Poetry Codex

Victorian

Ethna Carbery

1866–1902

Ethna Carbery was the pen name of Anna Johnston (1866–1902), a Belfast poet of the Irish literary revival. With Alice Milligan she helped found the Belfast paper The Shan Van Vocht, in which many of her songs and ballads of Irish history, love and legend first appeared between 1896 and 1899. She married the writer Seumas MacManus and died on 2 April 1902.

The Four Winds of Eirinn, published in Dublin in 1902, appeared after her death; her husband edited it, and about a third of it went to press unrevised by her. Its ballads of the Fenian past and the risings of 1641 and 1798, its fairy and legend poems and its love songs, written in the rhythms of Irish speech and song, made it one of the most widely read books of Irish verse of its day.

Poems (68)

  1. The Cold Sleep of Brighidin
  2. Shiela Ni Gara
  3. In Tir-na'n-Og
  4. The Song of Ciabhan
  5. Mo Chraoibhin Cno
  6. The Well o' the World's End
  7. The King of Ireland's Cairn
  8. Turlough MacSweeney
  9. The Love-Talker
  10. Paistin Fionn
  11. Handsome Brian O'Gallagher
  12. Mary of Carrick
  13. Niamh
  14. On an Island
  15. The Heathery Hill
  16. The Spell-Stricken
  17. Slainte na h-Eireann
  18. Glen Moylena
  19. The Sad Song of Finian
  20. The Brown Wind of Connaught
  21. The Four Places of Sorrow
  22. Caroll O'Daly
  23. Bereft
  24. Mo Bhuachaill Cael-Dubh
  25. Nial O'Cahan
  26. All Souls' Night
  27. Our Road
  28. Brian Boy Magee
  29. The Princes of the North
  30. Donal Mac Seaghain Na Mallacht
  31. Hills o' my Heart
  32. At the Well of the Branchy Trees
  33. Invocation
  34. I-Breasil
  35. The Curse of Mora
  36. Thinkin' Long
  37. The Conqueror
  38. Moorloch Mary
  39. Feithfailge
  40. The Wayfarer
  41. The Other
  42. The Quest
  43. The Eyes of Fionuala
  44. After
  45. My Prayer
  46. To the Comely Four of Aran
  47. Rody M'Corley
  48. The Wonder-Music
  49. A Glen Song
  50. The Kisses of Angus
  51. Neece the Rapparee
  52. Vein o' my Heart
  53. My Yellow Yorlin
  54. The Reason Why
  55. On Inisheer
  56. Mairin-Ni-Cullinan
  57. The Green Woods of Truagh
  58. Haunted
  59. Art the Lonely
  60. The Little Head of Curls
  61. Unfearing
  62. In Donegal
  63. Angus the Lover
  64. The Passing of the Gael
  65. The Shadow House of Lugh
  66. The Green Plover
  67. Niall Glondubh to Gormlai
  68. Consummation

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