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
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
,
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
,
Irish and
English, Burke emigrated to the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
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
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
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