Poets

Monsignor Patrick Joseph Hartigan was an Australian Roman Catholic priest, educator, author and poet.

Biography

He was born at Yass, New South Wales and ordained after study at St Patrick's Seminary, Manly. Writing under the pseudonym "John O'Brien" Hartigan's verse celebrated the lives and mores of the outback pastoral folk he ministered as a peripatetic curate to the southern New South Wales and Riverina towns of Thurgoona, Berrigan and Narrandera, in the first two decades of the 20th century. His poetry was very popular in Australia and was well received in Ireland and the United States.

The refrain We'll all be rooned from his poem Said Hanrahan has entered colloquial Australian English as a jocular response to any prediction of dire consequences arising, particularly, from events outside the interlocutor's control.

Hartigan died in Lewisham, an inner suburb of Sydney in 1952.

Legacy

A John O'Brien Festival is held annually in Narrandera.