Kathleen, a ballad by Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote another poem about a young woman named Kathleen. For some reason, Whittier referred to Kathleen as a ballad rather than a poem.

Here's his comment on Kathleen:

This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.

Here's Kathleen's first stanza:

O NORAH, lay your basket down,
And rest your weary hand,
And come and hear me sing a song
Of our old Ireland.

As he did with another poem, Maud Muller, Whittier begins Kathleen with a woman's name; however, unlike Maud Muller, the woman whose name begins Kathleen is not the woman whom the poem's about. Instead, she is the woman to whom the ballad is being sung.

Here's a listing of all Whittier's poems on Project Gutenberg.