The Midnight Court
Brian Merriman (c. 1749-1805) owes his fame and celebrity to one poem – The Midnight Court. Little else of his literary work is recorded.
Few biographical details of his life survive.
“Pauline Bewick’s visual translation, in eleven pieces, carries the mastery and the genius of The Midnight Court readily. Clearly, as an artist, she is a disciple of Merriman and dogma holds no fear for her. She conveys the plots and themes of the poem with all of the persuasiveness and conviction for which her art is known. Merriman, with his unique idiom, his mixture of mischief and mirth, naturally attracted her. Like Merriman, she has the ability to startle and to surprise, reflecting shade and emphasis to strike the poetic emotional experience of fear, sensuality, fantasy and the impish gaiety of life”
Professor Kieran R. Byrne
For often I walked by the curve of the river, on the Plains where the morning dew crystals the heather
Making for me on the rim of the bay a fiery brute in wild array
Sparking spectacular alight with flame, shimmering beauty with its doors ornate
Fixed in her stare with fire in her eye with temper and pain she began to cry
On the farmyard o’er I scattered seed and a cabbage beneath my head I’d leave
A once leaping up nimbly and fiercely, a cagey old stager bitter and wistful
Flat on the road and nothing to shield her with a mob from the bog and doorus around her
A pulp of pup that you ever did see, healthy and hardy in every degree
Set free together, as nature ordained from loving and coupling, lets not be restrained
Put into action and fill us with glee, the punishment set by the Queen of Craglee
Then I awoke from my dream and rubbed clear my eye and in one bounden leap of my fear I was free