Around the Boree Log and The Parish of St Mel's

Description

'We'll all be rooned,' said Hanrahan, In accents most forlorn, Outside the church, ere Mass began, One frosty Sunday morn. 'We'll all be rooned,' said Hanrahan, In accents most forlorn, Outside the church, ere Mass began, One frosty Sunday morn. In his affectionate and gently humorous verses John O'Brien sang of farming life and of the life of Irish settlers in Australia - at home, on the land, and at the Church upon the Hill that is the centre of their lives. this volume combines O'Brien's two books of verse, Around the Boree Log and the Parish of St Mel's. It is verse that is simple and sincere and lit with a kindly understanding of the lives it chronicles. 'He is the Poet Laureate of the Irish settlers in Australia' the Advertiser, Adelaide For when the Holy Morning strung Its beads upon the grass, You'd see us driving - old and young - the tall white graceful trees among, On every road to Mass.

John O'Brien was the pen name of Father Patrick Hartigan, born in Yass, New South Wales, in 1878. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1903 and in 1917 became parish priest for Narrandera, a position he held for twenty-seven years. His first volume of verse, Around the Boree Log, was published in 1921 and included the well-known poems 'Said Hanrahan', 'The Old Bush School' and 'Tangmalangaloo'. His second collection, The Parish of St Mel's, was published posthumously in 1954. John O'Brien died in 1952.