Thomas Given: poet, farmer, Justice of the Peace
Author: John Erskine
Date: 2013
Source: Ullans: The Magazine for Ulster-Scots, Nummer 13 Hairst 2013
John Erskine
In August 1917, in the fields of Flanders, the battle that would come to represent all that was worst in the horrors of trench warfare and which would become known as the Battle of Passchendaele was reaching its height. In that same month, back in Markstown, Cullybackey, County Antrim, the death was announced of Thomas Given, at the age of 67.
One brief obituary was headed ‘Thomas Given, Farmer and Justice of the Peace’. It did, however, go on to discuss his poetry and the poetry of two of his brothers. The poems of the three Given brothers — Patrick, Samuel Fee and Thomas — had been collected and published in 1900 in a volume under the title of Poems from College and Country ‘by Three Brothers’. The editor of the collection was in fact Thomas Given himself. The poems from College were those by Patrick and Samuel Fee Given, and those from the Country by Thomas. Thomas had intended the book initially as a tribute to the work of his brothers.
Thomas Given had been born about 1850, the youngest of several brothers. His older brothers had received a College education and had gone on to become teachers, one of them, Marcus, later becoming a successful lawyer in Philadelphia where Thomas had himself spent some time before returning to farm in County Antrim. However, his brothers were short-lived. Patrick Given and Samuel Fee Given had both died in their twenties; and in America Marcus too had died just as he was making his legal reputation.
Much, indeed the majority, of Thomas Given’s poetry is written in his native County Antrim Scots, unlike the poetry of his more formally educated brothers who preferred English. In presenting his poetry to the public, he remarks, ‘Now that I usher myself into the gaze of the public as an author, I do so in the language of Scotland’s greatest poet, “with fear and trembling” — [the phrase used by Burns in his preface to Kilmarnock edition] — for the simple reason that I owe nothing to the schools’
Indeed, George Raphael Buick, the local minister, historian and antiquarian, in providing biographical sketches in the book for the three brothers, remarks of Thomas Given’s language that:
He is specially happy when using the Doric of his native district as the vehicle of expression. Here his Muse seems most at home, becoming at once more natural and forcible, and employing, with spontaneity and freshness, language which is decidedly more idiomatic and picturesque than when he contents himself with dipping into ‘the well of English undefiled,’ whilst his rhythm is felt to be more crisp and sparkling, more instinct with subtle power, and more unmistakably melodious.
Thomas Given himself tells us that ‘many of the following trifles written by me have been stealthily committed to my notebook in the shelter of some unhearing hedge, or on the ridges of my fields while at the plough’.
By echoing the words of Robert Burns and by placing himself behind the plough, Given is doing much more than using the ‘Doric of his native district’. Given places himself within the same literary tradition as Burns: he uses not simply the same language as Burns but he also uses the verse forms and poetic conventions of the literary tradition that he and Burns shared.
Like that of Burns, too, Given’s poetry covers a wide range of themes and subjects. Although the poems come from the country, his poems are not simply confined to his observations of nature and the countryside. Buick also comments on the wide range of topics covered by Given in his poetry in these words:
He evidently loves nature, and rests in her love; hates everything that savours of cant and injustice, sympathises intensely with the oppressed, has an intimate knowledge of the world, is well acquainted with the various springs of human conduct, and withal carries about him, wherever he goes and whatever he does, a keen eye for those little, unobtrusive rills of love and loveliness which ‘give bloom and beauty to the wide, wide wastes where mortals live.’ He has one farther merit too which must not be overlooked, it is by no means a small one: he is always clear and intelligible.
School and schooling
Yet, as Thomas Given himself admitted, he owed little to the schools. For reasons that are not altogether clear, he did not receive the education which his brothers had enjoyed: ‘In my youth adverse circumstances against which I was not in a position to contend’, he says, ‘guided the lines so that I never got farther than the third class taught in the National School of my native village’.
Given recalls his schooldays and his school-fellows in one poem, ‘The Auld School at the Pun’. Given remembers the antics of his schooldays, the poverty of some children, and the school teacher, Master Craig, counting up the marks at the end of the week. Indeed, the barefoot boy, ‘sakeless o’ a shoe’, may well be Given himself:
The palmy days are lang awa’
Whun Craig keek’t through his specs,
An cud tak’ in frae wig tae wa’
Oor weest pranks an acts.
Syntax was little thoucht o’ then,
But heth we had tae mind it,
For at the very pointer’s en’
He taught us how tae find it,
By nicht or day…
Some wur bedeck’t in corduroy,
An sakeless o’ a shoe;
But as a rule the barefoot boy
Wae credit aye got through,
As watch him on the Friday nicht
While Craig the marks is scannin’,
He mostly then cam oot a’ richt,
An at the heid kept stannin’
O’ ’is class that day.
His commitment to education, born of his own experience compared to the different experience of his brothers, leads Given, in a poem written in English, to encourage a neighbour not to withdraw his son from education but to ‘keep the lad at school’.
You’ll take your boy from school, you say,
Because it is so cold;
Such weather is enough to make
Him prematurely old.
I do not doubt your loving heart
Filled up with kindness full;
But yet in truth to you I’d say,
To keep the lad at school.
This is the time his thoughts to raise
And mould them in the right;
An impress made on youthful minds
Can ne’er be lost to sight.
The man whose mind was never taught,
To folly is a tool,
So take advice from one who knows,
And keep the lad at school.
The natural world
However, despite the paucity of his formal education, Given went on to add: ‘Nature’s book was … open and free to me, and the fault was my own if I did not become an apt scholar under the tuition of such an illustrious teacher’.
Indeed it is Given’s acute observation and his knowledge of the countryside, the birdlife and the seasons that inform the writing of some of his best poems. His much quoted ‘A Song for February’ is an example.
The opening two lines of the section quoted here, John Hewitt remarked, ‘resist easy translation’.
The blackbird keeks oot frae the fog at the broo,
Gees his neb a bit dicht on a stane;
His eye caught the primrose appearin’ in view,
An the tiny wee violet o’ nature’s ain blue;
He sung them a sang o’ the auld an the new
A sang we may a’ let alane.
The thrush cuff’t the leaves ’neath the skep o’ the bee,
An’ he tirrl’t them aside wae a zest;
I maun hurry awa tae rehearsal, quo he,
This work fits the sparrow far better than me;
His sang pleased the ear frae the tap o’ the tree
As he fell intae tune wae the rest.
Thus nature provides for hir hoose an hir wanes,
An’ we may rejoice in the plan;
The wren tae the bluebonnet sings his refrain
On causey o’ cotter or lordly domain
The wagtail looks on withoot shade o’ disdain,
May we aye say the same o’ the man.
Equally well observed is Given’s ‘The First Swallow’. In this poem, the returning swallow builds its nest and feeds its young:
Ye’ll mind hoo last year ’neath the bennermost rafter,
The clabber ye stuck up in nebfu’s sae wee;
Ye’ll also remember that very soon after
Ye skirrl’t at the looks o’ the pussie an’ me.
The needfu’ wee throughban’ sae nerrowly soucht for,
Ye mixt wi’ the mortar tae keep it in shape;
The bite for the wee yins ye idently wroucht for,
An’ fill’t ilka mou’ as it upward did gape.
Given neatly broadens the poem as the swallow leaves on its migration to ask questions about Britain’s place in the wider world.
The Brig o’ Doon
Almost inevitably, like so many other Ulster poets, Given paid a visit to Burns’s birthplace. He stands with pride on the Brig o’ Doon:
Upon thy keyboun’ tapmost stay,
Auld Brig o’ Doon, I stan’ to-day,
An joyous gaze, yet rev’rently,
Wae heart aflame,
An’ praise the towerin’ minstralie
That gied thee fame.
However, while Scotland might boast of Burns a hundred years after his death, Scotland, Given observes, treated him badly while he was alive:
Thy cannie, paucky, sunburnt face
Shud been the first tae point his place,
In honest pride tae land an’ place
The heaven-tuned soul,
Whase works wul fire the human race
While planets roll.
Instead of praise ye wrung his heart
Enouch for angel tears to start
Mid cauld neglect’s ungratefu’ smart;
Ye let him dee
The king of true poetic art
In penury.
Social and political comment
Buick, in his assessment of Given quoted above, is indeed correct to highlight Given’s anger at injustice and his sympathy for the oppressed. Given even sought, and won, public office. While more often quoted perhaps for his poems on the natural world, Given deploys his poetry to comment on the local political situation, and on the plight of the poor, the weaver and the tenant farmer. Here is an extract from the poem ‘Out-door relief and the Guardians’. The Board of Guardians provided many of the local social services of the day; and the poem has a tellingly contemporary ring:
Is Charity forever gane
Hid oot o’ sicht beneath a stane,
Wae nane tae greet or say amen
Aboon its grave;
While want engulphs privation’s wane
In drunin wave? …
Oor local legislators a’ —
Or those weel read in ticht-fist law
Wha rise a stour that rates must fa’
Wae rapid strokes —
Wad want the pratie that the craw
In hunger hokes.
Forgettin’ that the poor maun leeve,
Although unfit to wun or weave,
What honest man will glunch or grieve
When food’s gien tae them?
The hearts no’ bigger than my neeve
Wad take it frae them…
Guid keep me frae the tender care
O’ those wha dole the poorhouse fare,
Or clods tae misery its share
O’ man’s relief;
But shud it come, oh, hear my prayer,
Let life be brief…
Given considers further the social and economic questions of the day in his poem, ‘The Weaver Question’. Like Herbison before him, Given is concerned at the increasingly difficult plight of the home weaver:
Queels maun be won when claith is wroucht
An pickers, shears an treddles,
Tallow an’ temples maun be boucht,
An’ floor tae dress the heddles.
Then meat tae gar the wee yins leeve,
Maun come as weel’s the tackle,
But shure the wages we receive
Wud hardly buy them treacle
Tae meal this day.
How aisy ’tis for men tae preach
Whun riches they hae got,
An’ wae self-interest’s purse-hurt screech,
Ca’ us a sinfu lot.
But, haud a wee! ye men o’ wealth!
Though noo for breath ye’re pantin
We ax nae favours gained by stealth —
It’s justice that we’re wantin’ —
Nae mair this day.
Given also considers that the General Assembly, while keen to ally itself with landlords on the matter of Home Rule, had failed to support the tenant farmers in their campaign for land reform. He mocks the attitude of the Assembly in his poem ‘The General Assembly and Home Rule’:
Nae need hae we for land reform,
Except in case oor hearers storm,
Then sympathy we show in form;
Tae get their tin.
The lan’lord’s back shud be kept warm,
Come in! come in!
In heavy questions o’ the past
We stuck within oor pulpits fast,
An let the tenants thole the blast,
Face, back, and shin;
Now self maun guide us deck and mast,
Come in! come in!
This contrasts unfavourably, Given considers, with the determined attitude of his fellows in the Cullybackey Masonic Lodge:
I watched you weel in years remote,
When bailiffs steered the tenant’s boat,
How fearlessly you cast your vote
On freedom’s side;
Amang the first you tossed your coat
’Gainst cursed pride.
You ne’er cud sympathize wae those
Wha havin’ plucked at fortune’s rose,
Wad straightway pawn their poorhouse clothes,
And ape the Tory,
While ilka breath o’ wind that blows
Can sing their story.
Can ony independent man,
Wha guides the plough wae wacket han’
While ill laws curse his native lan’
In ilka way,
Bow down and serve the landlord clan
For lickplate pay?
Still let us pride in takin’ pert
Wae those wha thole oppression’s dert,
Let’s gae the twa-faced their dessert,
And shut their mooth.
What though our speech be sometimes tert,
We’ll tell the truth.
Alongside these poems of radical protest are poems, written chiefly in English, which celebrate aspects of the Empire. These ‘War Songs’ celebrate Queen and flag, chiefly in the context of the Boer War, and praise, not least, the local hero, General Sir George White. This marks a juxtaposition of radicalism and pride in the Empire which the modern mind might not expect.
Friendship and tradition
Thomas Given’s poetry, before it was published in the collected volume issued in 1900, had first appeared in journals and newspapers such as the Irish Presbyterian and the Ballymena Observer. Indeed, Given had struck up a friendship with John Weir, the editor of the Observer and the author of the long-running and popular Bab M‘Keen column in the paper. There are several poems in the collected edition which are addressed to Bab M‘Keen. In this light-hearted but sincere tribute, Given recalls their friendship over many years and praises Weir’s local influence; he addresses Bab M‘Keen with an allusion to the alias which M‘Keen sometimes adopted, that of the weaver Pluckstick M‘Treddlehole. One stanza here is notable for the singular achievement of finding a rhyme for ‘Cullybackey’.
Tis thus I trace your auld grey pow
Close tae a generation,
Wha’s wit is sure tae fire a low
In hearts o’ every station.
The wee yin as it wuns the queels
An’ keeps its school task green
The fermer ploddin’ through his fields,
Both sing of you, M’Keen,
Wae joy this day.
Lang may your shuttle keep its way,
Your pluckstick han’ its power,
An bring you fame an’ health untae
Your slaes are coupit ower.
Your last sink drawn o’ ony size
In wather dry or drackey;
Tae that time comes a welcome lies
For you in Cullybackey
By nicht or day.
Thomas Given’s poetry was part of that tradition which John Hewitt identified as the tradition of the rhyming weavers and other country poets of Antrim and Down. The tradition was wider simply than Antrim and Down and included more than weavers and country poets. In reviewing Givens writing, Hewitt would remark:
He is at home on his own ground, alert to defend his fellow tenant farmers, to celebrate the brotherhood of the lodge. He may even, when called upon, speak for the weavers on strike: all of these in Standard Habbie, or, favourite with him, The Holy Fair stanza … The land and his life on and with it saved Thomas.
In studying Given’s place within the tradition, Hewitt comes to the following conclusion: ‘His language still has more density and grain than Herbison’s. But he has little of the intelligence and weight of a James Orr, or the muscle and sinew of a Francis Boyle or a Robert Huddleston, yet all this said and accepted, how much superior to his brothers. …’
Thomas Given was born in the middle of the nineteenth century and died during the first of the wars that convulsed the twentieth century. His poetry, collected in 1900, makes him the last of those poets so commonly, if not altogether accurately, dubbed ‘the rhyming weavers’.
John Hewitt recognizes Given’s place at the end of that tradition. He concludes: ‘Had not Poems from College and Country been in print, it would have been necessary to invent that book, fairly to illustrate the sad end of “an auld sang”’.
Poems from College and Country is unusual in having, in addition to a list of subscribers, a list of guarantors. Some two hundred names are on the two lists and they include both the local and the more widely eminent. One name to be found among them is that of the writer Archibald M‘Ilroy. The rhyming weavers generally enjoyed a position of admiration and respect within and across their communities. George Buick accords such a position to Given when he seeks to describe his character and personality:
Personally, Mr. Given is unassuming, genial, and most companionable; a man of fine feeling and high principle, greatly beloved by those who know him intimately, and much esteemed and respected (witness the list of Subscribers and Guarantors appended to this volume …) by all ranks and classes in his own immediate neighbourhood.
Sources:
Given, Thomas, (ed.) Poems from College and Country, Belfast: W. & G. Baird, 1900.
Hewitt, John, Rhyming weavers and other country poets of Antrim and Down. Reprinted ed., with introduction by Tom Paulin, Belfast: Blackstaff, 2004.
C[ampbell], A.A., [Obituary note on Thomas Given], Irish Book Lover, vol. 9, nos 3 and 4, October-November 1917.
MY AULD CANDLESTICK.
My auld candlestick, as you sit by the wa’
You mind me o’ those who are lang syne awa,
O’ happy young faces wha wove late at nicht,
As they put oot their wabs by the aid o’ your licht,
And got them laid up for the hall the next day,
Our bread tae procure and our rents for tae pay;
While John thocht nae ill o’t his wab-bag tae pack,
And start for the market wi’ three on his back.
But noo times are changed, for the poorest of a’,
When gaun tae the toon wonna travel ava’,
Tae keep fashion up, though their last pence be taen,
They maun hae a ticket and sail in the train;
Betimes when we venture tae travel abroad,
The cars o’ the poster are thick on the road,
Wi’ their big lades o’ folk oot and in tae the toon,
That wud pay for their seat though the charge be a croon.
Noo, my auld candlestick, though you needed nae mair,
The bare thocht o’ partin’ ye makes my heart sair,
When I think o’ the time ye gaen licht tae the wheels,
And assisted the wee yin that carried the queels,
Oor weans were then wi’ us frae big tae the wee,
The joy and delight o’ their daddy and me;
Their noise and their laughter, diversion and sang,
Made work tae us licht as the time wore alang;
But as time stole awa’, tae us troubles came,
Oor boys tuck the notion o’ leeing their hame,
And pushing their fortune far ower the wave,
Some of them succeeded, but some got a grave,
How yin by yin followed the pick and the wale
Yon stane in God’s Acre can tell oot the tale.
O, soun’ be their sleep ’neath the burial sod!
In the great resurrection they’ll shine wae their God.
POETICAL EPISTLE TAE CULLEYBACKEY AULD NUMMER.
Auld freen and helper up the hill,
By hamely words frae freedom’s quill,
O’ those wha doubly get their fill
O’ landlord laws,
True men shall thank you wae a will,
An’ help yer cause.
I watched you weel in years remote,
When bailiffs steered the tenant’s boat,
How fearlessly you cast your vote
On freedom’s side;
Amang the first you tossed your coat
’Gainst cursed pride.
You ne’er cud sympathize wae those
Wha havin’ plucked at fortune’s rose,
Wad straightway pawn their poorhouse clothes,
And ape the Tory,
While ilka breath o’ wind that blows
Can sing their story.
Can ony independent man,
Wha guides the plough wae wacket han’
While ill laws curse his native lan’
In ilka way,
Bow down and serve the landlord clan
For lickplate pay?
Still let us pride in takin’ pert
Wae those wha thole oppressions dert,
Let’s gae the twa-faced their dessert,
And shut their mooth.
What though our speech be sometimes tert,
We’ll tell the truth.
The tenants’ war that round us rage,
Should a’ oor noble thochts engage,
Until we wipe from freedom’s page
The ills that cover,
The homesteads o’ the present age,
And toss them over.
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND HOME RULE.
Ho! Home Rule Presbyterians a’,
Doubly-dyed in Adam’s fa’,
Withoot the nails to claut or claw
Your weasent skin,
Ere death enshrouds you wae a scraw,
Come in! come in!
In Balfour’s fauld your saul’s secure,
Nae shade o’ priestcraft tae allure,
Or turncoat Gladstone’s driving stour,
Tae mack men blin’;
’Gainst him your prayer may streech an hour.
Come in! come in!
We’ll teach you how to use your tongue,
By hemmerin’ faith in auld and young,
On priest and prelate lay the rung;
Oh! men of sin,
’Gainst whom oor great Convention sprung,
Come in! come in!
Tae other creeds we’ll ne’er gie space,
Nor let them show their spitefu’ face;
Yin creed’s enouch for this wee place,
O! morals thin!
We’ll stick tae a’ the gear an’ grace.
Come in! come in!
Nae need hae we for land reform,
Except in case oor hearers storm,
Then sympathy we show in form;
Tae get their tin.
The lan’lord’s back shud be kept warm,
Come in! come in!
In heavy questions o’ the past
We stuck within oor pulpits fast,
An let the tenants thole the blast,
Face, back, and shin;
Now self maun guide us deck and mast,
Come in! come in!
Auld Gladstone, robber o’ the creeds,
Maun now atone for past misdeeds;
Though Paul and Peter hing their heeds,
An’ hide their chin,
The guid he done is nocht but weeds,
Come in! come in!
Let unknown preachers spin their lays,
An’ gae tae some their meed o’ praise;
What though their face be sour as slaes,
In horrid grin,
We’ll stick tae Balfour an’ his ways,
Come in! come in!
A SONG FOR FEBRUARY
Day in an’ day oot on his auld farrant loom,
Time lengthens the wab o’ the past;
Dame nature steps in like a lamp to the room
Hir e’e tae the simmer o’ life geein’ bloom.
So winter slips by, wi’its mirth an’ its gloom,
As spring is appearin’ at last.
The robin gets up an’ he lauchs in his glee,
In view o’ the prospect so braw;
Sets his heid tae the side, wi’ its feathers agee,
As he spies a bit snaw drop at fit o’ the tree,
An’ says tae himsel’ a’ll hae denties tae pree
By an’ by when the splash is awa.
The blackbird keeks oot frae the fog at the broo,
Gees his neb a bit dicht on a stane;
His eye caught the primrose appearin’ in view,
An’ the tiny wee violet o’ nature’s ain blue;
He sung them a sang o’ the auld an the new —
A sang we may a’ let alane.
The thrush cuff’t the leaves ’neath the skep o’ the bee,
An’ he tirrl’t them aside wae a zest;
I maun hurry awa tae rehearsal, quo he,
This work fits the sparrow far better than me;
His sang pleased the ear frae the tap o’ the tree
As he fell intae tune wae the rest.
Thus nature provides for hir hoose an’ hir wanes,
An’ we may rejoice in the plan;
The wren tae the bluebonnet sings his refrain
On causey o’ cotter or lordly domain
The wagtail looks on withoot shade o’ disdain,
May we aye say the same o’ the man.
Next: Tha Thoarn Tree
Previous: Romance Ulster-Scots Style
Contents: Ullans: The Magazine for Ulster-Scots, Nummer 13 Hairst 2013
