Poet
(1880-1921) Tadhg Barry
From his mid-20s at least, Tadhg wrote poetry to express his thoughts and feelings. When he lived in Hull, Tadhg’s longing to be back in Cork is clear from the nineteen-verse emigrant paean he penned to his native city: ‘From Blackpool to sweet St. Barry’s, o’er each spot my memory tarries/ The Park, the Marsh, South Gate and Patrick’s Hill …’ As he became engrossed in Irish nationalism, political themes, especially martyrdom for Ireland, are more discernible in his work; religious topics are also common. He displays the full array of his poetic expression most vividly in Songs and other (C)Rhymes of a Gaol-Bird , a collection of twenty-six poems, verses and ballads written during his first incarceration and published in late 1917. The book contains touching personal stories of loss and longing for people and place: his young charges, the hurling fields of Cork, St. Vincent’s church and Ballingeary all feature. There are of course political works in it, like ‘Easter Week, 1917’, ‘Flag on the GPO Ruin’, ‘Faith and Fatherland’, ‘Martyrs of Ireland’ and ‘Prayer for Ireland’. One of most poignant poems is ‘In Memoriam – J.R.’, a tribute to a young English friend of his who had been conscripted and killed in Flanders during the First World War. Tadhg’s outrage at the horrors of war, and his socialist analysis of the system that perpetuates it, are on full display:
‘What good is this human slaughter?/ The millions so who’re slain/ Full many a wife and daughter/ Will watch for them in vain/ For the god of wealth is lucre/ And the way to wealth is a sin/ It stays not e’en at murder/ Nor war’s carnage and din … The poor are gaining nothing/ Although ‘tis they that fight/ The rich will give no footing/ Where poor demand their right/ And when the grand folks quarrel/ The workers – fools – take sides/ But never share the laurel/ That with the rich abides.’
‘To A Fellow Prisoner’ by Tadhg Barry. (National Library of Ireland)
At Ballykinlar, Tadhg may have been too busy educating his fellow inmates to write another book of rhymes, but he did compose at least one poem there: ‘Sand! Sand! Sand!/ For breakfast, dinner and tea/ And it’s thick in the once food butter/ That my best girl sent to me/ Oh well for the kids in the shore/ By soft summer wind to be fanned/ But it’s hell when each minute you swore at Ballykinlar and its sand/ And the whirling sands go on/ And their grit my lungs instil/ But it’s oh for a bite that won’t taste of sand/ And a sup that the dust won’t fill/ Sand! Sand! Sand!/ Bad luck to ‘aught’ else you can see/ But the sandless taste of meat or of bread/ Will never come back to me.’
‘An Exile’s Wish’ by Tadhg Barry (Courtesy of Barry O’Shea)
Following his murder, the Voice of Labour , the ITGWU’s new weekly newspaper, published Tadhg’s final piece of writing, a verse entitled ‘The Future War.’ It gives a clear indication of what he believed the most pressing struggle in an independent Ireland would be: ‘… /Oh, think that it’s preached from the pulpit how/ ‘Twas God ordained the plan/ That man should live by the sweat of his brow/ Well! You are a working man/
‘Funeral in Usk Gaol’ by Tadhg Barry – a tribute to Dublin Volunteer Richard Coleman, who died of the Spanish flu on 17 December 1918. (Cork Public Museum)
But we’ll sweat no more to please the boss/ But strive his reign to end/ And take the gains where we took the loss/ So the boss got his dividend … And we’ll teach the boss that the Bible says/ Go share with the poor your all/ And of true religion we’ll let some rays/ On his selfish souls to fall/ And the hungry feed, and the naked clothe/ And the sick to ease from pain/ And the heavy of heart to aid with their load/ And all human rights maintain.’
The final line, ‘And all human rights maintain’, perfectly encapsulates Tadhg Barry, a man who unselfishly gave his time and life for the cause he wholeheartedly believed in: an independent, socialist, Irish republic.
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