Life
1879-1944 [Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil; ‘The Mountainy Man’; fam.
Joe]; b. 15 July, Belfast, son of William Henry Campbell, a Catholic nationalist
building-contractor, his mother being interested in things Gaelic. ed.
Uladh with Hobson, and contributed plays to Ulster Literary Theatre;
visited Dublin in 1902; introduced by Padraic Colum to nationalist literary
leaders; contrib. Standish O’Grady’s All Ireland Review
and Griffith’s United Irishman; collaborated with Herbert
Hughes on Songs of Uladh (1904), written to old Irish airs (arranged by Herbert
Hughes), supplying words for “My Lagan Love” among
others; associated with Francis Bigger and his circle; ed. with Hobson
and others, Uladh (Nov. 1904), publishing “The Mountainy Man”
in the second number; also a play, The Little Cowherd of Slainge
(Ulster Theatre, May 1905), not successful; briefly resided in Dublin,
1905; moved to London, 1906; worked as English teacher for London County
Council Schools, and served as Sec. to Irish Literary Society, London;
assisted Eleanor Hull on Irish Text Society; met Nancy Maude, dg. of Col.
Aubrey Maude of the Cameronian Highlanders, at poetry reading, and m.
23 May 1910, against objections of her family; returned to Dublin, 1911;
lived in cottage at Lackendarragh, Co. Wicklow; wrote Judgement
(Abbey, April 1912) and The Turn Out, an unperformed play of 1798,
both printed in the Irish Review (August 1912), with poems; acted
as publicist and recruiter for the Irish Volunteers; living in Glencullen, Co. Wicklow, July 1914; engaged in rescue-work
during 1916 Rising; chairman of Wicklow County Council, 1920-1921; interned
for eighteen months as a Republican, 1922-23; trans. Patrick Pearse’s
poems in Irish for Collected Works [Patrick Pearse] (1922-24);
sep. from Maude, Aug. 1924; left Ireland, disillusioned, and settled in
New York, 1925-1939; fnd. School of Irish Studies, NY, 1925; fnd. Irish
Foundation, 1931; re-estab. & ed., The Irish Review, 1934;
lectured at Fordham Univ., NY, 1927-38; returned to Wicklow, 1939; d.
June 1944 in Wicklow, while preparing his Collected Poems; P. S.
O’Hegarty prepared a bibliography in 1940; caricatured by James Joyce
as ‘Mountainy Mutton’ in "Gas from a Burner"; there
is a portrait by Estelle Solomons; a ‘A Jail Journal’ (1922-23),
is now published, I was Among the Captives: Joseph Campbell’s
Prison Diaries (2001). PI DIW DIB OCEL DIL FDA APPL DUB OCIL
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Works
Poetry, The Garden of the Bees (Belfast:
W. Erskine Mayne; Dublin: Gill 1905); [Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil,] The
Rush-Light (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1906), 66pp.; The Man-Child
([Dublin:] Loch Press 1907), 38pp.; The Gilly of Christ (Dublin:
Maunsel & Co. 1907), 19pp.; and The Mountainy Singer (Dublin:
Maunsel 1909). Mearing Stones, Notes from My Note-book on Tramp in
Donegal (Dublin: Maunsel & Co. 1911); Irishry (Dublin &
London: Maunsel & Co. 1913), 79pp. [with 21 designs by author]; Earth
of Cualann (Dublin: Maunsel 1917), 62pp. [with 21 designs by the Author;
ltd. edn. of 500 copies]; Orange Terror, by ‘Ultach’
[rep. from Capuchin Annual] (Dublin 1943); Austin Clarke ed. and
intro., The Poems of Joseph Campbell (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1963).
Plays, The Little Cowherd of Slainge, in Uladh, No. 1 (Nov. 1904) [q.p.]; Judgement: A Play in Two Acts [Abbey Theatre Play Series] (Dublin: Maunsel 1912), 35pp. [Abbey April 1912], with The Turn Out [unproduced], in Irish Review (August 1912), pp.317-35. Also, trans. stories in Patrick Pearse, Collected Works (Dublin: Phoenix [Talbot] 1917).
Autobiography, Eiléan Ní Chuileanain, ed., I was Among the Captives: Joseph Campbell’s Prison Diaries (Cork UP 2001), 137pp.
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J. S. Crone, “Reviews”, in The Irish Book Lover, Vol. I, No. 3 (Oct. 1909)
P. S. O’Hegarty, ‘A Bibliography of Joseph Campbell/Seosamh
Mac Cathmaoil’, in Dublin Magazine [New Ser.], Vol. 15, No.
4 (1940), pp.58-61.
Sam Hanna Bell, ‘The Poetry of Joseph Campbell’, Lagan, No. 3 [1945], pp.67-73
Robert Farren, ‘Joseph Campbell: The Antrim-man’, in The Course of Irish Verse (NY: Sheed & Ward 1947; London Edn. 1948), pp.90-97
Degidon [pseud.], ‘Joseph Campbell, Recollections of Joseph Campbell’, Irish Writing, No. 10 (Jan. 1950), pp.66-70
Padraic Colum, ‘I Remember Joseph Campbell’, Rann, No. 17 (Autumn 1952), pp.10-12
David R. Clark, ‘Joseph Campbell’s "The Dancer"’, Éire-Ireland, 4, 3 (Autumn 1969), pp.82-86
Terence Brown, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (1975), pp.73-76
Nora Saunders, ‘Joseph Campbell’, in Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Conn: Greenwood Publ. 1979), pp.138-43
N[ora] Saunders and A. A. Kelly, Joseph Campbell, Poet and Nationalist 1879-1944: A Critical Biography (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1988), 160pp.
Journal of Irish Literature, ‘Joseph Campbell Special Issue’, Vol. VIII, No.3 (Sept. 1979)
Benedict Kiely, ‘Memories of the Mountainy Singer’, A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (Cork UP 1999), pp.248-56.
Irish Book Lover, Vols. 1 & 2 and Francis Stuart, ‘Fighting’ [Chap. VI,] in Things to Live For (Macmillan 1935), for memories of Campbell during the Civil War.
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Notes
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges
Figgis 1912): ‘clever young Catholic poet and artist ... writes under
Irish form of his name (Joseph Campbell) is a native of Belfast and now
resides near Dublin; represented in Dublin Book of Irish Verse
[ed. Cooke] (1909).
Donagh MacDonagh, ed. and intro., Poems from Ireland, ed. with an intro., with a preface by R. M. Smyllie (Dublin: The Irish Times 1944), notes that he ‘lectured at Fordham University; returning to [Ireland] in the present war [i.e., 1939-45] he contributed many poems to the Irish Times under his own name and under the pseud. of ‘Ultach’; his Collected Poems appeared in 1936 [... &c.]’
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), lists The Little Cowherd of Slainge, a play printed in Uladh, No. 1, and cites contemporaneous review of same, ending “Campbell has not yet found his voice”. Remarks that there was a Austin Clarke broadcast on Campbell, 1938; Campbell himself broadcast on Jan. 28 1942; Quotes, ‘Who would unlook me/Must file for himself a key of three words–/Vision, Energy, Bleakness’, qualities the Campbell though characteristic of Irish poetry; also ‘I am the mountainy singer–/The voice of the peasant’s dream,/The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,/The leap of the fish in the stream.’ Friendships with Colum and F. J. Bigger [‘the Ulster politician’]; actor, playwright and editor in Ulster literary movement; m. Nancy Maude in London [c.1911]; from Irishry, ‘As the spent radiance/Of the winter sun,/So is a woman/With her travail done.//Her brood gone from her,/And her thoughts as still/As the waters/Under a ruined mill.’
Brian M. Walker, et al., eds., Faces of Ireland (Belfast: Appletree 1992), selects "Harvest Song", and remarks that he set the life of Christ among the people and fields of Ulster’s countryside.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, selects “Who Buys Land” [‘Who buys land / Buys many stones, Who buys flesh / Buys many bones ...’] from The Rushlight, “When Rooks Fly Homeward”, “I am the Gilly of Christ”, “As I Came Over the Grey, Grey Hills”, from The Gilly of Christ (1907); “I am the Mountainy Singer” (b), from The Mountainy Singer (1909); “The Gombeen”, “The Old age Pensioner”, from Irishry (1913) [759-62]. Biog., 780-81. Note also that the editor of the James Joyce section in Field Day Anthology, Vol. 2, remarks that Campbell’s Judgement: A Play in two Acts (Maunsel 1912) uses the words ‘bastard’ and ‘whore’ (on p.25) and further adds that Campbell is behind the reference to ‘Mountainy Mutton’ in Joyce’s Gas from a Burner.
Brian Fallon calls Campbell a Georgian poet, with Colum and FR
Higgins, in Irish Times ‘Reassessment’ [see Higgins, RX infra], while
Terence Brown compare him to Walter de la Mare (See Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, 1996).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)