A Drover

Poem by Padraic Colum 1902.
(1881-1972)

First printed in: The United Irishman, 1902 or 1903.

Printed in his publication:
Wild Earth: A Book of Verse, 1907, pp.3-4.

A Drover [A Wild Earth]


Also printed in:
New songs. A lyric selection made by A.E. From poems by Padraic Colum, [and others], by George William Russell (Æ), 1904, pp. 42-43.

A Drover [New Songs]


Born Patrick Collumb in Longford, Ireland in 1881, poet, editor, children’s writer, folklorist, and playwright Padraic Colum was the oldest of eight siblings.

After finishing school at 17, he took a job as a clerk for the Irish Railway Clearing House until 1903, and during this period began to write seriously; he had joined the Irish Republican Army and the Gaelic League and taken the name Padraic Colum by the time he was 20. Living in Dublin during the Celtic Revival and a member of both the National Theatre Society and the Abbey Theatre, he met and became close friends with writers James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and George Russell (Æ). With James Stephens and Thomas MacDonagh, Colum founded the Irish Review.

Colum wrote his first play, The Saxon Shillin’, in 1902 and it won a prize from The Society of Gaels, a political party that was interested in a free state of Ireland. Producing plays and getting to know the likes of Arthur Griffith, whom later founded the political party Sinn Féin, Colum helped in the founding of the Abbey Theatre where a number of his early works were performed.

His relationship with Griffith also led to the publication of some of his first poetry. Griffith edited the United Irishman and Coolum's poems appeared in the weekly paper in 1902, as well as the daily paper the Irish Independant. Many of the poems that were initially found in the paper were later gathered for the collection Wild Earth that was published in 1907 and was dedicated to Æ (George Russell). 

Colum said, “I wrote my first poems for Arthur Griffith’s and A.E.’s (George Russell) journals and was immediately welcomed by people who took trouble to show a young writer how to form himself.”

Coolum features in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), itself inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. One character says, “I liked Colum’s Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius”.