‘Who is the Gael who Would Not Weep?’: The Book of the O’Conor Don, Fearghal Óg Mac an Bhaird, and Late Bardic Poetry of Exile

Journal article

This article examines how late bardic poetry transforms the condition of exile into a literary mode that reimagines community and tradition. I argue that poetry of lament, blessing and devotion articulates a broader literary consciousness that anticipates modern notions of a national consciousness. The compilation of bardic verse in manuscript form, particularly that of The Book of the O’Conor Don, creates a textual community where diverse voices that were once linked to local patrons and dynasties are reframed as part of a shared tradition. Within this context, elegiac poetry expands from mourning individual figures to envisioning collective memory mediated through the convention of bardic forms, while devotional verse reconfigures displacement through biblical allegory, aligning cultural survival with spiritual restoration. By reading elegiac mourning alongside devotional poetry, exile emerges not merely as a biographical condition but as the occasion for compositions that reimagine both geography and community. By attending to the interplay of form, theology and cultural memory, this article demonstrates how bardic poetry participates, even if unconsciously, in the creation of a national literature before the existence of a political nation.

Authors: McClurkin, DT

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Renaissance Studies
• Article number: rest.70025
• Publication date: 2026-01-01
• Acceptance date: 2025-11-27
• DOI: 10.1111/rest.70025
• EISSN: 1477-4658
• ISSN: 0269-1213
• Language: English
• Keywords: devotional poetry; poetics of loss; national imagination; exile and memory; Irish bardic poetry