Ulster Scots — the Rhyming Weavers

Presbyterian handloom weavers in Antrim and Down writing vernacular Scots verse, roughly 1780 to 1850, in the wake of Burns and bound up with United Irish radicalism. Samuel Thomson walked to Scotland to meet Burns; James Orr fought at Antrim in 1798 and wrote Donegore Hill, a bitterly honest account of men slipping away from the battle.

A small, coherent and often-overlooked body of work, and part of the Irish poetic record.

4 poets, earliest first.