Edward Walsh
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Edward Walsh was an Irish poet, born at Derry in 1805; died at Cork, 6 August 1850.
When little more than a boy he showed great intellectual gifts, and in 1830 was private tutor in County Cork. He was for a time teacher of a school at Millstreet, whence, in 1837, he removed to Tourin, County Waterford, having been appointed to a school under the Commissioners of Education.
Many of his songs and poems appeared between the years 1832-39, and he contributed to the Nation. In an uncongenial occupation, and pestered by officials, he went to reside in Dublin in 1843, and was befriended by Charles Gavan Duffy, who got him appointed sub-editor of the Monitor. His Irish Jacobite Poetry (1844) and his Irish Popular Songs (1847) gave unmistakable evidence of a genuine poet. Yet he was forced to fight against poverty, and, in 1848, he accepted the post of schoolmaster to the junior convicts of Spike Island.
There he was visited by John Mitchel, on his way to penal servitude, who vividly describes in his Jail Journal his meeting with Walsh. Not long afterwards, he secured the schoolmastership of Cork work-house, but died within twelve months. A fine monument, with an epitaph in Irish and English, was erected to his memory in the Father Mathew Cemetery at Cork. Among his lyrics Mo Chragibhin Cno, Brighidin ban mo stor, and O'Donovan's Daughters are in most Irish anthologies, while his translations from the Irish are both faithful and musical.
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This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. Edward Walsh was certainly not born in the county or city of Derry (or Londonderry as it was called elsewhere on this site) as is commonly thought. He was born in County Cork, in small townland known as Derry (coming form the Irish word Doire, referring to an oak tree, and hence not a unique placename in Ireland). This will be confirmed by researching the man's life, for instance in the book "A Tragic Troubadour" by John J. O'Riordan which was published last year and is probably the definitive assount of Walsh's life.
