Richard Barrett (poet)

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Richard Barrett (Riocard Bairéad, in Irish) (b. 1740 – 1818) was a poet and United Irishman.

Known in his lifetime as the Poet of Erris, Barrett was notable for his verse and songs in Irish Gaelic as well as the role he played in the Society of United Irishmen which mounted an uprising, known as The Irish Rebellion of 1798 against British rule. Barrett himself, according to local folklore, played an important role in the rebellion. A French expeditionary force under General Humbert landed in County Mayo to support the United Irishmen. Humbert was to be followed by further French troops but these never materialized. The rebellion ended in failure, despite some early victories over the English forces, most notably when the redcoats took flight before the pike-wielding men from Belmullet and other Erris villages in a battle that became known as the "The Races of Castlebar".

At the time of the centenary celebrations for the 1798 rebellion a ballad, "The Men of The West", was set to Barrett's air of "Eoghan Coir".

The poem engraved on his tomb stone at Cross Point, to the West of Belmullet, used to read as follows:

Why spend your leisure bereft of pleasure

Amassing treasure? Why scrape and save?

Why look so canny at every penny?

You’ll take no money into the grave.

His own grave had fallen into a bad state of disrepair a few years ago and his bones were nearly washed into the Atlantic Ocean after a wild storm. But well-wishers from the town of Belmullet have now shored up the cemetery wall to ensure another few years of existence for the poet's last resting place.

[edit] References

• Nicholas Williams, ed., Riocard Bairéad: amhráin (Dublin: An Clóchomhar, 1978)
• Éigse: a journal of Irish studies 16/3 (1976) Ó Concheanainn (Tomás), (Editor), National University of Ireland, Vol. 16, pp. 171--250.
• Beiner, Guy (2004) 'Who were "the Men of the West"? Folk historiographies and the reconstruction of democratic histories', Folklore, 115:2, 201-221
• Dunne, Tom (1998), '"Subaltern Voices?" Poetry in Irish, Popular Insurgency and the 1798 Rebellion', Eighteenth-Century Life - Volume 22, Number 3, November 1998, pp. 31-44, Duke University Press