FENTON, James [Séamus Dubh]. Amhráin Thomáis Ruaidh .i. The Songs of Tomás Ruadh O’Sullivan. The Iveragh Poet (1785-1848). Collected and edited by Séamus Dubh (James Fenton).

Dublin: M.H. Gill, n.d. [1914]. Crown octavo. pp. 112. First edition. Green buckram, lettered in gilt. A very good copy. Very scarce.
Jisc Library Hub locates 5 copies only. “The editor and collector of these poems is to be congratulated on his rescue of another Kerry poet from oblivion. His scholarly notes throughout the book and his fine description of Iveragh in pre-Famine times are outstanding features of this welcome little book” - Irish School Weekly.
Tomás Ruadh O’Sullivan, the Iveragh poet, was born about the year 1785 at Banard, beside the road that runs from Derrynane to Coomachiste, and near the present Farraneeragh National School. The site of the poet’s house is one of the loveliest in this “mostly lovely tract of the British Islands,” and its surroundings were well calculated to foster the poetic instincts of the youth. To the rear of the house arises the mountain range of Dunkerron, that stretches unbroken the long way to Carn Tuathail. Banard, itself, is situated high over the mouth of Kenmare Bay; the slope to the water’s edge descends
in a southerly direction; and, beside the water, the pointed gables of the old Monastery at Derrynane were clearly visible from the poet’s home. The broad Atlantic, studded with islands, expands to the west and south-west, and away against the southern sky are silhouetted the “blue headlands of sullen Ivra” in all their majestic grandeur. Here the poet grew up “on that Kerry coast which in its wild and majestic beauty is scarcely equalled in Ireland, and hardly surpassed in Europe”. Lord Macaulay - Lecky.

[L3 3G & ? L3 3A]