Owen Roe O’Sullivan or Eoghan Ruadh Ó Súilleabháin from Meentogues in the Headford area of Sliabh Luachra, is known as one of the Four Kerry Poets. The other three are: Geoffrey O’Donoghue, Aodhagán O Rathaile and Pierce Ferriter.
Owen spent many hours at The Park – a mansion that once stood near the derelict Pretty Polly factory in Killarney and the home of his patron, Colonel Cronin.
Brawl on College Street
It was while defending the colonel’s honour that he was injured in a brawl in College Street, the injury from which he later died.
Owen Roe O’Sullivan, Son of Sliabh Luachra, is a sketch of the gifted bard penned almost two hundred years ago.
It recalls how Owen showed poetic promise from a young age when he composed a satire to avoid a ‘hoisting’ at school, and how he gave up teaching when he fell in love with Mary Casey, whom he immortalised in song.
Translations of the Bard’s Verse
The sketch, reproduced by Janet Murphy, includes references to modern translations of the bard’s verse, keeping him very much to the forefront of Irish literature.
It also contains notes on the Cronin family of Rathmore House, The Park and Glenflesk Castle.
One of the noted Cronin descendants was Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, former student of Killarney monastery who went off to South Africa and made history photographing – with a box camera – his times and travels.
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