Egan O'Rahilly

Egan O'Rahilly or Aogán Ó Rathaille (Gaelic name: Aodhagán Ó Rathaille) (1670–1726) was an Irish language poet.

Quotes

• For the future I cease, Death approaches with little delay,
  Since the dragons of Laune and Lane and Lee are destroyed;
  I’ll follow the heroes far from the light of day,
  The princes my ancestors followed before Christ died.
  • Closing lines of his last known poem (c.1729)
  • Translated from the Irish by Owen Dudley Edwards, as quoted in Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 626

• That my old bitter heart was pierced in this black doom,
  That foreign devils have made our land a tomb,
  That the sun that was Munster's glory has gone down
  Has made me a beggar before you,Valentine Brown.
  • "Valentine Brown", as quoted in An Anthology of Irish Literature (1954), p. 239
  • Variant translation:
    Because all night my mind inclines to wander and to rave,
    Because the English dogs have made Ireland a green grave,
    Because all of Munster's glory is daily trampled down,
    I have traveled far to meet you, Valentine Brown.

Quotes about O'Rahilly

• Aodhagán Ó Rathaille sang this sang
  That I maun sing again;
  For I've met the Brightness o' Brightness
  Like him in a lanely glen.
  • Hugh MacDiarmid, in To Circumjack Cencrastus (1930)