About Samuel
Thomson
1798 Irish Rebellion Study
Samuel Thomson (1766 – 1816)
Although considered as one of the ‘Weaver Poets’, Samuel Thomson was in fact what is now known as a ‘hedge schoolmaster’. These were teachers who were not part of a state education system and did not have access to a school building, instead usually conducting classes in their own homes or out in the open. Thomson did not find his pupils promising material, and one of his poems is addressed ‘To a Blockhead at School’!
As Thomson lived in a small thatched cottage, space was limited. He called it ‘Crambo Cave’, ‘Crambo’ being a game that required each person to compose, in turn, rhyming lines of verse. The popularity of this game was one of the factors that contributed to a revival of interest in composing Ulster-Scots poetry.
Thomson was just 27 when his first book of poems was published. Its title was Poems on Different Subjects, partly in the Scottish Dialect, and came out six years after the appearance of the first book of poems written by Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. Both developments inspired other Ulster poets to issue books of their own collected poems.
When the United Irishmen were formed in Belfast in 1791, Thomson associated himself with the intellectual leadership of the movement rather than with those prepared to take up arms, perhaps because he considered himself a classical scholar. He published some of his poems in the United Irishmen’s newspaper, the Northern Star, until it was closed down by the government in 1797, although he hardly ever included any on political subjects.
After the failure of the 1798 Rebellion, Thomson began to contribute verse to the Belfast News-letter, a less radical publication. While his poems do not give away much about his political views, and often appeared under a range of pen-names, his friendships are a bit more revealing. One example was his close friendship with Rev. James Porter, the Presbyterian minister of Greyabbey, who was executed for his part in the Rebellion.
Thomson’s mixed feelings about the Rebellion are probably best summed up by considering his background. In religion, as a convinced Calvinist, he was opposed to the atheist views of Thomas Paine whose book, The Rights of Man, is thought to have inspired some of the participants. Also, although his own experience with his landlord and literary patron Lord Templeton had brought him little benefit, he continued to seek landlord patronage, for which he was criticised by the Ulster-Scots poet James Orr.
To a Hedge-Hog
by Samuel Thomson
The Discussion
The Poem
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Glossary
chaunt - chant
saft - soft
canny – gentle
chuse - choose
sairs – serves
chirlin – twittering, warbling
stangs – sharp pain
ill to thole – hard to endure
hurchin – hedge-hog
grusome – terrifying, horrible
tykes – a rough, ill-mannered person
gudefaith - sincerely
disna – doesn’t
rauckle – rough, crude
heckle – an instrument consisting of rows of metal spikes used in the manufacture of linen
sib kin – related by blood
sibber – more closely related
harpie - a creature from Greek mythology - thought to snatch its prey.
avow - admit (Standard English)
deil - devil
trow – to trust, have confidence in
naithing – nothing
Nick – the devil
auld - old
whin – gorse bush
nurst - nursed
ca’d – called
sae - so
To a Hedge-Hog​
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While youthful poets, thro’ the grove,
Chaunt saft their canny lays o’ love,
And a’ their skill exert to move
The darling object;
I chuse, as ye may shortly prove,
A rougher subject.
What sairs to bother us in sonnet,
’Bout chin an’ cheek, an’ brow an’ bonnet?
Just chirlin like a widow’d linnet,
Thro’ bushes lurchin;
Love’s stangs are ill to thole, I own it,
But to my hurchin.
Thou grimest far o’ grusome tykes,
Grubbing thy food by thorny dykes,
Gudefaith thou disna want for pikes,
Baith sharp an’ rauckle;
Thou looks (L----d save’s) array’d in spikes,
A creepin heckle!
Some say thou’rt sib kin to the sow,
But sibber to the deil, I trow;
An’ what thy use can be, there’s few
That can explain;
But naithing, as the learn’d allow,
Was made in vain.
Sure Nick begat thee, at the first,
On some auld whin or thorn accurst;
An’ some horn-finger’d harpie nurst
The ugly urchin;
Then Belzie, laughin, like to burst
First ca’d thee Hurchin!
Fok tell how thou, sae far frae daft,
Whar wind fa’n fruit lie scatter’d saft,
Will row thysel’, wi’ cunning craft,
An’ bear awa
Upon thy back, what sairs thee aft
A day or twa.
But whether this account be true,
Is mair than I will here avow;
If that thou stribs the outler cow,
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Literary Analysis
In line with his reluctance to openly address in his poems the issue of the Rebellion, Thomson enlists the natural world to capture a picture of the evils of community strife.
In the third verse, he writes ‘Gudefaith thou disna want for pikes’. The sense of the word ‘want’ is not quite the same as our modern usage, so ‘want for’ here means ‘have a lack of’, in a negative expression that really implies a decided positive. This hedgehog, like the rebels, is well supplied with weaponry. Pikes used in battle by disciplined men could create a formidable wall of sharp steel, just as the hedgehog can deploy a disconcerting array of spikes against an attacker.
As the poem continues, the words used give an impression to the reader of harshness. In the remainder of verse three, rauckle is Ulster-Scots for ‘rough’. Heckle was a piece of equipment used in the linen industry prior to industrialisation and was a toothed comb-like implement used for dressing flax.
The word sib means ‘related by blood’ in Ulster-Scots, and used of the sow refers to the word origin of the term hedgehog, so named because it frequents hedgerows and its snout is thought to resemble that of a pig. As the poem continues, Thomson puts forward hypotheses concerning hedgehog origins.
The deil is of course the devil himself, Nick (or more often, Auld Nick) being just another word for the same personage. Harpie occurs in Greek and Roman mythology and refers to a creature that was half-human and half-bird. Belzie is short for ‘Beelzebub’, a name given to Satan in the New Testament gospels of Matthew and Mark. This verse concludes with the Ulster-Scots word for a hedgehog – hurchin. This is probably a more appropriate name, being ultimately derived from a Vulgar Latin word meaning ‘to bristle’.
The following verse refers to the hedgehog’s habit of rolling in fallen plant debris, but uses the Ulster-Scots form row. English word endings with -oll resolve to -ow in Ulster-Scots, so in addition to row for ‘roll’ we also have (for example) pow for ‘poll’ (an older word for the top of the head).
From here, Thomson refers to superstitions surrounding the hedgehog. The first of these was the belief that the hedgehog drained the last drops of milk from a cow that over-wintered outside. Another freet (Ulster-Scots for ‘superstition’) was that it was unlucky to meet a hedgehog as you set out in the morning. Thomson has met many hedgehogs in the morning and eke (in addition) in the evening, but his experience is no different.
He becomes scathing about this ‘nonsense’ and advises the hedgehog to go home to its squeaking pups, because if Colley (a collie dog) should hear them the hedgehog, even with all the pikes it can muster, might not come off too well. Though the poem is suggesting that the hedgehog actively seeks safety and avoid the sheepdog; to go home and regroup, it is perhaps advising the United Irishmen to be more tactically astute and wait until better times. This coupled with the fact that hedgehogs who made sounds or which appeared during the day were often ill or injured lead us to ponder, is this a very clever nature poem disguised as a political one, or a political poem disguised as a nature poem? Either way it seems the United Irishmen misread the signs of the times (probably the French Revolution). Certainly, the short-lived Rebellion sent many of them scuttling home the worse for their experience.