Ballylaneen, Baile Uí Luanaigh, Co. Waterford

Baile Uí Luanaigh · Co. Waterford

A hill, a church, and the grave of the last great Munster Gaelic poet.

Ballylaneen is barely a village. A hill, a Catholic church built in 1824, an old graveyard with the poet in it, a closed shop-garage, a pub whose status comes and goes, and about seven houses. The 1957 closure of the school took the last of the daytime life out of the place. What is left is a parish more than a settlement - quiet farmland sloping down to the River Mahon, the Comeragh foothills behind, the Copper Coast a quarter of an hour to the south.

You come here for one reason. Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin, born in Limerick around 1715 and the last of the great Munster Gaelic poets, was buried in the old graveyard in 1795 after collapsing while at prayer in a Waterford church. His religious poems in Irish are still sung. The headstone above him carries a Latin epitaph by another poet, Donnchadh Rua Mac Conmara, set there in 1910 by a parish that had not forgotten. If you stand at the grave on a wet afternoon with the wind coming up off the Mahon, you understand how a small place keeps a big name.

Population

~100

Walk score

Church to crossroads in three minutes

Founded

St. Anne's church built 1824; parish older

Coords

52.1500° N, 7.3833° W

01 / 03

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The poet

Tadhg Gaelach is buried here.

Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin (1715-1795), the great Munster religious poet, collapsed in a Waterford church one April day and was laid in the graveyard at Ballylaneen. His verses are still sung at mass in Irish.

Stories & lore → 02 The graveyard

Old stones, Latin epitaph.

The old churchyard sits a short walk from the present-day St. Anne's. A flat upright stone with a curved top marks the poet's grave. The Neo-Latin epitaph on it was composed by his friend Donnchadh Rua Mac Conmara and inscribed on the headstone erected in 1910.

Stories & lore → 03 The setting

Hill above the Mahon.

Ballylaneen sits on a hill by the River Mahon, halfway between Kilmacthomas and Bunmahon. A church, a handful of houses, fields all around. The Copper Coast is fifteen minutes south; the rest is farmland.

Getting there →

02 / 03

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

The last Munster Gaelic poet

Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin

Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin was born about 1715, probably in the parish of Killeedy in west Limerick. He wandered south as a young man, lived rough for a long stretch, and in middle age underwent a religious conversion that turned his pen entirely to devotional poetry in Irish. His collection Pious Miscellany was published in 1802, seven years after his death, and went through dozens of editions through the 19th century. He died on 22 April 1795 - by tradition while at prayer in a Waterford church - and was carried out to Ballylaneen for burial. The grave is still visited. The verses are still sung at Irish-language Masses around Munster.

A poet writes for a poet

The Latin epitaph

Donnchadh Rua Mac Conmara, the Waterford and Newfoundland poet, was a friend of Tadhg Gaelach. On hearing of his death, Mac Conmara composed an epitaph in Neo-Latin verse. That epitaph was not actually cut in stone until 1910, when a new headstone was erected over the grave. Tom Walsh, the Gaelic scholar and teacher at the old National School, later translated it into Munster Irish. Two poets, one stone, a hundred and fifteen years between the writing and the carving - that is the kind of time a place like this keeps.

1824 and the wall of 1974

St. Anne's church and well

The present Catholic church of St. Anne was built in 1824, when the village was still large enough to support its own parish administration. There is also a holy well dedicated to St. Anne where people went to pray for cures; it was enclosed by a stone wall in 1974. The original parish of Ballylaneen was administered from Mothel about ten miles north. Today the village is part of Stradbally parish, four miles to the east, and the priest comes over to say Mass.

Getting there.

By car

Kilmacthomas is six minutes north on the R677. Stradbally is eight minutes east. Bunmahon and the Copper Coast are twelve minutes south. Dungarvan is half an hour west on the N25.

By bus

No regular service. Nearest stops are Kilmacthomas on the Waterford-Dungarvan route.

By train

No train. The old Waterford-Mallow line, which ran through Kilmacthomas, closed in 1967 and is now the Waterford Greenway.

By air

Cork Airport (ORK) is 1 hour 30 minutes by car. Waterford Airport handles limited private aviation only.