"Carrickfergus" is a 44-line poem by Louis MacNeice. It was written in 1937 and first published in book form in MacNeice's poetry collection The Earth Compels (1938). The poem reflects on MacNeice's childhood in Carrickfergus, a large town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Although the title of the poem is "Carrickfergus", the text of the poem refers to "Carrick", as the town is known locally and colloquially.
Louis MacNeice was born in 1907 in Belfast, as he notes in the opening lines of "Carrickfergus":
I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries
To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams: [1]— lines 1-2
'Gantries' refers to the Harland and Wolff shipyard, and the Arrol Gantry which dominated the skyline. This was constructed just after MacNiece's birth but was well-known within a few years as the building place of RMS Titanic. The 'mountain' is the Black Mountain, which forms a backdrop to inland Belfast.
In November 1907 MacNeice's father, John MacNeice, was appointed Rector of St Nicholas' Church, Carrickfergus, and in January 1909 the family moved to Carrickfergus, a town ten miles from Belfast on the northern shore of Belfast Lough:
Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim
Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams
The little boats beneath the Norman castle, [1]— lines 3-5
The MacNeices lived first in a house at 5 Governor's Walk, facing the harbour. "Its front door opened on the street, the farther side of which was flanked by the harbour wall, so that in rough weather spray would lash the windows. The rector liked its closeness to the sea as well as to the historic castle (a stone's throw to the left) and to his church." [2] In early 1911 the MacNeices moved into Carrickfergus Rectory, a large house with a garden, "far from the dirt and noise of the harbour, on the other side of town." [3] Here Louis MacNeice spent his childhood until, at the age of ten, he began at Sherborne Preparatory School, Dorset:
I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents
Contracted into a puppet world of sons [1]— lines 41-42
In "Carrickfergus", MacNeice reflects on his childhood growing up in Carrickfergus. One stanza describes his position as the son of John MacNeice – "I was the rector's son, born to the anglican order" – and mentions the Chichester Monument, an elaborate marble monument in St Nicholas' Church which made a deep impression on the young Louis MacNeice. He would later include a description of the Chichester Monument in his unfinished autobiography, The Strings are False: "a huge Elizabethan monument to the Chichester family who had then been the power in the land." [4] "Carrickfergus" also describes a wartime childhood, with rationing and "maps above the fireplace", and a "huge camp of soldiers" in sight of Carrickfergus Rectory.
"Carrickfergus" is a poem of eleven stanzas, each of four lines. The second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme. (The sixth stanza has the same word, "long", at the end of the second and fourth line.) MacNeice makes use of poetic devices such as assonance – "the clang of trams" – and alliteration – "sweat and khaki in the Carlisle train". The poem is autobiographical, and is narrated in the first person by Louis MacNeice: "I was born in Belfast... I was the rector's son... I went to school in Dorset..."
County Antrim is one of six former counties and two county boroughs that formed Northern Ireland until 1973. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of 3,086 square kilometres (1,192 sq mi) and has a population of about 618,000. County Antrim has a population density of 203 people per square kilometre or 526 people per square mile. It is also one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland, as well as part of the historic province of Ulster.
Carrickfergus is a large town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It sits on the north shore of Belfast Lough, 11 miles (18 km) from Belfast. The town had a population of 27,998 at the 2011 Census. It is County Antrim's oldest town and one of the oldest towns in Ireland as a whole. Carrickfergus Castle, built in the late 12th century at the behest of Anglo-Norman knight John de Courcy, was the capital of the Earldom of Ulster. After the earldom's collapse, it remained one of the only English outposts in Ulster for the next four centuries. Carrickfergus was the administrative centre for Carrickfergus Borough Council, before this was amalgamated into the Mid and East Antrim District Council in 2015, and forms part of the Belfast Metropolitan Area. It is also a townland of 65 acres, a civil parish and a barony.
Frederick Louis MacNeice was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely appreciated by the public during his lifetime, due in part to his relaxed but socially and emotionally aware style. Never as overtly or simplistically political as some of his contemporaries, he expressed a humane opposition to totalitarianism as well as an acute awareness of his roots.
Belfast Castle is a castle on the slopes of Cavehill Country Park in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in a prominent position 400 feet (120 m) above sea level. Its location provides unobstructed views over the City of Belfast and Belfast Lough. The current castle is a Victorian structure, built between 1867 and 1870, and is listed as being Grade B+. The main entrance into the Belfast Castle Demesne is now where Innisfayle Park meets Downview Park West, just off the Antrim Road. The original main entrance into the demesne was formerly on the Antrim Road itself, where Strathmore Park now meets the Antrim Road.
Glynn is a small village and civil parish in the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It lies a short distance south of Larne, on the shore of Larne Lough. Glynn had a population of 2,027 people in the 2011 Census.
Mary Wimbush was an English actress whose career spanned 60 years. Active across film, television, theatre and radio, she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1969 film Oh! What a Lovely War. Her television credits included Poldark (1975–77), Jeeves and Wooster (1990–92), and Century Falls (1993). She played Julia Pargetter in BBC Radio 4's popular soap opera The Archers, a part she played from 1992 until her death.
Eric Robertson Dodds was an Irish classical scholar.
Jon Howie Stallworthy, was a British literary critic and poet. He was Professor of English at the University of Oxford from 1992 to 2000, and Professor Emeritus in retirement. He was also a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford from 1986, where he was twice acting president. From 1977 to 1986, he was the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University.
"An Arundel Tomb" is a poem by Philip Larkin, written and published in 1956, and subsequently included in his 1964 collection The Whitsun Weddings. It describes the poet's response to seeing a pair of recumbent medieval tomb effigies with their hands joined in Chichester Cathedral. It is described by James Booth as "one of [Larkin's] greatest poems". It comprises 7 verses of 6 lines each, each with rhyme scheme ABBCAC.
John Frederick MacNeice (1866–1942), was born at Omey, Co. Galway, to a Protestant family which claimed descent from the kin of the early Irish saint MacNissi. Opting for the Church of Ireland ministry he served notably as rector of Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim and afterwards as bishop of Cashel, Emly, Waterford and Lismore (1931–1934) and until his death as bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore (1934–1942). MacNeice is well known for his symbolic opposition to the Partition of Ireland : hence his refusal to allow the Union Flag to be laid on Carson's grave at his funeral in St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast in 1935. MacNeice was twice married. One of his sons by his first marriage was the poet, Louis MacNeice.
That part of the United Kingdom called Northern Ireland was created in 1922, with the partition of the island of Ireland. The majority of the population of Northern Ireland wanted to remain within the United Kingdom. Most of these were the Protestant descendants of colonists from Great Britain.
The Earth Compels was the second poetry collection by Louis MacNeice. It was published by Faber and Faber on 28 April 1938, and was one of four books by Louis MacNeice to appear in 1938, along with I Crossed the Minch, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay and Zoo.
Zoo is a book by Louis MacNeice. It was published by Michael Joseph in November 1938, and according to the publisher's list belongs in the category of belles lettres. It was one of four books by Louis MacNeice to appear in 1938, along with The Earth Compels, I Crossed the Minch and Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay.
Rugby Football Excursion is a 44-line poem by Louis MacNeice. It was written in 1938 and first published in book form in MacNeice's poetry collection The Earth Compels (1938). The poem recounts an excursion taken by MacNeice from London to Dublin, in order to watch a rugby football match at Lansdowne Road stadium. MacNeice does not specify the occasion, but internal evidence from the poem establishes the match as a rugby football international when England defeated Ireland on 12 February 1938, 36 - 14.
The Sunlight on the Garden is a 24-line poem by Louis MacNeice. It was written in late 1936 and was entitled Song at its first appearance in print, in The Listener magazine, January 1937. It was first published in book form as the third poem in MacNeice's poetry collection The Earth Compels (1938). The poem explores themes of time and loss, along with anxiety about the darkening political situation in Europe following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. It is one of the best known and most anthologized of MacNeice's short poems. George MacBeth describes it as "one of MacNeice's saddest and most beautiful lyrics".
"Epilogue For W. H. Auden" is a 76-line poem by Louis MacNeice. It was written in late 1936 and was first published in book form in Letters from Iceland, a travel book in prose and verse by W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice (1937). MacNeice subsequently included it as the last poem in his poetry collection The Earth Compels (1938). "Epilogue For W. H. Auden" reviews the Iceland trip MacNeice and Auden had taken together in the summer of 1936; the poem mentions events that had occurred while MacNeice and Auden were in Iceland, such as the fall of Seville and the Olympic Games in Berlin.
June Thunder is a 28-line poem by Louis MacNeice. It was first published in book form in MacNeice's poetry collection The Earth Compels (1938). The poem begins with memories of idyllic summer days in the countryside - "the unenduring / Joys of a season" - before returning to the present and "impending thunder". June Thunder is written in a loose form of the sapphic stanza, with three lines set in falling rhythm followed by a shorter fourth line. The poem was anthologised in A New Anthology of Modern Verse 1920-1940 (1941), edited by Cecil Day-Lewis and L.A.G. Strong, and Penguin New Writing No. 2.
Autumn Journal is an autobiographical long poem in twenty-four sections by Louis MacNeice. It was written between August and December 1938, and published as a single volume by Faber and Faber in May 1939. Written in a discursive form, it sets out to record the author's state of mind as the approaching World War II seems more and more inevitable. Fifteen years later, MacNeice attempted a similar personal evaluation of the post-war period in his Autumn Sequel.
The Arrol Gantry was a large steel structure built by Sir William Arrol & Co. at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland. It was built to act as overhead cranes for the building of the three Olympic-class liners.
George Galway MacCannARCA ARUA was a Northern Irish abstract painter and Modernist sculptor, writer and broadcaster. MacCann was born in Belfast, the son of monumental sculptor David and his wife Elizabeth.