"The Lament for Owen Roe" is a traditional Irish ballad dating from the nineteenth century. With a mournful tune, based on an eighteenth-century composition called Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill by the harpist Turlough O'Carolan, it is a lament for the death of Owen Roe O'Neill. Its lyrics were written by Thomas Davis and draw on the tradition of romantic nationalism which was at its height during the era.
Owen Roe O'Neill (c.1585-1649), a member of the O'Neill dynasty of Ulster, was a veteran soldier who had spent most of his life serving as a mercenary in the Spanish Army. Following the Irish Rebellion of 1641 in which Catholics rose up to assert their rights while pledging their allegiance to Charles I, O'Neill returned to Ireland. During the ensuing Irish Confederate Wars he commanded the Ulster Army, mostly campaigning against the Scottish Covenanter Army whom he defeated at the Battle of Benburb. Following the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the declaration of the English Commonwealth, the Irish Confederates and the Covenanters united in a new alliance under his son Charles II. In the face of a potential landing by a large expedition of English troops, O'Neill quarreled with his rival Catholic commanders and refused to accept the Treaty. He instead began co-operation with local English troops under Sir Charles Coote, assisting them during the Siege of Derry.
His temporary alliance with the English having broken down, O'Neill now reached agreement with the Crown including amongst his conditions an Earldom and some lands once held by his family. However he died shortly afterwards. Rumours rapidly spread that he had been poisoned by the English republican forces of Oliver Cromwell (and in particular by O'Neill's recent former ally Coote) to remove a dangerous opponent. However the idea that O'Neill was assassinated is now generally rejected, and his death attributed to natural causes. After his death the Ulster Army was largely destroyed at the Battle of Scarrifholis. [1]
Among his many works, Turlough O'Carolan composed several tunes that referred to Irish leaders during the Confederate Wars, including Lord Inchiquin and Owen Roe. During the nineteenth century, Owen Roe was revived as a heroic figure by Irish nationalists. Thomas Davis of the Young Ireland movement included him along with other seventeenth century figures such as Red Hugh O'Donnell and Patrick Sarsfield who were represented, often rather anachronistically, as part of a general Irish nationalist movement that stretched back for centuries.
The song is sung from the perspective of one of O'Neill's followers in another part of Ireland, who hears the news of his death. It strongly endorses the idea that O'Neill was murdered and attributes his loss as the main reason for the catastrophic defeat to the English republicans under Oliver Cromwell, who occupied Ireland for the next decade, and deprived many Catholic leaders of their lands in the 1652 Act of Settlement.
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote an arrangement of The Lament as part of his "Ode to Irish Airs" collection. [2] William Butler Yeats was an admirer of the ballad. [3]
Its original tune is often played as an instrumental version without the later words. Another song commemorating O'Neill "The Battle of Benburb" also dates from the nineteenth century.
Owen Roe O'Neill was a Gaelic Irish soldier and one of the most famous of the O'Neill dynasty of Ulster. O'Neill left Ireland at a young age and spent most of his life as a mercenary in the Spanish Army serving against the Dutch in Flanders during the Eighty Years' War. After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, O'Neill returned and took command of the Irish Confederate Ulster Army. He is known for his victory at the Battle of Benburb in 1646.
Turlough O'Carolan was a blind Celtic harper, composer and singer in Ireland whose great fame is due to his gift for melodic composition.
The Irish Confederate Wars, also called the Eleven Years' War, took place in Ireland between 1641 and 1653. It was the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars in the kingdoms of Ireland, England and Scotland – all ruled by Charles I. The conflict had political, religious and ethnic aspects and was fought over governance, land ownership, religious freedom and religious discrimination. The main issues were whether Irish Catholics or British Protestants held most political power and owned most of the land, and whether Ireland would be a self-governing kingdom under Charles I or subordinate to the parliament in England. It was the most destructive conflict in Irish history and caused 200,000–600,000 deaths from fighting as well as war-related famine and disease.
Sir Phelim Roe O'Neill of Kinard, was an Irish nobleman who led the Irish Rebellion of 1641 in Ulster, which began on 23 October 1641. He joined the Irish Catholic Confederation during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, in which he fought under his kinsman and second cousin, Owen Roe O'Neill in the Confederate Ulster Army. In 1653 Phelim O’Neill had sought refuge on an old crannog in Roughan Lough while staying at Roughan Castle but was captured after his hideout was betrayed.
Confederate Ireland was the period of Irish Catholic self-government between 1642 and 1649, during the Eleven Years' War. During this time, two-thirds of Ireland was governed by the Irish Catholic Confederation or Confederacy, also known as the Confederation of Kilkenny because it was based in Kilkenny. It was formed by Catholic nobles, landed gentry, clergy and military leaders after the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and it included Catholics of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman descent. They wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination within the Kingdom of Ireland, greater Irish self-governance, and to roll back the plantations of Ireland. They also wanted to prevent an invasion by anti-Catholic English Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters, who were defying the king, Charles I. Most Confederates professed loyalty to Charles I and believed they could reach a lasting settlement with the king once his opponents in the English Civil War had been defeated. The Confederacy had what were effectively a parliament, an executive, and a military. It minted coins, levied taxes and set up a printing press. Confederate ambassadors were appointed and recognised in France, Spain and the Papal States, who supplied the Confederates with money and weapons.
The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland or Cromwellian war in Ireland (1649–1653) was the re-conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Cromwell invaded Ireland with the New Model Army on behalf of England's Rump Parliament in August 1649.
The Battle of Benburb took place on the 5th of June 1646 during the Irish Confederate Wars, the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It was fought between the Irish Confederation under Owen Roe O'Neill, and a Scottish Covenanter and Anglo-Irish army under Robert Monro. The battle ended in a decisive victory for the Irish Confederates and ended Scottish hopes of conquering Ireland and imposing their own religious settlement there.
Hugh Dubh O'Neill, 5th Earl of Tyrone (1611–1660) was an Irish soldier of the 17th century. He is best known for his participation in the Irish Confederate Wars and in particular his defence of Clonmel in 1650.
The Battle of Scarrifholis, also spelt Scariffhollis took place on 21 June 1650, near Letterkenny in County Donegal during the Irish Confederate Wars. A force loyal to the Commonwealth of England commanded by Charles Coote defeated the Catholic Ulster Army, commanded by Heber MacMahon, Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher.
The Battle of Rathmines was fought on 2 August 1649, near the modern Dublin suburb of Rathmines, during the Irish Confederate Wars, an associated conflict of the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It has been described as the 'decisive battle of the Engagement in Ireland.'
Heber MacMahon was bishop of Clogher and general in Ulster. He was educated at the Irish college, Douay, and at Louvain, and ordained a Roman Catholic priest 1625. He became bishop of Clogher in 1643 and a leader among the confederate Catholics. As a general of the Ulster army he fought Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Scarrifholis in 1650. He was defeated, taken prisoner and executed the same year.
Events from the year 1650 in Ireland.
Charles Coote, 1st Earl of Mountrath was an Anglo-Irish peer, the son of Sir Charles Coote, 1st Baronet, and Dorothea Cuffe, the former being an English veteran of the Battle of Kinsale (1601) who subsequently settled in Ireland.
The siege of Charlemont took place in July – 14 August 1650 during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland when the fortress of Charlemont in County Armagh Ireland was besieged by Charles Coote's Parliamentarian army, which was largely composed of soldiers of the New Model Army. The force led by Coote eventually took the fort from its Irish defenders, but not before they suffered heavy losses, with some 500 Parliamentarian Soldiers being killed during assaults on the formidable stronghold. In terms of the number of soldiers killed in battle, the siege of Charlemont was the second bloodiest engagement fought by the Parliamentarians in Ireland, only surpassed by the siege of Clonmel.
Presented below is a chronology of the major events of the Irish Confederate Wars from 1641 to 1653. This conflict is also known as the Eleven Years War. The conflict began with the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and ended with the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–53).
The Battle of Portlester took place on 7 August 1643 near the town of Ballivor, Leinster in Ireland as part of the Irish Confederate Wars. It was fought between the Ulster Army under Owen O'Neill and a largely Protestant government force from Dublin under Lord Moore, with both sides proclaiming their basic loyalty to Charles I. The battle consisted primarily of an exchange of artillery fire in which Moore was killed and his army driven off, giving the Confederates victory.
"The Battle of Benburb" is an Irish song commemorating the 1646 Battle of Benburb. The tune was composed by Tommy Makem, with the lyrics drawn from a nineteenth century poem by Robert Dwyer Joyce.
The Siege of Dublin took place in 1649 during the Irish Confederate Wars. It was a failed attempt by combined Irish Royalist and Confederate forces to capture the capital of Dublin which was held by English Republican forces under Michael Jones. It was part of a strategy by Duke of Ormonde, head of an alliance loyal to Charles II, to seize the remaining foothold of Ireland still under the control of the London Parliament.
Richard O'Farrell was an Irish soldier of the seventeenth century most notable for his service in the Irish Confederate Wars from 1642 to 1651. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant General.
The Laggan Army, sometimes referred to as Lagan Army, was a militia formed by Protestant settlers in the fertile Laggan Valley of County Donegal, Ulster, during the time of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
