Horseleap poet 'struck by muse' following Jim Gavin debacle

That doyen of ditties, Patrick Carton from Horseleap, has produced a video of The Ballad of Jim Gavin which has earned thousands of views on YouTube.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner, Patrick said: "I am no political pundit but the whole Jim Gavin presidential thing was such a GUBU moment that I was struck by the muse. Hard!”

On Monday October 6, the day after Jim Gavin withdrew from the presidential election, Pat woke up with the genesis of a song in his head, and he had it finished by that Wednesday.

“I thought it was too good to keep to myself, so I decided to put it up on YouTube. I got my daughter to film me with a mobile phone doing the song as a sort of practice run.

"That turned out okay. I then enlisted Conor English to make a proper video of it. That turned out well and that is the one I put up on YouTube”, Patrick said.

“On November 1, 1512, Michelangelo’s paintings on the Sistine Chapel were unveiled. On November 1, 2025, I uploaded my video and it has been getting over 1,000 views a day since. Two amazing artists working in different genres with only a few hundred years between them? You decide,” Patrick quipped.

Patrick Carton is a tour guide in Clonmacnoise. He is also a performative and published poet and storyteller. He has been described as a seanchaí with a modern slant.

He has appeared at Electric Picnic, the Galway Arts Festival, the Cúirt Festival, Galway, the All-Ireland Amateur Drama Festival in Athlone, Scór, and the Irish American Festival in Washington DC, as well as many other venues. He has also appeared on RTÉ One television and Midlands 103 radio.

Patrick expects to have more time to devote to his artistic pursuits in 2026. “You should be hearing more from me in the new year,” he promised.