Filíocht Fridays: Éamonn an Chnoic, the Jacobite cowboy of Tipp

This week I look at the famous sean nós ballad of tuaisceart Thiobraid Árann, and its aesthetic overlap with cowboys and tóraíocht.

Sean nós cowboys

It has often been said that Irish art revels in tragedy, ennui and melancholy, nowhere is that clearer than in the Jacobite rebel tradition. Hence why for this week I've decided to analyse the classic sean-nós cowboy poem, Éamonn an Chnoic.

The poem begins with an encapsulation of the the tragic melancholy of the Gaelic rapparee. The titular character, Éamonn Ó Riain, mourns over his rootless state of wandering, after the Elizabethean invasions took his ancestral lands. It is said he, as ‘Ned of the Hill’ faced an existence of ‘Toil of o’er hill and vale since morning !’. After the anarchic conditions of the Williamite Wars, great Irish lords increasing took the form of outlaws and rebels, men forced to live lives above the law and all established order.

It is a life which, while melancholic, is steeped in poetic and evocative imagery, so often reflected in the world's folk traditions. He, like An Spailpín Fánach, he says ‘Long I'm wandering’ in a life of handless poverty. But unlike that of a simple lumpenprole, Ned does aspire to return one day, like Odysseus, to his long-lost home: ‘Must seek my home in a far land !’. He is, like Sarsfield, a rebel who dreams of order, a patriot made to feel like a traitor and a foreigner in his own nation.