The aisling (, , approximately ), or vision poem, is a poetic genre that developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries in Irish language poetry. The word may have a number of variations in pronunciation, but the is of the first syllable is always realised as a ("sh") sound. The aisling also features in traditional sean-nós songs. History of the form In the aisling, Ireland appears to the poet in a vision in the form of a woman from the Otherworld: sometimes young and beautiful, other times old and haggard. This female figure is generally referred to in the poems as a spéirbhean (, 'heavenly woman'). She laments the current state of the Irish people and predicts an imminent revival of their fortunes, usually linked to the restoration of the Roman Catholic House of Stuart to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland. The form developed out of an earlier, non-political genre akin to the French reverdie, in which the poet meets a beautiful, supernatural woman who symbolizes the spring season, the bounty of nature, and love. Another source was a tradition rooted in Irish mythology in which a god or goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Pre-Christian pantheon, is seen weeping for the recent death of a local hero. According to Daniel Corkery, the first Aisling poems in the Irish language were composed during the early 17th century by the Roman Catholic priest, historian, and poet Geoffrey Keating. Fr. Keating's poem Mo bhrón mo cheótuirse cléibh is croidhe ("My sorrow, my gloomy weariness of breast and heart") and his elegy for the 1626 death of John Fitzgerald are both Aislingí. In the latter poem, Fr. Keating awakens from a slumber that has overtaken him along the banks of the River Slaney and is confronted by a vision of the Pre-Christian Irish goddess Cliodhna weeping for the death of John Fitzgerald. In Corca Dhuibhne in 1653, an anonymous bard composed a lament over the recent death by hanging of Irish clan chief, poet, and folk hero Piaras Feiritéar at Cnocán na gCaorach in Killarney, for leading his clansmen in war against the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The lament begins, Do chonnac aisling are maidin an lar ghil ("I saw a vision on the morning of the bright day"). The vision was the goddess Erin bewailing the death of a man who had overthrown hundreds. The first of the