Sarah Leech

Sarah Leech (1809 - 1830) was an Irish poet. She is the only known published female Irish weaver poet and one of the few women of the time to have poetry published in the Ulster Scots dialect.

Biography Sarah Leech was born in the townland of Ballylennan in the parish of Taughboyne, County Donegal in 1809. She was the youngest child of Thomas Leech, a weaver and farmer. The family were Protestant, most likely Presbyterian. At the age of 3, Leech's family were left in difficult financial circumstances when her father died of pleurisy. Leech's eldest sister, who had attended school, attempted to teach her younger siblings to read, but she had very little free time. At age 6, Leech attended school for 3 months. Despite a fear of her teacher, she learned how to read and displayed an interest in further learning and became a keen reader of "story books".

Leech was written about with great sympathy, focusing on how she was "the female orphan" in newspaper and commentary published about her, pieces about her detailed her piety and poverty. In the only collection of her poetry, Poems on various subjects published in 1828, her editor describes her life spent in "labour, indigence, and obscurity" and how any profits from the work would aid her in her "pilgrimage through life". Leech became lame, and appears to have been suffering from a condition like rheumatoid arthritis.