Life
1755-1829; member of Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore’s literary group;
published The Songs of Deardra, translated from the Irish, and other
poems (London 1825); poems in Madden’s Literary Remains of
the United Irishman. Well-known Ulster poet, son is buried at Coleraine;
memoir by Rev. Burdy.; author of ‘Banks of Banna’, writing in
Walker’s Hibernian Magazine. PI MKA RAF
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References
McKenna, Irish Literature (1978), The Songs of Deardra,
translated from Irish, with other poems (London 1825); contrib. Morning
Post, Belfast News-letter, Northern Star, Poetical
Register, and Walker’s Hibernian Magazine. Commentary
by F. J. Bigger, ‘Thomas Stott - Hafiz - the Poet of Dromore.’
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2; one of the group gathered around Bishop Percy, b. Hillsborough Co. Down, craftsman; d. Dromore; own name or pseud. ‘Hafiz’; See Hewitt and O’Donoghue.
Robert Welch, A History of Verse Translation from the Irish 1789-1897 (Gerrards Cross 1988), In 185 Thomas Stott published The Songs of Deardra, translated from the Irish with other Poems [1825], which he based on a manuscript given him by the Belfast collector, William Neilson. [72]
Belfast Public Library holds Songs of Dea[r]dra and other Poems (1825).
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Quotations
Terence
Brown, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan
1975), Brown cites the verses, ‘Sad and long to me now seems the
slow-footed day,/Since Usna’s brave sons in the silent grave sleep’,
as superior to the tedious quatrains of the rest of Songs of Deardra (p.15). ALSO, ‘How fair the peopled district round Dromore!/Here
wealth and comfort Industry supplies;/While vales extend, enrich’d
with flaxen store,/And hills adorn’d by cultivation rise.’ (Songs,
&c.)
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Notes
Stott
is the object of reproaches in a poem of 1823 by Joseph Carson, a ‘rhyming
weaver’ cited in John Hewitt’s thesis and the Fibre essay
(1948), ‘who lately changed his crippling song/To crush the weak
and back the strong;/For me I’ve other tow to tease/Than strive the
great folks ear to please.’ (Quoted by Patrick Walsh, DPhil, UUC
[1996]).
Irish Book Lover 12 (1921) [widely known poet who attracted the hostile criticism of Byron].
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