Irish Literature Companion:
Máire Bhuí Ní Laoghaire
Ní Laoghaire, Máire Bhuí (1774-?1849), poet; born in Túirín na nÉan in Uíbh Laoghaire (Iveleary), near Inchigeelagh, Co. Cork. In about 1792 she married Séamas de Búrca, a horse-trader from Skibbereen, and they bought a holding near Céim an Fhia (Keimaneigh), where they lived in some prosperity. She was illiterate, but her poems and songs were orally transmitted and survive in the folklore of her locality. Her best-known poem is ‘Cath Chéim an Fhia’, which gives a graphic account of an affray between the Whiteboys [see secret societies] and the local battalion of yeomanry in 1822.
