ABSTRACT
Aisling poetry's prophetic character thus serves as a kind of counterweight to the complaint against political injustices and the sufferings wrought by them. The allegorical figure of the woman who brings a message of hope is the same figure that in Ni Chonaill's lament for her murdered husband Art O Laoghaire covers his body with her cloak. This intimate gesture of tenderness symbolizes the feeling of solicitude evoked through the poetic imagery of Ireland's maternal care. Historically, the practice of waking the dead through ritual keening and revelries in Ireland met with official ecclesiastical opposition. The Catholic Church attempted to stamp out the perceived excesses of the "merry wake" through a number of edicts. Poetic laments for the dead are a testament to the depths of human suffering and grief. Expressions of sorrow and suffering to which laments give voice acquire their therapeutic value in the context of this work of mourning.
