School: Moynalty (B.)

Location:
Moynalty, Co. Meath
Teacher:
Uillford Ó Maoilmhichil
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0705, Page 339

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0705, Page 339

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Moynalty (B.)
  2. XML Page 339
  3. XML “James Tevlin the Poet of Billywood”

Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.

On this page

  1. James Tevlin was born at Farnadooney near Moynalty in County Meath in 1798 and died in April 1873. He was the son of humble, but respectable parents of the middle class of farmers. He was a Catholic, and followed his father's occupation - farming. He lived at "Glenview" in the house now occupied by Mr. Brogan. He is interred in Newtown graveyard, where also his mother rests. (She was one of the Duffys of Rasteen and she died in 1766) He kept very few records of his poems and any to be had now are those from memory as handed down from generation to generation - orally. The following are some of his poems:-
    The Poet Summoned
    On one occasion a goat, the property of the poet, was found by a policeman wandering on the public road. A summons was issued where upon the poet wrote the following lines to Mr. Farrell of Moynalty, one of the magistrates for the district:-
    "Honoured Sir: The police saw and found
    My goat trespassing on forbidden ground,
    Then to my door immediately they came
    and with a pencil soon took down my name;
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Language
    English