 The poem is a wonderful and outragous comedy containing
significant political comment.
Dervala writes:
The Midnight Court was written in 1780, but the complaints
seem fresh to some Irish women today.
Lady of Craiglea, you must assess
The extent of Irish women’s distress,
How, if the men continue with their ways,
Alas, women will have to make the plays
By the time the men are disposed to wed
They’re no longer worth our while to bed
And it’ll be no fun to lie below
Those old men who are so weak and slow.
Brian Merriman, wrote Cúirt an Mhean Oíche,
or The Midnight Court. His poem describes a dream in which
he is dragged to a trial where women of Ireland accuse the men of general
foot-dragging and lame bedroom performance. Irish men aren’t
worthy of their spirited womenfolk, they say. The population is falling.
Tight-buttocked, cutie priests are unavailable, and maidens wither
while single men dither. A young woman addresses
the court, blasting men for waiting to marry until they are past being
able to satisfy women in bed. She proposes, among other things, that
priests should marry, and destroys the shriveled old man who defends
men by abusing her. Aoibheall, judge and fairy queen, delivers a verdict
against the men just as Merriman, in terror, wakes up."
It is splendid stuff, rich and earthy and full of detail.
Diarmuid Breathnach writes:
As well as its literary worth, The Midnight Court is
full of information about spells, folklore and 18th century rural life
as well as matters revolving around marriage, sex, population, women’s
rights, births outside marriage [and] clerical celibacy.
Noel Fahy has:
A terrific set of Midnight Court related material here.
It includes detailed translation notes, autobiographical details,
and a side-by-side translation.
With a lively lover she wouldn’t have quit
Once she was lighted, you know she’d stay lit.
With the proper partner she’d never take flight
Entranced on her back with her eyes shut tight
She wouldn’t jump with inappropriate fright
Attack like a cat or scratch or bite,
But lie with him in embrace combined
Side by side with legs entwined,
Exchanging sweet nothings, little white lies
Lips to lips, fingers stroking his thighs.
The Midnight Court, Brian Merriman, 1780
Translated by Noel
Fahey
Professor Seán Ó Tuama describes The Midnight
Court well:
“The Midnight Court is undoubtedly one of
the greatest comic works of literature, and certainly the greatest
comic poem ever written in Ireland. … It is a poem of gargantuan
energy, moving clearly and pulsatingly along a simple story line,
with a middle, a beginning and an end. For a poem of over one thousand
lines it has few longeurs. It is full of tumultuous
bouts of great good humour, verbal dexterity and rabelesian ribaldry.
It is a mammoth readable achievement with little need of gloss.” (Brian
Merriman and His Court, Seán Ó Tuama, pg. 158)
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