School: Sliabh na Lice, Sráid na Cathrach
- Location:
- Slievenalicka, Co. Clare
- Teacher: Seán Ó Cionnfhaola
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0622, Page 111
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- (continued from previous page)shallow-brained, abecedarian pedagogues of the country".His work in Cloonanaha was crowned with success, although he led a rather reckless life of drinking when not engaged in his school duties. His constitution was no longer able to stand the strain to which he subjected himself. A severe illness developed into rheumatic fever and the teacher and poet was conveyed for medical treatment to the Poor House of Ennistymon. Here he lingered for a few weeks and fortified by the last rites of the Catholic Church, on an Autumn morning in the prime of life Seamas Mac Curtain passed to his Eternal reward. His body was consigned to a pauper's grave in the Poorhouse Plot, but his memory still lives on.
His "Swan Song" as he lay on his deathbed, in the Workhouse Ward, is known as "The Last Will and Testament", of Seamus MacCurtain.It rings with irony as the pauper poet sets out to divide his possessions the lands of Clare among his friends and benefactors.MacCurtain was the author of many fine poems in bilingual form in praise of persons and places such as given in page 5 of this book.The late Professor O'Looney was a regular attender at his school in Cloonanaha and later he was his particular friend.His poetry shows the decadence which had set in, in Gaelic Culture when no longer an unrhymed couplet or broken metre would drive a poet into a rage. Circumstances however compelled him to work for his bread and to pay in the coin understood by the peasantry of the day.
Collected by John Kennelly, Rockmount N.S., from various people in district.
- Collector
- John Kennelly
- Gender
- Male
- Informant
- various People in the district
