Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin
Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin (174829 June 1784), anglicized as Owen Roe O'Sullivan ("Red Owen"), was an Irish poet. He is known as one of the last great Gaelic poets. A recent anthology of Irish-language poetry speaks of his "extremely musical" poems full of "astonishing technical virtuosity", and also notes that "Eoghan Rua is still spoken of and quoted in Irish-speaking districts in Munster as one of the great wits and playboys of the past." Although previously known to speakers of Irish, especially in Munster, Ó Súilleabháin was relatively unknown to English speakers until the early 20th century. The Gaelic League published an Irish-language collection of his poems, with editorial apparatus in English, in 1901. In a 1903 book, Douglas Hyde, an Irish scholar from Roscommon who had learned Irish, referred to him as "a schoolmaster named O'Sullivan, in Munster" in his book The Songs of Connacht (which includes a drinking song by Ó Súilleabháin). The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911) mentioned Eoghan Rua in an article on "Celt" § Celtic Literature, calling him "the cleverest of the Jacobite poets" and noting that "his verses and bons mots are still well known in Munster." In 1924, Daniel Corkery devoted a chapter