CAROLAN, Turlogh, the most famous of the modern Irish bards, was the son of John Carolan or O’Carolan, a respectable descendant of an ancient tribe of East Breifny, a district now forming part of the counties of Meath and Westmeath. He was born at a place called Newtown, near Nobber, in the county of Meath about the year 1670. His father, being reduced to a state of poverty, quitted his native county and eventually settled at Alderford, co. Roscommon, bn the invitation of the family of M t Dermott Roe It was here that the future bard received his education, which appears to have been very limited, as he never acquired more than a smattering of the English language. In his eighteenth year he was seized with small-pox, and totally deprived of sight. This misfortune led to his becoming a professional bard or itinerant minstrel. His benefactress having provided him with a harp, a horse, and attendant, he began his avocation in his twenty-second, year by visiting the houses of the surrounding gentry, his wanderings being chiefly confined to Connaught. It is said, however, that he never played for hire, and that at the houses where he visited he was welcomed more as a friend than as an itinerant minstrel. To the family of M i Dermott Roe he was attached by the tenderest ties of gratitude and affection, and for them were composed some of his sweetest strains. The number of Carolan’s musical pieces, to nearly all of which he composed verses, is said to exceed 200. He died on the 25th March 1738, and was buried at Kilronan. His poetical Remains in the original Irish, with English metrical translations by Thomas Furlong, are printed in Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy (1831). Many of his songs are preserved among the Irish MSS. in the British Museum.