Walsh, Edward

(1805-1850)

   Irish poet born in Derry, where he became a teacher. He was imprisoned during the Tithe War of the late 1830s (over a levy to assist the Anglican clergy, which led to violence and death; relief was not granted until 1836) and was dismissed from his teaching position for articles he wrote in The Nation. He published Irish Jacobite Poetry (1844) and Irish Popular Songs (1847), and collected songs and poems throughout Ireland, which he dedicated to the people of Ireland. Being unable to secure a regular teaching post, he accepted the post of schoolmaster to the junior convicts on Spike Island prison colony, County Cork. In 1848 he was imprisoned for speaking with John Mitchel, the Irish nationalist who was being held at Spike Island before his transportation to Tasmania (Mitchel escaped from Tasmania in 1853 and established the radical Irish nationalist newspaper The Citizen in New York). Walsh later became a teacher in the Cork Workhouse, where he died of tuberculosis in 1850. Some of his poems: "Aileen the Huntress," "Have You Been at Carrick?" "Kitty Bhan," "Lament," "The Dawning of the Day."

   Sources: A Tragic Troubadour: The Life and Collected Works of the Cork Folklorist, Poet and Translator, Edward Walsh (1805-1850). John J. Ó Ríordáin CSSR, 2005. An Antholog y of Catholic Poets. Shane Leslie, ed. Macmillan, 1952. An Anthology of Irish Verse: The Poetry of Ireland from Mythological Times to the Present. Padraic Colum, ed. Liveright, 1948. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Aileen the Huntress, by Edward Walsh (http://www.mindspring.com/Walsh, Edwardmccarthys/whiskey/pipaddy.htm). The Book of Irish Verse: An Antholog y of Irish Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present. John Montague, ed. Macmillan, 1974. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. Oxford University Press, 1971. The Penguin Book of Irish Verse. Brendan Kennelly, ed. Penguin Books, 1981.