Kathleen Ni Houlihan (Irish: Caitlín Ní Uallacháin, literally, “Kathleen, daughter of Houlihan”) is a mythical symbol and emblem of Irish nationalism found in literature and art, sometimes representing Ireland as a personified woman. The figure of Kathleen Ni Houlihan has also been invoked in nationalist Irish politics. Kathleen Ni Houlihan is sometimes spelled as Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and the figure is also sometimes referred to as the Sean-Bhean
Kathleen Ni Houlihan is generally depicted as an old woman who needs the help of young Irish men willing to fight and die to free Ireland from colonial rule, usually resulting in the young men becoming martyrs for this cause. In the days before the Anglo-Irish War, the “colonial” power was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After the Anglo-Irish War, Kathleen Ni Houlihan was a figure more associated with the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, especially during the Troubles.
As a literary figure, Kathleen Ni Houlihan was perhaps most famously used by William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory in their play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. Other authors that have used Kathleen Ni Houlihan in some way include Seán O’Casey (especially in The Shadow of the Gunman) and James Joyce who introduces characters named Kathleen and Mr Holohan in his story “A Mother” (in Dubliners) to illustrate the ideological shallowness of an Irish revival festival.
Kathleen Ni Houlihan is generally portrayed as an old woman without a home. Frequently it is hinted that this is because she has been dispossessed of her home which comprised a farmhouse and “four green fields” (symbolising the four provinces of Ireland). In Yeats and Gregory’s Cathleen Ní Houlihan (1902), she arrives at an Irish family’s home as they are making preparations for the marriage of their oldest son. In Yeats and Gregory’s play, Kathleen Ni Houlihan tells the family her sad tale, interspersed with songs about famous Irish heroes that had given their life for her. She ultimately lures the young groom away to join in the failed Irish Rebellion of 1798 against the British during the French Revolutionary Wars. After the groom makes his decision and leaves, one character notes that the old woman has become a beautiful young woman with the walk of a queen. Yeats and Gregory’s treatment of Kathleen Ni Houlihan is fairly typical of this myth. The groom’s choice – and eventual death in the failed rebellion – rejuvenates Kathleen Ni Houlihan to some degree.
In the play, the mythic figure of Cathleen ni Houlihan functions, in the eighteenth-century Irish tradition of the aisling, or dream poem, as a symbol of national pride and fierce resistance to British rule. Yeats portrayed Cathleen as an old woman who persuades a young man on the eve of his wedding to serve her cause by joining in the 1798 Rebellion, which ended in a massacre of the vastly overmatched Irish rebels. Following the exit of the young man at the end of the play, his father turns to his last remaining son, a boy of twelve, and asks him if he has seen “an old woman passing by.” “I did not,” says the boy, “but I saw a young girl and she had the walk of a queen.”
In the first performance of Cathleen ni Houlihan, the play’s patriotic theme was reinforced when the title role was performed by Maud Gonne, one of the great beauties of the time, the great love of Yeats’ life and a revolutionary leader in her own right. As interpreted by Gonne, the play became a clarion call to arms directed at prospective rebels. Seen through the eyes of a young boy, however, the queen evokes a prophetic vision of an Ireland completely transformed and filled with the radiance of ever youthful possibility.
This prophecy was partly fulfilled in the 1916 Easter Rising and subsequent War of Independence that brought a partial end to British rule in Ireland. The treaty signed in 1922 between England and Ireland contained two clauses with extremely vexing aftereffects: the first retained the Crown as the titular head of the newly created Irish Free State, while the second established Northern Ireland as a semi-autonomous state for those mainly Protestant loyalists who preferred to remain part of the United Kingdom.