William Allingham to be remembered in Ballyshannon in his 200th birthday year

This Sunday, August 25 an Allingham Trail Walk will be held in Ballyshannon to remember the birth of the local poet 200 years ago in 1824. 

This forms part of National Heritage Week. Anthony Begley of County Donegal Historical Society will be the local history guide with special guests including Rachel O’Connor All-Ireland Drama Festival Best Actress 2024, Trish Keane, Richard Hurst, Irene and Fiona Pender providing songs, verses and stories. 

The meeting place is outside the Abbey Arts Centre at 3 pm and all are welcome.

William Allingham (1824-1889) the bard of Ballyshannon and Helen Allingham his artist wife are still commemorated in Ballyshannon today. William’s life as a poet is recalled in Allingham Park just across the road from the Abbey Arts Centre and his birthplace is marked on the Mall.

Helen Allingham his wife is remembered in the Helen Allingham Gallery which is situated in the foyer of the Abbey Centre. 

A plaque on Allingham Bridge also recalls the poet’s love of his home place. 

A successful literary festival, The Allingham Arts Festival, is held in the town every November. 

The road to Belleek from the roundabout is named Allingham Road and his bust is displayed in the Allied Irish Bank, formerly the Provincial Bank where William Allingham worked.

The Allinghams were an old Ballyshannon family resident in the area since the 17th century. The young William developed an interest in poetry from his Aunt Maryanne and his father William. He corresponded with the leading poets of the day in England, such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Leigh Hunt and Robert Browning. 

However the isolation of a poet, on the west coast of Ireland led to William forsaking careers in banking and later the customs to try his literary talents in London. There he became editor of Fraser’s Magazine and became part of the literary circle working with people like Charles Dickens. 

William’s publications of his poetry had commenced in 1850 and his first book included one of the most popular poems of the era entitled The Fairies. By 1863 he had published further books of poetry and he was awarded a pension by the English Prime Minister William Gladstone, in recognition of his 5,000-line poem on the land troubles called Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland. Gladstone had quoted from the poem in the House of Commons in Westminster.

In 1874 he married the watercolour painter Helen Patterson who had made an early name for herself creating the illustrations for Thomas Hardy’s novel, Far from the Madding Crowd. She was later to carve out a lucrative career as an artist who painted and thus preserved the cottages of old England in Surrey.  

Helen and William married 150 years ago this week, August 22, 1874.They had three children Gerard, Evey and Henry and finally lived in Hampstead in London where he died in 1889. 

William wrote much of his lyric poetry about the local area around Ballyshannon and poems like The Goblin Child, Four Ducks on a Pond, Abbey Assaroe and his famous emigrant ballad Adieu to Ballyshanny (also called The Winding Banks of Erne) are still recalled today. 

Helen Allingham and the three children are buried in England but William wished to be buried at St Anne’s Church on Mullaghnashee in his native Ballyshannon. as the following verse of his poem described.

 If ever I'm a moneyed man, I mean, please God, to cast

My golden anchor in the place where youthful years were pass’d ;

Though heads that now are black and brown must meanwhile gather gray

New faces rise by every hearth, and old ones drop away -

​Yet dearer still that Irish hill than all the world beside;

 It's home, sweet home, where'er I roam, through lands and waters wide.

​ And if the Lord allows me, I surely will return

​To my native Ballyshanny, and the winding banks of Erne.