Vol. 8: Morley, Vincent.

Type: Article

Morley, Vincent. ‘Hugh MacCurtin: an Irish Poet in the French Army’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 8 (1993), Pp 49-58.

In 1925, T.F. O’Rahilly published the text of a poem by the eighteenth-century Irish poet, Hugh MacCurtin in which MacCurtin portrays himself as a soldier. This article questions whether MacCurtin really was a soldier in Lord Clare’s regiment in the French army – and having established that he was indeed enrolled in that regiment, considers the probable date of composition of the poem. Morley examines the poem in detail, particularly its Gaelic references and threats toward George II, and concludes that it was written between 1726 and 1734, and that MacCurtin’s intended audience was the soldiers of the Clare regiment with whom he had previously served. The article contains a translation of the poem into English and is, itself, an English translation of the article above, pp. 39-48 of this volume.