Brian Merriman - Influence and Legacy

Influence and Legacy

The language of the poem is essentially the everyday Munster Irish of the time. In its frank and satirical treatment of sexuality, ironic parody of the battle of the sexes, and its biting social commentary, Cúirt An Mheán Óiche is a unique document in the history of Irish poetry in either language.

Cúirt An Mheán Oíche was never written down by its author and preserved, like much Gaelic poetry, in an oral format. It was first published in 1850 in an edition by the Irish scholar John O'Daly. In the 20th century, a number of translations have been produced, including notable English versions by Arland Ussher, Frank O'Connor, Edward Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford, David Marcus, Ciarán Carson, Thomas Kinsella and a partial translation by Seamus Heaney. Brendan Behan is believed to have written an unpublished, lost, version. O'Connor's translation, which is perhaps the most popular, was banned in Ireland by the Censorship Board in 1946, because of the sexual frankness of the content.

Cumann Merriman was founded in 1967 to promote the poet's work. They run an annual Merriman Summer School in County Clare each August.

In 2005, the Clare County Library released a CD recording of a local seanchai reciting Cúirt An Mheán Óiche in the traditional oral manner. Although it has not been made available for purchase, Cumann Merriman has posted excerpts on their website. For added contrast, the same passages are also reproduced from a modern dramatic reading of the poem.

In recent years, Merriman's poem and other Gaelic satires have heavily influenced the writings of several modern Irish poets like Seamus Heaney and Thomas Kinsella. Flann O'Brian's metafictional novel At Swim Two Birds also shows the influence of Cúirt An Mheán Óiche as well as other works of Irish mythology and literature.

In a 1993 lecture on Merriman's life and work, Seamus Heaney declared,

"Perhaps I can convey the ongoing reality of the poem's life more simply by recollecting a Saturday evening last August when I had the privilege of unveiling a memorial to Brian Merriman on the shore of Lough Graney in Co. Clare, where the opening scene of 'The Midnight Court' is set. The memorial is a large stone quarried from a hill overlooking the lake, and the opening lines are carved on it in Irish. The people who attended the ceremony were almost all from the local district, and were eager to point out the exact corner of the nearby field where the poet had run his hedge school, and the spot on the lough shore where he had fallen asleep and had his vision. This was, and is, the first circle where Merriman's poem flourished and continues to flourish. Later that evening, for example, in a marquee a couple of miles down the road, we attended a performance by the Druid Theatre Company from Galway in which the poem was given a dramatic presentation with all the boost and blast-off that song and music and topical allusion could provide. Again, hundreds of local people were in the tent, shouting and taking sides like a football crowd, as the old man and the young woman battled it out and the president of the court gave her judgement. The psychosexual demons were no longer at bay but rampant and fully recognised, so that the audience, at the end of the performance, came away from the experience every bit as accused and absolved as the poet himself at the end of his poem. The 'profane perfection of mankind' was going ahead and civilisation was being kept on course; in a ceremony that was entirely convincing and contemporary, Orpheus has been remembered in Ireland."