A Ghost in the Throat

1. The Invisible Labor of Women: A Drudge-Song and a Dirge

This is a female text, composed while folding someone else’s clothes.

Daily drudgery. The author opens by defining her work as a "female text," born of guilt and desire, stitched to a soundtrack of nursery rhymes while performing countless chores. Her days are a relentless cycle of feeding children, cleaning, and managing a household, tasks that are "ordinary" and often invisible, yet demand immense physical and mental effort. She finds a deep, almost paradoxical, satisfaction in "erasing" her daily to-do lists, even as new ones perpetually form.

The unwritten lists. Her life is a constant battle against entropy, where every tidied room swiftly unravels itself again, as if a "shadow hand" were already beginning the unwritten lists of tomorrow. This relentless cycle of domestic labor, though exhausting, provides a sense of control and purpose, breaking hours into achievable tasks. It's a "drudge-song," an "anthem of praise," and a "lament" all at once, reflecting the complex emotions tied to this often-unacknowledged work.

A shared text. The author recognizes her experience as part of a "shared text" lived by countless other women, a universal narrative of devotion and exhaustion. This realization sparks a deeper connection to the past, particularly to Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, whose voice she invites to "haunt her throat" during the small silences of her day, like while breast-pumping. This act of listening becomes a vital sustenance, a dark ink sipped amidst the pale syllables of milk.

2. A Voice Across Centuries: The Keen as a Lifeline

When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.

An ancient echo. The author's first encounter with Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's "Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire" (The Keen for Art Ó Laoghaire) was as an eleven-year-old, a daydreaming girl in a flimsy prefab classroom. The teacher's voice conjured a scene from 1773: English soldiers, a fallen young man, and a woman's voice rising in an "antique formula of breath and syllable" – a keen to lament the dead. This voice, an echo across centuries, reached the young girl with "dark hair and bitten nails."

A teenage swoon. As a teenager, the author developed a "schoolgirl crush" on the keen, drawn to its tragic romance. She imagined Eibhlín Dubh falling in love at first sight, abandoning her family, and drinking her murdered lover's blood, scribbling "pierced hearts in the margin." This visceral connection, though initially misunderstood, hinted at a deeper resonance with themes of desire and defiance that would later become central to her adult life.

A haunting presence. Years later, as a mother navigating the chaos of young children, the author rediscovered the keen. The poem's landscape came alive around her, fizzing with rain, and she felt herself "alive in it." Eibhlín Dubh, pregnant with her third child just as the author was, became a haunting presence, her lullaby-hum echoing in the dark. This renewed connection transformed the keen from a mere school text into a living, breathing dialogue between two women across time.

3. The Body as a Text: Milk, Motherhood, and Vulnerability

In choosing to carry a pregnancy, a woman gives of her body with a selflessness so ordinary that it goes unnoticed, even by herself.

The ocean of milk. The author's early motherhood is defined by the "twin forces of milk and text." She donates breast milk to a human milk bank, a meticulous ritual of sterilization and record-keeping, driven by empathy for premature babies and a desire for control amidst life's uncertainties. This act of giving, mediated by machines and distance, transforms her into a "wet nurse" for strangers, her milk a "liquid echo" reaching distant infants.

A body in crisis. Her third pregnancy culminates in a terrifying premature birth. Her daughter, tiny and struggling, is whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) due to a calcified placenta. The author's body, now a "text in pain," is hooked to machines, leaking milk and tears. She fights for her daughter, hand-expressing milk under immense pressure, feeling the "whip exhaustion of night-feeds" and the profound vulnerability of her body.

Desire's return. After months in the NICU, her daughter comes home, and the author's body slowly reclaims itself. Desire, which had "abandoned her" after birth, "slams open the door," returning with a force that leaves her "animal, throbbing, and wet." This reawakening of her own physical needs, alongside the lingering trauma of her daughter's birth and the constant demands of motherhood, highlights the body as a complex, ever-changing landscape of experience, marked by both joy and pain.

4. Reclaiming Erased Lives: Unearthing Women from Male Shadows

How swiftly the academic gaze places her in a masculine shadow, as though she could only be of interest as a satellite to male lives.

Beyond the male gaze. Frustrated by the "flimsy sketches" of Eibhlín Dubh's life in academic texts, which reduce her to "Wife of Art O’Leary. Aunt of Daniel O’Connell," the author embarks on her own "unscientific mishmash" of research. She aims to build a "truer image of her days," gathering every fact to create a "kaleidoscope" of fractured but vivid moments, determined to "lure female lives back from male texts."

A deliberate erasure. The author's method involves an "act of wilful erasure," sifting through historical documents like Mrs. Morgan John O’Connell's "The Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade," which primarily focuses on the lives of Eibhlín Dubh's brothers. She seeks out "occasional references to the lives of women," believing that "in every page there are undrawn women, each waiting in her own particular silence." This deliberate act of reading against the grain reveals the hidden narratives.

The power of connection. By focusing on Eibhlín Dubh's mother, Máire Ní Dhonnabháin Dhubh, and her twin sister, Mary, the author begins to sketch a richer portrait. She imagines their lives, their wit, their struggles, and their defiance against the Penal Laws. This process of unearthing and imagining not only brings Eibhlín Dubh to life but also deepens the author's understanding of her own female lineage and the enduring strength of women across generations.

5. Translation as Homemaking: Building Rooms for a Ghost

The task of translation itself, however, does not feel unfamiliar to me, not only due to translating my own poems, but because the process feels so close to homemaking.

Stanza as room. The author approaches the translation of Eibhlín Dubh's keen as an act of "homemaking," where each "stanza" is a "room" to be built and furnished. Despite lacking academic credentials, she feels uniquely qualified, drawing parallels between tending to a physical home and meticulously crafting a linguistic one. This methodical work involves "deliberating between synonyms, stitching and re-stitching the seams of curtains," a labor of love and devotion.

Conjuring a presence. Her goal is to "conjure Eibhlín Dubh's presence" by constructing a suitable home for her words, ensuring "each mirror will catch her reflection." The process is slow, repetitive, and often imperfect, much like housework, but it allows for a "slow intimacy with the poet herself." Through this deep engagement, she discovers the "particular swerve of her thoughts and the pulse of her language," feeling a profound connection that transcends centuries.

Beyond the text. Despite her dedication, the author judges her finished translation as "flawed," unable to capture the true "timbre of her voice." Yet, she realizes that the most cherished element lies "beyond the text, in the untranslatable pale space between stanzas, where I sense a female breath lingering on the stairs, still present, somehow, long after the body has hurried onwards to breathe elsewhere." This realization transforms her understanding of presence and absence, finding Eibhlín Dubh not just in words, but in the lingering spirit of female experience.

6. Omens, Echoes, and the Persistence of the Past

What is an omen if not a translation of the past to fit a new form?

Prophetic dreams. The author recounts a recurring nightmare of a plane crashing over the city, a dream that preceded her daughter's premature birth. Only in hindsight, after her daughter's perilous delivery, does she realize this was an "omen," her body desperately trying to translate a "deteriorating placenta into a visual language" to warn her. This experience highlights how the past, or future, can manifest in symbolic forms, demanding interpretation.

The Gearagh's silence. She visits The Gearagh, an ancient forest now submerged by a hydro-electric scheme, a landscape that once defied Eibhlín Dubh's nightmare of desolation. The "first destruction of The Gearagh occurred in text," through planning documents that led to its strategic flooding. This act of erasure, turning a vibrant soundscape into liquid silence, mirrors the historical silencing of women's voices and lives, leaving only "ancient stumps to splinter the surface."

Starlings and echoes. The author observes starlings, their murmuration a "miniature, ink blots swirling on a deep page," remixing sounds of modernity with ancient chirps. This avian imagery connects to the idea of omens and echoes, how "the past is always trembling inside the present." She learns of Norrie Singleton, the woman who first transcribed Eibhlín Dubh's keen, a "little starling" whose mouth opened to let "someone else’s words chirp out," ensuring the keen's survival as a "liquid echo."

7. Grief, Rage, and Defiance: Eibhlín Dubh's Unyielding Spirit

Love, your blood was spilling in cascades, and I couldn’t wipe it away, couldn’t clean it up, no, no, my palms turned cups and oh, I gulped.

A brutal loss. Eibhlín Dubh's life is irrevocably altered by the murder of her husband, Art Ó Laoghaire, a defiant man who flaunted his status despite the Penal Laws. The author recounts the chilling details of Art's confrontation with Abraham Morris, his enemy, and the subsequent ambush. Eibhlín's keen vividly describes her mare returning with "heart’s blood smeared from cheek to saddle," prompting her to leap onto the horse and gallop to his body.

Raw horror and desire. Upon finding Art, Eibhlín's grief is primal and visceral. She falls upon him, "keening and drinking mouthfuls of his blood," a moment of "raw horror" where desire still burns, commanding him to "Rise up now, do, stand, come home with me." This powerful image of consuming her lover's blood, a gesture of desperate intimacy and defiance, becomes a central motif for the author, reflecting the intensity of female love and loss.

Vengeance and erasure. Eibhlín's grief is intertwined with a burning rage, cursing Morris with "anguish," "glaucoma," and "shattered knee-bones." This fury fuels acts of revenge, including the theft and burial of Art's mare's head under the hearthstone, and her brother-in-law Cornelius's attempt to shoot Morris. These acts, though often leading to further loss and erasure (like the mare's unnamed sacrifice), underscore Eibhlín's unyielding spirit and her refusal to suffer silently.

8. The Intertwined Self: Finding Identity in Another's Story

I recognise how deeply different Eibhlín Dubh’s life is from mine, and yet, I can’t help myself in drawing connections between us.

A shared vulnerability. The author reflects on her own teenage years, marked by rebellion and a near-death experience by a river, drawing parallels to Eibhlín Dubh's life. She recounts her brief, disastrous attempt to study dentistry, driven by a desire for "safe, steady days, and a safe, steady paycheque," a stark contrast to her true calling. This period of self-discovery, including her time in the dissection room, reveals a profound vulnerability and a struggle for control.

The dissection room. Her dream of a "church-kind-of-place" eerily foreshadows the anatomy lab, where she later dissects a cadaver. This experience, initially a source of shame and failure, becomes a profound moment of connection, holding another person's heart in her hands. She later pledges her own body to the dissection room, a gesture of "poetics" and a way to "orchestrate a moment of my future in which my body will echo a moment from my past."

White ink. The author chooses to tattoo Eibhlín Dubh's words, "Is aisling trí néallaibh" ("such clouded reveries"), in white ink on her skin. This act is a tribute to Eibhlín Dubh and to Hélène Cixous's idea of women writing in "white ink," symbolizing the unwritten, unacknowledged texts of female experience. It signifies a deep, embodied connection, where the past and present, the two women's lives, are etched onto her very being.

9. The Body's Own Language: Scars, Lumps, and the End of Growth

My body replies in its dialect of scars. Ta-dah! it seems to say, Ta-dah!

The body's narrative. After years of pregnancy and breastfeeding, the author's body bears the marks of motherhood: "milk-bottle thighs split by turquoise seams; my breasts, lopsided and glorious; the holy door of my quadruple caesarean scar, my sag-stomach, stretch-marked with ripples like a strand at low tide." She looks at this body with pride, recognizing it as a "female text" that tells its own story, a continuation of a long lineage.

A new threat. The cessation of breastfeeding brings an unexpected discovery: two lumps in her left breast. This health scare, distinct from her familiar mastitis, plunges her into anxiety and a renewed sense of vulnerability. She questions if weaning her daughter might have prevented this, highlighting the complex interplay between maternal choices and bodily autonomy. The inverted, shy nipple of her left breast, which never produced much milk, now holds a new, unsettling secret.

Accepting strangeness. Despite the fear, the biopsy results bring relief: the lumps are not cancerous, though inexplicable. The surgeon's decision not to operate allows her to accept the "strangeness" of her body, carrying these "neat as ammonite fossils" within her. These lumps, like her tattoo, her caesarean scar, and her broken tooth, become part of her body's unique "text," clues for future students in a dissection room, symbols of a life lived and transformed.

10. Letting Go and Holding Close: The Enduring Female Line

My attempt to know another woman has found its ending not in the satisfaction of neat discovery, but in the persistence of mystery.

The elusive ghost. As Eibhlín Dubh's name disappears from historical records, the author struggles to let go. Her search for definitive answers—her date of death, burial place, reconciliation with family—remains unfulfilled. She acknowledges that her "small skills, self-taught and slapdash, have faltered," and that her quest, though driven by admiration, may have been a "selfish arrogance." The "persistence of mystery" becomes the ultimate outcome of her journey.

Following the lineage. In a desperate attempt to find Eibhlín Dubh, the author shifts her focus to her descendants, tracing the lives of her sons and grandsons. She unearths fragments of their stories—Conchubhar's education in Paris, his legal career, his marriages, and his son Goodwin's distinguished but troubled life as a professor. Through these male narratives, Eibhlín Dubh appears fleetingly, "cast once more in the periphery of men’s lives," yet her temperament and spirit ripple through generations.

A new beginning. The author finds a fragment of delph at Derrynane, a "little treasure" symbolic of the female lives and labor of the place. She steals it, a defiant act of reclaiming. This journey, initially a service to Eibhlín Dubh, ultimately transforms the author, making her aware of "how blurred the furze had grown around me." She learns to hover over life's "gaps in awe," accepting mystery. As she prepares to write in a new notebook, she knows its first page will begin: "This is a female text," a testament to the enduring power of female voice and connection.

Last updated: February 23, 2026