29 August 2010
“William Allingham country” was the theme of our last Field Day of 2010 and Ballyshannon our destination. Anthony Begley acted as our guide for this occasion; this was a subject very close to his heart – understandably, of course, both being natives of the town.
We visited many of the places associated with the poet and the town is fortunate in that most of them are still extant (especially when one must consider that he was born in 1824).
The poet began his working life in the Provincial Bank and so we stopped opposite there to view it and then strolled a short distance to his birth-place on the Mall. At each stop, Conor Carney, a local school Principal, recited extracts from his poetry and this contributed immensely to our appreciation of his literary skill.
And William Allingham was indeed a major literary figure, much highly thought of by his contemporaries, eg. Tennyson and Rosetti. He corresponded with them a lot.
We visited the poet’s grave in the grounds of St. Anne’s Church of Ireland and were kindly granted access to view the interior. In his final words of tribute there, Anthony gave great prominence to a most interesting facet of his life – his marriage to Helen in 1874; she established a superb reputation as a water-colour artist and is recognised as such today. The town has a Helen Allingham gallery and there is a Helen Allingham Society in the USA. A google search will show the magnificence of her work which now command very high prices.
The poet, who died in 1889, is also highly celebrated in his native place. There is the Allingham Park, a memorial plaque on the bridge named in his honour, also a plaque on the house in which he was born and a commemorative bust by Arthur Breen in the bank where he worked.
After our President, Col. Declan O’Carroll, thanked everyone who had made the day so enjoyable, we bade a fond farewell to Ballyshannon recalling the poet’s own words as he departed from the same town many, many years earlier.
“Adieu to Ballyshannon! where I was bred and born;
Go where I may, I’ll think of you, as sure as night and morn,
The kindly spot, the friendly town, where everyone is known,
And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own;
There’s not a house or window, there’s not a field or hill,
But, east or west, in foreign lands, I’ll recollect them still.
I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I’m forced to turn –
So adieu to Ballyshannon, and the winding banks of Erne!”
(“The winding banks of Erne”, verse 1)