Life
1795-1829 [Jeremiah Joseph; fam. ‘Gerry’]; b. Cork; intended
for Maynooth and priesthood, he studied at TCD for 2 years, and joined
British Army; entered TCD as a medical student, and won poetry prizes;
taught in William Maginn’s school, Cork; contrib. to Bolster’s
Quarterly and The Mercantile Chronicle; collected ballads and
legends in Munster (now lost); his classic ballad ‘Gougane Barra’
appeared in 1826; suffered from TB of the throat and travelled to Lisbon
in search of health, 1827; d. in Lisbon, 29 Sept.; Collected Poems
issued in 1861; ‘The Literary Remains of Jeremiah J. Callanan’
are held in the Royal Irish Academy as RIA MS 12.1.13. DNB PI JMC DIB
DIW DIH DIL MKA RAF OCIL FDA
[ top ]
Works
The Recluse of Incidony and Other Poems (1830); Michael Francis
McCarthy, ed., The Poems of J. J. Callanan (1847); Do.,
shorter edn. (1861); also in Gems of the Cork poets: comprising the
complete works of Callanan, Condon, Casey, Fitzgerald, and Cody (Cork:
Joseph Barter & Sons, Academy Street [1883]), xvi, 510, [2]pp. [18.6cm.].
Also, Charles Wood, "And Must We Part?": An Irish Melody ([q. pub.]
1931).
[ top ]
W. B. Yeats, ‘Modern Irish Poetry’, in Irish Literature, gen. ed. Justin McCarthy, NY/CUA 1904, Vol. III, p.vii.)
Robert Farren, Course of Irish Verse (London: 1948), pp.22-3.
B. S. Lee, ‘Callanan’s "The Outlaw of Loch Lene"’, Ariel, vol. 1, No. 3 (July 1970), pp.89-100;
Robert Welch, ‘Some Cork Translators’, in A History of Verse Translation from the Irish, 1789-1897 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1988).
Sean O’Faolain, The Irish: A Character Study (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1947), p.133-35.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 1, p.42.
Fergal Gaynor, ‘"An Irish Potatoe Seasoned with Attic Salt": The Reliques of Fr. Prout and Identity before The Nation’, in Irish Studies Review, 7, 3 (Dec. 1999), pp.313-24.
[ top ]
Notes
C. G. Duffy, ed., Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1848), contained
"The Outlaw of Loch Lene"; also printed in Arthur Quiller Couch, ed.,
Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1918 (new ed. 1929), p.646;
also in Brendan Kennelly, ed., Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970).
D. J. O'Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912), lists Recluse of Inchidony, and Other Poems (1830), with MS letters to Maginn and Crofton Croker in copy at BL; Poems of J. J. Callanan (Cork 1847; Dublin 1861); also poems in Gems from the Cork Poets (1883); entered as medical student in Dublin; returned to Cork and stayed with different people, with sallies into countryside to collection folklore and songs, never published; Callanan translations to early number of Blackwood’s Magazine; "Virgin Mary’s Bank" to The Literary Magnet (Jan. 1827), ed. Alaric A Watts, who reprinted it in Poetical Album (1828); ‘Avondhu’ also in Magnet (1827), sign. "Hidalla"; "Gougane Barra" refused by New Monthly Magazine, 1826; variant of familiar version in BL; "Lay of Mizen Head" given to The Harp, 1859, ed. McCann, by John Windele; also lines eulogistic of the author in Patrick O’Kelly, The Aeonian Kaleidoscope (1824); ‘Cusheen Loo’ and ‘The Lamentation of Felix McCarthy’, cited as his in various collections, disowned explicitly in an MS letter (as above); see D. J. O’Donoghue’s article to this effect in Dublin Evening Telegraph (Jan. 13 & 16, 1890). [PI also cites Michael Francis McCarthy, f. of Justin, and ed. of Poems of J. J. Callanan (n.d.)].
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives eight poems incl. “Dirge of O'Sullivan Bear [sic]”.
Frank O'Connor (Book of Ireland) selects 'Gougane Barra' and 'Loch Lene'.
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), writes that Callanan contrib. primarily to Bolster’s Quarterly Magazine, where his "Outlaw of Loch Lene" appeared in a collection of ‘Callanan’s Poetry’, (3, 1828, pp. 191-200) over the words "from the Irish", and accompanied by a ‘Memoir’ of the poet (pp.280-97).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; selects ‘Dirge of O’Sullivan Bear’, ‘The Convict of Clonmel’, and ‘The Outlaw of Loch Lene’. Biog. [FDA2 112], 2 yrs. at TCD as out-pensioner; contracted tuberculosis; went to Lisbon; works incl. The Recluse of Inchidony and Other Poems (London: Hurst, Chance 1839 [err. sic]); Poems of JJ Callanan (Cork: Bolster 1847); with biog. intro. by M F McCarthy; Poems of JJ Callanan (Cork, Daniel Mulcahy, 1861).
Thomas Kinsella has written: ‘Callanan [then] nothing’. See ‘The Divided Mind’, in Sean Lucy, Irish Poets in English, 1973, p.212.
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)