Renewal begun again,
fleshy richness of Spring, festooned on hedgerow,
Hanging, bulging, vein of leaf, of stem,
Blossoming into joy of raindrop richness.
Perfumes of bloom and birdsong,
kindling soul’s appetite,
embracing it in verdant tendrils of love.
I visited the Chinese Cemetery in Noyelles Sur Mer a few weeks ago. I really came across the place by accident. I had just visited the scene of the Battle of Crecy (1346) where King Edward III’s English army annihilated the French force under King Philip VI. I was returning to our lodging in St. Valery Sure-Mer when I saw a sign for the ‘Cimetière Chinois’. Even with my limited French I knew that this must be a war cemetery but presumed it was a cemetery for French Colonials from Indochina. Curiosity got the better of me and so I took a turn off in Noyelles. I soon found the cemetery down a quiet back lane surrounded by wheat fields. We were the only ones visiting. The first thing you notice is the beautiful Chinese archway which guards the entrance. The cemetery like all war cemeteries in France is well-kept, neat and tidy. The information plaque advises that there are 849 graves here and that they all belong to members of the Chinese Labour Corps. Most of the deaths seemed to have occurred in 1918 and 1919 and the majority of these after the Armistice. I immediately wondered had most succumbed to the Flu Epidemic or some other calamity.? Only some of the graves have the names of the deceased. Most just have numbers. Also each grave stone contains an epitaph and after some observation I worked out that there were only four options, “Faithful unto death (至死忠誠)”, “A good reputation endures forever (流芳百世)”, “A noble duty bravely done (勇往直前)” and “Though dead he still liveth (雖死猶生)”. The remains also seem to have been buried two per grave.
I decided to do a bit more research and discovered that the men came mostly from Shandong Province. They were recruited and processed by both the French and English through the Treaty ports Tianjin and Weihaiwei. They were poor and from the countryside. The wages offered were very high by Chinese standards but low by European rates (about 1/3 of a French privates salary). The selection process weeded out those with disease and so only the strongest labourers were selected. The journey was arduous, almost three months by ship until they docked at Marseilles. When a German U-boat sank a ship drowning 540 Chinese labourers the route was changed. Now the labourers crossed the Pacific, were shipped in cattle trucks across Canada and then sailed the Atlantic. It must have been a terrifying experience for what were simple, rural peasants with little knowledge of the wider world.
In France they worked 10 hours a day and 7 days a week for 20 yuan. They worked building trenches, repairing railways, unloading and transporting supplies to the troops. The strange food caused many to suffer stomach problems. Camp conditions were hard and work conditions uncomfortable. When the war was over the men were not repatriated immediately but were used in mine clearance and recovering bodies from the battlefields. This was dangerous and foul work. It is estimated that up to 10,000 died during the War from shelling, landmines, poor treatment, cholera or the worldwide flu epidemic. It was estimated that at the end of the war over 300,000 workers from the Colonies, 100,000 Egyptians, 21,000 Indians and 20,000 native South Africans were working throughout France and the Middle East by 1918. After the war, the British government sent a War Medal to every member of the Chinese Labour Corps. The medal was exactly like the British War Medal that had issued to every member of the British armed forces, except that it was of bronze, not silver, a fact that illustrates the lesser value placed on these men upon whose backs and hands the war was won.
‘By the terms of this contract…I, the undersigned coolie recruited by the Weihaiwei Labour Bureau, declare myself to be a willing labourer’
This is not your fatherland, where they make you toil,
Digging trenches for the damned, pulling bodies from the soil.
This is not your motherland, where you clear mines all day,
Did they tell you about the shells, the fever and decay.
You left your family in Shandong, you were shipped across the sea
Loaded on a cattle truck, and then dumped in Picardy.
Why did you join this fight Sheng? What brought you to this place?
What is the cause you died for? Was it two yuan per day?
Now you lie in Noyelles –sur- Mer, amongst the fields of wheat,
‘Faithful unto death’, it says, not the fate you’d planned to meet.
A medal then was cast, to remember this campaign,
They said it didn’t matter, the colour of your skin,
So your noble sacrifice was honoured,
your number was engraved,
But theirs was cast in silver
and yours in simple bronze.
Chinese Labour Corps Cemetery
Noyelles-sur-Mer, 2016
I’ll meet you by the Moose he said,
It’s a Caribou, I thought
As his friends walked on ahead
to survey the pot-holed earth
They fell in piles just over there,
past that small, neat track
Close by the shattered tree
In their brave reckless attack
Now ‘No mans land’ is a gentle green
where the New Foundlanders all fell
Dying for a far off King
Pulverised by savage shell.
In a half-hour hell it was over
A generation lost
From an Island far away, and
where still they count the cost
They met up by the Caribou
looked again across the field,
They cursed the tragedy of man,
When his pride it cannot yield.
Beaumont-Hamel, 2016
Where have all the fish gone?
The fish we caught as children, in abundance,
with hand cut rods of bamboo or sally,
under the guiding hands of Grandfathers
with soft white hair and kind, haggard faces.
Where have all the restless Springs gone?
When we walked barefoot along muddy streams,
with jam jars of frog spawn.
When we jumped rivers like Olympians
and were masters of the little Kingdoms of our minds.
Where have all the busy, sultry Summers gone?
When we hurriedly lapped fast melting ice cream,
Watched hay and silage a making and turf reared,
Fought wars of imperial importance,
in back lanes and o’er freshly cut meadows.
Where have all the children gone?
The ones we learned to ride bikes and skip ropes with,
kicking ball until the last flickerings forsook the day.
Where have all the fish gone?
Perhaps some have eaten their fill and lie resting in deep pools.
William Butler Years was born on this day in 1865. Although born into the Anglo-Irish ascendancy Yeats could arguably be said to have done more to reshape the modern Irish identity than any if his contemporaries. Yeats drew his inspiration from ancient Irish myths and folklore and as an ardent cultural nationalist, valued the classical past as an inspiration for a modern pluralist society. He has so many great poems and this is one of my favourites that simply has to be read aloud.
“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Captain Peter Keenan was born in 1834 to Irish parents at the town of York in the rural North West of the State of New York. By 1861 he was living in Philadelphia. He helped recruit the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry. He was appointed Captain, Company C, 19 August 1861. He was promoted to Major of the regiment 15 October 1862. According to the Pleasonton version, at the Battle of Chancellorsville,
“he was ordered by General Alfred Pleasonton, after the rout of the 11th corps on the right wing, to charge the advancing enemy in a wood, and hold them in check until the artillery could be got into position. He charged with his regiment, which numbered fewer than 500 men, so impetuously that the Confederates were startled, and hesitated to advance from the wood, until the guns were ready to rake the column as it emerged. Keenan met an inevitable death at the head of his men, many of whom fell with him, but the sacrifice enabled General Pleasonton to hold Stonewall Jackson’s corps in cheek and save the army from rout.”
His life is the subject of ‘To the Knife: The Biography of Major Peter Keenan, 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry’ by Charles C. Kelsey. His famous charge which is on a par with the Charge of the Light Brigade a decade earlier is also immortalised in the following poem by George Parsons Lathrop (1851-1898).
KEENANS CHARGE
The Battle of Chancellorsville, 1863
The sun had set;
The leaves with dew were wet:
Down fell a bloody dusk
On the woods, that second day of May,
Where Stonewall’s corps, like a beast of prey,
Tore through with angry tusk.
“They’ve trapped us, boys!”
Rose from our flank a voice.
With a rush of steel and smoke
On came the rebels straight,
Eager as love and wild as hate;
And our line reeled and broke;
Broke and fled.
Not one stayed—but the dead!
With curses, shrieks, and cries,
Horses and wagons and men
Tumbled back through the shuddering glen,
And above us the fading skies.
There’s one hope, still—
Those batteries parked on the hill!
“Battery, wheel!” (‘mid the roar)
“Pass pieces; fix prolonge to fire
Retiring. Trot!” In the panic dire
A bugle rings “Trot!”—and no more.
The horses plunged,
The cannon lurched and lunged,
To join the hopeless rout.
But suddenly rode a form
Calmly in front of the human storm,
With a stern, commanding shout:
“Align those guns!”
(We knew it was Pleasanton’s.)
The cannoneers bent to obey,
And worked with a will at his word;
And the black guns moved as if they had heard.
But, ah, the dread delay!
“To wait is crime;
O God, for ten minutes’ time!”
The General looked around.
There Keenan sat, like a stone,
With his three hundred horse alone,
Less shaken than the ground.
“Major, your men?”
“Are soldiers, General.” “Then
Charge, Major! Do your best;
Hold the enemy back at all cost,
Till my guns are placed;—else the army is lost.
You die to save the rest!”
By the shrouded gleam of the western skies,
Brave Keenan looked into Pleasanton’s eyes
For an instant—clear, and cool, and still;
Then, with a smile, he said: “I will.”
“Cavalry, charge!” Not a man of them shrank.
Their sharp, full cheer, from rank to rank,
Rose joyously, with a willing breath—
Rose like a greeting hail to death.
Then forward they sprang, and spurred, and clashed;
Shouted the officers, crimson-sashed;
Rode well the men, each brave as his fellow,
In their faded coats of blue and yellow;
And above in the air, with an instinct true,
Like a bird of war their pennon flew.
With clank of scabbards and thunder of steeds
And blades that shine like sunlit reeds,
And strong brown faces bravely pale
For fear their proud attempt should fail,
Three hundred Pennsylvanians close
On twice ten thousand gallant foes.
Line after line the troopers came
To the edge of the wood that was ring’d with flame;
Rode in, and sabred, and shot— and fell;
Nor came back one his wounds to tell.
And full in the midst rose Keenan tall
In the gloom, like a martyr awaiting his fall,
While the circle-stroke of his sabre, swung
Round his head, like a halo there, luminous hung.
Line after line—aye, whole platoons,
Struck dead in their saddles, of brave dragoons
By the maddened horses were onward borne
And into the wavering vortex flung, trampled and torn;
As Keenan fought with his men, side by side.
So they rode, till there were no more to ride.
But over them, lying there shattered and mute,
What deep echo rolls?—’Tis a death-salute
From the cannon in place; for, heroes, you braved
Your fate not in vain; the army was saved!
Over them now—year following year—
Over the graves the pine-cones fall,
And the whippoorwill chants his spectre-call;
But they stir not again: they raise no cheer.
They have ceased. But their glory shall never cease,
Nor their light be quenched in the light of peace.
The rush of their charge is resounding still
That saved the army at Chancellorsville.
by: George Parsons Lathrop (1851-1898)
Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown
I came across this poem by John J. Ronan and thought I’d share it. Not only has the poem a great title but it really captures the movement of humanity in a metropolis, The poet manages to convey the experience of using mass public transport and introduces to us the multitude of characters that take their place on the city stage every day.
42nd St.
34th Street
28th St.
23rd St.
18th St.
14th Street
Christopher St.
Houston St.
Canal St.
Franklin St.
Chambers St.
You can check out more at http://www.blackcatpoems.com/r/taking_the_train_of_singularity_south_from_midtown.html#k3HvcqtotctM0XDO.99
I note that looking back on the First World War is a retrospective act everywhere save for Ireland. Here it is the most introspective of activities. However over the next few years it will become the norm as we finally place the significance of the war in its proper context.
Many people are still coming to terms with the fact that in 1916 their forefathers were not manning a sandbagged window in the GPO. As we revise and edit the standard version of history fed to us over the last 90 years, we will realise that for every person that took up arms in Dublin on that Easter Monday morning, there were 200 fighting in Khaki. Yes Irishmen and women were in the thick of it from Ypres to Mesopotamia, Gallipoli to Walvis Bay. It is a fact that many residents of this Island are uncomfortable with and this discomfort will no doubt invite any number of theories and explanations. Yet as we come to understand it we must also confront the fact that there was no conscription in Ireland during the Great War. So if thousands of ‘Nationalists’ went to the front and it wasn’t for ‘King and Country’, what was their motivation?
For me the first clue is in those beautiful lines written by Thomas Kettle in the field before Guillemont on the 6th of September, 1916
“And oh! they’ll give you rhyme
And reason: some will call the thing sublime,
And some decry it in a knowing tone.
So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,
And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,
Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead,
Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor,—
But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed,
And for the secret Scripture of the poor.”
We are finally maturing as a nation, or so we like been told, Ad nauseum. This morning the media is dominated by stories of Israels relentless destruction of Gaza and sectarian atrocities in Iraq. How ironic that almost a century ago the Connaught Rangers with many Leitrim men in the ranks fought and defeated the Turks at Gaza, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Basra & Fallujah, and how sad and depressing it is that a century later these same familiar place names still dominate the news.
The only positivesof the Great War was the extensive body of war poetry it left us, much of it espousing the futility of war, recording the terrible carnage and its effects on the human soul. There are many oft quoted verses by Sassoon and Wilfred Owen et all but I think these few lines by Conrad Aiken capture the madness of going ‘o’er the top’
“It will be like that other charge–
We will climb out and run
Yelling like madmen in the sun
Running stiffly on the scorched dust
Hardly hearing our voices
Running after the man who points with his hand
At a certain shattered tree,
Running through sheets of fire like idiots,
Sometimes falling, sometimes rising”
Palestine 1917
We await the Poets of Gaza, Donetsk, Aleppo and Bangui.
WILLIAM HENRY DRUMMOND
“LEITRIMS FORGOTTEN POET”
William Henry Drummond was born on Holy Thursday April 13, 1854 in the townland of Curraun(1854-04-13), in the northern end of the parish of Mohill. At that time William’s family used the surname Drumm but changed it to Drummond in 1875.
The world that William grew into was one where the British Empire was entering its zenith with Victorian ingenuity, innovation and industrial might allowing the Empire to spread its power and influence around the globe. Just a fortnight prior to William’s birth, Britain and France had declared war on Russia and the Crimean War officially began. A few miles away at Lough Rynn, William Sydney Clements had acquired the title the Third Earl of Leitrim and begun his infamous lordship.
In the Leitrim that the young Drummond was born into An Gorta Mor, the Great Famine had not long ended and this seismic event had changed the demographics and landscape of the County forever. In Dublin, Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wilde was born, a talent whose popularity and fame endures to the present. How ironic it is then that in the latter decades of the Nineteenth Century, William Henry Drummond’s name was as well known and in some countries his writings more popular than that of his compatriot. Today though is very different and Drummond’s work has fallen into disuse and obscurity. We should not forget however this Leitrim man, born in relatively humble beginnings in Mohill who would go on to become the First National poet of Canada.
William was the oldest of the four sons born to George Drumm and Elizabeth Morris Soden. George was an officer of the Irish Constabulary (not yet Royal until 1867). Elizabeth’s family were native to Mohill and lived on a comfortable holding at Creenagh. In 1856 The Drumm Family moved to North Leitrim and lived at Tawley, Tullaghan. The Archives of the University of Toronto record that the young Drummond was tutored by a Paddy McNulty whilst at Tawley. J. B Lyons records that
“While in Tawley, William attended an Irish National school where he fell under the spell of a gifted and charismatic teacher by the name of Patrick McNulty. At this time, William began to “scribble” his first verses and was exposed to the tradition of Celtic legends expressed in the popular poetry of the day.
The family returned briefly to Mohill in 1863-64 before emigrating permanently to Canada in 1865.
According to Williams wife May, George Drumm was dismissed from the Police Force because of a quarrel he had with Lord Leitrim. It appears his health also broke at this time. Despairing with conditions in Ireland and worried about the family’s future, George and his Elizabeth decided to emigrate with their children to Lower Canada. The family arrived in Montreal in the summer of 1864. Sadly the new beginning very quickly turned into a false dawn because in February 1866 George died suddenly and his family, left without even his small pension, faced financial ruin and hardship.
Elizabeth Drumm opened a shop in the front room of their house in Montreal. The boys all sold newspapers, and, when he was 14, William Henry left school and became an apprentice telegraph operator. He worked for several years for a logging firm spending his summers at L’abord-à-Plouffe, an isolated lumber town in Quebec. It was here that Drummond had his first encounters with the speech and customs of the French-Canadian backwoodsmen. Many of these men were miners, prospectors or fur trappers and they were known colloquially as Habitants and Voyageurs. These characters, many of whom shunned the bright lights and comforts of city life, would be the primary inspiration for the future writings of William Henry Drummond.
Williams’s earnings with his telegraph work helped to keep the family and provide his three younger brothers with an education.
In 1875, having been convinced by a cousin that “the name Drumm was but a Corruption of the name Drummond our ancient family name,” William officially changed his surname and that of his mother and brothers to Drummond.
After six summers working in the remote logging camps Drummond set his sights on pursuing a career in Medicine. In 1876–77 Drummond attended the High School of Montreal. He began studying medicine at McGill University the following year but subsequently failed his second year. Sir William Osler, of McGill University fame remembered Drummond as “a brilliant and loveable personality, but at the same time one of the least studious in my class.”
In 1879 he transferred to the medical faculty of Bishop’s College, Montreal and he completed his studies there. One source records, “Bill Drummond was better known as an athlete than as a student, excelling in snowshoeing, hammer throwing, putting the shot, and fast walking and for a time was Canadian Amateur Champion of the last named exercise and one of the most popular men in College”.
Drummond spent his internship and early years of practice in numerous locations throughout rural Quebec. In 1888 he returned to Montreal, and set up a General medical practice in the family home. In 1893 he was appointed as Professor of Hygiene at his alma Mater, Bishops College. In 1894 he was made assistant Registrar and Professor of Medical Jurisprudence. In 1895 he became associate editor of the Canada Medical Record.
Drummond was also well known as a breeder and exhibitor of Irish terriers. He was a member of the Montreal Kennel Club and the Irish Terrier Club of Canada.
Drummond’s brothers George Edward, John James, and Thomas Joseph, all became successful businessmen and the Drummonds were one of the most influential families in both Montreal and Canadian society. William also invested successfully in various ventures with his brothers ranging from Ironworks to silver mines.
When Drummond was 40, he married May Isobel Harvey, a native of Jamaica in the West Indies. The couple was reputed to have met in September 1892 at the Laurentian Club, a well known social club in Montreal. Drummond later travelled to Jamaica where the couple were engaged before marrying at Savanna la Mar, Jamaica. After their marriage they made frequent trips between Montreal and Jamaica. Drummond became interested in the French Creole and Patois language patterns and dialects found in the West Indies.
In his work Drummond embraced the folklore and way of life of rural Québec. His style of narrative verse was written in the English idiom but totally inspired by the French Canadian farmers and woodsmen.
Drummond’s best-known poem, “The wreck of the ‘Julie Plante’” was written in the late 1870s. The poems origins were later recounted by Mrs. Drummond; Drummond had been warned by an old French Canadian man to come in off the Lac des Deux Montagnes in a windstorm. The old man had said “An’ de win’ she blow, blow, blow lak a hurrican!” According to Mrs. Drummond these words spoken in dialect “rang so persistently in his ears that, at the dead of night, unable to stand any longer the haunting refrain, he (Drummond) sprang from his bed and penned” the lines that were “to be the herald of his future fame.” With its clever mixture of English and French words, strong rhythms, and witty lines, the poem was an immediate success when eventually published.
“De win’ can blow lak hurricane
An’ s’pose she blow some more,
You can’t get drown on Lac St. Pierre
So long you stay on shore”
Drummond had composed occasional poems for circulation amongst friends and for informal recitation throughout the 1880’s. In the early 1890s his verses began appearing in Periodicals and he made his début reciting his own poetry.
Drummond does not appear to have deliberately courted literary fame and preferred to compose his verse for private readings and intimate gatherings. By 1895-96 however he was planning a published volume with much encouragement from his family and friends. He was also greatly encouraged by the well known French-Canadian poet Louis Fréchette, whom he had met in 1896. The eagerly awaited publication “The Habitant and other French–Canadian poems” was a runaway success and transformed Drummond into one of the most popular authors in the English-speaking world. The Volume contained 23 poems and several illustrations by Frederick Simpson Coburn.
In the Introduction Drummond said that having lived beside French Canadians most of his life, he had “grown to admire and love them.” Although the English-speaking public might be familiar with the urban French Canadian, it “had little opportunity of becoming acquainted with the habitant”.
“The Habitant” as well as being a popular work was also a critical success. The volume was favorably reviewed in the literary press of Great Britain and North America. The poems themselves became subjects of detailed critical comment. It is unclear how much money Drummond made from sales, but the attention that he received both enabled and forced him to change his life to cope with these new demands Three more volumes were published “Phil–o–rum’s canoe and Madeleine Vercheres; two poems” (1898); “Johnnie Courteau and other poems” (1901); and “The Voyageur and other poems” (1905). All three publications were successful and were reprinted many times. Drummond was besieged with requests for speaking engagements, recitations, tours, and more books.
Later Life
As his fame grew Drummond undertook various lecture tours in the United States and Canada. In 1902 he spent part of the summer in Britain and Ireland. It is not recorded whether he had the opportunity to revisit his birth place. All of these activities brought even more fame as he brought his work to a wider audience. He also received other honors. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom in 1898 and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1899. In 1902 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Toronto and in 1905 another would be conferred on him by Bishop’s College.
In August 1904 Moira, Drummond’s only daughter, was born. The following September his third son William Harvey, died aged three. One of his most famous poems, “The last portage,” which appeared in “The Voyageur and other poems”, came to him as a result of a dream that he had on Christmas Eve 1904 while he was still mourning the boy’s death. In 1905 he closed his medical practice in Montreal. His mother, Elizabeth died in April 1906 and the weight of personal grief seems to have greatly affected Drummond at this time.
Increasingly Drummond was spending more and more time in the mining town of Cobalt where he and his brothers had acquired an interest in silver mines. He spent most of the winter of 1906–7 in Cobalt fighting a smallpox epidemic in the settlement. Drummond’s own health suffered in this period. He returned to Montreal in early March, and was the guest speaker at the annual dinner of the St Patrick’s Society in Montreal on 18 March 1907. He returned to Cobalt shortly after and died suddenly on the 6th April 1907 from a cerebral hemorrhage. William Henry Drummond, Canada’s first national poet was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal. He was widely mourned.
A year after his passing “The Great Fight: poems and sketches”, a collection of 20 poems and two sketches, with a short biography by his widow and illustrations by Coburn, was published. “The poetical works of William Henry Drummond” was also published posthumously in 1912.
Summary
For decades Drummond and his poetry remained important elements within the canon of English Canadian literature. Gradually though his poetry became to be seen as old-fashioned and unrepresentative. Commentators such as Lee Briscoe Thompson lamented that Drummond was a “victim of an attack of modernists on late-19th-century poetry”. Other critics believe that Drummond’s poetry was sidelined because it lacked political correctness and might offend the Quebecois people. Thompson believes the “shelving” of this “people’s poet” was unfortunate, for Drummond represents a very sincere attempt to articulate a sympathetic portrayal of rural French Canadians. Thompson also believed Drummond’s work was a valid portrayal of a uniquely Canadian language and dialect which was borne of the fusion of two distinct ancient cultures in the New World. In his most recent biography, J.B Lyons seeks to redress the fate of Drummond by placing him in the context of dialect poets, the best known being Robert Bums of course. It remains to be seen what the future holds for the poetry of William Henry Drummond. What cannot be denied is that for a few short decades this son of Leitrim was one of the most popular, and celebrated authors of the day and was considered Canada’s National Poet.
J. F. Macdonald, William Henry Drummond (Toronto, [1923?]), is the sole book-length study of the poet.
L. J. Burpee, “W. H. Drummond: interpreter of the habitant,” Educational Record of the Prov. of Quebec (Quebec), 61 (1945): 208–12, reissued as “W. H. Drummond [1854–1907],” Leading Canadian poets, ed. W. P. Percival (Toronto, 1948), 71–78. R. H. Craig, “Reminiscences of W. H. Drummond,” Dalhousie Rev., 5 (1925–26): 161–69. M. J. Edwards, “William Henry Drummond,” The evolution of Canadian literature in English. . ., ed. M. J. Edwards et al. (4v., Toronto and Montreal, 1973), 2: 94–97. R. G. Moyles, English–Canadian literature to 1900: a guide to information sources (Detroit, 1976), 129–31. Gerald Noonan, “Drummond – the legend & the legacy,” Canadian Lit. (Vancouver), no.90 (autumn 1981): 179–87. Thomas O’Hagan, “A Canadian dialect poet,” Catholic World (New York), 77 (April–September 1903): 522–31; Intimacies in Canadian life and letters (Ottawa, 1927). R. E. Rashley, “W. H. Drummond and the dilemma of style,” Dalhousie Rev., 28 (1948 49): 387–96. L. B. Thompson, “The shelving of a people’s poet: the case of William Henry Drummond,” Journal of American Culture (Bowling Green, Ohio), 2 (1980): 682–89.
“William Henry Drummond” (1854-1907) by John Garvin, (1872-1934)
Garvin, John William, ed. Canadian Poets. Toronto, Canada: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, Publishers, 1916. pp. 177-188.
'A River runs through it' 