The news last year that RTÉ were to screen their well known 1966 drama Insurrection, commissioned for the 50^th anniversary of the Easter Rising, was of particular interest to us here in the RIA Library.

In 2013, following his death at the age of 91, the Academy was gifted the papers of Prof. Kevin B. Nowlan MRIA, the Dublin-born historian and champion of architectural conservation. This extensive collection of papers reflects his varied interests and work. Cataloguing the Nowlan collection, I found the papers relating to his work with RTÉ in 1966 to be particularly interesting and timely.

Nowlan & RTÉ

In 1965, Nowlan was appointed as Historical Advisor to both Raidió Éireann and Teilifís Éireann in respect of the commemorative programming for the Golden Jubilee of the 1916 Easter Rising. This meant that no scriptwriters or researchers were to be appointed without Nowlan’s endorsement and no scripts were to enter production without his prior approval.

The planning for the commemorative programming had begun as early as 1963 when Francis MacManus, General Features Officer at RTÉ Raidió Éireann commissioned a series of radio interviews with survivors of the Rising. Proinsias MacAonghusa undertook the interviews, noting in a letter to MacManus “As you know, the list of survivors gets thinner week by week”[1].

A typewritten letter from Proinsias MacAonghusa to Francis MacManus, RTÉ. 25 August 1964. RIA/KBN/7/7/1/4

Contemporary sources

Those working on the commemorative programmes had to cater both to those survivors of the Rising who were still alive in 1966 and a younger generation who knew little about it due to the “sustained neglect” of the period by Irish historians.[2] It is worth noting that this neglect was in part due to the scarcity of primary sources available to those interested in the period. The valuable witness statements collected by the Bureau of Military History between 1947 and 1957 would not be open to the public until 2003. Historians had to rely largely on newspapers, parliamentary reports and what autobiographies had then been published by some of the survivors. Furthermore, there were difficulties in talking about what was still a relatively recent event, not least one so controversial and divisive. In a 1965 letter to RTÉ regarding researchers for Insurrection, Nowlan noted that the Taoiseach’s Office “are fearful of the names of informers and the like filtering down to local places”[3].

Planning for controversy

The documents from the planning stages of the commemorative programming show RTÉ making a concerted effort to avoid any potentially controversial aspects of the Rising. It was decided that there should be an emphasis on the surviving participants and that “there should not be an interpretive or analytical approach, but an idealistic and emotional one”[4]. Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars was deemed inappropriate for the official commemorative drama. The socialist aspect of the Easter Rising was not to be emphasised over the nationalist aspect and vice versa. The word ‘insurrection’ was to be used in place of ‘rebellion’[5].

Minutes of a Raidió Éireann meeting on 1916 commemorative programming. 22 July 1965. RIA/KBN/7/7/1/9 pg.1

Public involvement

Members of the public were particularly interested in the planned programming and many sent letters to RTÉ suggesting possible topics and interviewees. Some wrote to RTÉ telling their own or their family’s stories from the Rising. One particularly interesting letter, from a William C. Sweeney of Greenwich, recounts two stories from his time working on the boats from Holyhead to Dublin.[6] One of his stories concerns Michael Collins travelling to London for treaty negotiations in 1921 when Mr. Alfred Cope, Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland, happened to be travelling on the same ferry. Sweeney recounts how Cope had his armed guard vacate his sleeping berth in order to give it to Collins who had been too late in booking to secure one. The other story concerns executioner John Ellis travelling to Ireland to execute Kevin Barry.

Letter from William C. Sweeney, Greenwich, to the Director of Raidió Éireann. 21 January 1966. RIA/KBN/7/7/1/25 pg.1

Disputing the story

RTÉ’s dramatic offering for 2016, The Rising, came in for some criticism for the supposed inclusion of historical inaccuracies for the sake of drama. Indeed, the story was much the same in 1966. Nowlan disputed elements of Insurrection with the then head of RTÉ, Gunnar Rugheimer, in advance of the programming, concerned that certain elements were not historically accurate and noting that his acceptance of these elements would damage his own work in this period of Irish history. Nowlan’s concerns related to the use of Irish language phrases, a scene showing the wounding and treatment of James Connolly, whether Sean MacDermott had polio as a child and the prominent inclusion of Lieutenant George Mahony.

Reception

Once Insurrection was broadcast some relatives of the Easter Rising participants wrote to RTÉ with their comments. Kathleen Mahony, the widow of the aforementioned Lieutenant George Mahony, wrote after the first episode to note how she, her daughters and her son-in-law were “enthralled” to see her husband portrayed on the programme, commenting on how the actor playing her late husband is very like him in looks and mannerisms – “Could you please tell Mr. Murray how wonderfully true his impersonation was?”[7] She wrote once more after the final episode to correct the fallacy that her husband was English, noting that he was born in Cork and “entirely Irish”[8].

Letter from Kathleen Mahony to Jack White, RTÉ. 27 April 1966. RIA/KBN/7/7/2/2/36 pg.2

Sarah Floyd, a niece of John J. Doyle, Dublin Brigade Medical Officer 1915-1922, had also written to RTÉ to say that it was her uncle rather than Lieutenant Mahony who dressed Connolly’s wounds and that he lives with her if they wish to verify this story. This was certainly the story which Doyle had given in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History.[9]

1916 stories

Then, as now, there was an appetite for those whose families were involved in the Rising to tell their stories. This was facilitated in 2016 with projects such as the DRI’s Inspiring Ireland public memorabilia ‘collection days’ where unique items relating to the Rising were digitised and are now available to the wider public on http://www.inspiring-ireland.ie/.

The Nowlan collection is now available to readers. To read the letters shown in this blog in full, please click here for PDF: Celebrating 1916 in 1966 Letters

This blog has been written with the co-operation of the RTÉ Archives, who also hold material on Insurrection and the 1966 commemorations.
Main image courtesy of RTÉ Archives.

Further reading:

• Brian Lynch, ‘TV Eye: Through the eyes of 1916’, History Ireland, Vol 14, Issue 2, Mar/Apr 2006.
• 1916 in 1966 Commemorating the Easter Rising, ed. Mary E. Daly and Margaret O’Callaghan (2007).

Karen de Lacey
Nowlan Archivist

Johann Kaspar Zeuss (1806-1856) is rightly lauded as the father of the modern academic discipline of Celtic studies. His two-volume magnum opus, Grammatica Celtica, which appeared largely unheralded in 1853, established incontrovertibly through the study of Old Irish sources the relationship of the Celtic languages to the Indo-European family. His achievement is made notable by the fact that such a link had hitherto been only one of many conclusions as to their origin, reached with varying levels of academic rigour, that were doing the rounds previous to Zeuss during the early 19th century. Zeuss’ portrait from the Royal Irish Academy’s collection has recently been hung in the office of our Foclóir Stairiúil na Gaeilge/Historical Dictionary of Irish, which fitting, if inevitably humbling, event gives us occasion to consider the achievement of this unassuming Bavarian scholar and how he came to be owed so much by subsequent scholarship in Irish and Celtic philology.

Portrait of Johann Kaspar Zeuss

Zeuss grew up near the town of Kronach, spending his boyhood helping on the farm. He progressed to the University of Munich, where an aptitude in language study is evidenced by his distinguished performance in Classics, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Old Slavonic. His research interests were initially in history, however, and his 800-page volume on German history, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme appeared in 1837. With it the young scholar’s reputation had been established, but was perhaps negatively influenced by a second book, Die Herkunft der Baiern von den Markomannen, published in 1839, in which Zeuss criticised other historians and their attempts to interpret history without the linguistic skills he deemed requisite to deal properly with the historical sources. An academic position in a pre-eminent university did not materialise, despite several applications. The criticism within the book refers most vehemently to scholars who could not discern between Germanic and Celtic words, and it is to be presumed that he had acquired some knowledge of the Celtic languages at this stage.

Celtomania

This was the age of ‘Celtomania’, a phenomenon which for want of learned, scientific and empirical research into their origins, had ascribed various fanciful and unproven ancestry to the Celtic languages, often relating them to mysterious peoples and exotic tongues. Only tentatively, by the time of Zeuss, had serious scholars suggested that Celtic was related to the Indo-European family, and it is notable that the great philologists Jacob Ludwig Grimm (he, with his brother Wilhelm, of fairytale fame) and Franz Bopp did not include Celtic in their great comparative surveys of German, Sanskrit, Zend (Avestan), Greek, Latin, Lithuanian and Gothic, which traced the ancestry of the premier European languages eastwards to the heart of India. Surely the Celtic languages, spoken on the very fringes of the continent, their vast early literature still only very slowly coming to be appreciated, could not be similar in origin? Arrival from the west, north or even the African continent was maintained by many to be a more likely scenario. MacPherson’s Ossian tales and the subsequent debates around the authenticity of their source, and Vallancey’s ‘absurd and fanciful etymologies’ were a further setback to the reputation of the discipline.[i]

Reproduced by kind permission of An Post © Statue of Johann Kasper Zeuss at Kronach, Germany

Grammatica Celtica

It was to this gap in the knowledge of the situation of Celtic that Zeuss addressed himself, setting about his task through his study of Old Irish sources. What is perhaps most remarkable by today’s standards is that he never visited Ireland, and it is questionable whether indeed he ever met an Irish speaker. His approach to the problem led him ad fontes; he travelled to libraries across Europe wherein were housed the earliest examples of written Irish. These were in the form of glosses, such as those found in Würzburg, Karlsruhe, Milan and Turin (mostly from the 8th century, but some in the so-called prima manus, from the 7th), in which commentaries in Irish on, for example, the epistles of Paul are found between lines and in text margins. Zeuss transcribed and interpreted these and other such examples and from his analysis he was able to lay out in Grammatica Celtica, for the first time, the grammar of the language. In his return to the earliest extant forms of the language, Zeuss was a pioneer; earlier in the eighteenth century the glosses had been identified as Irish but mistakes had been made in their interpretation. Zeuss brought to their study his modern training that enabled him to tackle the scientific study of any language. His reliance on the glosses is almost absolute, and he barely refers to any extant scholarship in Celtic, obviously preferring to build all his conclusions solely on the foundation of the sources.

Grammatica Celtica by J. C. Zeuss (Lipsiae, 1853)

John O’Donovan

One scholar whose work in the field is indeed mentioned in the preface to Grammatica Celtica is John O’Donovan, whose copy of Grammatica is in the Academy’s Library. O’Donovan introduced the great work to the Irish public in a review article in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology in 1859 where he speaks of the ‘scarcely credible’ nature of what Zeuss has achieved, in order ‘to show how much all future Irish grammarians owe to the vast and true learning, and indefatigable industry of J. Caspar Zeuss’. With the publication of Grammatica Celtica in 1853, Zeuss had established Celtic studies on an international stage, proving what his predecessors had only glanced at and suggested.

O’Donovan was correct in his assertion that Grammatica Celtica would pave the way for further investigation into Irish grammar, and Rudolf Thurneysen’s Handbuch des Altirischen, appearing in 1909 brought matters further along, and was translated to English by D.A. Binchy and O. Bergin as A Grammar of Old Irish in 1946. Furthermore, it is no exaggeration to say that the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of the Irish Language, and ongoing research in Irish philology and lexicography, owes much to the achievement of Zeuss and is part of his legacy. James Henthorn Todd, the Irish historian and President of the Academy from 1856-61 was an admirer of Zeuss, and had invited him to take an academic position in Dublin, which Zeuss had accepted and he had plans to travel here. Alas he succumbed to his long-endured poor health before being able to accept this accolade; the pulmonary tuberculosis that had claimed other members of his family before him now caused his own death. Todd spoke in his inaugural speech of the need for an authoritative dictionary of the Irish language, and this endeavour was finally undertaken in the early 20th century and it continues in another form to this day, now under the studious gaze of Johann Kaspar Zeuss. Táimid go mór faoi chomaoin ag an Ghearmánach seo a tharraing gort chun míntíreachais a bhí á phlúchadh ag an fhiaile, gort inar fhás agus inar bhláthaigh an oiread sin de shaothrú scolártha, nárbh ann ach dá thaise murach é.

Charles Dillon
Eagarthóir
Foclóir Stairiúil Gaeilge
Historical Dictionary of Irish

At first sight it looks inconsequential; a smallish notebook with a fading list of dates, names and numbers. Was it almost discarded as waste paper some 200 years ago? I’m sure at the time some may have preferred it had been. Was it stolen to protect a person or persons unknown from its sensitive contents? In today’s parlance, was it leaked?

Known as the Secret Service Money Book, this small quarto-sized manuscript consists of payments made by the government ‘for the purposes of detecting, preventing, or defeating treasonable or other dangerous conspiracies against the state’.[i] It covers payments made between 21 August 1797 and 31 March 1804 and includes monies paid to informers during the Rebellions of 1798 and 1803.

Codenames

In many instances only the initial letters or ‘codenames’ of the recipients are used. The barrister, United Irishman and serial informer, Leonard MacNally, is listed as ‘L.M.’, ‘M.N.’, ‘T.W.’ or J.W.’. There are a number of entries noting payments made to ‘MacNally’ through his go-between, the attorney and Castle agent, John Pollock.

‘A record of secret service financial transactions in Ireland, 1797-1804, with a note on 1795-7’ [Secret Service Money Book] MS 23 D 44

Pricetag on Betrayal

Information leading to the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Robert Emmet had a high value. An entry for 20 June 1798 reads:

‘F.H. discovery of L.E.F. £1000’.

This was a payment made to Francis Higgins (also known as the ‘Sham Squire’), proprietor of the Freeman’s Journal.

Francis Higgins (The Sham Squire) taken from “The Sham Squire”: and the informers of 1798 / by William J. Fitz-Patrick (Dublin, 1866)

A mysterious entry for 5 November 1803 may reveal secrets of another famous betrayal:

‘Finlay and Co., account of Richd.Jones, esq. … £1000’

According to R. R. Madden in his book The life and times of Robert Emmet (Dublin, 1847) ‘there can be little doubt [this] was the reward for the apprehension of Robert Emmet.’ It is not certain if Madden was correct .

‘A record of secret service financial transactions in Ireland, 1797-1804, with a note on 1795-7’ [Secret Service Money Book] MS 23 D 44

The Cost of Law and Order

The notebook not only lists payments made to informers, it also includes money spent on accommodating and feeding prisoners, travel expenses and other sundries. Major Sirr, town-major of Dublin and the man who shot and arrested Lord Edward, appears in the book many times. An entry for 26 July 1798 lists a payment of £9 6s to Major Sirr ‘for pistols for Mr Reynolds’. A generous side of Major Sirr is revealed in an entry for 29 December 1798, when we see a payment of £6 16s. 6d. for Christmas boxes for six men.

The Book

The Secret Service Money Book (SSMB) was originally kept in the Record Tower at Dublin Castle and bought by Charles Haliday. It is now held by the Royal Irish Academy as part of the Haliday Collection.[ii] How it left the Castle in the first place is a bit of a mystery.

The Castle Chapel and Record Tower / by George Petrie, MRIA. Petrie Collection 12 Q 7

Stolen?

The first person to publish material from SSMB was the historian R. R. Madden in his work The United Irishmen: their lives and times (1842-6). According to the historian John P. Prendergast, Madden said the book was stolen by a carpenter from the Record Tower at Dublin Castle, along with other items and sold to a grocer on Capel Street.[iii] Prendergast explained that Madden borrowed the SSMB from the grocer. Concerned that his reference book was stolen property and contained damaging information, Madden was at first reluctant to publish and asked Daniel O’Connell for his legal opinion. O’Connell asked ‘Did you steal the book?’, Madden replied ‘No’, ‘then publish’, O’Connell advised! Madden did not refer to the dubious provenance of the book in his own work.

According to W. J. Fitzpatrick in his book ‘The Sham Squire’: and The Informer of 1798 (Dublin, 1866), Madden obtained access to the SSMB in 1841 ‘under strange circumstances’.[iv] From Fitzpatrick’s book we also find the following alternative version of the discovery of the SSMB, related by an unknown person, referred to only as Dr __:

Discarded?

‘When Lord Mulgrave, … was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1835-9), some official in Dublin Castle cleared out and sold a quantity of books and papers, which were purchased in one lot by John Feagan, a dealer in second-hand books, who had as his place of buisness, a cellar at the corner of Henry Street. … They and others of the collection had each a red leather label, on which, in large capitals, was impressed ‘Library, Dublin Castle’. Among them was the MS. account of the expenditure of the Secret Service Money, and of which I was the first to point out the possible value when it was about to be thrown, with various useless and imperfect books, into waste paper.’[v]

The Haliday connection

Fitzpatrick also explained how the SSMB finally ended up in the safe hands of Charles Haliday. “The Secret Service Money Book” explained Mr. Haliday, “was sold with other curious documents as waste paper.”[vi] Fitzpatrick also included a letter by a Mr Sylvester Redmond, added as an appendix, which questioned Haliday’s story and corroborated the story that the book was stolen. Mr Redmond explained:

‘The document in question was not ‘cleared out and sold’ by any official in the Castle—it was stolen with some other valuable documents, but it came into the hands of poor John Fegan in an honest and legitimate manner. He kept a stall at the corner of Off Lane and Henry Street, … The doctor, I think, has made a mistake by stating that it was publicly exhibited for sale. No man in the world knew the value of such a document better than poor Fegan. He showed it to Mr Edward Byrne (since dead,) who kept a tavern at No. 6 Capel Street. … and Mr Byrne sent for me and showed it to me. Although young, I was immediately alive to the value of the treasure that lay before me, and I at once resolved to possess it. I appointed to meet Mr Byrne and Fegan in the evening, and did so; but imagine my surprise when I found the treasure had flown. Mr Byrne had taken it back to the Castle! Between the time I had seen him in the forenoon and my visit in the evening, a person from the Castle called on Mr Byrne, and threatened to have him transported if he did not give up the document! Mr B. was a very timid man, and at once proceeded to the Castle and delivered it up. It seems that, in consequence of the gossip raised by poor Fegan about it, it was missed from the Castle, and hot search made after it. The above is the result. This was in the latter end of 1838, or beginning of ’39. I have often regretted the loss, for had I got it, no pressure would have extracted it from me.’[vii]

According to Fitzpatrick, Haliday was adamant it wasn’t stolen but sold as waste-paper. We are told Haliday purchased the SSMB at the auction house of Joseph Scully, Ormond Quay.[viii] Was Haliday correct or did he want to play down the true nature of events?

Historian and former Librarian of the Royal Irish Academy Library, Sir John T. Gilbert (1829-98), made a transcript of the SSMB and published it in Documents relating to Ireland, 1795-1804 (Dublin, 1893). By this point Haliday was dead and the manuscript was in the RIA Library, where it remains to this day. Gilbert made no mention of the provenance of the manuscript other than it was owned by a Dublin bookseller about the year 1840 and subsequently acquired by Haliday. The Weekly Irish Times for Saturday 14 January, 1893 published a review of Gilbert’s book and noted ‘the history of the manuscript is curious’.

As we have seen there is much confusion around the journey the Secret Service Money Book made from Dublin Castle to the shelves of the Royal Irish Academy Library, less than a mile away. One thing we know for sure is that the mysterious little book doesn’t readily volunteer all of its secrets.

The Secret Service Money Book was part of the Library’s exhibition ‘Dublin Documents: highlights from Charles Haliday’s manuscript collection’ and is now available as an online exhibition.

Sophie Evans
Assistant Librarian

The surviving sixteenth-century manuscript of the Annals of Connacht is unique; no other contemporary copy of the text survives. The manuscript contains an important chronicle of Irish history extending from AD 1224 to AD 1544.

What are the Annals of Connacht?

The vellum manuscript we now call the Annals of Connacht was written in the mid-sixteenth century. The contents were derived from older annals compiled for the O’Conors of Connacht. The annals contain obituaries of prominent individuals together with an annual record of significant events for some 320 years, from 1224 to 1544, with one later entry for the year 1562. The opening entry is a substantial obituary for Cathal Crobderg O’Conor, who died in 1224.

Gearóid Mac Niocaill, writing in the 1970s, observed that much of the content of the Annals of Connacht seems to derive from a fifteenth-century compilation by a member of the Ó Maoil Chonaire family of professional historians (Mac Niocaill, 1975:32). The principal evidence for this is that the main focus of the Annals of Connacht is on the Gaelic lordships of north Connacht, and particularly on the O’Conors, descendants of the last high king of Ireland. The learned family of Ó Maoil Chonaire were hereditary historians to the O’Conors. Three scribes are responsible for the manusctript but only two identify themselves: Paitin and Sean Riabhach. No surname is given, but they were probably members of the learned family of Ó Duibhgeannáin.

Who owned the Annals of Connacht?

The unique manuscript of the Annals of Connacht (RIA MS C iii 1) has been preserved in the Royal Irish Academy Library since 1883 when it was returned to Ireland with the rest of the Stowe/Ashburnham collection of manuscripts. More than a century earlier, it had been acquired by the antiquarian scholar Charles O’Conor of Ballinagare, County Roscommon, and there are some annotations in his hand from the 1740s. The manuscript is now accompanied by many ancillary notes on the history of the O’Conors in papers that have been preserved alongside the vellum manuscript since the mid-eighteenth century. The eighteenth-century binding includes Charles O’Conor’s bookplate on the inside back cover.

Bookplate of Charles O’Conor from Annals of Connacht (Photo: B. Cunningham)

Before O’Conor acquired the volume, it is known that up to the late 1720s the manuscript was in the hands of the Ó Duibhgeannáin family in north Connacht. On folio 15r there is the signature of ‘Dominick Digginan’ and the date 1727, and the manuscript had probably been in the continuous ownership of that family for almost 200 years.

The new binding

A decision was taken in 2008 to rebind the manuscript, because the late eighteenth-century binding of the manuscript had become extremely worn and the front and back boards had become detached.

The condition was such that the manuscript could no longer be put on display, and could not be issued to readers because of the risk of loss or damage to disbound parts of the manuscript. It was cleaned, repaired and re-bound by conservator Anthony Cains in 2008-09. It is now bound in Irish oak boards with a white spine made of pig-skin, the vellum leaves carefully resewn into the new binding.

New binding of Annals of Connacht, the work of Anthony Cains, 2008-09 (Photo: B. Cunningham)

This extensive conservation work, funded by a private benefactor, was done with a view to conserving the manuscript as securely as possible for future generations. This kind of major intervention with a medieval manuscript means that certain aspects that might be considered characteristic of the manuscript are modified. In the case of the Annals of Connacht, ancillary papers dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth century that had been inserted into the eighteenth-century binding as part of a repair job at some point in the twentieth century have now been removed. These papers have been cleaned and conserved and are now bound separately from the original vellum manuscript.

These paper accretions preserve clues to the history of the manuscript and its use through the centuries, and need to be preserved and studied. However, just as an historic building of the sixteenth century might be restored to its original form, by peeling away later layers of renovation and redecoration, so it is with a manuscript like the Annals of Connacht, where the form in which it has now been conserved is as close as it can be rendered to the form in which it was first created. The highest possible standards of manuscript conservation have been applied so as to create a binding that will enhance the preservation of the vellum leaves on which the text is written, and to create a robust manuscript that will, we hope, last well into the future.

The older binding is also part of the history of the manuscript and it, too, has been preserved. It is stored in a special drawer built into the box in which the manuscript is housed. In addition, there are the conservator’s notes on the condition of the manuscript at the time of the conservation and rebinding. These notes are kept on file in the library, and can be made available to researchers interested in the history of the manuscript and its binding as physical object.

New box and bindings of Annals of Connacht, the work of Anthony Cains (Photo: B. Cunningham)

Conclusion

Now that the manuscript has been restored and is useable again, and has been digitised for the Irish Script on Screen website, not to mention published with a translation and index, there’s really no excuse not to study this important text from sixteenth-century Connacht that preserves so much of the history of the O’Conors and other Connacht families as well as providing evidence of the scholarly endeavours of the professional historians of the O’Duigenans and O Maoilchonaires through the centuries. Any volunteers for the task?

Further reading

Kathleen Mulchrone’s description of the manuscript was published in Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, Fasc. XXVI (Dublin, 1943), pp 3274-6.

Martin Freeman (ed. & transl.), Annála Connacht (Dublin, 1944).

Gearóid Mac Niocaill, The medieval Irish annals (Dublin, 1975).

A full transcript of the Irish text, with English translation, is freely available online as part of the Corpus of Electronic Texts. www.ucc.ie/celt

The manuscript (C iii 1) was digitised in 2002 by the Irish Script on Screen project. www.isos.dias.ie

Bernadette Cunningham
Deputy Librarian

In January 1867 the Royal Irish Academy received a letter from Mr Richard Welch announcing that Mrs Mary Haliday had decided to donate her late husband’s collection of books, pamphlets and manuscripts to the Royal Irish Academy Library. The letter notes that Mrs Haliday is

‘desirous to pay this tribute to the memory of her late beloved and lamented husband, and at the same time to preserve to the Royal Irish Academy so valuable and unique a collection.’

Letter from Richard Welch to the Royal Irish Academy, 9 Jan 1867.

The collection was welcomed as

‘a handsome donation, which will form so important an accession to the Library of the Academy and prove so beneficial in future times to the students of Irish history’[i]

Pamphlets

The collection consists of some 36,000 pamphlets, tracts & broadsides, 800 books and 290 manuscripts. If you visit the Reading Room of the RIA Library you will see Haliday’s pamphlets lining the walls of the Gallery. Mrs Haliday’s Monkstown house must have felt quite bare when the collection was moved into its new home in Academy House. Follow the Library Twitter account for a Haliday pamphlet every day throughout January #Haliday150.

To celebrate 150 years of this remarkable collection the Library has organised an exhibition highlighting a selection of Dublin manuscripts from Haliday’s collection. Online exhibition.

Library Exhibition: Dublin Documents – Highlights from Charles Haliday’s manuscript collection (9 January 5 May 2017)

Historical notes

Haliday devoted much of his time to historical research. He was particularly interested in the early history of Dublin. On behalf of the Ballast Board (The Corporation for Preserving and improving the Port of Dublin) he undertook extensive research on the history of Dublin port which led him to examine the Viking settlement of the city. The Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin (Dublin, 1882) was edited by his friend, the historian John P. Prendergast and published posthumously in 1883. The exhibition includes notebooks written by Haliday full of well-organized notes with references to books and manuscripts he consulted.

Reports on trades and manufactures, Dublin

A manuscript volume consisting of a copy of reports presented to Daniel O’Connell in1834. Over 37 trades are listed, describing the status of each trade before and after the Act of Union.Trades include ropemakers, hatter, bakers, coopers, shipwrights, cotton, wool and silk manufacturers, chandlers, tanners, printers, and book binders.

Secret Service Money Book

Known as the Secret Service Money Book, this manuscript consists of lists of payments made by the Government for secret information. It includes payments made to informers during the Rebellions of 1798 and 1803.

Secret Service Money Book, MS 23 D 44

Act of the Privy Council in Ireland, 1556-1571

In the sixteenth-century, the Privy Council acted as an advisory body to the Lord Deputy of Ireland (Chief Governor).

A volume recording the activities of the Council from 26 May 1556 to 22 March 1571. Subjects covered by the Council included defence, law and order, trade and financial policy and local government.

Registrum Monasterii St Thomas [Register of the Abbey of St Thomas, Dublin]

A register consisting of transcripts of documents connected to the Abbey of St Thomas copied by William Copinger of Cork in 1526. It is written in Latin in the chancery hand of the period, with some rubric headings. The large initial letters have a strap or ribbon decoration.

Registrum Monasterii St Thomas, MS12 D 2

Guild of St Anne

The Guild of St Anne was established in 1430 by charter of King Henry VI and a chantry chapel was established at St Audoen’s Church, Dublin. The collection includes over 200 documents relating to the Guild of St Anne with over150 deeds relating to guild property. The exhibition will highlight a small selection of items from this collection.

Lunchtime Lecture: Wednesday 1 March 2017, 1pm – Professor Colm Lennon, MRIA, will give a lecture on the manuscripts of the Guild of St Anne ‘Charitable property: the manuscripts of St Anne’s Guild, Dublin’.

Who was Charles Haliday?

Charles Haliday was born in 1789 probably in Dublin. He was a merchant, banker, antiquarian, public health reformer and a prolific collector of books, pamphlets and manuscripts, particularly those of Irish interest. As a well known book collector, auctioneers sent him their catalogues and the waste-paper sellers of Dublin would wait for him outside his offices, bringing him books, pamphlets, broadsides and other ephemera. Most of the biographical information we have on Haliday comes from his friend John P. Prendergast, who describes him as:

“tall and well proportioned. His countenance was expressive of great animation and energy. He had a fine head and regular features with a brow indicative of capacity. His mein had something haughty; his manners though courteous, were rather distant and forbad familiarity; but to friends he was free and cordial.”

Portrait of Charles Haliday

Haliday lived and conducted his bark & timber business from a building on Dublin’s Arran Quay. It has recently been discovered that he may have been educated at Walker’s School on South William Street. He became a wealthy man but was by no means part of the idle rich! As a successful merchant he figured prominently in the Dublin business community, he was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and was a Director and Governor of the Bank of Ireland. Away from commerce Haliday dedicated much of his time to social and public health reform, campaigning for better living conditions for the poor of the city. He wrote numerous pamphlets and letters to newspapers on both social and business issues. He was an active member of the Mendicity Association of Dublin, personally administering to the sick during the cholera epidemic of 1832.

Haliday set out to make enough money and be comfortably well off so he could dedicate more of his time to social issues and also to historical research. He was particularly interested in the early history of Dublin and wrote a book entitled : The Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin, which was published posthumously in 1881. He became a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1847 and served on the Committee of Antiquities for many years.

In 1834 he moved out to Monkstown, Co. Dublin and in 1843 he built himself a large villa to his own design. The house included a large library and study to house his ever-growing collection. Haliday died at Monkstown Park on the 14 September 1866 at the age of 77. In the last months of his life Haliday undertook a statistical survey of the slum areas of Kingstown – walking the streets and laneways compiling a detailed description of the buildings and living conditions of the poor. He was proofreading his work ‘A statistical Inquiry into the Sanitary conditions of Kingstown’ when he was taken ill. This work was published in 1867.

As long ago as 2000 James Gleick took note of a cultural shift toward acceleration manifest in such phenomena as a reduction in sleeping time, ‘millisecond sensitivity that breeds further dependence on technology,’ and modification of telephone operator scripts to eliminate courteous phrasing as a time-saving measure.[i] Similarly in his well-known book 24/7 Jonathan Crary writes about the accelerated pace of daily life and the elaboration of work into multiple spheres from which it used to maintain separation.[ii] Judy Wajcman has observed that ‘People’s subjective sense of time pressure has become urgent,’ while Melissa Gregg has analysed the ways in which ‘consciousness of the always-present potential for engaging with work is a new form of affective labor that must be constantly regulated.’[iii] The strong consensus is that we are called upon more and more to be frantic multi-taskers while ‘the elaboration, the modelling of one’s personal and social identity, has been reorganized to conform to the uninterrupted operation of markets, information networks, and other systems.’[iv]

Academics are hardly immune from these developments despite popular culture’s predilection for depicting us as culturally removed solitary thinkers who sustain a sole and uninterrupted focus on our research while dwelling on a remote higher plane. Indeed, contemporary university environments are more and more marked by heightened administrative burdens in baroquely technocratic regimes characterized by high levels of interruptedness. While it has always been true that the job of a university faculty member entails smooth coordination of research, teaching and administrative responsibilities, the calibration of these elements seems trickier of late and certainly digital culture contributes to a pervasive sensibility that there is more to keep up with. Like many academics, I find my work being emphatically globalized; with colleagues and contacts in North America, Asia and elsewhere there is no phase of the day or night when email isn’t coming in from somewhere. Libraries such as the Royal Irish Academy’s Reading Room offer a salutary refuge in such an era. Facilitating lengthy periods of concentration, they are refuges for mono-tasking.

I want to venture a few comments about the particular usefulness of the RIA library to scholars as it is a space I have been making regular use of and deriving significant benefits from. To come into the library lately is to experience the vivid contrast between the tumult of the Dawson Street LUAS works and the wondrous quiet of the RIA. As a site for focused concentration the Reading Room is unrivalled; this is a place where whispering librarians and patrons are mindful of each other’s engrossment.

Maybe I am showing my age here, but I want a library to look, sound and even smell like a library. The primary colors, open-plan design and technologized operating systems that have taken over many libraries are out of sync with those expectations. At the RIA there is a pervasive and pleasing ‘book smell,’ the building absorbs sound and wood, glass and paper predominate over metal and plastic. In this space the disruptive innovations that reduce contact between human beings while ratcheting up administrative confusion don’t set a tone of frustration and bewilderment. Questions to librarians are straightforwardly and directly dealt with.

For all these reasons, I’ve come to place a high premium on the RIA as a scholarly space in the heart of the city, a site where a more traditional set of protocols still governs interactions between library users and staff and where the work of reading, note-taking and writing can proceed in a deliberate, productive and unhurried way. In short, the Reading Room provides the kind of contemplative ethos and experience I crave more and more on days dominated by administrative problem-solving work set to the tune of the pings of each new addition in the inbox.

Diane Negra, MRIA
University College Dubin

Diane Negra, MRIA, is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture and Head of Film Studies at University College Dublin. The Co-Editor-in-Chief of Television and New Media, she is the author, editor or co-editor of ten books including the forthcoming The Aesthetics and affects of cuteness (Routledge, 2016).

National Bibliographic Centre for Irish History

Here in the Royal Irish Academy Library a team of compilers work on Irish History Online (IHO), an up-to-date and comprehensive database listing of publications on Irish history. We are the National Bibliographic Centre for Irish History. IHO is an essential resource for the study of Irish history at any level, and is free of charge to users.

What is it?

Irish History Online is an authoritative listing of what has been written about Irish history from earliest times to the present. It lists writings on Irish history published since the 1930s, with selected material published in earlier decades. It includes 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. It is kept up to date, and already lists many books and articles published in 2016. The database is updated almost daily and more than 3,000 new entries are added each year.

The Irish History Online database includes a fully searchable electronic version of the printed listings of ‘Writings on Irish History’ that were published annually in Irish Historical Studies since the late 1930s. Cumulatively, over 95,000 bibliographic records on Irish history are now searchable online through the Irish History Online database.

The project team

Irish History Online is compiled and regularly updated by a team of voluntary editors and compilers. The team in 2016 is: Eoin Baireád, Máirín Cassidy, Ciarán McCabe, Pádraicín Ní Mhurchú and Sinéad Noonan. The work is coordinated by Bernadette Cunningham, deputy librarian, editor of Irish History Online.

We remember with great fondness and respect Ciaran Nicholson, former IHO compiler, who died in May 2016. From his base in Trinity College Library, Ciaran worked from 1989 to 2013 as compiler of new data on books and articles in books and contributed hugely to the comprehensiveness of the Irish History Online database.

External support

The IHO project team is very grateful to Irish Historical Studies Ltd, who provided some funding to the project in 2016. This donation, matched with some existing funding, enabled a librarian (Sinéad Noonan) to be employed on a two-day week between April and July 2016.

Maynooth University Department of History funded a student (Brendan Hannon) to work on the IHO database in summer 2016. This ‘SPUR’ scheme was administered by Dr Jacinta Prunty and Prof. Jacqueline Hill at Maynooth while training was provided by Bernadette Cunningham in the Royal Irish Academy Library.

The Legal Deposit departments at Trinity College Library and the National Library of Ireland supply us with monthly lists of new acquisitions relating to Ireland. These are checked by the project team and relevant items are added to the IHO database.

The Irish Committee of Historical Sciences continues to support our vital national bibliographic project as it has done since its foundation.

Our European partners

Irish History Online (IHO) is part of a European network of national historical bibliographies.

We are members of the European Historical Bibliographies Network, a collaborative international project of subject-specific bibliographies from fourteen European countries. Together, these bibliographies are part of the fundamental research infrastructure for the humanities in Europe. The Network promotes cooperation among the participating institutions and brings together, on a European level, the various national bibliographic resources so that trans-national historical research is facilitated. The common platform is hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften).

The European Historical Bibliographies Network has held five international conferences to address technical data-management as well as cultural and historical issues experienced by the various individual bibliographical projects. In 2015 a new milestone was reached with the publication of Historical Bibliography as an Essential Source for Historiography (Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on European Historical Bibliographies), Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2015. The book was launched by Professor Mary Daly, at a reception held at Boston College, 43 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, in January 2016. Professor Marian Lyons (Maynooth U.), president of the Irish Historical Society, Professor Jacqueline Hill, IHO convenor and Dr Bernadette Cunningham, IHO managing editor, also spoke at the event. http://www.cambridgescholars.com/historical-bibliography-as-an-essential-source-for-historiography

You can help

If you have published an article or book on Irish history, or on the history of the Irish abroad, do check that your publication is listed on our Irish History Online database. You are very welcome to send us details of any additions or corrections. Please email your comments and suggestions to the IHO project editor at iho@ria.ie. We aim to provide a comprehensive, accurate, up-to-date listing, and if you have published research on Irish history, we would like to record your work on Irish History Online.

IHO Management committee, 2016

• Professor Jacqueline Hill, convenor
• Dr Bernadette Cunningham, editor
• Ms Máirín Cassidy, compiler
• Dr Ciarán McCabe, compiler
• Mr Wayne Aherne, RIA, head of IT
• Professor Emeritus Vincent Comerford
• Ms Siobhán Fitzpatrick, RIA, Librarian
• Professor Mary O’Dowd

Bernadette Cunningham
Deputy Librarian

1 July 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of one of the worst battles in military history. The Battle of the Somme lasted 141 days and claimed over a million casualties, including c.3,500 Irishmen. The First World War (WWI) raged on for another two years with the final death toll exceeding 38 million. Ireland’s Memorial Records, a Roll of Honour listing the names of Irishmen killed in WWI, runs to eight volumes and contains 49,400 names. There was no Conscription in Ireland, yet 140,000 Irishmen enlisted between 1914 and 1918. What propelled men to join up? What means did the British Government use to encourage men to take up arms and face an uncertain future in the battle fields?

One of the most well recognised means of recruitment was posters and they became a critical means of communication during WWI. The Academy Library holds 37 WWI posters, six of which were published by the Parliamentary War Savings Committee, London, encouraging people to buy war loans. The remainder are direct recruitment posters. Of these, all but one were printed by The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, London. The collection includes one poster printed in Ireland and aimed directly at Irishmen. It is entitled ‘What have you done for Ireland’ and was printed in Dublin in March 1915 by Alex. Thom.

The lack of local printers being used in the production of recruitment posters is mentioned in the 11th Annual Report of the Dublin Industrial Development Association printed in the 1 July 1916 issue of the Irish Industrial Journal:

‘It was discovered that a large number of the posters so extensively used for recruiting purposes by the War Department were printed in England. The matter was taken up by your Council with the result that the printing of such publications is now entrusted to local firms.’

So, what methods did the posters use to encourage recruitment? One of the earliest posters in the Academy collection was printed in November 1914 by The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, London. This poster is worth mentioning as it became the basis of other well-known recruitment posters. In July 1914 Eric Field of the Caxton Advertising Agency was approached by high ranking governmental officials and sworn to secrecy, he was told that war was imminent and was contracted to design a visual recruitment strategy. Field created a concept in red, white and blue with the Coat of Arms of George V and the words ‘Your King and Country Need you.’ On 5 August 1914, the day after war was declared, a version of this advertisement appeared in a number of newspapers and was printed as an official poster.

A short time later Alfred Leete, influenced by Field’s text, designed his famous Lord Kitchner ‘Needs You’ image – Kitchner pointing at the viewer with the words ‘Your Country needs you.’[i] A similar poster was then designed featuring John Redmond pointing and the words ‘Your first duty is to take your part in ending the war.’[ii] In turn, Leete’s design influenced James Montgomery Flagg who, in the summer of 1916 in America produced the iconic ‘Uncle Sam Needs You poster.’[iii] These images appeal purely to a sense of duty to one’s country, a straight forward statement.

The artist Arthur Wardle used the imagery of a pride of lions with the text ‘The Empire needs men!’ This poster printed in 1915 addresses the Commonwealth stating ‘The overseas states all answer the call. Helped by the young lions the old lion defies his foes. Enlist now.’ Wardle mainly painted animal subjects and spent many hours sketching animals at London Zoo. In this image the old lion standing on the rock represents Britain and the young lions behind represent the countries of the Commonwealth.

Stories of the horrors of war and the desperate conditions of the trenches arrived back from the battlefields. Poster campaigns attempted to counteract this by communicating a positive spin on life in the army. An example of this approach is seen below. This poster features a happy smiling soldier, his cap at a jaunty angle, with the words ‘Come along boys! Enlist today!’

The poster below has the same sentiment, it depicts a group of Highland soldiers laughing and smiling as they march in unison. This image portrays happy soldiers and a sense of comradery and adventure – heading off for adventure with your pals.

The idea of joining the army as an adventure is also seen in an interesting pamphlet I recently came across in our pamphlet collection. Entitled Ireland’s Cause it is printed in both English and Irish and was probably published by the Parliamentary Recruitment Committee. It portrays a positive, attractive view of the army life. It begins by telling the reader the first rule of the Army is to give every man three meals a day ‘it would be hard to beat the stews and pies which form the principle portion of Tommy’s daily menu.’ The pamphlet is illustrated with scenes of men playing football, fencing and boxing. It includes extracts from a speech given by Redmond who had recently visited the front:

‘I met every Irish regiment at the front … they marched by, most of them with green flags flying and the Irish war-pipes playing our national airs. … all they ask of Ireland is that Ireland should stand by them; and I say that there is not a man in the Irish regiments at the front who would not feel humiliated, deserted, and betrayed if those Irish regiments had to rely on Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Welshman to fill gaps in their ranks.’

His words play on a sense of duty and also a sense of Irishness, he is making clear that the British Army has distinct regiments. It is interesting as a piece of propaganda and the fact that it is aimed at Irish speakers.

According to a small article in the Waterford News from 1916, this bilingual pamphlet was sent out to all households in Waterford. The author of the article (‘Gossip by a Gaelic Leaguer: Irish for Recruits’) seems unconvinced by its content:

‘Waterford householders have received copies of a bi-lingual booklet, entitled “Ireland’s Cause”, which has been published by the Recruiting Department in Ireland. There is a description in idiomatic Irish of how Tommy is fed and trained when on active service, together with some of Mr. Redmond’s experiences at the front.’ (Waterford News, Friday February 25 1916, p.6).

The poster below shows a figure of a young boy in a scout’s uniform looking up at his father with the question ‘Father – what did you do to help Britain fight for freedom in 1915?’ In this poster the viewer is forced to look at his sense of duty, his role as a father and a man – how he will be seen by others particularly his son. Another version of this poster was published for the Irish market, with ‘Ireland’ substituted for ‘Britain’ in the text.[iv]

In a similar vein, the poster below forces the viewer to think of how he will be perceived if he doesn’t sign up – it asks the question, if you don’t sign up ‘What will your pals think of you?’

The one poster in the collection printed in Dublin and aimed directly at Irishmen attempts to force the viewer to think of how he will be perceived if he does not join the army and fight. The poster plays on a sense of guilt asking the question ‘Can you meet the eyes of soldiers? Or have you to turn away?’

The poster below urges the viewer to ‘Remember Belgium.’ The German invasion of Belgium resulted in the deaths of over 6,000 civilians and was referred to as the ‘German atrocities’. The poster depicts a soldier standing in the foreground and a woman and child fleeing from a burning village in the background. What is the viewer being asked to do here – To stand up for what is right? To join the army to protect women and children? To be a man?

We can see through this collection the range of emotional, practical and patriotic ways men were called to arms. The collection also includes posters aimed at people not eligible for recruitment, asking ‘If you cannot join the army try & get a recruit’, ‘To the women of Britain … won’t you help and send a man to join the army to-day.’ Whether it was for political reasons, a sense of adventure, a sense of duty or purely for financial reasons, thousands of Irishmen did enlist and thousands were killed or wounded on the battlefields of WWI.

Detailed records of the Library’s WWI Posters are available on our Prints and Drawings Catalogue.

Sophie Evans
Assistant Librarian

Select Bibliography:

Committee of the Irish National War Memorial, Ireland’s memorial records 1914-1918, being the names of Irishmen who fell in the Great European War 1914-1918 (1923)

Department of the Taoiseach, ‘Irish Soldiers in the Battle of the Somme’ http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Historical_Information/1916_Commemorations/Irish_Soldiers_in_the_Battle_of_the_Somme.html

Thomas P. Dooley, Irishmen or English soldiers? : the times and world of southern Catholic Irish man (1876-1916) enlisting in the British army during the First World War (Liverpool, 1996)

D. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Ireland and the First World War (Dublin, 1988)

J. Horne, (ed.), Our war: Ireland and the Great War (Dublin, 2012)

T. Bowman, ‘The Irish at the Battle of the Somme’ History Ireland, Issue 4, Vol. 4. Winter 1996

J. Strachan, C. Nally (eds), Advertising, literature and print culture in Ireland, 1891-1922 (Basingstoke, 2012)

A ‘Book of Fenagh 500 Festival’ takes place in the village of Fenagh, County Leitrim, on 29–31 July 2016. The events commemorate the making of a medieval manuscript known as the Book of Fenagh or Leabhar Chaillín, now among the treasures of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.

Village sign, Fenagh, Co. Leitrim. Photo © B. Cunningham

The Book of Fenagh tells the story of the life of St Caillín, founder of an early Christian monastic community at Fenagh. Caillín is said to have been a disciple of St Columba. Tadhg Ó Rodaighe (Roddy/O’Roddy/Rodachan) of Fenagh commissioned the manuscript in the year 1516. He had a political motive. Ó Rodaighe wished to use stories about St Caillín and the saint’s association with Fenagh to support his own local ambitions, and to promote the status of Fenagh. The life of St Caillín that the manuscript contains was based on an older verse compilation that no longer survives. The new 1516 manuscript had both prose and verse.

Book of Fenagh, folio 2v, AD 1516. Photo © RIA

The manuscript was written in the Irish language by a talented scribe, Muirgheas Ó Maoilchonaire of Cluain Plocáin, in County Roscommon. It is written on vellum (calf-skin), and is a very fine example of late medieval Irish manuscript production.

Following the Reformation, the church lands at Fenagh were transferred to the protestant bishop of Ardagh in 1585. Part of the former monastic church was used for worship by the Church of Ireland until a new church, St Catherine’s, was built nearby c. 1800.[1] Before the end of the eighteenth century the two medieval church buildings at Fenagh were mere picturesque ruins.

1794 engraving of ecclesiastical ruins at Fenagh. From Francis Grose, The Antiquities of Ireland, vol 2 (London 1795). Photo © RIA

The larger medieval church on the site, rebuilt in the fifteenth century, still retains ornate tracery in a large east window. The smaller medieval church to the north-east was the parish church, and the original patron of the Book of Fenagh was erenagh of the parish church. Was the manuscript perhaps originally kept on the upper level of this building, accessed by the stone stairs that still survives at the west end?

Fenagh medieval parish church in the foreground and monastic church on higher ground nearby. Photo © B. Cunningham

The manuscript remained in Fenagh for over 300 years and was still in the possession of the Ó Rodaighe family in the early nineteenth century. After the death of the last Ó Rodaighe owner, the Book of Fenagh was given to Bishop Conroy of Ardagh for safekeeping. In 1888 his successor, Bishop Woodlock, sold the manuscript to the Royal Irish Academy for the sum of £10. This was done on the advice of Rev. Denis Murphy, S.J., ‘in order to ensure its safety for all time’.[2]

The enthusiasm of Denis Kelly, a Roscommon landowner and bibliophile, ensured that the manuscript was translated by 1857. William Hennessy, who worked in the Public Record Office of Ireland, prepared the original text and notes for publication, and their work was published in 1875.

The manuscript was bound by the Royal Irish Academy and was catalogued and given the shelf-mark 23 P 26. The manuscript was digitised by the Irish Script on Screen project in 2003, and it can now be viewed online.

Book of Fenagh in its late-19^th century binding. Photo © RIA

A particular highlight of the ‘Book of Fenagh 500’ festival will be the newly commissioned facsimile of selected pages from the Book of Fenagh that will be on display in Fenagh. The new vellum manuscript is the work of Timothy O’Neill, one of Ireland’s most accomplished scribes. Through him, the skills and techniques of Ireland’s medieval scribes are being carried on into the twenty-first century.

A book of historical essays, Making the Book of Fenagh, is being published by Cumann Seanchais Bhreifne in 2016, edited by Brendan Scott, Raymond Gillespie and Salvador Ryan.

In late summer and autumn 2016, the Library of the Royal Irish Academy will have a special exhibition and lecture series in Academy House, the centre-piece of which will be the 500-year-old Book of Fenagh.

View the exhibition online.

Listen to Noel McGuinness interview Bernadette Cunningham about the Library and the Book of Fenagh – recorded at Academy House during Culture Night 2016.

Bernadette Cunningham
Deputy Librarian

Further reading

W. M. Hennessy & D. H. Kelly (ed. & trans.), The Book of Fenagh in Irish and English (Dublin, 1875, reprint, 1939)

M. J. Moore, Archaeological inventory of County Leitrim (Dublin, 2003), #1410.

M. Herbert, ‘Medieval collections of ecclesiastical and devotional materials: Leabhar Breac, Liber Flavus Fergusiorum and The Book of Fenagh’, in B. Cunningham & S. Fitzpatrick (eds), Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, 2009), pp 33–44.

B. Cunningham & R. Gillespie, ‘Muirgheas Ó Maoilchonaire of Cluain Plocáin: an early sixteenth-century scribe at work’, Studia Hibernica, 35 (2008-9), pp 17–43.

Digitised edition of the Book of Fenagh (RIA MS 23 P 26) is online: www.isos.dias.ie

On Thursday 1 June 1916, the Council of the Royal Irish Academy met as usual but the ongoing war and the recent Rising interfered with its usual business. The first item on the agenda that day was a letter written by Osborn Bergin, MRIA, concerning the Academy’s Irish Dictionary. Bergin, working on the publication of the dictionary, was eager to retrieve research notes which were stranded in Kristiania (now Oslo), having been taken there by Carl Marstrander, MRIA. It had previously been decided to leave the material in Norway until the war ended, the North Sea being too dangerous for crossings. But Bergin implored the Council to consider taking the risk of sending for the material ‘as there is no near prospect of the war coming to an end, and as on the other hand, there appears to be a lull in the activities of the German submarines.’

Royal Irish Academy Council Minutes, p.449, 1 June 1916

The third item on the agenda that day was the thorny issue of how to deal with Eoin MacNeill and the recent Rising.

MacNeill had been elected a Member of the Academy on 16 March 1907 in recognition of his academic works on Early Irish history. His qualifications for election are detailed as ‘Sometime editor of the Gaelic Journal. Editor “Three Middle Irish poems on the Battle of Mucrama” in RIA Proceedings. Writer of papers in Early Irish History in New Ireland Review 1906-1907. Contributor to “Eriu.”’

Certificate of Candidate: John (Eoin) MacNeill (MRIAC/1064)

Born in Glenarm, Co. Antrim on 15 May 1867, MacNeill’s family considered education to be of great importance and he went on to gain a degree in Constitutional History, Jurisprudence and Political Economy. In 1887 he became a Junior Clerk at the Accountant-General’s Office in the Dublin Law-Courts – the first to be appointed through examination rather than patronage. In the same year, at the age of 20, he began studying Irish which led him to study Old and Middle Irish and Early Irish History. Throughout the 1890s MacNeill continued with his studies and writings, becoming editor of the Gaelic Journal (1894-7), co-editor of Fáinne an Lae (1898-9) and the first editor of An Claideamh Soluis (1899-1901). He was influential in the founding of the Gaelic League in 1893 and became its Vice President in 1903. His academic standing continued to rise. After being elected a Member of the RIA in 1907, he went on to become the first holder of the Chair of Early Irish History at the University College Dublin.

MacNeill’s 1913 Gaelic League article ‘The North Began’ called for the formation of a nationalist volunteer force and he was later instrumental, along with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, in the formation of the Irish Volunteers. Critical for MacNeill was the belief that the Irish Volunteers should be a defensive force, reacting only to British aggression or conscription, but the IRB held no such belief and issued the order to rebel against the British. The order was given for Easter weekend 1916; it is clear that MacNeill issued a countermand but this did not stop the Rising, it only postponed it for a day.

Although he had not taken part in the Rising and indeed had tried to stop it, MacNeill was arrested, court-martialled and sentenced to life imprisonment. From Kilmainham he was taken to Dartmoor and later, to Lewes in Sussex. He was released in June 1917.

Caricature of Eoin MacNeill, from A book of caricatures / by V. L. O’Connor. Dundalk, 1916.

And so, at that June meeting of the Council in 1916, having first discussed Bergin and his stranded books and research notes, the Council turned its attention closer to home. The Council of the Academy moved to remove Eoin MacNeill’s name from the list of Members, effectively expelling him from the Academy.

The minutes read as follows:

‘That whereas Prof. John Mac Neill having been tried by General Court Martial under the Defence of the Realm Act, has been found guilty of crimes against the peace of His Majesty the King and of this Realm, and has been sentenced to penal servitude for life, it is the opinion of this council that his name should forthwith be removed from the list of Members of the academy: and the Council accordingly recommend that the Academy at its next meeting do direct the removal of his name in accordance with the precedent of March 16, 1799.’

Royal Irish Academy Council Minutes, p.450, 1 June 1916

The final decision was referred to a full meeting of the Academy. A short sentence at the end of the Minutes of the Academy for 26 June 1916 simply notes:

‘A recommendation from the Council relative to the removal of the name of a Member from the List of Members was adopted.’

Ireland post Rising was a different world; events moved quickly and public opinions shifted. By the end of 1918 MacNeill was elected a Member of Parliament for the National University and by the end of 1919 a number of people, particularly Rev. Timothy Corcoran, MRIA (Professor of Education in UCD) and Count Plunkett, MRIA, worked to re-instate him as a Member of the Academy. At a Meeting on the 27 June 1921 Count Plunkett moved and E. H. Alton seconded a motion ‘That any and every Resolution or other Act of or within the Academy passed during or after the month of June 1916 and terminating the membership therein of John MacNeill, be and hereby is rescinded.’ The motion was carried and almost exactly five years after his expulsion, MacNeill was reinstated.

Eoin MacNeill went on to have a long and distinguished academic and political career. He was re-instated as professor of Early Irish History at UCD, and went on to become the 29th President of the Royal Irish Academy in 1940.

And until I get another chance to peruse the Academy Archives I can only assume Osborn Bergin eventually got the notes he needed to continue work on the Irish Dictionary! [i]

Sophie Evans
Assistant Librarian

Professor Mary Daly, President of the Royal Irish Academy, discussed the decision to expel Eoin MacNeill from the Academy and his reinstatement in her lecture ‘The Academy in a decade of Revolution’ on Wednesday 4 May 2016

The portrait of Eoin MacNeill seen above is by artist David Rooney and appears in the Royal Irish Academy Publication 1916 Portraits and Lives / edited by James Quinn & Lawrence William White (RIA, 2015)
1916 Portraits and Lives is available to purchase from our online shop.