School: Cooleenbridge, Scariff
- Location:
- Poulagower, Co. Clare
- Teacher: T. Mac Seóín
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0592, Page 013
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Cooleenbridge, Scariff
- XML Page 013
- XML “Brian Merriman”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- Little is known of where Brian Merriman was born or where he came from but it is stated with some authority and this fact is borne out by his great work The Midnight Court that he was born about the year 1847. He was one of the hedge-school masters and after coming to Feakle about the year 1770 he taught a hedge school in that parish.His father was a stone mason and it is said he came from Ennistymon. It was in the townland of Kilcalaren near the present Catholic Church and not far from the old fair green that he taught school. The following lines taken from The Midnight Court show that it was here he lived when he wrote the great poem:
"De ghealadh mo chroidhe nuair a chífinn Loch GréineAn talamh an tír is ioghar na spéire"(continues on next page)
