32 - Poem on the life of Bishop William Delaney

32

Poem on the life of Bishop William Delaney

1 p.; clipping

A clipping containing an elegiac narrative poem written in memory of The Right Reverend Dr. William Delany, late Bishop of Cork. Dated at Bandon, 15 November 1886, the poem opens from the perspective of a stranger walking through a grief-stricken town where all the shops are closed and a ‘pall of gloom’ hangs over the citizens making their way to St. Patrick’s Church. The narrative shifts as the stranger encounters a 90-year-old patriarch weeping at the church porch, who recounts a powerful historical reminiscence of Dr. Delany’s tenure as their parish priest during the Great Famine (‘the year of famine ... when all our food was lost’).

The elder describes the late bishop’s heroic selflessness during the crises of starvation and the fever pestilence, detailing how he answered dying calls in the dead of night through falling snow to administer last rites and absolution in impoverished hovels. The climax of the verse highlights a specific winter incident where, lacking gold or silver to give to starving supplicants outside a local hill chapel and schoolhouse, the priest stripped off his own coat to be sold and divided among the poor, walking bare into the wintry sleet.

ISAD(G) 2nd edition