Castillo, John

(1792-1845)

   Irish-born of Roman Catholic parents, Castillo (the Bard of the Dales) was brought up near Whitby, Yorkshire, and practiced the trade of a journeyman stone mason in the Cleveland area of northeast England. He joined the Wesleyan Methodist Society in 1818 and was a popular and energetic revivalist preacher in the North Riding. Most of what he wrote is of a religious nature and written in the Cleveland dialect. His popular (very long) poem "Awd Isaac" occupied the first place in his volume of poems, Awd Isaac, The Steeplechase, and Other Poems (1831). A complete edition of his poems was published in 1850. His other main publications: A Specimen of the Bilsdale Dialect, 1831. The Bard of the Dales, 1858. The Lucky Dream is a long poem written in dialect and tells the story of being welcomed as a king by a friend on a freezing night on the moors. Some of his other poems: "Intemperance," "Merry Christmas as Kept in England," "On Friendship," "The Broken Guide Post," "The Leisure Hour," "To a Fox Taken in a Trap," "To a Withered Flower!" "Wisdom: The Traveller's Consolation."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition, 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Yorkshire Dialect Poems edited by FW Moorman (http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/songs/ydp.html).