Connocht Moran plays the lute to the daughter of an Ó Conchobhair King and urges her to elope with him. Etching by Charles West Cope, 1844.

An episode referred to in 'O'Connor's child'. 'Allingham remarks: "The time is in the earlier years of the English settlement in Ireland. The nameless heroine, a daughter of one of the royal O'Connors, has a lover of inferior rank, with whom she runs away. Her fierce brothers pursue, find their place of refuge, slay Connocht Moran, and drag their sister home again. She, distracted, utters a wild curse on her own family and clan as they issue forth to battle against the English chivalry, and to destruction. Then, out of her mind, sometimes raving, other times melancholy, she takes up her abode in a solitary shieling; and there one day to a passing stranger tells her tragic story. 'Castle-Connor' and the rest of the scenery and decorations are about as truthful as those of a romantic opera. Yet it is dyed with delicate ethereal tints, and the versification is delicious." When Henry II. quitted Ireland in 1172, after his partial conquest of that country, all serious purpose of completing it was forgotten in the continental struggle which soon opened on the Angevin kings. Nothing but the feuds of the Irish tribes enabled the adventurers to hold the districts of Drogheda, Dublin, Wexford (in Leinster), Waterford, and Cork (in Munster), which formed what was thenceforth known as "the English Pale." Between Englishmen and Irishmen went on a ceaseless and pitiless war. Half the subsistence of the English barons was drawn from forays across the border, and these forays were avenged by incursions of native marauders. So utter seemed the weakness of the English settlers that Robert Bruce despatched a Scottish force to Ireland under his brother Edward. A general rising of the Irish welcomed this deliverer ; but the danger drove the barons of the Pale to a momentary union, and in 1316, under William De Burgh and Richard de Bermingham, they won the bloody battle of Athenree in which eleven thousand Irish under Felim O'Connor were slain, and the sept or clan of the O'Connors was almost completely annihilated. Twenty-nine chiefs of Connaught also fell on this terrible day.' (Webb, loc. cit.)

The gothic setting is presumably supposed to be one of the castles of the O'Connor kings, referred to as "Castle Connor" in Campbell's poem, perhaps meaning Ballintober Castle in County Roscommon

[1844]

1 print : etching ; platemark 20.3 x 14.7 cm

C.W. Cope Etch. Club Lettered state has etched lines from the poem by Thomas Campbell, 'O'Connor's child, or the flower of love lies bleeding' (1810): " At bleating of the wild watch-fold Thus sang my love—"Oh. come with me: Our bark is on the lake, behold Our steeds are fasten'd to the tree"."

[State before addition of verses by Campbell].

W.T. Webb, Selections from Campbell, London: Macmillan, 1902, p. 110-114

Wellcome Collection 2823109i