, she became first a scholar of Irish language and literature, in Dublin and at the Sorbonne. During World War II, she studied law and was one of the first woman to be called to the Bar. 

In 1947, she became one of Ireland’s first three women diplomats, serving with distinction in Spain, France, and the UN in New York. In 1962, she married her colleague, statesman and historian Conor Cruise O’Brien, and resigned her post.

At this time Cruise O’Brien was embroiled in worldwide controversy surrounding his service for the UN in the Congo, during the war following the secession of Katanga. The couple lived in Ghana and New York before returning to Ireland in 1969, where O’Brien was a well-known figure in Irish electoral politics and public life. Together they adopted two Irish-Ghanaian children, and some of Máire’s finest poems are tender expressions of parental love.

Máire continued to write, publish, and translate poetry up to the 2000s. She was deeply immersed both in the speech of West Kerry and in the rich traditions of Irish literature.

Her most celebrated single work has been the remarkable seven-poem sequence “Ceathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin” [“Mary Hogan’s Quatrains”], about a transgressive sexual affair, which won the Oireachtas prize. In poetic accomplishment, erotic charge and emotional intensity, the “Ceathrúintí” have been rightly admired as a new departure in 20th-century Irish literature. 

In 1957, John Jordan called her “a prober of the condition of love,” noting that “no living Irish poet has brought more honesty and insight to the subject”.

Not least among Mhac an tSaoi’s achievements in this work is a compelling sexual frankness and defiance of the repressive ethos of the period; few readers forget the electrifying stanza: 

Beagbheann ar amhras daoine,
Beagbheann ar chros na sagart,
Ar gach ní ach bheith sínte
Idir tú agus falla 

[I care little for people’s suspicions,
I care little for priests’ prohibitions,
For anything save to lie stretched
Between you and the wall.]

Here the simplicity of the language recalls the plainness of the great love-poetry of amhráin na ndaoine, revealing the poet’s supple capacity to take inspiration from different aspects of the tradition.

But she ranges widely: her work includes two or three powerful anti-war pieces, as well as fine elegies, notably one for the piper Séamus Ennis. Her later work looks unflinchingly at ageing, bodily decay, and death. 

One of her last, and most beautiful, poems is “Ceann bliana” (“One year after”). It mourns her husband’s death and calmly regards her own:

Cóirím mo chuimhne chun dulta dhi ’on chré,
Fillim spíosraí san eisléine léi agus airgead cúrsach;
Tá sneachta fós ar ithir na cille,
Sínim le hais an choirp ar mo leabaidh.

[“I arrange my memory in readiness for the grave,
Put spices in her shroud and silver coins;
The snow is still on the cemetery ridge;
I lie down beside the body on my bed]

Translation: Louis de Paor

• Patricia Coughlan is Emeritus Professor of English at UCC. Her “The Poetry of Máire Mhac an tSaoi and the Indivisibility of Love” appeared in A History of Irish Women’s Poetry, ed. Ailbhe Darcy and David Wheatley (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Jack

Strapaire fionn sé troithe ar airde,
Mac feirmeora ó iarthar tíre
Ná cuimhneoidh feasta go rabhas-sa oíche
Ar urlár suimint’ aige ag rince.

Ach ní dhearúdfad a ghéaga im thimpeall,
A gháire ciúin ná a chaint shibhialta –
Ina léine bhán, is a ghruaig nuachíortha
Buí fén lampa ar bheagán íle . ..

Fágfaidh a athair talamh ina dhiaidh aige,
Pósfaidh beag agus tógfaidh síolbhach,
Ach mar chonacthas domhsa é arís ní cífear,
Beagbheann ar chách ób’ gheal lem chroí é.

Barr dá réir go raibh air choíche!
Rath is séan san áit ina mbíonn sé!
Mar atá tréitheach go dté crích air –
Dob é an samhradh so mo rogha ’pháirtí é.

Jack

A fine fair-haired six-foot fellow,
A farmer’s son from the country westward,
On hard cement we danced together
A night in the future he’ll not remember.

But I won’t forget how his arms embraced me
His quiet smile, civil conversation –
In his clean white shirt, his neat combed hair –
Yellow in the lamplight as the oil ran lower.

He’ll get the land his father leaves him,
Marry and raise a houseful of children
But no-one will see the man I danced with –
What did I care who saw my fancy.

All that is best in the world I wish him,
Blessings on every place that holds him,
Every promise fulfilled in living,
My chosen partner for all this summer.

Translation: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

• Both the poem and translation are from the book An Paróiste Míorúilteach / The Miraculous Parish – Máire Mhac an tSaoi, (published by O’Brien Press in conjunction with Cló Iar-Chonnacht).