In the late 18th and early 19th century a group of poets emerged in Ireland. Mostly working class and from the linen industry, they wrote about their lives through poetry, often influenced by the rhythm of the loom as they produced their linen.

Influenced by their contemporaries such as Robert Burns, many of the poems were written in the common tongue of the time, Ulster-Scots and they would come to be known as the Rhyming Weavers or Weaver Poets.