Liadan (fl. 7th c.)

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Liadan (fl. 7th c.)

Poet of Ireland. Flourished in the 7th century in Ireland.

Very little is certain about Liadan's life. Biographies of her written hundreds of years after her death tell that she was a noblewoman who rejected her lover, a handsome man called Cuirithir, and joined one of the convents of Christianized Ireland. She came to regret her haste and sought his love again, only to find that he had joined a monastery and refused to leave it. The only poem of hers to survive supports this story to some extent; it is a lament which names Cuirithir as a lost lover for whom Liadan is grieving.

Laura York , Riverside, California