Brian Merriman or in Irish Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre (c. 1747 – 27 July 1805) was an Irish language bard, farmer, and hedge school teacher from rural County Clare. His single surviving work of substance, the 1000-line long Dream vision poem (The Midnight Court), describes a supernatural trial in which the women of Ireland are suing the men for refusing to marry and father children and is often compared to the works of François Rabelais. Cúirt an Mheán Oíche is widely regarded as the greatest work of comic or satirical verse in the history of Irish poetry. Merriman's life Merriman in oral accounts collected after his death was said to have been born illegitimately in Clondagad or Ennistymon, County Clare. His father is said to have been either a Roman Catholic priest or an Anglo-Irish landlord. His mother was surnamed Quilkeen. Shortly after his birth, Merriman's mother married a stonemason who was working on the walls of the Deerpark estate in Ennistymon. The family moved to Feakle and some years later Merriman is known to have owned a 20-acre (81,000 m2) farm near Loch Gréine. According to Daniel Corkery, it is still unknown, "how nor where", Brian Merriman, "got his education. Perhaps in some hedge school, or intermittently at the feet of some wandering poet or priest, one bearing with him the relics of a nation's culture, the other the credentials of Louvain or Salamanca." Merriman is known, however, to have been the teacher of the illegal hedge school for the townland of Kilclaren. He is also said in the local oral tradition to have been a stout man with black hair who was a very talented fiddler. Also according to the local oral tradition, Brian Merriman was employed for a time as resident tutor to the children of a local Protestant and Anglo-Irish landlord. According to Daniel Corkery, this would not have been uncommon at the time. The Irish language was still spoken so pervasively in 18th century Ireland that many landlords and their families had to learn Irish to communicate with their household servants, tenant farmers, and hired labourers. Furthermore, the oral poetry composed in Munster Irish throughout the 18th century, which is replete with allusions to both Classical and Irish mythology, includes many of the greatest and most immortal works of Irish literature in the Irish language. It is unlikely, however, that Merriman's employers were aware of