| abstract | - Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin (1748 – 29 June 1782), anglicized as Owen Roe O'Sullivan ("Red Owen"), was an Irish poet. Ó Súilleabháin is known as one of the last great Gaelic poets. A recent anthology of Irish-language poetry speaks of his "extremely musical" poems full of "astonishing technical virtuosity" and also notes that "Eoghan Rua is still spoken of and quoted in Irish-speaking districts in Munster as one of the great wits and playboys of the past." Eoghan Rua was relatively unknown to English speakers until 1924, although famous among Irish-speakers, especially in Munster. In a 1903 book, Douglas Hyde, an Irish scholar from Roscommon who had learned Irish, referred to him as "a schoolmaster named O'Sullivan, in Munster" in his book The Songs of Connacht (which includes a drinking song by Ó Súilleabháin). The 1911 version of the Encyclopædia Britannica mentioned Eoghan Rua in an article on "Celtic Literature," calling him "the cleverest of the Jacobite poets" and noting that "his verses and bons mots are still well known in Munster." In 1924, Daniel Corkery devoted a chapter of his groundbreaking book The Hidden Ireland (1924) to Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin. The book was the first comprehensive look at the world of Irish-speakers during the 18th century, a period which had been considered completely barren except for English-language literature. Corkery writes, "'What Pindar is to Greece, what Burns is to Scotland... that and much more is Eoghan Ruadh to Ireland.' Alas! it is by no means so; but were Father Dinneen to write: "that and much more was Eoghan Ruadh to Gaelic Munster," he would have understated rather than overstated the matter." He then discussed at length the way country people came alive at the mention of Ó Súilleabháin's name, and could recite long poems and a hundred stories about him. "Eoghan Rua's life was ... tragic, but then he was a wastrel with a loud laugh." Ó Súilleabháin is most famous for his aisling [pron. "ashling"] poems, in which the vision of a beautiful woman comes to the poet in his sleep—the woman also often symbolizing the tragic Ireland of his time. Most of the following information comes from Corkery's work. Corkery in his turn depended on a book in the Irish language, Amhráin Eoghain Ruaidh Uí Shúilleabháin, or Songs of Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, written by the priest An t-Athair Pádraig Ua Duinnín (Father Dinneen).
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