An Béal Bocht (Irish: The Poor Mouth) is a 1941 novel in Irish by Brian O'Nolan (Flann O'Brien), published under the pseudonym "Myles na gCopaleen". It is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish-language novels of the 20th century. An English translation by Patrick C. Power appeared in 1973. Stan Gebler Davies wrote: "The Poor Mouth is wildly funny, but there is at the same time always a sense of black evil. Only O'Brien's genius, of all the writers I can think of, was capable of that mixture of qualities."