Michael Burke ( or ; – 6 July 1881) was an Irish

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

Biography

Born sometime about 1800 in the townland of Bresk, parish of Kiltullagh, four miles east of

Athenry Athenry (; ) is a town in County Galway, Ireland, which lies east of Galway city. Some of the attractions of the medieval town are its town wall, Athenry Castle, its priory and its 13th-century street-plan. The town is also well known by virt ...

town, Burke was educated at the nearby Dominican College at Esker. In time he became schoolmaster at Esker National School, hence his nickname,''The Schoolmaster of Esker''. Writing in 2018, Martyn said of him:

Many details of his early life remain unknown. The only man of the name documented in the 1821 census is thirty-two year old Michael Burke, his twenty-six year old wife, Mary, and their two year old daughter, Mary; but Michael is listed as a "Farmer & Labourer" (Mary a "Flax spinner") and resided at "Careenlea, Kiltullagh". Therefore, identifying him with Micheál de Búrc is problematic.

Known as a good scholar who spoke, read and wrote in

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, Irish and English, Burke emigrated to the

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sometime after 1839. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa wrote that as of 1853, "He teaches in the oman CatholicOrphan Asylum in Brooklyn .. is both a scholar and poet, and composes in the Irish language".''A Brief Account of the Author's Interview With His Countrymen and of the parts of the Emerald Isle whence they emigrated, together with a direct reference to their present location in the land of their adoption, during his travels through various states of the Union in 1854 and 1855'', Jeremiah O'Donovan, Pittsburgh, 1864. Burke died at his home in

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in 1881.

''Oíche na Gaoithe Móire''

Burke's chief claim to fame is the poem ''Oíche na Gaoithe Móire'' (

Night of the Big Wind The Night of the Big Wind () was a powerful European windstorm that swept across what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, beginning on the afternoon of 6 January 1839, causing severe damage to property and several hundred d ...

), concerning a severe windstorm which swept across Ireland on the night of 6–7 January 1839 causing severe damage to property and several hundred deaths. According to Mary Burke,

The hurricane-like storm of 1839 arrived suddenly after a strangely calm day, plunging towns into immediate darkness, which magnified the terror. Author Peter Carr notes that eddying winds caused the contents of houses to dance in the air and the din forced those huddled together to sign in order to communicate. Thousands hastily abandoned badly built and suddenly roofless houses, innumerable farm animals perished, and the Shannon flooded vast areas of the surrounding countryside. ... Irish-speaking areas constituted the island’s poorest and most isolated regions, so there is a double silence to their unrecorded and unrecordable suffering.

''Oíche ...'' runs to fifteen verses which give a very vivid description of the event, comparing it to God venting his anger as he did with the

Deluge A deluge is a large downpour of rain, often a flood. The Deluge refers to the flood narrative in the biblical book of Genesis. Deluge or Le Déluge may also refer to: History *Deluge (history), the Swedish and Russian invasion of the Polish-L ...

. However, Burke noted that the damage caused made good work for tradesmen such as thatchers, slaters, carpenters and masons. While Martyn notes that the poem "was well known in Burke's lifetime ... both he and it had been entirely forgotten by the 1900s, even in his home parish, as was the language in which it was composed."

References

* ''Tocar Amhrán'', ed. Páidhraic Ó Domhnallán, Dublin, 1925. * "Oíche na Gaoithe Móire", Eugene Duggan, ''As The Centuries Passed ...'', ed. Kieran Jordan, 2000. * "An Irishwoman’s Diary on the ‘Night of the Big Wind’ – January 6, 1839", Mary Burke, The Irish Times, 12 January 2016

External links

* https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irishwoman-s-diary-on-the-night-of-the-big-wind-january-6th-1839-1.2492876 {{DEFAULTSORT:Burke, Michael Writers from County Galway Irish male poets 1800s births 1881 deaths 19th-century Irish poets 19th-century Irish educators Irish-language writers People from Athenry