James Farewell

Life
fl.1689; author of The Irish Hudibras, or Fingallian Prince (1689), a satire on the Irish described by John Colgan as ‘this deservedly scarce work’ and quoted by him with expunged lines; first edn. held in National Library of Ireland. PI.

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Works
Virgilius Maro Publius [pseud. James Farewell], The Irish Hudibras or Fingallian Prince, Taken from the Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aenæids, and adapted to the Present Times (London: R. Baldwin 1689), 156pp., 8o.

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Criticism
Russell Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (1959), pp.39-42; Alannah Hopkin, The Living Legend of St Patrick (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1989), pp. 116-17.

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Commentary
Russell Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (1959), pp.39-42: identifies it with the Forth and Barhy dialect; with bibl. cit., Jeremiah Hogan, The English Language in Ireland (1927); according it the status of the only surviving relic of the Fingallian dialect, whereas Alspach further cites ‘The Fingallian Hunting of the Hare’, noticed by Croker in Sloan 900, and adds ‘The Fingallian Dance’ and ‘The Fingallian Travesty, or the Sixth Book of Virgill’s Aeneids, a la mode de Fingaule’, with the former in Sloan 900; ‘we know nothing of James Farewell.’ (p.42.)

Alannah Hopkin, The Living Legend of St Patrick (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1989), pp. 166-17: Hopkin’s description gives notice that Aeneas is rendered by the character Nees who enters Hell at St. Patrick’s Purgatory, employing the shamrock as the aureus ramus [golden bough] of the classical original; Ireland is spoken of throughout as ‘Shamrogshire’, which caused [John] Colgan to remark that ‘the mention of an Irishman seems just as naturally to suggest to the writer, thoughts of an Irishman’s favourite food, the shamrock, as the word Frenchman was, at one time, wont to call up thoughts of stewed frogs in the mind of Englishmen.’[Colgan, Trias Taumaturgas, q.p.].

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References
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol., 1, p.439 [The Irish Hudibras or Fingallian Prince, Taken from the Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aenaeids, and adapted to the Present Times (London 1689), 3rd version of a 17th c. poem (elsewhere called ‘The Fingallian Burlesque’) which parodies Bk. VI of Virgil’s Aeneid in an Irish setting; belongs to Williamite period; set in Fine Gall [Finis Galliae], Fingal, north of Dublin, it adapts the story of Aeneas’s descent into the underworld to an Irish context and depicted an English sense of Ireland and appeals to English expectations of Irish custom and behaviour; FDA ed. Bryan Coleborne further remarks that the poem creates characters and events equivalent to the original and hence explores the use of parody as a form of satire on the native Irish. Extract at FDA1, 439-40.

National Library of Ireland holds a first edition copy of The Irish Hudibras; or, Fingallian Prince (1689).

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Quotations
The Irish Hudibras or Fingallian Prince”: ‘Mean while the Rout to work do fall / To Celebrate the Funeral. / And first with Turff from Bog, and Blocks, / They made a Fire wou’d roast an Oxe / Some lay the pipkins on, and so / With Holy Water bathe his Bum / There was the Priest forgiving Sins / Busie as Hen with two Chickeens, / ’Nointing his Forehead, and his Nose, / And downwards to his Pettigoes / After the method of his Function / With Holy Oyl of Extreme Unction.’ (Extract from The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 1991, Vol. 1, p.439.) Further, ‘Springs, happy springs, adorn’d with sallets / Which nature purposed for their Palats; / Shamroges and watercress he shows, / Which was both meat, and Drink and close.;’ also, ‘Stalking about the bogs and moors / Together with their Dogs and Whore; / Without a Rag, Trouses or Brogues / Picking of Sorrels and Sham-rogues.’ (Quoted in Alannah Hopkin, The Living Legend of St Patrick (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1989, pp.116-17.)

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Notes
Confusion: Farewell’s poem is not to be confused with “The Irish Hudibras”, recteHesperi-Neso-Graphia, or a description of the Western Isle (Dublin 1724), by Moffett, or by Jones.

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