ABSTRACT
The only traces of Henry Nelson's life are found in the titles to his poems. Of the thirteen broadside poems attributed to Nelson and published in Dublin between 1725 and 1729, eight include his name and his primary occupation: 'bricklayer'. Nelson appears to have been the chief panegyrist for the tailors' procession, an annual event in which the guild members gathered at their Hall in Back-lane around St James's Day and marched to hear a sermon at St John's Church in Fishamble-street before retiring to the Kings Inns for a celebratory feast. The public display occasioned by the tailors' procession also incited the satirists of the day, who pilloried the tailors but, except for adopting Nelson's broadsheet form, seem to have left him alone. Nelson did vary the content of his procession poems.
