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WF
Marshall The Bard of Tyrone 1888 - 1959 The Poet WF has been described as "The Bard of Tyrone". Although he went to live in Castlerock in 1928 he never ceased to be a Tyrone man. He was a Tyrone man in exile in Co. Londonderry. A high proportion of his poetic output is contained in collections entitled Verses from Tyrone (1922), Ballads and Verses from Tyrone (1929), Ballads from Tyrone (1939) and Tyrone Ballads (1943). As Blackstaff's blurb for Livin' in Drumlister acknowledges, his native county provided much of his inspiration: its mountains and woods, and its people, not least its plaintiff old bachelors and love-sick girls. Among the poems inspired by Tyrone's landscape are 'Dunmullan'(his father's townland), 'Shore Mill' and 'Purple and Gold'. 'The Hills of Home' reflects his deep affection for the county. Marshall loved the very names of Tyrone's townlands. His enjoyment is evident in 'Tyrone Jigs'. The mere mention of Tyrone's plaintiff old bachelors and love-sick girls immediately brings to mind 'Me An' Me Da' with its opening line 'I'm livin' in Drumlister ...' Another is 'Sarah Ann'. 'Sarah Ann' has a sequel, 'The Runaway'. There is humour and humanity in Marshall's poetry and an acute understanding of the human condition. Another poem about Tyrone's people, 'The Lad', provokes a radically diferrent response. A love and understanding of history is another theme present in WF's poetry. In 1662 Charles II, after the restoration of the monarchy, sought to restore episcopacy to Scotland. The Scots were deeply wedded to Calvinism and the Presbyterian form of church government and bitterly resented this. The eviction of resisting minsters provoked covenanting revolts in 1666, 1679 and 1685. The verses of 'The Flag' well capture defiance of Mitre and Crown. Anyone who wonders why Presbyterians are not natural pillars of the establishment may discern some of the reasons why. The siege of Derry, as Ian McBride has recently explained, is central to the Ulster Protestant experience. It too is a story of defiance and triumph against the odds. It is the subject of one of WF's longer poems, 'The Relief', a poem which attracted praise from Kipling. 'The Twain' is a most interesting poem. English and Scottish settlers in Ulster, and their descendants, for many years were often mutually antagonistic. Pronounced differences existed on a range of issues, political, religious and socio-economic, a point fully appreciated by Marshall. In times of common adversity - such as the end of the seventeenth century in general and the siege of Derry in particular - they made common cause. But after the danger passed, mutual antipathies reasserted themselves. 'The Twain' celebrates the emergence of an Ulster-British community, a coming together of the descendants of the English and Scottish settlers. WF's passion for fishing is a recurring theme of his poetry. Every year WF and RL spent a week fishing Lough Melvin, the subject of one of his poems. In 'My House' it is made perfectly clear that the ideal fishing poem where a man can cast a fly. 'The River' is a fishing poem but the fishing poem par excellence is 'The Big Trout'. He also wrote very personal poems to amuse and entertain friends and mark family occasions.
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