Ó Doirnín, Peadar

Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, The, January, 2000 by ROBERT WELCH

Ó Doirnín, Peadar

(?1700–1769) poet. Born near Dundalk, he spent most of his life in that area; he is buried in Urney on the Louth-Armagh border. Most of the details about him derive either from

folklore

or from accounts written by antiquarians in the 19th cent., and are not very trustworthy. He became a schoolmaster at Forkhill, Co. Armagh, having married Rose Toner. According to tradition he was active as a Jacobite Whiteboy and lived a wild life. Personal and somewhat enigmatic, his love-poems combine derived themes with originality in language, metre, and imagery; they include

‘Mná na hÉireann’

, and the well-known

‘Úr-Chnoc Chéin Mhic Cáinte’

.