The Musical Poet of Gougane Barra

by Henry Lorton. 

There is a green island in lone Gougane Barra,

Where Allua of songs rushes forth as an arrow;

Thus sang the poet Jeremiah Joseph Callanan who died on September 19, 1829.  He was born near Balinhassig in 1795 and from his youth his parents were anxious that in due course he should become a priest.  Growing up in the country he was a fluent Irish speaker and early developed a love for the legends and history of his native land.  In accordance with his parents wishes he went to Maynooth to study or the priesthood but after two years he realised that he had no vocation and mush to the distress of his parents  and friends left the college.

In 1820 he was admitted as an out pensioner to Trinity College Dublin.  He was there for two years and whilst there he won a prize for an English poem relating to Alexander's restoration of the spoils of Athens.

His financial resources were at an low ebb for the faculty of medicine and he had to leave the college.  He next decided to enlist in the army and he joined the 18th. Royal Irish Regiment, due to go to Malta.  However, his friends, unwilling to see him travel there, bought him out of the army.

In 1823 he became an assistant to Dr. William Maginn's School in Marlborough Street.  He and Maginn became great friends, frequently drinking and dining together.  However he stayed in the school only a few months.  Maginn, though his influence with Blackwood's Magazine was able to have Callanan's early poems printed in that magazine.  For another four years up to 1827 Callanan spent much of his time going around Cork and the South-West of Munster collecting old ballads and legends and having them published.

In 1826 his health began to fail and in search of a warmer climate he went to Lisbon as a tutor.  He quickly learned the Portuguese language and made translations into English of his new country's poetry.  He also prepared his own writings for publication in a collected form.

He was lonely away from his beloved Ireland, family and friends.  His health grew worse and he died of tuberculosis (consumption as it was then called) at the age of 33 in 1829.  A correspondent of the "Athenaeum" writing from Lisbon in 1876 states that there is now no trace of Callanan's grave owing to the destruction of the ruined church of San Jose which was attached to the hospital where he died.

The "Critical Dictionary of English Literature" describes Callanan's "Gougane Barra" as "The most perfect, perhaps of all Irish minor poems in the melody of the rhythm, the flow of its language and the weird force of its expression".

In character Callanan was amiable and refined.  When in Portugal, he greatly desired to be buried in Ireland but it was not to be.  In the beautiful poem "Gougane Barra" he thinks of his own death and refers to it in the followings lines :-