John Castillo

John Castillo (1792–1845) was born near Dublin of Roman Catholic parents and brought up at Lealholm Bridge in the Cleveland country, where he learnt the trade of a journeyman stone-mason. In 1818 he joined the Wesleyan Methodist Society and became a popular local preacher in the North Riding.

His best-known poem, Awd Isaac, was first printed at Northallerton in 1831 and gave its name to a volume published at Whitby in 1843. He died at Pickering. The poem here is taken from Moorman's Yorkshire Dialect Poems (1916).