Life
1864-1907 [var. 1854]; Canadian poet, Irish by birth; b. Currawn House,
near Mohill, Co. Leitrim, emig. to Canada with family, aged ten; learned
fishing from Lord Palmerston; ed. Montreal High and McGill; MD Lennoxville,
1884; used ‘voyageur’ and ‘habitant’ dialects; worked
as telegrapher, supporting his mother and brothers, who became millionaires;
practised in Quebec and Montreal, where he died in a smallpox epidemic;
wrote amusing French-Canadian dialect verse in English; The Habitant
and other French Canadian Poems (NY 1894), collected by his wife,
Isobel Harvey, so popular that five other collections; Johnny Courteau (1901); The Voyageur (1905); his style was only approximately
Quebecois, being formed - according to one reviewer - by his own experience
among the Highland-Scotch. It was enthusiastically received as realistic
in England; his ear for French Canadian was attuned at Bord-a-Plouffe
during six summer sessions as a telegrapher from the age of fifteen. OCCL
KUN
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Works
The Habitant and other French Canadian Poems (NY 1894), collected
by his wife; Phil-o-Rum’s Canoe and Madeleine de Vercheres
(NY&Lon 1898); Johnny Courteau and other poems (1901); The
Voyageur and other poems (1905); The Poetical Works of William
Henry Drummond (1912), with memoir [portrait] by his widow.
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Criticism
J. B. Lyons, William Henry Drummond: Poet in Patois (Ontario: Fitzhenry
&Whiteside 1994), 217pp.
References
Belfast Public Library holds [poss. by another author], The Great
Fight (1908); The Habitant (1911).
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