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Life
1755-1829; member of Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore’s literary group; published The Songs of Deardra, translated from the Irish, and other poems (London 1825); poems in Madden’s Literary Remains of the United Irishman. Well-known Ulster poet, son is buried at Coleraine; memoir by Rev. Burdy.; author of ‘Banks of Banna’, writing in Walker’s Hibernian Magazine. PI MKA RAF
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References
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature (1978), The Songs of Deardra, translated from Irish, with other poems (London 1825); contrib. Morning Post, Belfast News-letter, Northern Star, Poetical Register, and Walker’s Hibernian Magazine. Commentary by F. J. Bigger, ‘Thomas Stott - Hafiz - the Poet of Dromore.’
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2; one of the group gathered around Bishop Percy, b. Hillsborough Co. Down, craftsman; d. Dromore; own name or pseud. ‘Hafiz’; See Hewitt and O’Donoghue.
Robert Welch, A History of Verse Translation from the Irish 1789-1897 (Gerrards Cross 1988), In 185 Thomas Stott published The Songs of Deardra, translated from the Irish with other Poems [1825], which he based on a manuscript given him by the Belfast collector, William Neilson. [72]
Belfast Public Library holds Songs of Dea[r]dra and other Poems (1825).
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Quotations
Songs of Deirdre: ‘Sad and long to me now seems the slow-footed day, / Since Usna’s brave sons in the silent grave sleep’, as superior to the tedious quatrains of the rest of Songs of Deardra (p.15) - quoted in Terence Brown, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan 1975). Brown also quotes: ‘How fair the peopled district round Dromore! / Here wealth and comfort Industry supplies; / While vales extend, enrich’d with flaxen store, / And hills adorn’d by cultivation rise.’ (Songs, &c.)
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Notes
Stott is the object of reproaches in a poem of 1823 by Joseph Carson, a ‘rhyming weaver’ cited in John Hewitt’s thesis and the Fibre essay (1948), ‘who lately changed his crippling song/To crush the weak and back the strong;/For me I’ve other tow to tease/Than strive the great folks ear to please.’ (Quoted by Patrick Walsh, DPhil, UUC [1996]).
Irish Book Lover, 12 (1921): Stott was a widely-known poet who attracted the hostile criticism of Byron.
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