This article considers two contrasting French translations of Cathleen Ni Houlihan, a one-act play form the Irish literary Renaissance of the turn of the twentieth century. Highly nationalist in content and tone and hibernicizing in language variety, the play purports to represent the essence of Gaelic identity at an important moment in the history of Irish nationalist self-awareness. Thus, the source text is much more than just a theatrical event, as it consciously stages a potent political myth. Cathleen Ni Houlihan is a cultural icon form the Gaelic poetic tradition: standing for Ireland, she is the 'sean bhean bhocht' of bardic poetry, or solitary old beggar woman, abandoned by her protectors and evicted from her land by a foreign invader.