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.