I. The Irish Lament Tradition

Nowhere in the debate about the oral versus the written nature of Irish literature have the lines of battle been so clearly drawn as in the controversy over the nature and function of the caoineadh (‘keen’), or lament. The paucity of our actual knowledge about the caoineadh in both poetic and social-historical terms, as well as antagonistic assumptions made by proponents on both sides of the debate, have helped to ensure that the controversy remains heated – especially in connection with Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (The Lament for Art O'Leary), the well-known eighteenth-century lament generally ascribed to Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. Ultimately, however, neither side negates the other, but rather each contributes its own distinctive insights into this complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. For, as is so frequently the case in Irish literature, the caoineadh and its related forms reveal that the oral and the written, the elite and the vernacular, may be seen not as opposing sides of a social and literary dichotomy but as participants in a dynamic process of interaction and shared tradition.

The evidence we possess for the Irish lament tradition comes in the form of manuscripts (many of them transcriptions from oral sources), a handful of recordings of ‘reconstructed’ keens, and both written and oral accounts of the performance of laments in the context of wakes and funeral rituals.