Monaghan Verse

Monaghan Verse: An Exile Remembers

  

            Sometime after completing Chapter Five and, in passing, mentioning the identity of J. Nunn, I happened across a possible reference to the gentleman.  It may be found at http://www.exis.net/ahd/monaghan. (Click on “Monaghan Names in Verse.”)

            The verse itself, rather lengthy, was printed in Toronto newspaper in 1879 and “refers to Monaghan as it was fifty years earlier [1849] (sic), at the height of the Catholic Emancipation Controversy.”  It is from a booklet, “A Souvenir of Monaghan,” Oct 1968.

            The verse itself mentions upwards of three hundred names of Monaghan locals; it is subdivided into categories: mercantile, professional, bakers, butchers, blacksmiths, sawyers, deformed citizens, miscellaneous.  Under the subdivision ‘Professional,’ the following was extracted:

                                   " Flemming, Reilly, Mitchell, Wright,

                                     Swanzy, Dudgeon, Nunn and Knight,

                                    Attorneys always silly grinning

                                    While they their clients cash were winning."