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Padraic Colum, one of the best known poets of the Irish Literary Revival throughout his long life faithfully recorded the landscape and colourful idiom of his native place. Colum was a respected man of letters, honoured by many Universities, who continued to bring the art of poetry to American students while he himself was then eighty years of age. Some of his better known poems include 'She moved through the fair', 'The Old Woman of the Roads' and 'The Drover' which begins with the following lines: 'From Meath of the pastures, to wet hills by sea, through Leitrim and Longford, go my cattle and me.' Colum has written plays, children's' lore and mythology, and biographies of his fried James Joyce and of the Irish patriot Arthur Griffith. 'She moved through the the fair' first popularized by the famous Irish John Count McCormack, has now become one of the best loved Irish lyrics. Padraic Colum was born in Longford Workhouse in 1881, where his father was Master. The family were abandoned by his father who left for the goldfields of Colorado, and Padraic was reared in North Longford where he became familiar with Granard, Colmcille, Bunlahy and Molly, place names which later occur in his literary output. In the final years of his life Colum stated 'I have always tried to use the speech of the people of Longford in my work', - the idiom he had learned at the poultry fairs in north Longford which he visited during his youth.
Padraic Colum
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