Mary O’Malley’s works reflect upon the struggles of the movement from the old Irish culture into the new; the conflicts of the traditions in Irish culture. In her early works, she particularly centers her attention on women, and their struggles in relation with the establishment of a modern society and the new cultural vices such as divorce, birth control, etc (which is still seen as taboo subjects in the Irish Catholic society). She also writes about the restriction in the public and private freedoms. In her poem Cealtrach, she talks about the difficulties that Irish women had to deal with in occurrence of a stillbirth. Hence the main theme of her poem is the death of unborn children and how their mothers had to deal with it in consequence of the Irish culture. The theme is strongly depicted by the imagery of struggle and death that is depicted in her poem; moreover the final stanza of her poem is also of key importance in the representation and enhancement of her theme.
The imagery that O’Malley uses in the Cealtrach poem is very potent. The impact of this imagery begins right away with the title, which means “old burial ground” in Gaelic. Even before we begin to read to poem, we know that we are not going to be reading a joyous poem. To tie in the full force of the meaning of the title we must read through the poem and analyze it; after doing so the meaning of the title is that much more powerful to us as readers.
As we read through the first lines of the poem, right away it is told to us that this burial ground is kept secret “The children were never told about those places.” The author also uses a nice metaphor on line two and three “the unbreachable silence of women”, which tells us that first of all, this is a well guarded secret, and that second of all, this secret is known only to women. Following this we find out that this secrecy has a basis in protecting “us” from terrible things. We find out in the next lines that this secret is protecting us...