The laws of Ireland, 1689-1850: a brief introduction

Essentially, the tale was trivial. A scoundrel named Siobharan stole a cockerel, which had been bought at a fair by Father Aengus. A local court quickly denounced the theft and a warrant for his arrest was promptly issued. It was a local drama, a conflict within a community that was replicated across the countryside and across rural societies everywhere. But the poet and scribe Aogan 6 Rathaille (1675-1729) found something emblematic, drawing from its mundane universality a tense political specificity that twisted me tale away from the ordinary and placed it into the mythic world of the symbolic. The poem he composed, \u27Ar Choileach a Goideadh 6 Shagart Maith\u27 (A Good Priest\u27s Stolen Cock) metamorphosed the event from the banalities oflocal spite into a profound parable of cultural, religious and political conflict. Blending the English and the Irish language, the opening stanza revealed 6 Rathaille\u27s intent. The simple inclusion of the word \u27whereas\u27, as well as demanding the reader\u27s attention, placed me case in a court where Anglophonic law encountered Irish-speaking communities:PUBLISHEDpeer reviewe