Author: Ramsey, Richard
Biography:
RAMSEY, Richard (c. 1785-1833: Belfast Commercial Chronicle)
His surname is sometimes spelled Ramsay. O’Donoghue (1912) erroneously identified him as author of Tale of the Butter-horn, published under the pseudonym Matthew Meek (q.v.); Meek was likely the real name of the lay Covenanter who wrote that poem. Ramsey was from Letterkenny, County Donegal. The only information found about him is from his death notice. It states that his Juvenile Poems (not located) was published when he was nineteen and that he was a frequent contributor of verse to local newspapers. Another publication attributed to him, Voyage to Bengal, has also not been located. Robert Young (q.v.) was a friend: Ramsey subscribed to Young’s Orange Minstrel (1832) and Young prints an elegy for him in his Poetical Remembrancer (1854). Ramsey died at Letterkenny on 11 July 1833; the death notice gives his age as forty-eight. (Belfast Commercial Chronicle 29 July 1833; O’Donoghue)