Oisín Kelly

Oisín Kelly (17 May 1915 – 13 October 1981) was an Irish sculptor.

Kelly was born as Austin Kelly in Dublin, the son of William Kelly, principal of the James Street National School, and his wife, Elizabeth (née McLean). Until he became an artist in residence at the Kilkenny Design Centre in 1966, he worked as a school teacher. He initially attended night class at the National College of Art and Design and studied briefly in 1948–1949 under Henry Moore.

He originally concentrated on small wood carvings and his early commissions were mostly for Roman Catholic churches. He became well known after he was commissioned to do a sculpture, The Children of Lir (1964), for Dublin's Garden of Remembrance, opened in 1966 on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. More public commissions followed, including the statue of James Larkin on Dublin's O'Connell Street.

He figures in five magical lines of Seamus Heaney's second "Glanmore Sonnet":

Works on display

Oisín

Oisín (/oʊˈʃiːn/ oh-SHEEN; Irish pronunciation: [ˈɔʃiːnʲ]), Osian or Ossian (/ˈɔːʃən/ AW-shən) or Osheen, was regarded in legend as the greatest poet of Ireland, and is a warrior of the fianna in the Ossianic or Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. He is the son of Fionn mac Cumhaill and of Sadhbh (daughter of Bodb Dearg), and is the narrator of much of the cycle.

Legends

His name literally means "young deer" or fawn, and the story is told that his mother, Sadbh, was turned into a deer by a druid, Fear Doirche (or Fer Doirich). When Fionn was hunting he caught her but did not kill her, and she returned to human form. Fionn gave up hunting and fighting to settle down with Sadbh, and she was soon pregnant, but Fer Doirich turned her back into a deer and she returned to the wild. Seven years later Fionn found his child, naked, on Benbulbin. Other stories have Oisín meet Fionn for the first time as an adult and contend over a roasting pig before they recognise each other.

Oisin

Oisín (pronounced in Irish as USH-een, with stress on first syllable) is an Irish male given name. It is sometimes anglicized as Osheen or spelt without the diacritic, as Oisin.

Variants include Scottish Gaelic: Oisean ([ˈɔʃɪn]), Welsh: Osian (/ˈɒʃæn/) and the English Ossian.

People with the name

See also