ࡱ> CEB%` DbjbjNN .(,,DHHHH T$h54444444$`6h8 5 5"5;;;4;4;;;x 4H';4850h5;9X9;;9O$r;\ 5 5%h5$ $$ $ The Book of Irish Writers, Chapter 36 - James Orr 17701816 James Orr is significant in his own right - as well as representing the group of writers that John Hewitt would later classify as the Rhyming Weavers. These writers came, as Hewitt put it: from that time before the schoolhouse tamed their lively tongue This was certainly true of Orr. Born in 1770 near Ballycarry in County Antrim, he received the whole of his education from his father: He strove to form my taste and heart, My hand he trained without a rod, Orr was the only child of elderly parents and seems to have been kept from school partly because they feared the bad influences that he might encounter. He began writing at a young age and quickly established a local reputation. Society was changing rapidly during Orrs lifetime. New democratic ideas were in the air. The ideals of the Society of United Irishmen were formed in part by the same Presbyterian background that Orr came from. Many of his early poems first appeared in The Northern Star, the journal of the United Irishmen which was printed in Belfast. As a member of the United Irishmen, Orr took part in the Rising of 1798. He was at the Battle of Antrim in June and his first biographer notes that: his conduct will long be remembered in having been actively employed in preventing his companions committing acts of cruelty. Orrs own account of the battle, in his long poem Donegore Hill, is more realistic, and has few illusions. He sees the Rising as a protest against rack-rents by a disorderly troop: Whan chiels wha grudgd to be sae taxd An tythd by rack-rent blauthry, Turnd out en masse, as soon as axd An unco throuither squathry Were we, that day The poem goes on to condemn those who turned and ran before the English soldiers: Come back, ye dastards! Can ye ought Expect at your returnin, But wives an weans stript, cattle hought, An cots, an claughins burnin? Despite his anger at this cowardice, Orr is still able to conclude: In tryin times, maist folk, youll fin, Will act like Donegore men On onie day. After the failure of the Rising, Orr escaped to America, but despite publishing some verse in newspapers it was not the kindred place he had hoped for. He returned to Antrim sometime before 1800. We know this because he applied to join the yeomen, a part-time militia originally raised to combat the United Irish man threat, but he was rejected because of his radical views. On his fathers death he took over the tenancy of their small farm and continued with the trade of weaving. In 1804, Orr was able to publish the one book that appeared during his lifetime: Poems on Various Subjects. This was made possible because friends raised a subscription list of almost 500 names; that is, nearly 500 people subscribed to buy the book before it was published. This gives a sense of Orrs reputation by this time if we bear in mind that these days, many books of poetry would have a print run of about 500 copies. The poems collected in the volume, as its title suggests, cover a range of topics. While many of them are addressed to named individuals, and a large number are elegies, others celebrate such everyday things as the potato and tea: Welcome, my friens,- yere just in time, The kettles on, an soon will chyme; An gif, tho usd to strains sublime, Yell listen me, Ill clear my throat, an rudely rhyme In praise o Tea. There are suggestions that Orrs earlier radical views may have softened. In his Address to Belfast, for example, he denies that there is any party-spite in the city. This leads to a vision of Belfast as an improbable ecumenical utopia: Thy Churchman scorns to smite the meek And passive Quakers modest cheek: Thy Cathlick yields her willing hand To Calvins friend, in Hymens band. Orrs first biographer, a friend called McDowell, all but gives up, after the publication of Poems on Various Subjects. In the last years of Orrs life, scarcely any thing occurred, which deserves particular notice. Without going quite as far this we do have to acknowledge that the balance between weaving and poetry in Orrs life, like that of most of his contemporaries was very much in favour of weaving. These were working men who had first and foremost to make a living at an exhausting trade. Drink was Orrs refuge in later years, but he still maintained a circle of literary friends and after his death in 1816, aged 46, they compiled a volume of The Posthumous Works of James Orr of Ballycarry which appeared in 1817. 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