Considered by many to be the greatest Irish song poet of her generation,
Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire (Yellow Mary O'Leary; 1774-1848) was an illiterate
woman unconnected to elite literary and philosophical circles who
powerfully engaged the politics of her own society through song. As an
oral arts practitioner, Máire Bhuí composed songs whose ecstatic,
radical vision stirred her community to revolt and helped to shape
nineteenth-century Irish anti-colonial thought. This provocative and
richly theorized study explores the re-creative, liminal aspect of song,
treating it as a performative social process that cuts to the very root
of identity and thought formation, thus re-imagining the history of
ideas in society.