During the covid pandemic a dear friend sent me A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. The bewitching story is about two Irish women, centuries apart, whose lives become entwined. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman and mother, Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill discovers her young husband has been murdered. In her anguish she drinks handfuls of his blood and at his wake she composes an extraordinary poem, or keening. In the present day, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, a poet and mother becomes consumed by Eibhlín and the keening, her deep sense of connection to the 18th century noblewoman compels her to find out more about her life.
“This is a female text, written in the twenty-first century. How late it is. How much has changed. How little.”
At the end of the book, Doireann has translated the keening that was sung at Eibhlín Ní Chonaill’s husband’s wake. Keeners were women who travelled around Ireland to sing, wail and emote at wakes and gravesides in mourning for the person who had passed away. Keens, the songs they sang, were emotional expressions of grief and lament. The word keening comes from the Irish (Gaelic) word for crying, caoineadh. The keening for Art Ó Laoighaire has passed down through oral tradition in Ireland over the centuries and later it was documented in Irish.
Doireann’s version of the keening is the first time it has been translated from Irish to English by a woman, and a poet no less. A long love letter from a grief-stricken woman to her beloved, the heartache rises from the pages and stays with you for days, weeks and months after reading it.
During the covid lockdown, I was inspired to embroider the first ten verses of the keening, which are in Eibhlín Ní Chonaill’s voice, and so I set about ruling my lines and transcribing each letter, word, line and verse onto a delicate silk organza. Over the next few months of quarantine, long, lonely afternoons and evenings, I glanced up from my embroidery frame to see the seasons change outside my window. The keening slowly emerged on the cloth in tiny gold stitches until eventually the last ‘i’ was dotted and the last ‘t’ was crossed. Holding my breath, I ironed the silk organza and the ink disappeared. The golden keening glimmered across the transparent fabric, beautiful words like beloved, companion, steadfast and true, glistened in the sunlight. Time passed and the embroidery was carefully folded and placed in a drawer.
The Subversive Stitch
My embroidered response to A Ghost in the Throat is currently on display at The Subversive Stitch exhibition in the Draíocht Art Centre in Dublin until January 25, 2025. Curated by Sharon Murphy, the exhibition takes its title from Rozsika Parker's The Subversive Stitch, Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (1984) and focuses specifically on embroidery with its roots in women’s narratives, communications and resistance. It reflects on embroidered work as both image and expression of private, social and political concerns. It presents the work of seven artists; Ursula Burke, Rachel Fallon, Catherine Fay, Riin Kaljurand, Abigail O’Brien, and Sanja Todorović whose work, though conceived out of different circumstances, contexts, ideas and impulses, is united in the scale of its distinctive ambitions and the essential nature of embroidery to her practice and being. The embroidered keening will be displayed alongside Acceptance from the Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven series of textile sculptures and my embroidered samples from École Lesage.
