Michael Hogan (1832-1899)
Poet of the
People
By Kieran Beville
On a quiet corner of New Road, Thomondgate where the Shannon breeze tugs at
peeling paint, the once-bustling Whelan’s Pub stands silent now — its doors
bolted, its windows dulled by time. Yet on its weathered wall, a small plaque
bears the words that keep memory alive: “Michael Hogan, The Bard of Thomond,
lived here.” To most who pass by, it is a ghost of a building. But to those who
knew it — those who drank there, sang there, or grew up hearing their fathers
talk of the poet who once called it home — Whelan’s remains sacred ground. I
count myself among them.
I
was born and raised in Thomondgate where my father and grandfather lived and I
became a poet. So, in a sense I am part of that lineage. I remember sitting at
that bar with my father on Sunday afternoons, when the talk turned to Hogan —
our own local legend. Even then, before I’d written a word worth keeping, I
understood that in Thomondgate, poetry didn’t live on pages. It lived in the
stories traded over stout.
A
Bard is Born
Michael
Hogan was born on 1 November 1832. Thomondgate was then a working-class
district — full of craftsmen, millworkers, and fishermen who toiled by day and
made their own entertainment by night.
His
father, Arthur, was a skilled wheelwright but also a musician who could coax
tunes from a fiddle. That mix of craft and art ran deep in the Hogan household.
Young Michael’s education was limited to the Christian Brothers’ school nearby,
but his real schooling was in the speech and rhythm of the streets.
From
wheelwright’s son to mill worker to self-declared Bard of Thomond, Hogan built
himself not through privilege but through persistence and wit.
Limerick in His Lungs
Mid-19th
century Limerick was a city of tension — industry against famine, commerce
against poverty. Hogan lived and worked in the thick of it: at Russell’s Mills
on Lock Quay, later with Limerick Corporation.
His
poems were first printed in The Irishman, The Nation, and The Limerick Chronicle,
but his breakthrough came with his 1861 collection Lays and Legends of Thomond.
It was a patchwork of history and humour, satire and sorrow — ballads of local
heroes, ghosts, and rogues. Hogan’s Limerick wasn’t idealised; it was alive,
flawed, and loud. In his poems, bishops drank too much, labourers
philosophised, and every pub corner could contain a parable.
The
Satirical Sting
Hogan’s
satire had bite. His most infamous poem, “The Drunken Thady and the Bishop’s
Lady,” scandalised the city — its humour bawdy, its targets uncomfortably
recognisable. But the people loved him for it. In an era when polite society
looked down its nose at the working man’s wit, Hogan gave that wit a stage. His
self-published broadsides — lampooning hypocrisy, celebrating local life —
circulated through taverns and markets faster than any sermon or speech. He was
the city’s jester and conscience rolled into one: a man unafraid to provoke
laughter or unease, depending on who was listening.
Whelan’s
Pub and the Ghost of the Bard
Whelan’s
Pub, the building now derelict but once lively, holds a special place in the
story of the Bard. There is a planning notice for apartments posted on the
façade, so it would seem that its fate is decided. Hogan lived there for a
time, and it became one of the places most closely associated with his name. In
later generations, it was more than a pub — it was a living monument.
Old-timers would gather there, pints in hand, swapping verses and tales. My
father and I were among them on more than one occasion, smoke curling around
stories of “Hogan’s time.”
Even
after its closure, the building retains its spirit. The plaque outside reminds
us that poetry, like memory, can outlast mortar and glass. Thomondgate
residents — poets, teachers, tradesmen — have long campaigned for the building
to be preserved as a place of historical and cultural interest. Their argument
is simple: if Limerick is to honour its Bard, it should protect the home where
his laughter once echoed.
The
irony isn’t lost on us — that a man who wrote of the working class might have
his own house crumble for want of civic care. Yet his ghost lingers. Walk past
Whelan’s on a damp evening and you might almost hear him, pen scratching,
composing another verse for the city that shaped him.
A
Poet Abroad
In
1886, disillusioned but not defeated, Hogan left for America. Like so many
Irish emigrants, he sought a new beginning across the Atlantic. He read his
poems in Irish halls, entertained exiles with his tales of Thomond and
Limerick, but the homesickness never left him.
Three
years later, thanks to a fund raised by supporters back home, he returned to
Limerick — older, nearly blind, but proud. He resumed work with the Corporation
as a custodian of the Turf Quay and caretaker of the King’s Island walkway, always
close to the Shannon that had sung through his youth.
Decline
and Death
By
the late 1890s, Hogan was frail and poor. His dream of publishing another
collection faded. On 19 April 1899, he died quietly at his Thomondgate home. He
was buried in Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery, and though there was little fanfare,
his fellow citizens ensured that his name was not forgotten.
Resurrection
of the Bard
For
decades, Hogan’s work lingered only in memory and fragments. But in the 1990s,
the Friends of the Bard society revived his legacy — restoring his grave,
publishing his poems, and raising funds for a public monument. In 2005,
sculptor Séamus Connolly unveiled his bronze likeness outside King John’s
Castle. There he stands now, book in hand, forever reading from Lays and
Legends of Thomond.
While
the statue draws visitors, it is on the other side of the river, not exactly in
close proximity to the place Hogan once called home. The distance is symbolic:
one stands polished and proud for tourists, the other — Whelan’s — sits
neglected, waiting for recognition.
The
People’s Poet
What
makes Hogan endure is his humanity. He wasn’t a polished academic or a
privileged artist. His poetry was not avant-garde in the sense that it did not
break new ground but that does not mean he is unimportant. He was a gifted
balladeer. He was a man of the people — flawed, fiery, and funny. His poems
captured the life of dockers, weavers, fishmongers, and the occasional drunk
philosopher. Unlike Yeats, whose muses were ethereal and aristocratic, Hogan’s
inspiration was earthy — the laughter from a snug in Thomondgate, the rhythm of
a mill wheel, the gossip of a market. He wrote in the local tongue, for local
ears. His verse was democratic — as rough and real as the streets that inspired
it.
“From riverbank
to Shannon quay,
The songs I sing
are born of thee;
No lordly muse
nor marble hall,
Just Thomond’s
tongue to tell it all.”
Why
He Still Matters
In
an age when heritage risks becoming a hashtag, Hogan’s story reminds us what
local pride truly means. He declared himself The Bard of Thomond not out of
arrogance, but out of love — for the people, the accent, the stubborn humour of
his place. Every poet who writes in Limerick today, every musician who sings in
the local dialect, is walking the path Hogan cleared. And every campaigner
fighting to save Whelan’s from decay is really fighting for something bigger —
the right of working-class history to be remembered, not rewritten.
A
Toast to Thomond’s Voice
So,
when I pass the boarded windows of Whelans I think of my father’s laughter, the
warmth of the old pub (where my first cousin, Betty Clancy, was the barmaid)
and the poet who gave us words for who we are. The building may crumble, but
the voice endures — carried in every Limerick ballad, every pint glass raised
in defiance or remembrance.
Michael
Hogan, our Bard of Thomond, has not left us. He simply changed form — from man to
memory, from verse to echo. And as long as the Shannon flows past Thomondgate,
his song will never fall silent. In the end, Michael Hogan’s legacy is not
confined to stone or plaque, but carried in the rhythm of Thomondgate itself.
Each voice that rises in song, each story shared in a pub or along the
riverbank, continues his work. We are his inheritors — the poets, dreamers, and
storytellers of a city that still speaks in rhyme when it remembers its own.
Perhaps that’s the true meaning of being the Bard of Thomond: not fame, but
endurance. For as long as words have music and Limerick has heart, Hogan’s
verses will live on. His headstone reads, not in his own words, but a noble
sentiment: “Oh! ’twere a shame to let his name / Like other
names, decay.”
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