The advice of Mac Clave from Aughnamullen

The text and translation of this famous Irish satire composed in the late 17th century in the dialect of South Ulster/North Leinster first appeared in the Clogher Record, the journal of the Clogher Historical Society, in 1965. The translation has been revised for the present edition and a study of the poem in its Irish and Euporean context has been added. The author of the Comhairle which offers the pseudo-advice of one John Mac Clave, a parish priest deposed by Archbishop PLunkett, may have been the poet Owen O Donnelly, probably to be identifie with a cleric of the same name who was ordained in 1672. The theme is the lack of learning among the Catholic clergy in the countryside on account of the wretched facilities for priestly training and education in Ireland during the Penal Days. The spirit is very akin to that of William Carleton's "Denis O Shaughnessy going to Maynooth" (1831-3). Indeed Carleton may very well have heard one of the versions of the Comhairle before he painted his hero with the same satirical and affectionate brush as his Gaelic predecessor.