Weaver Poets

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Weaver Poets, Rhyming Weaver Poets and Ulster Weaver Poets were a collective group of poets belonging to an artistic movement who were both influenced by and contemporaries of Robert Burns and the Romantic movement.

Contents

Origins

In the late eighteenth century, a number of men involved in the textiles industry, mostly confined to counties Antrim and Down began to submit poems to newspapers and publishers. They were craftsmen and often self-employed. They are known specifically for writing poems in the common tongue of the time for that region, Scots. More often than not, they were working-class and not formally educated.[ citation needed ]

Some of the more well-known Weaver Poets were James Orr of Ballycarry and David Herbison - The Bard of Dunclug.

Style and form

The style they adopted was the standard Habbie as adopted from a Robert Sempill poem by Robert Fergusson, himself a Scottish weaver, and later by Burns.

Sometimes the poetry produced by the movement was political - Orr had joined the United Irishmen in 1791 and took part in the United Irishmen Rebellion of 1798.

Many weaver poems were collected by poet John Hewitt. Hewitt bequeathed his entire collection to the University of Ulster.

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Ulster Scots dialect Scots as spoken in Ulster, Ireland

Ulster Scots or Ulster-Scots, also known as Ulster Scotch, Scots-Irish and Ullans, is the dialect of Scots spoken in parts of Ulster in Ireland. It is generally considered a dialect or group of dialects of Scots, although groups such as the Ulster-Scots Language Society and Ulster-Scots Academy consider it a language in its own right, and the Ulster-Scots Agency and former Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure have used the term Ulster-Scots language.

English poetry

This article focuses on poetry from the United Kingdom written in the English language. The article does not cover poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, including Republican Ireland after December 1922.

Scottish literature

Scottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes works in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin, Norn or other languages written within the modern boundaries of Scotland.

Poetry took numerous forms in medieval Europe, for example, lyric and epic poetry. The troubadours and the minnesänger are known for their lyric poetry about courtly love.

Irish poetry Poetry written by poets from the Island of Ireland

Irish poetry is poetry written by poets from Ireland. It is mainly written in Irish and English, though some is in Scottish Gaelic and some in Hiberno-Latin. The complex interplay between the two main traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English and Scottish Gaelic, has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to categorise.

Irish literature Writings in the Irish, English (including UIster Scots) and Latin languages, primarily on the island of Ireland

Irish literature comprises writings in the Irish, Latin, English and Scots languages on the island of Ireland. The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from the seventh century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish. In addition to scriptural writing, the monks of Ireland recorded both poetry and mythological tales. There is a large surviving body of Irish mythological writing, including tales such as The Táin and Mad King Sweeny.

American poetry Poetry from the United States of America

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Ethna Carbery Irish writer and journalist

Ethna Carbery, born Anna Bella Johnston, was an Irish journalist, writer and poet. She is best known for the ballad Roddy McCorley and the Song of Ciabhán; the latter was set to music by Ivor Gurney. In Belfast in the late 1890s, with Alice Milligan she produced The Shan Van Vocht, a nationalist monthly of literature, history and comment that gained a wide circulation in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora. Her poetry was collected and published after her death under the pen name Ethna Carberry, adopted following her marriage to the poet Seumas MacManus in 1901.

James Orr, known as the Bard of Ballycarry, was a poet or rhyming weaver from Ballycarry, Co. Antrim in the province of Ulster in Ireland, who wrote in English and Ulster Scots. His most famous poem was The Irishman. He was the foremost of the Ulster Weaver Poets, and was writing contemporaneously with Robert Burns.

Ballycarry Human settlement in Northern Ireland

Ballycarry is a village in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is midway between Larne and Carrickfergus, overlooking Islandmagee, and is part of the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 981.

James Hope (Ireland)

James "Jemmy" Hope was a radical democrat in Ireland who organised among tenant farmers, tradesmen and labourers for the Society of the United Irishmen. In the Rebellion of 1798 he fought alongside Henry Joy McCracken at the Battle of Antrim. In 1803 he attempted to renew the insurrection against the British Crown in an uprising co-ordinated by Robert Emmett and the new republican directorate in Dublin. Among United Irishmen, Hope was distinguished by his conviction that "the fundamental question at issue between the rulers and the people" was "the condition of the labouring class".

James Stewart Alexander Simmons (1933–2001) was a poet, literary critic and songwriter from Derry, Northern Ireland.

John Hewitt (poet)

John Harold Hewitt, who was born in Belfast, Ireland, present day Northern Ireland, was the most significant Belfast poet to emerge before the 1960s generation of Northern Irish poets that included Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. He was appointed the first writer-in-residence at Queen's University Belfast in 1976. His collections include The Day of the Corncrake (1969) and Out of My Time: Poems 1969 to 1974 (1974). He was also made a Freeman of the City of Belfast in 1983, and was awarded honorary doctorates the University of Ulster and Queen's University Belfast.

Literature of Northern Ireland

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.

Eliza Jane White who published as Ida L. White was an Irish poet, republican, feminist, atheist, and anarchist.

Poetry of Scotland

Poetry of Scotland includes all forms of verse written in Brythonic, Latin, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, French, English and Esperanto and any language in which poetry has been written within the boundaries of modern Scotland, or by Scottish people.

Scots-language literature

Scots-language literature is literature, including poetry, prose and drama, written in the Scots language in its many forms and derivatives. Middle Scots became the dominant language of Scotland in the late Middle Ages. The first surviving major text in Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (1375). Some ballads may date back to the thirteenth century, but were not recorded until the eighteenth century. In the early fifteenth century Scots historical works included Andrew of Wyntoun's verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland and Blind Harry's The Wallace. Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the royal court, which included James I, who wrote the extended poem The Kingis Quair. Writers such as William Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Walter Kennedy and Gavin Douglas have been seen as creating a golden age in Scottish poetry. In the late fifteenth century, Scots prose also began to develop as a genre. The first complete surviving work is John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490). There were also prose translations of French books of chivalry that survive from the 1450s. The landmark work in the reign of James IV was Gavin Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid.

<i>Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (London Edition)</i> 1787 collection of poems by Robert Burns

Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect is commonly known as the Third or London Edition and sometimes the Stinking Edition. It is a collection of poetry and songs by Robert Burns, printed for A. Strahan; T. Cadell in the Strand; and W. Creech, Edinburgh. MDCCLXXXVII The date of publication for the London Edition was in November 1787, however Strahan and Cadell had previously advertised for sale the 'Second' or 'Edinburgh Edition' using the 500 or so copies that William Creech still had that were unsold. The successful selling of these made a truly new 'London Edition' a commercially viable enterprise.

References

'History into Poetry, the works of James McKowen (1814-1889) The Bard of Lambeg.' (ed) Fredrick Gilbert Watson, Belfast ISBN 978-0-9932528-5-3