Edward Walsh

Edward Walsh (1805 – 6 August 1850) was an Irish poet, the son of a sergeant in the Cork Militia, and was born in Derry City, where his father's regiment had been sent for training. His parents were natives in the village of Millstreet, County Cork, near which his father at one time possessed a small holding.

Walsh spent about thirty years of his life in Millstreet. His education was received in that most primitive of Irish primary schools, the ‘hedge school’—so called because the children assembled under a spreading hedge on summer days to be taught by untrained teachers who, wandering from district to district, thus obtained a miserable livelihood.

When little more than a boy he showed great intellectual gifts, and in 1830 was private tutor in County Cork. Additionally tutored children of an Irish member of parliament.

Selected poem

Have You Been at Carrick? In