Irish History Online (IHO) is a free to use bibliographic records database that lists works on Irish history published since the 1930s, with selected material published in earlier decades, up to the present day. It currently contains over 113,000 bibliographic records. It is hosted and managed by the Royal Academy Library and is compiled, edited and regularly updated by a team of voluntary editors and compilers.

Fig.1 Newly acquired publications to the Library.

The IHO includes descriptive bibliographic information on books and pamphlets, articles from journals published in Ireland or internationally, and chapters from books of essays, including Festschriften and conference proceedings. The information needed to create an IHO record is gathered from several sources by our compilers. While working onsite in the Royal Irish Academy Library, compilers have access to the Academy’s extensive library holdings. They also have access to all newly acquired publications and up to date journals subscribed to by the Library. Another greatly appreciated source for record details comes from the Legal Deposit departments at Trinity College Library and the National Library of Ireland. Both institutions supply the IHO with monthly lists of new acquisitions relating to Ireland. The team works through these lengthy lists adding the relevant bibliographical information to the IHO database.

Fig.2 Some of the many periodicals and journals the Library subscribes to.

The catalogue is not an exhaustive list of every known publication relating to Irish history. However, we are continuously striving to include as much accurate and relevant bibliographical information as we can, and we do this in the following ways. To help keep this process consistent and concise, we have created relevant online forms to enable authors, academics, historians and researchers to submit their own bibliographic information. There are four forms: Article in Book ; Article in Journal ; Publication Title: and Foreword, Preface Etc.

Fig.3 Start of the online form to submit an Article in Book to the IHO database.

Or if the list of various publications is quite substantial, the bibliographical information can be emailed to iho@ria.ie and the team will input this information into the database. As well as our volunteers, the IHO is delighted to take part in the SPUR – Summer Programme for Undergraduate Research funded by Maynooth University. This programme allows an undergraduate student to gain valuable, paid research experience in the Royal Irish Academy for 6 weeks over the summer break. The student will be based in the Library on Dawson Street for the duration of the programme.

Fig.4 Current number of IHO records stands at over 113,000!

At present, the IHO database is linked to the RIA Library management system. The Library will be upgrading their system this year to an open source cloud-based system, called Koha. Currently volunteers have to travel into the Library to access the IHO database, thereby restricting who can volunteer to those individuals with free time during the working week. With Koha, this will enable new and existing volunteers to input bibliographical information into the IHO database remotely.

Fig.5 IHO volunteers hard at work onsite inputting bibliographical information.

The new system will also allow the Library to ingest large amounts of bibliographic data that publishers provide to the IHO in a quicker and more efficient way. This will greatly increase the records within the IHO, making it a more robust online resource. However, before Koha is up and running, there needs to be work carried out on the existing IHO database records to make sure they are compliant to recognised international bibliographic standards and therefore easier for migration into the new system. It will be a lot of work to undertake in the coming months — but one that will hugely benefit users of the Irish History Online database in the long term.

So, watch this space!

By Meadhbh Murphy, Deputy Librarian

The Royal Irish Academy acquired the Robert Lloyd Praeger (1865-1953) collection in 1952. Upon intake, the collection had been split into various trunks, which contained hundreds of items relating to the natural sciences—including papers, pamphlets, and photographs. The bulk of the photographs found in the collection are glass plate negatives and prints, many of which were produced by Irish photographer Robert John Welch (1859-1936). Praeger and Welch were avid collectors, and both were active in Ireland’s naturalist circles. Praeger himself had joined the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club (BNFC) at the young age of eleven, and later joined the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club (DNFC) in 1893.

Fig.1 Portrait of Robert Lloyd Praeger, MRIA
photographed by A.R. Hogg (RIA Photo Series 20/Box 2)

Fig.2 Portrait of Robert John Welch, around 1890
(Irish Naturalists’ Journal, obituary notice for R.J. Welch, vi:6 Nov. 1936)

The field clubs attracted both amateurs and professionals who had an interest in the fields of botany, zoology, geology, and archaeology. As many of Praeger and Welch’s photographs make clear, members frequently attended expeditions throughout Ireland to study, observe and collect ‘specimens’. The specimens—as well as the photographs of them—would later be shared with others during meetings.

Fig.3 “The way some Irish Naturalists studied nature,” Belfast and Dublin Naturalist Field Clubs taking tea at Slieve Glah, Cavan, July 1896.
R. L. Praeger is standing to the left of the table Photographed by Robert John Welch (RIA Photo Series 18/Box 7)

Alongside Welch, other well-known photographers from Ireland—including Alexander Robert Hogg (1870-1939) and William Alfred Green (1870-1958)—played an important role within these naturalist circles. The photographs made during expeditions reflect various areas of the natural sciences: expansive landscapes, colonies of seabirds, or fragments of corals and seaweed. Photographs of materials found across Ireland serve as proof of the discovery of new species of wildflowers, of molluscs and other curiosities. The images helped others understand the geology, flora and fauna of the island.

Fig.4 “On the Limestone Terraces of the Burren, Co. Clare” photographed by Robert John Welch.

History of the Lantern Slide

During field club meetings, a lanternist would project photographic images produced from expeditions onto a screen so members could observe the images in detail and discuss them. The photographs that were being projected were called lantern slides; projected through a magic (or optical) lantern.

Fig.5 Lantern slide projector at the Royal Irish Academy Library

The earliest known lantern shows can be traced back to approximately 1720, but it was between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when projection had become exceedingly popular in the field of entertainment. Lantern slides would later become integral for education and research. When used for entertainment, a lantern show would usually consist of an audience seated in complete darkness; a narrator guiding people through an engrossing story while a projectionist flipped the slides. When the lantern slide industry began to shift away from entertainment and towards education, slides were produced in large quantities by manufacturers across Europe and North America and were distributed globally.

Lantern slides were commonly used in the fields of natural history and sciences because they allowed for the sharing of images of specimens and scientific findings with large audiences. For example, a lecturer could share an image of a specimen which had been photographed microscopically: such as details of a tendril, the comb fragments of a beehive, or the intricate patterns found on the wings of a butterfly. They were also popularly used within the field of medicine.

Fig.6 & 7 Two handmade lantern slides. The image of the nest has been hand-painted. The image on the right has a skewed appearance,
which suggests this is a handmade (rather than a commercially produced) slide.

What is a Lantern Slide?

There are two standard sizes of lantern slides: 8.3 x 8.3 cm (European format) and 10.16 x 8.25 cm (American format). The image on the slide might have been produced by one of several historic photographic processes (such as collodion, albumen, or silver gelatin). The photographic image is covered with an identical sized piece of glass, which is held in place by four strips of gummed tape around the support. Another identifying feature of lantern slides is a decorative or rounded border framing the image, featuring a descriptive text which explains the content of the image.

In collections today, one is likely to find slides produced by any number of different commercial manufacturers. However, it is worth noting that many photographers chose to produce their own slides. These can usually be distinguished from commercially made slides by observing handwritten captions on their exterior; or hand-coloured sections of the images themselves.

Fig.8 & 9 A lantern slide with an image produced by R. J. Welch. The image is of Spiranthes romanzoffiana, or ‘Irish Lady’s Tresses’. The handwritten inscription suggests that the slide was handmade. Note the same image on the right,
which was produced with a flat-bed scanner and was processed as a photographic positive. The image shows the detail of the original photograph and gives us a sense of what it may have been like to observe this image while it was being projected.

The Praeger Collection & Issues in Collections

The Praeger collection held by the RIA Library contains glass plate negatives, photographic prints and several hundred lantern slides which are currently being transferred from original small wooden carrying cases to archival-grade boxes and enclosures. The slides have not yet been catalogued or digitised which means that there are many items from Praeger’s invaluable collection which have not yet been seen or been made accessible to staff and researchers.

Fig.10 An example of a set of Praeger’s lantern slides which were originally stored in a small wooden carrying case.

Since the original photographic image is covered in a piece of support glass which is tightly fastened with tape, it is common for people to believe that lantern slides are stable. They were, after all, made for the sake of being projected; for being handled by lecturers while they quickly flip through slides during presentations. Glass is also understood to be longer-lasting than paper, so other photographs found on glass supports are—like lantern slides—often not prioritised for preservation. Despite the stability (or inherent durability) of lantern slides, both their glass supports and the images on them are at risk of degradation.

Unfortunately, these important photographic resources remain inaccessible within many collecting institutions—which is currently the case with items from the Praeger Collection. Lantern slide collections are important to tend to as they are integral to understanding the history of photography and nature of photographic reproductions, and of the growing use of photography for commercial ventures. They are important historical and educational resources which tell us the stories of how knowledge was transmitted and shared. In the case of Praeger’s collection, the images offer us the opportunity to learn about the history of the natural sciences, and more generally – the history of Ireland.

Moving Forward

Over the next year the lantern slides will be rehoused, digitised, and catalogued in hopes of making images from Praeger’s collection more accessible. The process requires research, resources for housing materials, and quite a bit of patience, but the rewards will be gratifying. Please keep an eye on our website and social media channels (@Library_RIA on Twitter or @rialibrary on Instagram) for updates on this project.

By Rebecca Cairns, Library Assistant, Royal Irish Academy

The Royal Irish Academy Library has been a key supporter of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) since the research began to take shape, as Beyond 2022, in 2019. From the early support and guidance of former RIA Librarian Siobhán Fitzpatrick to the enthusiastic collaboration with the current Librarian, Barbara McCormack, it has been an exciting and productive partnership. The VRTI aims to make a virtual home for replacements and surrogates for the public records of Ireland destroyed in the explosion and fire at the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) in 1922.

Fig.1 People standing watching the Four Courts on fire, June 1922 (RIA C/24/5/A McWeeney Collection)

Given the vast range of such replacements at the RIA, the work program agreed between Beyond 2022 and the RIA settled on digitising major collections of the work of the former Irish Record Commission held at the RIA. The Irish Record Commission was established in 1810, under the direction of William Shaw Mason (MRIA), and charged with evaluating the state and extent of the public records of Ireland. The commissioners’ intention was to publish transcripts or calendars of the most historically significant parts of the collection as printed source material for scholars. Much of the commissioners’ work, including the recommendation to build a new public record office, was unrealised, but they created a detailed survey of the records and transcripts, and created calendars for much of the most important material.

For various reasons, only a very small proportion of what was a huge transcription project was ever published, but their manuscript copies survive, amounting to some 250,000 pages of handwritten text. Although the bulk of the Irish Record Commissioners’ output is preserved at the National Archives of Ireland, large parts of the original collections were dispersed to other repositories. Three key sets of Irish Records Commission manuscripts are at the RIA: their transcripts of early modern Kings letters, Charters and Grants to Irish towns and boroughs; the calendars of inquisitions post-mortem in the Ordnance Survey of Ireland collection and the Ferguson Collection of extracts from ancient records, remembrance rolls and charters.[1] So far, the town charters and inquisitions post-mortem have been digitised and are available to search and view in the VRTI.[2] This newly digitised resource was drawn from 38 manuscript volumes running to 4,700 pages. Every entry in the calendars has its own title and the handwritten text is fully searchable.

The true identity of the ‘Ordnance Survey Inquisitions’

The ‘Ordnance Survey Inquisitions’ (RIA OS EI), calendars of inquisitions post-mortem, are part of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland collection at the RIA. These inquisitions, some 25 bound volumes within a larger collection, arrived at the Academy in 1861, bearing the simple label ‘Presented to the Royal Irish Academy by authority of the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for War’. The ‘Ordnance Survey Inquisitions’ are drafts for calendars that were intended for eventual publication, prepared by the Irish Record Commission between years 1816-1819. Most of the drafts are unsigned, but those that are have all been signed by sub-commissioners of the Irish Record Commission, John Fowler, James Hardiman, Thomas Litton, Francis John Nash and Oliver Anselm Tibeado.

Fig.2 The bookplate of OS EI 32, a continuation of the
commonplace books of the calendar of inquisitions for county Galway.

An inquisition post-mortem was held following the death of a landowner. Under the feudal system, all land was ultimately owned by the monarch and all ‘landowners’ were in fact tenants of the crown, either directly or indirectly. A person who had a direct lease from the crown was known as a ‘tenant in chief’, and this lease was normally confirmed by letters patent to this effect. The tenant in chief could then sub-let as they pleased. Many leases were only for the life of the lessee, and when they died the lands were returned to, or ‘escheated’, back to the king. If there was an heir, a ‘livery of seisin’, or payment, had to take place before the heir could take up possession again. The inquisition post-mortem was a local inquiry, performed by an escheator appointed by the crown, to determine the facts of the landowner’s death, identify their heir(s) and to determine the extent and value of the escheated land. The inquisitions can therefore hold a treasure trove of information about lands, tenants and families.

Fig.3 OS EI 9, p. 6. Inquisition number 2 for County Clare,
taken at Ennis on 26 July 1578 by Edward White.

The completed inquisitions were normally returned to the Chancery, and a copy was also sent to the Exchequer. The collections of Irish inquisitions post-mortem, and inquisitions on attainder, commenced during the reign of Henry VIII and continued until the end of the reign of William III. They were kept in the Bermingham Tower, Dublin Castle.[3] An additional set of sixteenth-century inquisitions concerning the properties of dissolved monasteries were stored at the Chief Remembrancer’s Office.[4] Both collections were transferred to the PROI at the Four Courts in the late nineteenth century. In England the practice of taking an inquisition post-mortem was suspended under the Commonwealth of the 1650s, and abolished altogether by Charles II. However, the tradition continued in Ireland until the early eighteenth century where far more land was held directly by the crown as various land confiscation schemes were settled.

Two volumes of a calendar of the inquisitions, one each for the provinces of Ulster and Leinster, were published under the title Inquisitionum in Officio Rotulorum Cancellariae Hiberniae aservatarum Repertorium. A portion of an intended third volume for the province of Munster was prepared for print, but the project was incomplete when the Irish Record Commission was dissolved in 1830. Given the destructions of the original inquisitions in 1922, it is fortunate that the quality of the calendars is exceptionally high. The Irish Record Commissioners included far more detail than their counterparts in England, recording, for example, the ages of the heirs and the names of the jurors.[5] The original transcriptions and calendars made by the Irish Record Commissioners of the inquisitions for Ulster and Leinster are preserved in 31 bound volumes at the National Archives of Ireland.[6] The remainder, the unpublished calendars for Connacht and Munster, were believed to be lost but have, in fact, survived in the Ordnance Survey of Ireland collection at the RIA.

Fig.4 and 5 Irish Record Commission calendars recovered from the RIA Ordnance Survey Inquisitions for County Cork (Munster) and Galway (Connacht)

The Irish Record Commission manuscripts

The dissolution of the Irish Record Commissioners was a highly disorderly affair, with some work incomplete, some unpaid and recriminations all round. Sir William Betham, the Ulster King of Arms and one of the architects of this dissolution, found himself in possession of the keys to the Bermingham Tower record office in 1830 and the work of the IRC that remained in the building. Betham assumed onto himself the propriety of these transcripts and calendars, copying some and retaining others as his own genealogical business required. Sir Thomas Larcom took charge of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in 1828. In addition to performing the first large scale survey of Ireland since the Down Survey of the 1650s he intended to produce a set of companion volumes to the maps, a series of county memoirs that were to be a definitive history of each county.

Fig.6 Portrait of Sir Thomas Aiskew Larcom (1801–79)
wearing his military uniform, by Sir Leslie Ward dated 1888.

As was the case with the Irish Record Commission’s publications, the Ordnance Survey Memoir of Ireland would also run aground; ultimately only one volume was published, for Templemore Parish in county Derry.[7] In order to have the resources to hand to research the county memoirs, Larcom approached Betham with a view to purchasing some manuscripts relevant to this research.[8] At this point, the Irish Record Commissioners’ manuscripts comprised a series of commonplace books, used for transcription and gathered together as each portion of the work was completed. Larcom had the loose commonplace books properly bound and these were, from the outside, indistinguishable from the remainder of the material gathered by Larcom, George Petrie and John O’Donovan for the Memoirs series.[9]

Fig.7 OS EI 88, p. 61. A rare example of a full list of local jurors assembled to assist the escheator in his inquisition.
The lands in question are in the Barony of Tinnahinch, County Laois, near Mountmellick.

The inquisitions thus became part of the ‘Ordnance Survey Topographical Collection’. In 1858 an antiquarian, the Reverend John O’Hanlon, prepared a summary list of the contents of each of the bound volumes but without realising their provenance as this information had been removed. By then, the Ordnance Survey was solely devoted to mapping and no longer in the business of publishing books. Also, Thomas Larcom had taken control of the records in the Bermingham Tower. He listed the Record Commissioners’ manuscripts in his custody in a report to the House of Commons in 1866.[10] This report embodied ‘all of the information I possess on the manuscripts in my charge’, and the murky early-career transactions of now Major General Sir Thomas Larcom were best forgotten. In light of the importance of the Ordnance Survey collections to historians, Larcom had already arranged for the entire library to be transferred to the Royal Irish Academy to make it more accessible.[11]

However, not all traces of the Irish Manuscripts Commissioners had been excised from the bound volumes. Occasional unnumbered sheets are bound in with the inquisitions that are tallies of the number of pages transcribed and initialled. These were the evidence recorded by the transcribers of the amount of work done and were used to calculate their pay. These initials tally with the individuals identified as having worked on the original project in the early nineteenth century, and with their respective offices.[12] John Fowler of the Rolls Office is prominent throughout the collection and was responsible for collation and the more general progress of the work.[13] Thomas Litton performed a similar role at the Chief Remembrancer’s Office.[14] Other Record Commissioners whose names appear on these tally sheets include John Conroy, Edward Groves, Francis Nash, Theobald O’Flaherty and Edward Tresham. Occasionally, the tally sheets are also dated, leaving no doubt as to their provenance. One, for example, was signed and dated January 1818 by Oliver Anselm Tibeaudo, a sub-commissioner at the Rolls Office when the work was at its most intense.

Fig.8 and 9 Tally page from OS EI 18, p.168 collated and indexed in OS EI 17 by John Fowler for Co. Cork

Machine transcription

The identification of this ‘lost’ treasure permits not only a re-assessment of the valuable work of the Irish Record Commissioners, but also the opportunity to complete a highly valuable project abandoned almost two centuries ago. At an early stage in the Beyond 2022 project, it became apparent that there was no point in amassing thousands of digital images unless the content was searchable. The collections are just too large to expect users to page through all of the pictures in the hope of finding the information they are looking for. At Beyond 2022, we began to experiment seriously with Transkribus.

Fig.10 screen grab from the Beyond 2022 project’s image processing account showing the
automatic transcription of a 17th century document from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Transkribus is a machine learning platform that allows the computer to infer, from the ‘ground truth’ of pre-prepared perfect transcription, likely matches of words or letters, even if the computer has never seen that style of handwriting before. The ground truth is converted by the Transkribus algorithms into mathematical models based on the geometry of the letters and the shapes of the words. When the computer comes across a new letter in a new document, it compares all the words and letters in its memory and suggests the most likely match. The computer cannot ‘think’ as such, but it also cannot forget and this is where machine learning is such a powerful technology. The result is a truly remarkable resource with 4,700 pages of manuscripts from two of the RIA’s collections of Irish Record Commission calendars searchable for the first time. The handwriting models have also been applied to digital images of thousands of further pages from Irish Record Commission calendars drawn from archives around the world that will eventually enable the full reconstruction of this incredible resource.

By Dr David Brown, Senior Researcher|Archival Discovery Lead, VRTI

Notes:

1. The town charters are located at 24 Q 7-18; the Ferguson extracts are part of the Haliday collection, 12 G 1-6; the volumes of inquisitions post mortem are RIA OS EI 9-11, 18-23, 31-4, 49, 50, 54, 62-4, 69-71, 74-7 and 88.

2. The town charters are available to browse in the Virtual Treasury of Ireland from here: https://virtualtreasury.ie/item?isadgReferenceCode=RIA%2024%20Q The inquisitions can be browsed from here: https://virtualtreasury.ie/item?isadgReferenceCode=RIA%20OS%20EI. In both cases, click on the ‘Next’ button on the far right of the screen opposite the item title, to open the first volume of the series.

3. Reports from the Commissioners of the Public Records of Ireland, II, (Dublin, 1812), p. 432.

4. Charles Cooper, An Account of the Most Important Public Records of Great Britain and the publications of the Record Commissioners…, I, (London, 1832), p. 341.

5. Charles Purton Cooper, An Account of the Most Important Public Records of Great Britain and the Publications of the Record Commissioners…, (London, 1832), p. 315.

6. National Archives of Ireland, RC5/1-31.

7. Thomas Colby, Ordnance Survey Memoir of County Londonderry, (Dublin, 1837). The prepared and abandoned text for much of Ulster was eventually published in 40 volumes by the Institute for Irish Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast, in the 1990s.

8. National Library of Ireland, Larcom MSs 7,553.

9. Rev. John O’Hanlon, ‘The Records of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland’, The Journal of the Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, 3 (1858), p. 97n.

10. Record Commission (Ireland), ‘RETURN “of all Manuscripts, Historical or Legal, edited and prepared, or partially prepared, for Publication by the Irish Record Commissioners, or any other Persons employed by the Government for that purpose”…’, (London, 1866).

11. Royal Irish Academy, OS EI 9-11, 18-23, 31-34, 38, 49, 50, 54, 62-64, 69-71, 75-77, 88.

12. For these individuals see Margaret Griffith, ‘The Irish Record Commission, 1810-30’, Irish Historical Studies, 7, No. 25 (March, 1950), pp 37-38.

13. RIA OS EI 19, p. 3.

14. RIA OS EI 9, p. 3.

As the year draws to a close and the most recent in a long line of Royal Irish Academy Library lecture series — ‘Sisters’, a celebration of sisterhood and specifically of the lives and achievements of families of sisters who made a difference [i] — comes to an end, it presents an opportunity to review the past 22 years of this outreach activity.

Fig.1 Sisters II lecture series poster (2022)

When the Academy Library embarked on a new venture in 2000 — the development of a lecture programme with the Linen Hall Library, Belfast [ii] — the move was seen as rather unusual — ‘Why would the Library organise lecture series?’, ‘at lunchtime?’. But the initiative proved successful, increasing the reach of both libraries by delivering parallel lectures in Dublin and Belfast on alternate weeks. It also led to a long term commitment by the Academy Library to this form of public-service offering.

Fig.2 Announcement for the inaugural series of lunchtime lectures (2000)

Hitherto, the Library had been a mecca for scholars from home and abroad, as well as local historians, archaeologists, third-level students and others who valued the ease with which they could access myriad resources in a central, but quiet space.

Fig.3 Royal Irish Academy Library reading room

However, there was a concern to make the collections more accessible by reaching beyond the regular reader cohort, increasing engagement with different sections of the public, exposing them to the various collections in innovative ways. From a healthy start the lecture series really took off, looked forward to by a regular and growing band of supporters thirsty for new knowledge. The concept of lifelong learning was being mainstreamed and many new retirees flocked to the diverse series on offer.

Fig.4 A life of protest: Jonathan Swift exhibition and lecture series poster (2017)

Series were planned around selected themes, often focussing on important national centenaries or anniversaries, extending to literary characters! In 2004 for example, we celebrated the centenary of the fictitious Leopold Bloom’s renowned peregrinations in Dublin on 16 June 1904: a series on the city featured amongst other speakers, journalist Fintan O’Toole and Dublin architect and song collector, Frank Harte (1933-2005), who enthralled a packed house with his explanations and renditions of Dublin ballads.

Fig.5 Folio 218v from the Annals of the Four Masters (RIA MS C iii 3 folio)

Similarly, in 2007 the 400th anniversary of the Franciscan college at Louvain drew significant audiences to two series: ‘Ireland and Europe in the 17th century: poets, priests and patrons’ and ‘Irish scholarship at St Anthony’s College, Louvain’; these talks were complemented by an exhibition exploring the influence of the continental Franciscans on the development of Irish-language printing and their critical role for Irish historiography in the compilation of the annals of Ireland to 1616, known to every Irish person as ‘The Annals of the Four Masters’ (the Library’s manuscript set was displayed).

Fig.6 Discovering Thomas Moore lecture series and exhibition image (2019/2020)

Fig.7 Title page of Moore’s Irish Melodies (MR/17/B/29)

Lecture series provided not only opportunities to highlight the collections and to showcase current scholarship, but they also enabled collaborations with institutions throughout Ireland, including TU Dublin (then Dublin Institute of Technology) in 2008 and Queen’s University Belfast (2019) for series commemorating Bard of Ireland, Thomas Moore of the eponymous Moore’s Melodies. Moore’s personal library was donated to the Academy in 1855. Other major collections presented ready themes for exploration and collaboration, for example:

• The important pamphlet collections — ‘From Cromwell to Cholera: a history of Ireland from the pamphlet collection of Charles Haliday’ (2012);
• ‘Aon amharc ar Éirinn: Gaelic families and their manuscripts’ (2013);

Fig.8 (left) From Cromwell to cholera lecture series poster (2012)
Fig.9 (right) Aon amharc ar Éirinn lecture series poster (2013)

• ‘Mapping city, town and country since 1824: the Ordnance Survey in Ireland’ (2014) — celebrating the Library’s major OS collections, organised in collaboration with the OS and the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, this was a hugely popular series;
• Early Irish medical manuscripts — ‘Gaelic medical learning and its cultural afterlife’ (2015);
• ‘1815;1915: Centenaries and bicentenaries: Celticists, lexicographers and antiquarian scholars’ (2015)

Fig.10 (left) Mapping city, town and country since 1824 lecture series poster (2014)
Fig.11 (right) 1815;1915: Centenaries and bicentenaries (2015)

Fig.12 Gaelic medical learning and its cultural afterlife lecture series poster (2015)

One event — the Battle of Clontarf — for which most of the Academy’s documentary evidence is to be found in mainly 18th and 19th-century accounts, resonated hugely with the public and was supported by the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Ireland — ‘1014’.

Fig.13 1014 lecture series poster (2014)

Over time, the scale and delivery of this outreach developed too and involved contributions from every Library staff member. Posters were professionally designed, [iii] some accompanying exhibitions also offered sponsored publications, and eventually most lectures were recorded as resources for the interest of virtual users. Above all, the lectures connected the Library with a broader public, enhancing the Academy’s offerings and supporting a public service ethos. Thanks to the support of many contributors over the years quality lectures have been freely delivered to lunchtime audiences.

Long may they continue!

By Siobhán Fitzpatrick

Listen back to lunchtime lectures and view the digital exhibitions!

[i] The lecture series, begun in 2019 and interrupted in 2020, was completed on 9 November 2022. Originally scheduled as a 5-lecture series, due to popular demand a second series was organized for 2020 but for obvious reasons this had to be curtailed, eventually recommencing this year. Nine families of sisters have been explored in the Academy’s Sisters: nine families of sisters who made a difference (Dublin, 2022), ISBN: 9781911479833

[ii] With the support of Dr John Gray, then Librarian of the Linen Hall Library, the late Dr John Killen (d. 2022) then his Deputy, approached the Academy Library re a collaboration. John Killen later served as Linen Hall Librarian 2008–15.

[iii] Mostly by Academy Publication Department’s designer Fidelma Slattery.

(1) Introduction

In January 2020 Brendan Scaife MRIA suggested that I examine the contents of two boxes of notes and draft articles by William McFadden Orr MRIA, FRS held in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA). He is known internationally for the Orr-Sommerfeld equation but I had no previous knowledge of his work as a major Irish scientist. It was necessary to obtain a reader’s card but this was a mere formality. Following an initial reading the contents were clearly very advanced and would be of interest to a researcher dealing with the history of science in Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I was satisfied that a full study could be useful and would highlight ideas not discussed in detail in other publications. My attempts to turn his notes into readable articles are on-going. However, they are not appropriate for undergraduates.

Fig.1-2 Examples of notes in the archive of William McFadden Orr

The notes can be divided into two main categories. All were written in pencil or ink. Short notes of two to four pages were probably solutions to questions or possible suggestions for research. Longer notes in excess of twenty pages may have been presentations to graduate audiences or unfinished drafts of articles for publication. However, none were arranged in sections with specific titles considered as standard in published documents. This would suggest that they were not intended for immediate publication. All contained pages and equations that were adequately numbered in ascending order. Consequently, there was no difficulty in following a proper sequence in any document. I concentrated on the longer notes of twenty pages or longer. The contents usually referred to comments or critical analysis of articles by other leading researchers. An interesting point is that diagrams were non-existent. I assume that this was due to the type of mathematical analysis and his background in mathematical physics. There was considerable use of the Greek alphabet to denote particular parameters which were awkward in typing with Microsoft Office 2016. Although the notes were obviously intended for personal use by McFadden Orr the general lay-outs were quite readable. Any difficulty was in following the advanced technical contents as a proper understanding of text was required to avoid errors. Topics were definitely not intended for undergraduate audiences. I would recommend that the best option is to proceed slowly in any similar examination of archives. I did not find the work to be boring or repetitive and have never regretted my decision to proceed with the study.

Fig.3 Headings from working notes from beginning (1) to the creation of a first draft (6) with title Stability of motion of a viscous liquid

Topics covered a wide area from hypergeometric series, Fourier integrals, electromagnetics, thermodynamics, viscosity and fluid dynamics. I could not avoid noticing that his depth of analysis and understanding was impressive beyond my ability to describe. He was obviously a genius. Development of the Orr-Sommerfeld equation in fluid dynamics to describe modes of disturbance to a viscous parallel flow is his most widely known contribution to research.

(2) Biography

William McFadden Orr retired in 1932 following a very distinguished career in the areas of physics and electrical engineering. He was Professor of Mathematics in the Royal College of Science in Dublin and made major contributions to mathematical physics.

Fig.4 Royal College of Science for Ireland (Image from RIA AP 1907/11:
An historical sketch of the Royal College of Science from its foundation to the year 1900 / William Barrett MRIA. Dublin: 1907)

McFadden Orr graduated in mathematics at age nineteen from the Royal University of Ireland. He attended St John’s College Cambridge and in 1888 became Senior Wrangler followed by a fellowship. In 1892 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the Royal College of Science for Ireland and transferred in 1926 to University College Dublin. On 29 December 1903 McFadden Orr was proposed for membership of the RIA and duly elected as of 16 March 1904. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1909 and received an honorary DSc from Queen’s University Belfast in 1919. Unfortunately, he died within a year of retirement in 1933 at age 68.

Fig.5 Section of William McFadden Orr’s candidate certificate for
membership of the Royal Irish Academy dated 29th December 1903

McFadden Orr’s studies covered a wide area. His early publications dealt with hypergeometric series and Fourier integrals. Later publications examined problems in mechanics, thermodynamics and electromagnetics. A small book titled Notes on thermodynamics for students was highly regarded for its precision in formulation of scientific principles. He published notes on the work of Rudolf Clausius in entropy and irreversible processes. His work on the stability of steady motion of a liquid was well known internationally and became important for research in aerodynamics and fluid motion. Three unpublished notes were about viscous liquids. He may have intended to draft a textbook as he titled them as chapters one, two and three. The details were a critical analysis on papers by Lord Kelvin but his conclusions were based on his examination. For the electron theory that became popular in the second half of the nineteenth-century he was interested in establishing precision for a mechanistic concept. Three notes examined variations in the electromagnetic force of a voltaic cell with a thermoelectric circuit. He demonstrated that the total heat given out in the flow of electricity around a closed circuit was the equivalent of chemical and physical changes irrespective of the complicated nature of such changes. There was no publication or note on relativity. In general, his work was considered to rely on accurate definitions, logical rigor and clear understandings of fundamental concepts.

Fig.6 (upper) Letter of recommendation written by Sir Joseph Larmour on 7 December 1891 and (lower) thank you letter written by J. Morris on 18 July 1923

McFadden Orr had extensive correspondence with leading physicists of the late nineteenth-century. In particular, he corresponded with Sir Joseph Larmor over a period of twenty years on problems in electrical engineering. He corresponded with George Francis Fitzgerald about moving conductors and nature of electrons. Unfortunately, no technical details were recorded in the archives. His only controversy was a difference of opinion with Oliver Heaviside on the relevance of Hamilton’s Principle of Least Action. He believed that students should have a clear understanding and stressed its importance for theoretical physics and engineering. The letters were of a personal nature referring to his application for a professorship in the Royal College of Science and have no technical value. However, his views were obviously highly regarded within the international scientific community.

(3) McFadden Orr Archives (RIA MS 24 O 43 (a)-(b))

The following documents are typed from hand-written notes in both boxes in the archives. Contents are unchanged and no part had been added or removed in any document. This work is on-going and to date four separate notes have been edited and are available as PDF files.

• Thermodynamics and Electromagnetic Force of a Voltaic Cell
• Contact Difference of Potential
• Electromotive Force of a Thermoelectric Cell
• Viscous Liquids – Part 1 (in progress)

There is a total of around ten documents that could be reproduced as articles. This will probably take another twelve months with a number beyond restoration due to contents and lengths. Several consist of comments on articles by major physicists of the nineteenth-century. The emphasis is on mechanical and physical problems which could be due to his professorship in a technical college. They cover areas of viscous liquids, dilute solutions and comments on experiments. In the meantime the above list is available in the Library. I must stress that all documents are notes rather than draft articles and are a difficult read. Contents are exactly as written by McFadden Orr. My main concern is that approximately 1,900 equations and formulas handwritten in pencil or ink could be reproduced with serious errors in PDF files. Consequently, technical accuracy is my top priority. It is not my intention to reproduce any document where technical inaccuracies are likely to occur.

Fortunately, the McFadden Orr Archives contain the original document from the Royal Society awarding him the Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS) title. It is in good condition but has been folded to fit into a box with the other notes and letters.

Fig.7 Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS) title awarded to
William McFadden Orr on 7 May 1909 signed by its secretary Joseph Larmour

He has four major articles published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. The award also includes a note reminding McFadden Orr of the annual subscription to the Royal Society. I concluded that some things do not change with time.

Fig.8 Volumes for Section A of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in the library

For a listing of publications by William McFadden Orr, please see the PDF link.

By Brian Patrick McArdle

On 11 October 2022 the Royal Irish Academy hosted the launch of an exhibition marking the life and career of Professor Jan Łukasiewicz (1878–1956), a Polish logician and philosopher whose work has been instrumental in the developments of both academic fields. Some of his most important work was completed in Ireland after the second world war, while he held a Professorship of mathematical logic at the RIA.

Fig.1 Royal Irish Academy meeting room with Professor Jan Łukasiewicz exhibition on display

I was fortunate enough to play a small role in bringing this exhibition to fruition. I must confess that I was unaware of Łukasiewicz’s work before I was contacted by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Dublin fortunately Łukasiewicz’s life and work in his native Poland was well covered by my colleague, Professor Jan Jadacki. Drawing on collections in the Library of the RIA and the National Archives of Ireland, I was able to uncover some of the more obscure details of Łukasiewicz’s time in Ireland.

The brilliance of Łukasiewicz’s mind ensured that his name would be recorded for posterity; that his academic achievements came in a life that experienced the devastation of two world wars, and exile from his home in Warsaw in his late sixties, was nothing short of remarkable. But even in a remarkable life, the story of how Łukasiewicz and his wife Regina ended up in Dublin is wonderfully bizarre. Having fled Poland towards the end of the war, the Łukasiewiczs found themselves in Brussels in February 1946, with few prospects before them. There Łukasiewicz met a Polish-speaking Irishman in the uniform of a Polish officer. There can’t have been too many of those floating around Belgium at the time, but we have no idea who this man was. He urged Łukasiewicz to travel to Dublin, where he said the Irish government would welcome displaced distinguished scholars.

Fig.2 Royal Irish Academy council minutes from 18 September 1946 recording the appointment of Łukasiewicz to the Professorship of Mathematical Logic

That proved to be the case, and that summer the Łukasiewiczs had an audience with Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. Łukasiewicz recorded the meeting in his diary: ‘He told me that he would take care of my fate and he kept his word.’

It’s particularly appropriate for the exhibition to make its debut in the Meeting Room of the Royal Irish Academy, because de Valera kept his word by arranging for the RIA to appoint Łukasiewicz as a Professor of mathematical logic, funded by the Irish government.

Fig.3 Irish dedication to Éamon de Valera in Logika I metafizyka (RIA C/21/3-6) translated as ‘In honour of Éamon de Valera, a great statesman and scholar.
It is with thanks to him that Jan Łukasiewicz was able to spend the last years of his creative life in Dublin, welcomed after being expelled from his homeland.’

On 18 November 1946 Łukasiewicz delivered his first public lecture in Ireland in that very room. The Irish Press carried a detailed report the following day. Łukasiewicz, it observed, was a

Professor without a chair, a man without a home. This country has given him shelter and a position in keeping with his eminent reputation. This is more than a gesture of sympathy towards a distinguished foreigner. To have a man of Dr Łukasiewicz’s standing amongst us to aid the cause of advanced study is a national gain.

His appointment as a Professor in the Royal Irish Academy was highly unusual, though not without precedent again at the behest of Eamon de Valera, the Academy had appointed Erwin Schrödinger as a Professor of theoretical physics in 1940, if only for six months while the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies was being set up. As far as I can ascertain, apart from Schrödinger and Łukasiewicz only two other people have ever been appointed as Professors of the Academy: Gerhard Besu and Ernst Lewy.

During the decade in which he lived and worked in Dublin, Łukasiewicz was able to reconstruct and publish work he had abandoned in Warsaw, and to conduct new research in the field of symbolic logic. It was a period later described by one of his former students as ‘one of the most fruitful of his scientific career’ and led to the completion of his magnum opus, a monograph titled Aristotle’s Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic.

Fig.4 Title page and spine of monograph titled Aristotle’s Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic (RIA MR/26/H/32)

The challenge of an exhibition like this (one that’s true of all life writing apart from full-length, biographical treatment), is that it’s very difficult to distil a person’s life into a handful of information panels especially one filled with so many incidents and achievements. One of the real advantages of the format, however, is that the visuals can offer counterpoints to the text and pose questions that the physical restrictions of a word count don’t allow. As an example, there’s a wonderful photo of Łukasiewicz and his wife Regina on one of the panels, taken shortly after their arrival in Dublin. They’re both smiling, and we can only imagine their relief at having landed in what would prove a safe haven after the traumatic experience of fleeing their homeland.

Fig.5 (left) Jan and Regina Łukasiewicz shortly after their arrival to Dublin in 1946 (Image: Irish Press, 19 November 1946; courtesy the Irish Newspaper Archive)
Fig.6 (right) Jan Łukasiewicz as the laureate of the Science Award of the City of Warsaw, 11 November 1935 (Image: Public domain)

When we juxtapose that photo with those of Łukasiewicz in his former life as a distinguished academic in Warsaw, the exhibition asks us to ponder just how deeply the couple were affected by the loss of that life in Poland, with its friendships and the academic connections Łukasiewicz formed in the Lvov-Warsaw School of Philosophy.

Though the distance of time has somewhat dimmed the public’s memory of his time in Ireland, it’s worth noting that Łukasiewicz’s achievements were certainly recognised here during his lifetime, and indeed after his death. After his appointment as Professor of mathematical logic, he was invited to deliver lectures at Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1950 and 1952.

Fig.7 (left) Donation signed by Łukasiewicz of his paper On the intuitionistic of deduction (RIA AP 1952/39)
Fig.8 (right) Donation from Łukasiewicz of his paper Sur la formalisation des théories mathématiques (RIA AP 1953/27)

Even before his book on Aristotle’s syllogistic had been published, the gifted English mathematician, logician and computer scientist Alan Turing arranged for Łukasiewicz to visit the Victoria University of Manchester. In recognition of his academic achievements, on 5 July 1955 Łukasiewicz received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin. An honorary degree is the highest honour that a university can bestow upon an academic, though University College Dublin found a suitable posthumous alternative, at least for a time. Its Department of Computer Science was housed in what was called Łukasiewicz Building for about a decade in the late 1990s and early 2000s; an apt honour for an academic whose work was so fundamental to the development of computer science.

Fig.9 Letter from Łukasiewicz to Boole Committee dated 20 May 1954
expressing his regrets at not being able to attend centenary celebrations (RIA MS 12 K 45)

It’s always a thrill to reconstruct a person’s life, especially one so influential in such varied fields of academic study, and whose work paved the way for intellectual and technological innovations that are fundamental to the way that we live today. An appreciation published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy after his death neatly encapsulated his career: ‘His [work] … marks a turning point in the history of logic … His analyses of essential logical problems are distinguished by great clarity and extraordinary beauty of style.’

Fig.10-11 Obituary notice from Royal Irish Academy proceedings minutes of 1955-56 session (RIA 43.D)

Dr Eoin Kinsella

Keep an eye out for publication next year of an entry on Jan Łukasiewicz in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. The exhibition produced by the Polish Embassy of Ireland and hosted by the Royal Irish Academy continues until the end of the year.

Fig.12 Cover of Jan Łukasiewicz exhibition booklet

Defining provenance

First, a definition: ―provenance is the record of location or ownership of a work of art or significant scholarship. In the context of a library’s acquisition policy, it can often reveal a sequential history of readership which in turn reveals unexpected shared interests across generations.

Ownership of Russell’s Principles of Mathematics

Fig.1 Inscription of R.A.P. Rogers June ’05 in blue pencil on the title page of RIA MR/41/R/33

In 1905, Reginald Arthur Percy Rogers FTCD, MRIA bought a copy of Principles of Mathematics (1903) vol 1, by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), from the Crampton Book Shop, Crampton Quay, Dublin. So much is clear.

Fig.2 The Crampton Book Shop booksellers stamp found on upper paste-down leaf of RIA MR/41/R/33

He referred to it in ‘The Logical Basis of Mathematics’ (1908); see PRIA (section A) vol 27 (1907-1909) pp. 182-193.

Fig.3 Gold spine label of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (PRIA), vol. 27 1907-1909 A (RIA RR/42/B)
alongside section of page 193 referencing B. Russell

However, certain important clarifications are required. Russell never published a second volume. Instead, he collaborated with Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) on Principia Mathematica, appearing in three volumes (1910, 1912, 1913).[1] What Rogers possessed had rapidly become an intellectual ‘shipwreck’, beached by its youthful captain who had intended to augment vol 1 with a sister-ship.

Fig. 4 Section of Reginald Arthur Percy Rogers’ candidate certificate for membership
of the Royal Irish Academy dated 8th December 1902

Rogers bought the book described here in July 1905, that is, at the beginning of TCD’s long vacation. He had been elected MRIA in 1903, the year of Principles’ publication. In 1911, he published A Short History of Ethics, Greek and Modern (London: Macmillan) and Wildflowers, a Book of Verse (London: Ousley). His college career is not a central concern here.

Annotations and inscriptions

Fig.5 Pencil and ink annotations written on lower fly-leaf of RIA MR/41/R/33

Two longer-term factors deserve attention. These are―(1) Rogers’ annotations and (perhaps) annotations by other, later owners, and (2) the sequence of subsequent owners’ inscriptions. A full understanding of the annotations would require the expertise of a logician and/or mathematician.

1. The book contains 528 pages of Russell’s text. My estimate is that more than half of these bear annotations whether verbal or by way of underlining and similar marginal indicators. The verbal ones involve several colours of pencil annotation, mainly blue and red. Lead pencil annotations are extensive, and are not limited to the pages of text but appear also on fly-leaves, paste-downs and other vacant spaces.

Fig.6 Pencil annotations covering upper paste-down and fly-leaf of RIA MR/41/R/33

PePen and ink annotations may have been inscribed on a second or further occasion of Rogers’ reading the text: on page 12, one finds two distinctive nibs at work.

Fig.7 Pen and ink annotations in two distinctive nibs on page 12 of RIA MR/41/R/33

Density of annotation varies: for example, in chapter 2 (‘Symbolic Logic’, pp. 10-32) all but 3 pages are annotated; compare this with chapter 25 (‘The Meaning of Order’, pp. 207-217) which is largely unannotated―but note the final paragraph.

Fig.8 Example of heavily annotated pages from chapter 2 vs.

Fig.9 chapter 25 with only final paragraph underlined in blue pencil RIA MR/41/R/33

2. It cannot be assumed that all these annotations and markings are Rogers’ work; empirical demonstration is advisable.[2] Born in Kilkenny on 10 August 1874, he died aged 50 on 17 October 1923 at 142 Leinster Road Dublin,[3] having been (it seems) a recent patient in Mercer’s Hospital. My understanding is that his copy of The Principles of Mathematics passed into the possession and care of Francis La Touche Godfrey (born in India; d.1974), a fellow of TCD and Rogers’ colleague in the Department of Mental and Moral Science (i.e. philosophy).[4] Godfrey may have been an executor, formally or informally.

3. What traceably happened next was less predictable; the annotated volume passed into the possession of William Palladius Allen (1892-1984), a member of the Catholic teaching order, the Christian Brothers. For many years Brother Allen taught mathematics in the O’Connell School, North Richmond Street Dublin, and assembled an astonishing personal library; this is now preserved in NLI.

Fig.10 One of the many book-stamps of the Christian Brothers Library within RIA MR/41/R/33

HoHow Rogers’ copy of The Principles floated free from the Allen Collection is not yet clear. It was purchased c. 2013 from the Belfast antiquarian book sellers, Peter and Briad Rowan, and was donated to the RIA Library in 2017. The elaboration of this embryonic provenance will tell several important stories about the reception of new philosophical thinking in Ireland and (perhaps) the teaching of contemporary ideas, the preservation of evidence, and the role of collectors (individual and institutional) in the transmission of culture.

Notes:

1. For a succinct account of the relationship between these two publications, see Ray Monk’s article in ODNB.
2. TCD Library’s Manuscript Department contains a number of published philosophical texts (by Kant, Hegel and others); these are preserved with the papers of the Revd Francis La Touche Godfrey. Items particularly relevant are (1) G. W. F. Hegel, The Logic of Hegel, Translated from the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences by William Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892, 2nd ed. revised and augmented (TCD Ms 6247). And (2) John Neville Keynes, Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic. London: Macmillan, 1884 (TCD Ms 6256).
3. His parents were Robert Hawkesworth Steele Rogers (clergyman) and Frances (née Wilmott).
4. Cataloguers of F. La T. Godfrey’s papers describe a copy of W. Wallace, The Logic of Hegel (1892) ‘formerly the property of R. A. P. Rogers’; other philosophical works of the same provenance are also preserved.

By Bill Mc Cormack, MRIA

Discovering Shelfmarks

Zoë Comyns is the inaugural Podcaster in Residence at the Royal Irish Academy 2021/2022 and the presenter and producer of the RIA podcast series Shelfmarks. The podcasts were funded by the Arts Council Literature Project Award.

I had paid many visits over the years to the Royal Irish Academy Library sometimes for talks or exhibitions, other times just dropping in to have a look. I loved that you could slip away from the Dublin crowds and within minutes there was a place dedicated to knowledge and discovery, that felt like a sanctuary from the commercialism of the city centre. I loved the peace, the green table lamps as I read, even with the Vierpyl busts of Roman emperors keeping an eye on me as I nosed around. In the RIA you’re always in interesting historical company. Any book or reference could lead to a lifetime of study.

Fig. 1 Royal Irish Academy reading room with green table lamps and Vierpyl busts

As Podcaster in Residence of the Royal Irish Academy I had greater access to its wonderful Library collections. My interest lies in finding new ways to connect the past and present and through the series to create an audio bridge across centuries that deepens our understanding of nature and how our relationship with it has evolved through each discovery. The aim for the podcast series Shelfmarks was to select an object, book or person associated with the RIA collection and to give an insight into them and the Academy’s work on the natural world. Each episode starts with a short audio essay by me and then gives way to conversations and readings by a weekly guest. I commissioned six writers; Kerri Ní Dhocartaigh, Jane Clarke, Neil Hegarty, Siobhan Mannion, Amanda Bell and Manchan Magan and asked them to respond to the selected theme/person.

Connecting with the naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger

My initial fascination with people connected with the library was through a copy of The way that I went by Robert Lloyd Praeger (1865-1953) from my family home. Praeger was a naturalist, librarian and member of the RIA. He was its president from 1931-34. I found him a fascinating figure and later when I realised his long standing connection with the RIA I wanted to make a programme about him. In fact, I came across so many fascinating figures who were associated with the Academy, the series started to form.

Fig.2 Frontispiece portrait of Robert Lloyd Praeger and title page from The way that I went (RIA D/1167)

Praeger wrote so many papers and books it was initially overwhelming as to where to begin to tell his story but with writing for the ear I decided to structure a piece about him by writing one word for each of the papers and books he wrote. A small offering to give insight into his vast studies of over 800 papers and 24 books, not to mention the thousands of miles he spent walking across Ireland exploring, note taking.

Fig.3 Map of Ireland from Praeger’s The way that I went (RIA D/1167)

In the opening pages of The way that I went Praeger mentions his long and frequent walks around Ireland. He worked all week as a librarian and took off at the weekend tramping thousands of miles across the country. Each walk was accompanied by the idea he mentions in the introduction to The way that I went of ‘stopping often, watching closely, listening carefully’. These mantra-like watchwords can guide the listener to take stock of the natural world, what they see around them and as Praeger did note it and appreciate it. Each episode in the series hopes to guide the listener in this way too to hone in on a location, or a person and the natural world and ask us to think more carefully about our place in it.

Fig.4 (left) Album title page containing an illuminated address by the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club presented to Robert Lloyd Praeger on 4 July 1893 (RIA 12 T 24)
Fig.5 (right) Photograph by Robert Welch of the Belfast and Dublin Naturalists Field Club taking tea at ”The Glen”, Newry, 6 July 1893 (RIA 12 T 24 no.78)

Poet Jane Clarke joined me for this episode and we took a walk through her local area in Wicklow and chatted about Praeger, the natural world and she read two specially commissioned poems for the episode.

Journey with the mythical Cessair

Another episode of Shelfmarks is prompted by the figure of Cessair, mentioned in the Leabhar Gabhála (Book of Invasions).

Fig.6 (left) Leabhar Gabhála from the Book of Lecan containing the myth of Cessair (RIA MS 23 P 2 folio 186 verso)
Fig.7 (right) Noah’s Ark depicted in the Book of Ballymote (RIA MS 23 P 12 folio 1 verso)

In the myth Cessair is the grand-daughter of Noah and daughter of Bith. Bith is refused passage on The Ark and so Cessair builds three ships to seek out a new land. Each ship is crewed by fifty women and on a seven year journey two of the ships sink. The third ship containing Cessair, fifty women, her husband Fintan, her father Bith and her brother Ladra arrive in Ireland. She takes the first step on Irish soil.

Writer Siobhán Mannion joined me on the episode to explore this myth, the taking of Ireland and how becoming at one with the natural world becomes essential to survival.

What surprised me about making this episode is the amount of people who got in touch to say they had never heard of Cessair. Through Shelfmarks it’s been exciting to let people know about her and other fascinating figures and topics in the collection: Cynthia Longfield (1898-1991) and her work of dragonflies, Richard Kirwan (1733-1812) and the measuring the weather, the mythical Book of Hy-Brasil (Book of O’Lees) and nature cures, the Dr Wilhlem Doegen (1877-1967) recordings and St Brigid, ornithologist and naturalist Richard Manliffe Barrington (1849-1915) and journeys to Rockall as well as stories of the last wolf in Ireland.

Fig.8 (left) Photograph by Cynthia Longfield Roberts of the dragonfly Anax Imperator
Fig.9 (tright) The mythical Book of Hy-Brasil/Book of O’Lees (RIA MS 23 P 10 ii page 4)

Fig.10 Plate IV from Praeger’s The way that I went (RIA D/1167) of Rockall, looking E.N.E. from a water-colour sketch by W.S. Green

All you have to do is step off the noisy street and into this place of wonder by foot or through your headphones.

All episodes in the Shelfmarks series are available online or via SoundCloud. Watch the 2021 Culture Night Special on YouTube.

The Royal Irish Academy Library holds a wide range of diverse material and one collection that is often overlooked is early twentieth century periodicals. This material is an important source when it comes to topical issues like the polar expeditions of the early 1900s.

On the 15th of June 1910, the ship Terra Nova left its moorings at Cardiff heading out on an expedition that would take the ship and its crew to Antarctica. The expedition leader, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, made it clear that his main objective was to secure the prize of being the first person to reach the South Pole. Among the crew he had chosen for the trip was the 33-year-old Irishman Tom Crean.

Fig.1 Newspaper image of Tom Crean, circa 1910, prior to him setting off on the Terra Nova expedition (Image: www.irishnewspaperarchives.com
Title: ‘The Kerryman With Scott’ from the The Irish Independent, 11th April 1912) [1]

Born on or shortly before February 16th, 1877, into an impoverished existence, Tom Crean, one of 8 brothers and 3 sisters born near Annascaul, County Kerry, joined the Royal Navy in July 1893. He was almost 16½ years-old when he signed up and following a harsh training period aboard HMS Impregnable on England’s south coast, Crean was deemed ready to undertake his first naval assignment. Still a boy sailor, Crean was ledgered to the ship HMS Wild Swan in December 1894 as she headed out of Plymouth bound for the Americas.

Fig. 2 Drawing of Lough Annascaul, County Kerry by George Victor Du Noyer (Image: RIA 3 D 6 (64))

In a seven-year period thereafter, Tom Crean’s career as a young seaman commenced with a 3½ year term of service on the Pacific Station whilst based in Esquimalt, Canada. From here HMS Wild Swan would attempt to safeguard the interests of the Crown in an area across the Pacific and its west coast that covered 133 lines of latitude from the Arctic circle down to the southern tip of Chile. In December 1901, Crean was in Australia with his ship Ringarooma, the ship was ordered to assist Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery while it waited to depart for Antarctica. When an able seaman of Scott’s ship deserted after an altercation with a petty officer, Crean volunteered, and was accepted

Crean’s relationship with Antarctica would begin in New Zealand in 1901 aboard Discovery and continued with the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition in 1910. Over the course of his first two expeditions six lives had been lost and the dangers of polar exploration were clearly evident.

British National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904

Discovery sailed to the Antarctic on 21 December 1901, and seven weeks later, on 8 February 1902, arrived in McMurdo Sound, where she anchored at a spot which was later designated “Hut Point”. Here the men established the base from which they would launch scientific and exploratory sledging journeys. Crean proved to be one of the most efficient man-haulers in the party; he spent more time than anyone in the harness, a total of 149 days. Crean accompanied Lieutenant Michael Barne on three sledging trips across the Ross Ice Shelf, then known as the “Great Ice Barrier”. One of these trips, on 30 October 1902, was to lay depots in support of the main southern journal which would be undertaken by Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson.

Fig.3 The Discovery brought to a standstill by pack-ice (Image: National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904. London, 1907.)

During the Antarctic winter of 1902 Discovery became locked in the ice. Efforts to free her during the summer of 1902–03 failed, and although some of the expedition’s members, including Shackleton, left in a relief ship, Crean and the majority of the party remained in the Antarctic until the ship was finally freed in February 1904. After returning to regular naval duty, Crean was rewarded with the rating Petty Officer 1st Class on 10th September 1904, thanks to the recommendation of Scott.

While in the Antarctic the expedition members carried out scientific research and geographical exploration of the region. Its scientific results covered extensive ground in biology, zoology, geology, meteorology and magnetism which were published in the series National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904. There are six volumes, published by the British Museum between 1907 and 1912 and the RIA Library was gifted a set by the museum.

Fig. 4 Title page National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904; vol.1 Geology. London, 1907.

On this expedition they made a number of discoveries including that of an unknown Emperor penguin colony at Cape Crozier.

Fig.5 (left) Antarctic birds (Image: National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904; vol.II, plate VIII)
Fig.6 (right) Emperor penguin and chick (Image: National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904; vol.II)

Crean continued to build up his arsenal of skills at a number of shore-based naval training establishments. In 1906, Crean’s value became further apparent when Scott requested the Kerryman join him on the HMS Victorious. In the following years, Crean would join his captain on HMS Albemarle, HMS Essex and HMS Bulwark. By 1907, Scott was planning his second expedition to the Antarctic and Crean would not only be among the first of Scott’s recruits for this journey, but he would carry out epic feats of heroism.

Fig.7 (top-left) A volcanic cone on the mainland; the summit of Cape Jones. The Discovery in a gulf in the Lady Newnes “Piedmont afloat.” (Image: National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904)
Fig.8 (top-right) Mount Huggins and the Royal Society range (Image: National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904)
Fig.9 (bottom) Terra Cotta mountains, showing dykes of dolerite (Image: National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904)

Terra Nova Expedition 1910-1913

Fig.10 Expedition ship Terra Nova during the 1910 British Antarctic Expedition (Image: Herbert Ponting, 1911 – public domain)

The expedition left in June 1910 and reached McMurdo Sound in January 1911. Scott’s attempt to reach the South Pole started November 1911 and had three stages; 640 km across the Barrier, 190 km up the heavily crevassed Beardmore Glacier to an altitude of 10,000 feet above sea level, and then another 560 km to the Pole. Crean was part of the final group of eight who were within 270km of their goal, but Scott did not select him to make the final journey. So, on 4 January 1912, Crean and two of his companions, William Lashly and Edward Evans, began to retrace their steps back to the base.

Fig.11 British Antarctic Expedition 1910-13. Petty officers Edgar Evans and Tom Crean (left) mending reindeer sleeping bags. 16 May 1911
(Image: Herbert Ponting – public domain; colourisation by https://www.mycolorfulpast.com/)

Evans had contracted scurvy as he, Crean and William Lashly were negotiating their way across the Great Ice Barrier in an effort to make it back to safety at the expedition base at Hut Point. Left bitterly disappointed at being excluded from the party who would accompany Scott on his attempt to reach South Pole, the three men faced a daunting 800-mile trek. When Evans’ condition deteriorated, Crean and Lashly lay their sick colleague on the sledge which they then hauled across the ice before reaching Corner Camp. Crean then ventured out on his historic solo journey of 36 miles in 18 hours to Hut Point to raise a rescue party. By the end of 1912, Scott and his companions had not returned with their remains finally being discovered by Crean and his fellow companions in November 1912.

On his return to Britain in 1913, Crean became one of the rare recipients of an Albert Medal for Bravery for his life-saving solo trek to save the life of Evans. On St Patrick’s Day 1914, Evans, relived his ordeal whilst addressing a packed audience at New York’s Carnegie Hall, recalling the point in their journey when he felt he could no longer continue, he stated:

“When I begged them to leave me, it was Crean who, speaking for both, turned and said to me, ‘If you are to go out sir, then we’ll all go out together.’” [1]

Fig.12 Moraines supported by ice, on the west side of McMurdo Sound
(Image: National Antarctic Expedition 1901-1904)

Crean would head south for the third and final time when, in May 1914, he was appointed second officer to Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial TransAntarctic expedition aboard the ship Endurance. It was an expedition on which he would distinguish himself still further by playing a primary role on what is considered the greatest survival and rescue tale in maritime history.

Fig.13 Photo of Tom Crean taken aboard the Endurance, 1914
(Image: Frank Hurley – public domain)

To read more about the incredible life of this Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer, pick up the recently published, Crean – The Extraordinary Life of an Irish Hero by Tim Foley https://tomcreanbook.com/. Or you can visit the RIA Library where we house a number of publications on Irish polar explorers, such as The Heart of the Antarctic: the story of the British Antarctic expedition 1907-1909 South: the story of Shackleton’s last expedition 1914-1917 a republished version of Shackleton’s originals, Great endeavour: Ireland’s Antarctic explorers by Michael Smith and Seek the frozen lands: Irish polar explorers by Frank Nugent.
Fig.14 Crean – The Extraordinary Life of an Irish Hero by Tim Foley (Merrion Press, 2023)
[1] Foley, T. (2020) Crean – The Extraordinary Life of an Irish Hero, 3rd edition

By Meadhbh Murphy and Tim Foley

Many of the medieval and modern manuscript sources housed in the Royal Irish Academy library offer valuable evidence for use of the script known as ‘ogam’, a distinctive writing system that was invented for the Irish language and is attested on stone monuments in Ireland and Britain from as early as the fourth century. The major new collaborative project OG(H)AM, run by researchers at Maynooth University and the University of Glasgow, is aiming to harness digital tools from different fields, including linguistics, archaeology and manuscript studies, to develop a better understanding of the changing historical contexts and contemporary social value of ogam script. Part of this work will involve documenting examples of the writing system from manuscripts in the RIA library collections.

Ogam looks a little bit like a barcode: in its earliest form, the standard alphabet was made up of 20 characters, each consisting of one to five short parallel lines or notches, with the value of each character depending on its position relative to a baseline. When inscribed on stone monuments, ogam symbols were typically written in three dimensions across the edge of the stone and read vertically. This system was later adapted and expanded to suit the format of the manuscript page, however, where the total number of symbols was expanded and characters were usually arranged along a horizontal stemline.

The early development of writing in the Irish language was closely tied to Latin learning, and many of the first attestations of ogam in manuscripts occur within discussions concerning Latin and Irish grammar or foreign alphabets (for more on this, see the OG(H)AM project blog here). Perhaps inspired by their exploration of different languages and writing systems, some early Irish scribes jotted down short marginal notes or signed their names in ogam alongside the texts that they were copying. An example of this is found in one of the oldest manuscripts in the RIA collections, known as the Stowe Missal (RIA MS D ii 3). This early ninth-century Mass-book mainly consists of Latin texts, but also includes a tract on the Mass and three healing charms written in Old Irish. The first eleven folios of the manuscript contain excerpts from the Gospel of St John, at the end of which the scribe has written a colophon in Latin but signed his name in ogam

Fig.1: The scribal signature SONID/DINOS in Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS D ii 3 (‘The Stowe Missal’, early 9th century).
On the background and contents of this manuscript, see this online talk by Lars Nooij and also his 2021 PhD thesis available here
Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

The ogam letters in this example, read left-to-right, spell out the name SONID. The meaning of this name is uncertain, however, as it is unattested elsewhere in early Irish sources; the reverse reading of DINOS has been suggested, but this sheds little additional light on the identity of the scribe. The Stowe Missal signature also lacks the so-called ‘feather marks’ that often appear at the end of the horizontal stemline used for manuscript ogam, although the evidence of other manuscripts indicates that this convention had already been adopted by some scribes by the ninth century.

The ‘Book of Ogam’ and cryptography in medieval Ireland

One of the most famous and visually impressive examples of manuscript ogam in the RIA collections is a text known as In Lebor Ogaim (‘The Book of Ogam’), preserved in the great fourteenth-century compendium of Irish learning known as the ‘Book of Ballymote’ (RIA MS 23 P 12). In Lebor Ogaim consists of over 100 different ‘alphabets’, most of which are variations of the standard ogam alphabet or other kinds of cryptic devices. The tract is immediately followed in the Book of Ballymote by the text known as Auraicept na nÉces, a primer of the Irish language that is heavily indebted to Latin grammatical teaching and includes ogam symbols alongside alphabet tables for Latin, Greek and Hebrew:

Fig.2-3: Ogam ‘alphabets’ from In Lebor Ogaim, followed by the beginning of Auraicept na nÉces
(‘The Scholars’ Primer’), the earliest grammar of the Irish language (RIA MS 23 P 12, fol. 170v).
Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

Some of the variant versions of the ogam alphabet found in In Lebor Ogaim allude to legendary Irish figures or aspects of wider literary tradition. For example, the diagram to the far left at the bottom of fol. 170r in the Book of Ballymote (above left and enlarged in the image below) illustrates a variety of the script called Traigsruth Ferchertne (‘Ferchertne’s Foot-stream?’), perhaps alluding to the acclaimed chief poet of Ulster who appears in literary sources from around the ninth century. The middle diagram is named Fege Find (‘Finn’s Ridge-pole [Ogam]’), most likely referring to the famous Irish warrior Fionn Mac Cumhaill, while the diagram to the right is named Rothogam Roigni Roscadhaigh (‘Wheel-ogam of Roigne Roscadach’), possibly an allusion to a figure skilled in poetry or rhetorical speech (roscad). In these varieties of the script, the ogam symbols are arranged in a wheel or on the lines of concentric circles or squares:

Fig.4: Three variants of ogam from In Lebor Ogaim (RIA MS 23 P 12, fol. 170r). l-r: Traigsruth Ferchertne ‘Ferchertne’s foot-stream(?)’,
Fege Find ‘Finn’s ridge-pole [ogam]’, and Rothogam Roigni Roscadhaigh ‘Wheel-ogam of Roigne Roscadach’.
Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen

Many of the alphabets found in In Lebor Ogaim do not occur outside of this source, and it is not always clear what practical use they might have had. It is probable, however, that they point to a broader interest in cryptography that can be traced to much earlier ideas about the exclusivity of literate knowledge. Thus in the preface to the tract, it is claimed that the ogam script was invented by Ogma, ‘a man well skilled in speech and poetry’, who designed it ‘as a proof of his ingenuity’ so that the speech ‘should belong to the learned apart, to the exclusion of rustics and herdsmen.’

In some cases, the use of ogam script seems to have offered momentary amusement or distraction for a scribe tasked with copying learned (and perhaps rather tedious or technical) material. An example of this is found in RIA MS 24 B 3, an early-sixteenth-century compilation of medical learning written by the North Connacht scribe Conla Mac an Leagha, who appears to have been a practising surgeon in the service of the Mac Diarmada lords in Magh Luirg (modern Boyle and Frenchpark, Co. Roscommon). When copying an Irish translation of standard Latin teaching on uroscopy (the diagnosis of illness through examination of urine), Conla lent an additional Irish flavour to his work by occasionally switching from Roman to ogam script:

Fig. 5: RIA MS 24 B 3, p. 31 (early 16th century): a fragment of a treatise on the contents of urine written in
Roman and ogam script by the medical scribe Conla Mac an Leagha.
Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen.

Manuscript ogam in the modern period

Ogam script, or variants of it, continued to be used in Irish manuscripts well into the modern period. Numerous examples of the writing system are found in handwritten books of Irish-language prose and poetry produced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of them associated with members of the prolific Ó Longáin family of scribes. Thus in RIA MS 493 (23 C 18), a miscellaneous collection of Irish lore, Mícheál Óg Ó Longáin (1766–1837) signed his name three times at the bottom of a page containing a list of Arabic and Roman numerals:

Fig.6: RIA MS 493 (23 C 18), p. 124. .

The first signature in the above image is in traditional ogam script, while the second is in so-called ‘ogam coll’, a cipher in conventional script in which vowels (which would be represented by one to five strokes in traditional ogam) are instead written with one to five cs. This code appears to derive from one of the variants of ogam referred to in In Lebor Ogaim as coll ar guta (‘C for a vowel’). The third signature is in so-called ‘ogam consaine’, another cipher in conventional script whereby vowels and diphthongs are replaced by certain combinations of consonants. In accordance with a key to this latter cipher given on the preceding page of the manuscript, the ‘í’ in Mícheál’s forename is represented by the letters NG, while the diphthong EA is replaced by the doubled consonant MM.

Although both the ‘ogam coll’ and ‘ogam consaine’ ciphers use conventional Roman script rather than the traditional strokes and notches of so-called ‘ogam craobh’, illustrations of these three varieties of ogam are commonly found together in later manuscripts. For example, one section of RIA MS 622 (23 K 34), a collection of genealogies written in the nineteenth century by an unknown scribe, provides keys to ‘ogam craobh’, ‘ogam coll’ and ‘ogam consaine’ along with didactic poems in Irish on the use of each variety and introductory notes in English. The scribe then copied out the Pater Noster and Ave Maria in ‘ogam coll’, followed by the formula for general confession in ‘ogam consaine’:

Fig.7: RIA MS 622 (23 K 34), p. 105: a didactic poem on ‘ogam consaine’ and
a key to that cipher, followed by the Pater Noster and beginning of the Ave Maria in ‘ogam coll’.

On the page immediately following these passages are notes on various alphabets, along with a copy of a sentence in traditional ogam script by one Seán Ó Conaire, probably the Fr. Seán Ó Conaire who was a priest of the diocese of Cloyne and died in 1773:

Fig.8: RIA MS 622 (23 K 34), p. 107: Copy of a signature in ‘ogam craobh’ by Fr. Seán Ó Conaire,
a priest of the diocese of Cloyne who died in 1773, followed by notes on various alphabets.
.

The Royal Irish Academy is also home to a large collection of manuscripts written by the Cork antiquarian John Windele (1801–1865), who had a particular interest in ogam. Windele is known to have travelled throughout Munster to seek out monuments with ogam inscriptions and to have even kept several ogam stones in his garden, referring to them as his ‘megalithic library’. One of Windele’s notebooks is now RIA MS 655 (24 M 35), which contains both sketches of stone inscriptions and various ogam alphabets derived from In Lebor Ogaim:

Fig.9 (left): RIA MS 655 (24 M 35), fol. 3v: ‘Wheel-ogam’ from one of John Windele’s notebooks.
Fig. 10 (right): RIA MS 655 (24 M 35), fol. 12r: Ogam inscriptions from one of John Windele’s notebooks.

Windele’s notebooks offer valuable insight into the activities of nineteenth-century Irish scholars and antiquarians who sought to preserve and decode ogam inscriptions on stone monuments across the island and further afield. It is clear, however, that ogam also had an enduring appeal that extended well beyond this archaeological record. The medieval and modern manuscript evidence for ogam offers a window into the development of ideas about languages, alphabets and cryptography in Ireland over a span of some 1,000 years. The manuscript collections of the Royal Irish Academy form a crucial part of this larger puzzle – much of which is yet to be fully deciphered.

Further reading:

• George Calder (ed.), Auraicept na nÉces. The Scholars’ Primer (Edinburgh, 1917)
• Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (Maynooth, 1997)
• Pádraig Ó Macháin and Sorcha Nic Lochlainn (eds), Leabhar na Longánach. The Ó Longáin Family and their Manuscripts (Cork, 2018)
• Erich Poppe, ‘Writing Systems and Cultural Identity: Ogam in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland’, Language & History 61:1–2 (2018), 23–38

Deborah Hayden, Department of Early Irish, Maynooth University.