OpenLearn Ireland
Three Irish Poets – Ellen O'Leary
...English crown forces; but the ballad evokes a romantic past in which O’Neill yet rules over Tyrone ‘in high state, with his fair English bride’. The language of the poem is given a ‘Celtic’ flavour by the use of the Scots Gaelic ‘sheiling’ and the Irish words ‘sugaun’ and ‘bawn’. The dialogue suggests spoken idiom of English in Ireland: ‘Poor weeny...