The Merfolk and Saint Brendan

Publication Instance Details #783

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	Displacement/Forced Migration
Irish Context	Emigration (from Ireland) Specific Irish place or place-name mentioned Great Famine (Ireland)
Languages	English
Original Language	Irish
Original Poem	An Mhúruch agus Naomh Bréanainn
Original Author	Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Genre	Part Of Lyric Sequence
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	This sequence of poems, 'Na Murúcha a Thriomaigh', makes use of the international folk tale of the mermaid to construct an allegorical world in which the merpeople have left the water and now live uneasily among humankind on earth. The speaker of this poem describes an event from medieval text, 'The Life of Saint Brendan', in which the saint encounters a harpooned mermaid at sea, who is revived, accepts the Eucharist, dies, and is buried with great ceremony by the saint. This tale gives credence to the long tradition of mermaid folklore and tales in Ireland. The Great Famine and Irish cultural loss is often understood to be implicit in this sequence of poems.