The ‘Books of Survey and Distribution’ record one of the fundamental consequences of the seventeenth-century conquest of Ireland; and the Royal Irish Academy has a set of them.

The first of those statements sounds dramatic, and at first glance you might be forgiven for wondering what the fuss is about when you see what the books contain: lists of landowners and landholders, along with the size of their holdings. Yet these relatively plain manuscripts reveal a revolution. During the 1650s, in the aftermath of the intertwined British and Irish civil wars of the 1640s and the devastating reconquest of Ireland by the English parliament, vast quantities of Irish land was confiscated from Irish Catholics (who were deemed to have been in rebellion), in order to pay for the parliamentarian war effort. The Books of Survey and Distribution record the outcome.

The Irish Manuscripts Commission published editions of four of the books held in the pre-1922 Public Record Office (which are now in the National Archives). The RIA copies consist of ‘sixteen splendid volumes in folio ruled in red ink and written with the greatest neatness and accuracy in period size’. They were purchased by the British Government in 1883 from the library of the duke of Buckingham, and are copies originally composed in 1677 at the behest of Arthur Capel, earl of Essex (1631-83), lord lieutenant of Ireland from 1672 to 1677 (who eventually cut his own throat while imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1683). Essex, in correspondence, had no problem describing Ireland as a ‘plantation’, so what do the records he had copied reveal?

Bookplate of Algernon Capel, 2nd earl of Essex, from the RIA volumes, which had been commissioned by his father.

In a nutshell, they are records of landownership. Between 1640 and 1670 the proportion of land in Ireland owned by Catholics went from 42.2% to 16.6%, while the proportion owned by Protestants jumped from 42.1% to 69.8%. A new wave of British settlers had obtained lands in Ireland that had been confiscated and redistributed by the Cromwellian authorities in the 1650s; and equally, many of those who had settled in earlier waves of colonisation acquired lands and consolidated their wealth and status in a new order. The Jacobean plantation of Wexford is a case in point. The plantations of Ulster and Munster are the most well-known British colonisation projects in Ireland, but there were many other, smaller plantation schemes, and the plantation of Wexford was the first of these.

Beginning in 1618, North Wexford witnessed a dramatic shift in land ownership, as land deemed to be in the gift of the crown was granted to a mixture of military veterans and administrators under specific conditions, such as undertakings to fortify the new settlements that were to be established (uniquely for a plantation scheme in this era, no new British grantees were involved). The proportion of land in the hands of the ‘New English’ (the newer, largely Protestant settlers of the early modern period) went from 14% to 50%, while the share of land belonging to those descended from the original medieval settlers (the so-called ‘Old English’) went from 11% to 14%. The proportion of Irish-owned land dropped from 75% to 36%.

Spine title from the Books of Survey and Disctribution. Vol 2. County Wexford and County Kildare (RIA MS G iii 2)

It also appears that land clearances took place: in the 1620s complaints were made by landowners, of both Irish and Old English extraction, that they had been harshly and avariciously dispossessed. Many of those who seem to have dispossessed them survived as a new elite beyond the war and upheaval that erupted in Ireland after 1641. The Book of Survey and Distribution covering Wexford (which also covers Kildare) does give a strange sense of who the winners ultimately were in Wexford. In the barony of Gorey, for instance, the list of individuals confirmed in various landholdings by 1668 under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation (which had adjusted and regularized the new dispensation) includes the names of landowners and landholders who had been present in the region since the early years of the plantation in the county, such as the Masterson and Sinnott families, Dudley Colclough, or the earl of Anglesey (who enriched himself enormously in these years).

Books of Survey and Distribution: Vol 2. County Wexford and County Kildare. Entry for the Barony of Gorey (RIA MS G iii 2)

And this is what gives the Books of Survey and Distribution a claim to be considered among the most important documents in modern Irish history. Their neat and accurate tabulations of who owned how much land, and where, starkly reveals the foundation on which the power and influence of the new ruling elite of seventeenth-century Ireland came to rest. The revolution in Irish land ownership that took place between 1640 and 1670 was the most dramatic social transformation to take place in Ireland between the Flight of the Earls in 1607 and the Great Famine of the 1840s. It effectively shaped the balance of social, economic and political power on the island for the next two centuries. The copies of the Books of Survey and Distribution held in the RIA illustrate how that balance of power stood at the end of the 1660s, and how it had changed since the outbreak of war in 1641.

Dr John Gibney
Assistant Editor with the Royal Irish Academy’s Documents on Irish Foreign Policy series.

Sources and further reading:

Kevin Whelan (ed), Wexford: history and society (Dublin, 1987).

Trinity College Dublin Down Survey website: http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/

‘Keepers of the Gael’ is a wonderful exhibition currently being hosted by Galway City Museum as part of the Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture programme of events. The new exhibition draws on archaeological research, museum artefacts and late medieval Irish manuscripts to explore many aspects of the cultural, intellectual and physical environment of the schools of higher learning that existed in pre-modern Gaelic Ireland.

Vellum manuscripts: BL Egerton 88 and RIA 23 Q 6

Two vellum manuscripts, from two separate archives, are displayed in a prominent place at the centre of the exhibition. The two manuscripts were originally one. Both British Library MS Egerton 88, and Royal Irish Academy MS 23 Q 6 (section D, pp 33–52) were written in the 1560s by Donal O’Davoren (Ó Duibhdabhoireann) and his students. They were affiliated to the O’Davoren law school at Cahermacnaghten (Cathair Mhic Neachtain) in the Burren region of north Clare. The students worked partly at the MacEgan (Mac Aodhagáin) law school at Park, in north Galway where older manuscripts were available that could be copied.

Dispersal

Another small fragment of the same O’Davoren manuscript is now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen (MS 261B). The eighteenth-century scholar responsible for dispatching this part to Scandinavia was Colonel Charles Vallancey, MRIA (1725?–1812). He gave it to an academic friend as a sample of an Irish manuscript, in the hope that other Irish manuscripts might be recognised if they came to light in Denmark. Historian and archivist Grimr Jonsson Thorkelin (1752–1829), who was interested in early Irish history, almost certainly met Colonel Vallancey during a visit to Britain and Ireland between 1786 and 1791. The manuscript has remained in Copenhagen where Thorkelin was archivist at the Royal Library.

The main part of the O’Davoren manuscript was acquired by James Hardiman, MRIA (1782–1855). He later sold it to the British Museum in 1832, where it was catalogued as Egerton 88. The acquisition by the Museum was funded by a bequest from Francis Henry Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater (1756–1829).

A smaller fragment was acquired by the Royal Irish Academy sometime before 1844. It came as part of ‘a collection of disjointed fragments’, now with the shelf-mark 23 Q 6, that appear to have already been bound together when Eugene O’Curry first catalogued them in 1842–4.

Left: Charles Vallancey, MRIA, 1725?-1812. Right : Eugene O’Curry, 1794-1862.

Reunion

Eugene O’Curry, MRIA (1794–1862), who had special expertise in Irish legal manuscripts, and who arranged the present sequence of leaves in British Library MS Egerton 88, was the person who deduced that one section of Royal Irish Academy MS 23 Q 6 had once formed part of Egerton 88. All the surviving sections can potentially be reunited in a virtual way as part of collaborative projects to digitise significant Irish manuscripts, but the exhibition in Galway provides a unique opportunity to see the original vellum manuscripts, produced in the county 450 years ago, side by side.

RIA, MS 23 Q 6, detail from p. 44

Interpreting the O’Davoren law manuscript

The law manuscript that Colonel Vallancey, James Hardiman, Eugene O’Curry and other scholars tried to elucidate in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is still a rich source for the study of the ancient laws of Ireland. The texts transcribed by O’Davoren and his students preserve some of the early laws of Ireland, later termed ‘brehon’ law by English commentators.

The format in which these legal manuscripts were transcribed was quite complex. They often consisted of an early ‘text’ written in large script, believed to preserve elements of Irish law that originated in the seventh or eighth centuries. Surrounding that text, in smaller script, were explanatory glosses and commentaries. These later interpretative elements had accumulated in the law schools over several centuries.

RIA, MS 23 Q 6, detail from p. 33

The manuscripts in which the earliest Irish law texts are now preserved generally date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, most older ones having been lost. Through the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century scholars focused on recovering and producing editions of the earliest elements of these legal texts. Manuscripts dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were used to recover early Irish law as it may have existed in the seventh or eighth century. It is only in more recent years that attention has turned to the social contexts within which these early modern manuscripts were produced, and the evidence they contain for how Irish legal principles were studied, adapted and applied by the professional learned class down to the late sixteenth century.

Seminar

An interdisciplinary symposium in the Hardiman Library at NUI Galway on 25–26 January 2020 will explore the physical and cultural landscapes of the learned schools of sixteenth-century Ireland, and most especially the O’Davoren law school at Cahermacnaghten. Archaeological excavations, museum artefacts, and evidence for the political and social context within which lawyers and their students operated in late medieval Gaelic Ireland will be discussed. This promises to be a more holistic approach to the study of these law schools than has previously been attempted.

The symposium is hosted by the Centre for Antique, Medieval and Pre-Modern Studies, Moore Institute (NUI Galway), in collaboration with the School of Celtic Studies (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) and Galway City Museum, and is coordinated by Professor Elizabeth FitzPatrick, School of Archaeology, NUI Galway. A guided visit to the ‘Keepers of the Gael: Culture and Society in Gaelic Ireland c. 1200-1600 AD’ exhibition in Galway City Museum is also part of the seminar programme.

Bernadette Cunningham
Deputy Librarian

Further reading

Liam Breatnach, A companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2005).

Rowena Dudley, Late medieval Irish law manuscripts: a reappraisal of methodology and context (Sydney: Celtic Studies Foundation, University of Sydney, 2013)

Kathleen Mulchrone & Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy. Fasciculus XXVII (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1943), entry no. 1243.

Eugene O’Curry, ‘Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy’ [unpublished], series 1, vol. 2, pp 455–458 (RIA, RR/67/E/10).

S.H. O’Grady & Robin Flower, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Library (3 vols, London, 1926–53; reprint Dublin, 1992).

MS 23 Q 6 has been digitised and is available to view via Irish Script On Screen.

Exhibition : Keepers of the Gael.

Logos are ubiquitous; we can identify a company or institution at a glance by just a symbol or a font type. The ‘tick’ on the side of a running shoe, the penguin on the spine of a book. From the earliest days of print history, printers and publishers used devices in very much the same way, to mark ownership, to advertise and as a mark of quality. Printers’ devices, also known as printers’ marks, are made up of a woodcut illustration, a motto or initials or all three. Some are more elaborate than others, as we shall see in this series of posts. They are usually found above the imprint on the title page of a book or on the final leaf.

The first known printer’s device appears in Fust and Schoeffer’ Mainz Psalter in 1457. It is positioned after the colophon[i] and is made up of two shields hanging from a branch. The Greek symbol X for Christ is inscribed on the first shield and the Greek letter A for logos (word) on the second.

The printers’ device is not a remnant of the manuscript book tradition; it is only with the invention of the printing press and the beginning of mass production of printed material that such an addition proved useful. However, the origins of the printers’ device predates the invention of print and typography. Early Medieval merchants would use distinctive marks on their produce and the earlier devices are reminiscent of these symbols. These merchants’ marks, or ‘housemarks’, were quite simple and usually in the shape of the number 4. The earlier printers’ devices often used the number 4 as a base with a combination of strokes or curves, often with intials and an orb and cross. The first device we will look at in this series shows clearly how the printer developed his mark from the established merchants’ marks.

Johannes Hamman de Landoia

Johannes Hamman, also known as Hertzog, was a printer from Landau, Germany. There are about 85 known works by Hamman c.1482-1509, mostly printed in Venice. He often collaborated with fellow Germans, including Johann Emerich on a number of liturgical texts.

Hamman’s device is made up of his initials I. H. within an orb and cross surrounded by an elegant leaf design on a black background. The orb and cross, globus cruciger, has been a symbol of Christianity since the Middle Ages. It is the representation of Christ’s dominion over the world. In the lower portion of the orb are a reversed ‘4’ mark with a cross and reversed ‘C’. This could possibly represent Hamman’s ‘merchant’s mark’ or ‘housemark’. He was the first in Italy to combine the ‘4’ mark with the orb and in this case the monogram, indicating his German origins, as this was a feature of German printers rather than Italian.

Hamman’s device located on the final page under the colophon of Epytoma Joannis de Monte Regio in Almagestum Ptolome by Joannes Regiomontanus (Venice, 1496) RIA SR 24 F 19.

Life, the universe and everything …

In the Library’s incunabula [ii] collection we find this device in a very important early scientific work entitled Epytoma Joannis de Monte Regio in Almagestum Ptolome by Joannes Regiomontanus. The Epytoma is an abridged version of Ptolemy’s Almagest, an astronomical textbook written about AD 150 establishing his model of a geocentric universe, a model which was followed for over a thousand year.

Austrian astronomer and mathematician, Georg von Peuerbach, began his new Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest in 1460 but died before it was completed, the task was taken on by his pupil Regiomontanus. The book was eventually printed on 31 August 1496 in Venice by Hamman, twenty years after Regiomontanus’ death. The Epytoma is the first printed edition of Ptolemy’s Almagest; it also discussed newer observations and developments in the field of astronomy and drew attention to some of the problems with Ptolemy’s theories. It became an important reference tool for astronomers, including Copernicus, who consulted a copy of the book and began to question Ptolemy’s calculations and so set in motion his re-envisaging of the solar system.

This early printed book contains some relatively interesting and complex printing techniques. It has a xylographic title page, which is the technical term for a woodcut title. It also has numerous marginal diagrams throughout and decorative woodcut initials.

Xylographic title page and decorative initial. Epytoma Joannis de Monte Regio in Almagestum Ptolome by Joannes Regiomontanus (Venice, 1496) RIA SR 24 F 19.

The most elaborate feature of this book is the full-page woodcut depicting Ptolemy and Regiomontanus under an armillary sphere with the moon, sun and stars above. Ptolemy, sits to the left reading a book on his lap, opposite sits Regiomontanus pointing and possibly questioning him. They represent ancient and modern science in dialogue.

Marginal diagrams and full page woodcut illustration. Epytoma Joannis de Monte Regio in Almagestum Ptolome by Joannes Regiomontanus (Venice, 1496) RIA SR 24 F 19.

The Library’s copy has an additional interesting feature – its provenance. This Book was a gift given by His Excellency Rainer III, Prince of Monaco, to the President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, on his Official Visit to Ireland, 10-14 June, 1961, in reocognition of his mathematical interests. The President, a member of the Academy, presented it to the Academy for the Library collections on 13 April, 1964.

We shall continue to explore more of our early printed books in future posts, so stay tuned!

Sophie Evans
Assistant Librarian

Further Reading:

Hugh William Davies, Devices of the early printers, 1457-1560 : their history and development, with a chapter on portrait figures of printers (London, 1935)

Alfred W. Pollard, Fine Books (London, c.1912)

Centre de Recursos per a l’Aprenentatge i la Investigació / Universitat de Barcelona. (2019); available online at: https://crai.ub.edu/sites/default/files/impressors/cerca_eng.htm (Accessed 25 Nov. 2019).

William Roberts, Printers’ marks: a chapter in the history of typography by W. Roberts (London, 1893); available online at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25663/25663-h/25663-h.htm#fig40b (accessed 25 November 2019).

[i] Colophon: Inscription at the end of a book containing information on its production – printer’s name, place of publication, date etc.

[ii] Incunabula: Books printed before 1501.

‘Egan, the harp-maker, most anxious that I should judge the power of his improved Irish harps – sent his son with one – the Chaise at the door at ½ past three, and some beautiful Irish airs played to me during my last moments […]’ – Thomas Moore

This debut of Egan’s Irish harp on 17 October 1821 was part of Moore’s busy final day in Dublin, along with sitting for a portrait, shopping for a tabbinet (cloth) for Bessy and dining in Howth that evening prior to his return journey to England.[1] The harp maker John Egan (fl.1797-1829) had written to Moore months earlier on the ‘perfection’ of his new harp model and according to Moore, ‘begging me to allow him to present me one of his best, as a mark of admiration.’[2] An Irish harp placed in the hands of the Bard of Erin, this celebrated performer in London drawing-rooms, was a case of masterful product placement by Egan. Mutually advantageous to Moore, it was the perfect accessory for the national bard’s public persona, singing his harp-infused lyrics of the Irish Melodies to the chords of the national instrument.

The entrepreneur Egan appreciated beneficial high-profile endorsements. For years the novelist Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) had famously posed as her fictional harpist-heroine ‘Glorvina’ playing an Egan Irish harp to adoring audiences. Since 1809 the Duchess of Richmond and successive vicereines residing at Dublin Castle had commissioned Grecian pedal harps from the local maker. Egan harps exquisitely decorated in a neoclassical style were on display in the great houses of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, and eventually harp orders came from the royal palaces. Remarkably, in August of 1821 this Irish artist was awarded the highest accolade attainable for a harp maker in his time – the royal warrant as harp maker to George IV and the royal family.

Image 1. Advertisement for the Portable Irish Harp in Pigot and Co.’s Directory, 1824.

In his Dawson Street workshop, near the Academy’s present location, initially Egan mainly produced fashionable Grecian pedal harps, the standard model manufactured by his counterparts in London. John Egan was not a typical harp maker however, as evidenced by a dozen different harp models designed in a range of shapes, sizes and mechanisms. For his most striking harp, he fashioned a winged-maiden symbol, the figure of Hibernia, into a playable instrument. In this post-union era, Ireland’s symbolic harp, so effectively used in the Melodies, was a potent signifier of national identity, and yet ironically the native wire-strung Gaelic harp, played for centuries, had largely disappeared. Egan continually championed the idea of a new form of Irish harp, a modernized instrument. His seminal invention – the ‘Portable Irish Harp’ – effectively fused old with new. The model’s bowed pillar shape and small size of three feet in height, paid homage to Ireland’s oldest and most celebrated instrument, the Brian Boru harp in Trinity College. To reinforce a symbolic Irishness, the harps had gilt motifs of Irish wolfhounds and shamrocks, Egan’s signature decoration, on a lacquered ground of either green, blue or black. Unlike the Gaelic harp’s wire-strings and limited modal tuning, the Portable Irish Harp had pliable gut strings fitted with innovative sharpening mechanisms for key changes: either ring stops or ditals (Image 1). Thus this ingenious up-to-date instrument, unmistakably ‘Irish’ in appearance, had a modern sound and chromatic capabilities for playing contemporary art songs as well as traditional Irish tunes.

Image 2. Portrait of Thomas Moore in his Study at Sloperton Cottage. Photo ©National Gallery of Ireland.

In 1823, Moore’s Royal Portable Irish Harp (reflecting the royal warrant) was delivered: ‘My Irish harp arrived from Ireland, and a little one of two octaves with it for Anastasia’.[3] A smaller harp for Moore’s daughter, a generous gesture, reflects Egan’s penchant for making harps in unusual sizes. Both harps are visible in the painting Thomas Moore in his study at Sloperton Cottage in the National Gallery of Ireland (Image 2). No further harp references appear in Moore’s journal and little is known of his harp-playing, in contrast to glowing first-hand descriptions of his piano performances. The poet’s richly decorated green harp has nonetheless acquired a legendary status. Fifty years on, in 1879, it was played by Swedish harpist Herr Sjoden in the Moore centenary concert in Dublin and was described thus —‘the strains of “Dear harp of my country” coming from that old harp stirred many a heart […].’[4]

Image 3. Thomas Moore’s harp in the Royal Irish Academy.

Although the harp has remained in the Royal Irish Academy since its donation by Moore’s widow Bessy in 1852, ‘Moore’s Harp’ was listed in a 1902 Boston exhibition catalogue, and another Egan harp was sold to American harp maker Melville Clark in 1905 as the poet Moore’s own instrument. Similar misattributions of ‘Marie Antoinette’s harp’ are common fabrications to inflate an instrument’s value. One harp labeled ‘The poet Moore’s Irish Harp’ in the George W. Childs collection, Philadelphia, is an exception, as it is actually the small harp of Anastasia, who tragically died of illness at age sixteen (Image 4). My research uncovered an interesting chain of provenance for Anastasia’s harp, from Bessy Moore to her nephew Charles Murray to journalist S.C. Hall. In 1884, Hall offered the harp to Childs, who was the major contributor to fund the Moore commemorative window in Bromham church (Wilts,), where Moore is buried.

Image 4. Photocard of small Egan harp owned by George W. Childs. Photo courtesy of Corpus Christi Library, Texas.

Today, rare Egan harps are treasured as art objects in museums in sixteen countries worldwide. Like Moore’s Melodies, Egan’s Portable Irish Harp transcended the period to live on in revised formats. The model was copied by the principal harp makers working around 1900 as the template for the modern Irish harp. A significant legacy, John Egan’s innovative Portable Irish Harp was crucial to a revitalised Irish harping tradition.

Nancy Hurrell
Author, The Egan Irish Harps: Tradition, patrons and players (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2019)

This blog has been compiled in conjunction with the Academy Library’s exhibition ‘Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth Europe’ and to celebrate Moore’s Egan harp which stands proudly on display in the Meeting Room. The Library thanks the benefactors who have enabled conservation of the harp and the refurbishment of the display case.

Main image: Portrait of Thomas Moore in his Study at Sloperton Cottage. Photo ©National Gallery of Ireland.

The scene: Berlin, Court of the King of Prussia, Wilhelm III (1770-1840).
A cold January night in 1821. Festive lights burn. The court is thronged. Chief guests, and participants, are the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia and his wife, the Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna, Wilhelm’s daughter, whom he had married in 1817. The future Tsar of Russia and his wife are on an extended stay at her father’s court.

The occasion: A performance of Thomas Moore’s long oriental poem Lalla Rookh.

Director and choreographer: Count Carl von Bruhl (1772-1837), court theatre director.

Music director: Gaspare Spontini (1774-1851), Kapellmeister and General Music Director to the court.

The cast: Lords and ladies of the court; ambassadors to the court.

The story: Lalla Rookh was first published in London by Longmans in 1817. It became an overnight sensation and runaway bestseller — ‘the first edition sold out on the first day’[1] ran to multiple London and American editions and was soon translated into Romance, Scandinavian and Slav languages as well as Arabic. Readers throughout Europe were gripped by the adventures of Indian princess Lalla Rookh journeying to marry a Kashmiri king. En route she meets a minstrel, Feramorz, who accompanies her on her journey. She falls in love with Feramorz who is, of course, her betrothed in disguise!

The tale within the narrative of the Peri (a Persian spirit denied entry to heaven who has to complete three quests in order to earn entry to Paradise), gave rise to many musical interpretations, including Schumann’s oratorio, ‘Das Paradies und die Peri’ (1843).

(Left) Plate 6: Lalla Rookh and Aliris, the king of Bucharie (Kashmir) played by the Grand Duchess, Alexandra Feodorovna and Grand Duke Nicholas. (Right) Plate 16: The Angel of Light and the Péri.

Lalla Rookh appealed to the contemporary European fascination with the East – both real and imagined. The story included songs which lent themselves to musical arrangement, as in the case of the Berlin performance. The Grand Duchess Alexandra played the title role of Lalla Rookh with the Grand Duke playing the part of Feramorz. Fantastic costumes were designed and these became the subject of drawings by court painter, Hensel, the originals of which were taken back to Russia by the Grand Duchess. Lalla Rookh increased Thomas Moore’s exposure in Russia where his Irish melodies were already known and popular.

There were 3,000 guests that 21 January including French writer and ambassador to the German court, Chateaubriand, who commented that the tableau vivant was ‘the most splendid and tasteful thing he had ever seen.’[2] Soon everyone was talking about the outstanding Berlin production — Byron, Goethe, the literati, the great and the good of Europe, all knew of it. Lalla Rookh’s fame spread further, even to the shores of India itself.

(Left) Plate 5: Princes of Bucharie. (Right) Plate 3: A Lord and Lady of Bucharie.

In 1822, Berlin printer Louis Guillaume Wittich published a small volume as a record of the Berlin performance: Lalla Roûkh: divertissement mêlé de chants et de danses, executé au Château Royal de Berlin le 27 janvier 1822 [sic] pendant le séjour de … Msgr. Le Grand-Duc Nicolas et Mad. La Grande-Duchesse Alexandra Féodorowna …

Including 23 colour plates of the participants, this is an important record of their names, the costumes and the script on the night. Thomas Moore had a personal copy which was retained by Mrs Moore for her own collection when she donated his library to the Academy in 1855. The little volume, inscribed by Moore and with his wife’s bookplate, was subsequently owned by S.F. Cresswell who bought it at the sale of Bessy Moore’s collection in 1874. Later it belonged to Belfast collector Andrew Gibson who donated his collection of Moore material to Queen’s University Belfast, although he too chose to retain this copy. The volume changed hands again but in the summer of 2019 it came up for sale in Dublin.

Plate 17: Mahmoud, the Tyrant of Ghizna, and the Dying Warrior

The Royal Irish Academy Library purchased this special book, using our Seamus Heaney Special Acquisitions Fund and with generous assistance from the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland to whom we are indebted.

So the Lalla Rookh which linked a King, a future Tsar and an imagined Indian princess has come home to Ireland, to Thomas Moore’s own library at the Academy. We are proud to have it for our Moore collection and also for the national collections of Ireland.

Siobhán Fitzpatrick
Academy Librarian

Acknowledgement: We sincerely thank the Academy Library Committee and the Council of the Academy for their support of the purchase.

To view the Berlin copy of Lalla Rookh do visit our exhibition — ‘Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe’ curated by Dr Sarah McCleave, QUB

Our free lunchtime lecture series on Moore is being held in autumn 2019. All welcome.

Select Bibliography:

Wilfred S. Dowden (ed.), The journal of Thomas Moore (6 vols, Newark etc., 1983–91).

Ronan Kelly, Bard of Erin: the life of Thomas Moore (Dublin, 2008).

Sarah McCleave & Brian Caraher (eds), Thomas Moore and romantic inspiration: poetry, music and politics (Abingdon, 2018).

Harry White, Music and the Irish literary imagination (Oxford, 2008).

For a more complete, contemporary bibliography please take a copy of our exhibition booklet or request a copy via library@ria.ie — Sarah McCleave, Discovering Thomas Moore: Ireland in nineteenth-century Europe (Dublin, 2019). ISBN: 9781911479222

Main image: Plate 23: The players procession.

One hundred and seventy-five years ago the Academy bought an unusual looking medieval manuscript with an even more unusual provenance story. A story of kidnap, an enchanted island, a magical book and an old Irish family.

Some enchanted island …

The island of Hy Brasil has been spoken about for generations in the West of Ireland. A phantom isle shrouded in a cloud of mystery, said to only be visible every seven years. Does it exist? Did it ever exist?

The island has appeared on maps and charts from as early as 1325 and up to the late 1800s. Tales are told of sailors setting out in search of the island to no avail. Yet there are also accounts of sailors successfully finding the island or happen upon it by chance. John Nisbet, a Scottish sea captain claimed to have seen the island in 1674 while travelling from France to Ireland. Four members of the ship’s crew went ashore and were met by a ‘wise old man’ who gave them gold and silver. The sailors also came back with tales of large black rabbits and a magician in a castle.

Island of Hy Brasil. Theatro d’el Orbe de la Tierra de Abraham Ortello (Antwerp, 1602)

One of the last written accounts of a sighting was by the antiquarian and archaeologist T. J. Westropp, who states he saw the island on three different occasions. On one of these occasions he took along his mother, brother and some friends:
‘It was a clear evening, with a fine golden sunset, when, just as the sun went down, a dark island suddenly appeared far out to sea, but not on the horizon. It had two hills, one wooded; between these, from a low plain, rose towers and curls of smoke. My mother, brother, Ralph Hugh Westropp, and several friends saw it at the same time; one person cried out that he could ‘see New York’!’

Early maps showing “Brasil” Island. From T. J. Westropp, ‘Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the North Atlantic (PRIA Vol. 30 (1912/1913, Plate XX.

Melancholy Murrough

Historian Roderick O’Flaherty, a native of the West of Ireland, wrote a description of West Connaught in 1684, which includes local history and lore. O’Flaherty recounts a story of a man named Murrough O’Ley and his astonishing claims of being transported to the island of Hy Brasil. In April 1668, O’Ley, in a melancholy state of mind after a disagreement with his wife, was out walking at Irrosainhagh, in the south of the barony of Ballynahinch. He was taken by force by two or three men who put him on a boat and sailed to an island they called O’Brazil. O’Ley did not give a description of the island itself but from its shore he could see the Aran Islands and other places along the West Coast. After two days, his kidnappers returned him to Seapoint, near Galway, ‘hoodwinked’. There he stayed with a friend for a number days. Some years later, O’Ley found he had the gift of healing even though he had never studied medicine. The implication was that he had been given this gift on the magical island of O’Brazil.

A magical book

In 1846, the historian James Hardiman published O’Flaherty’s account and noted that the story was still remembered in the area, almost 200 years after the event. By Hardiman’s time the tale had been embellished, as often happens with time. One addition to the story tells of O’Ley being given a book whilst on the island and told not to open it for seven years. O’Ley obeyed and after seven years opened and read the book and henceforth had the power to heal.

The Book of O’Lees ‘Book of Hy-Brasil’ RIA, MS 23 P 10 (ii), p.62

In 1839, John O’Donovan, whilst working on the Ordnance Survey, also heard the story of Murrough O’Ley and his adventures. O’Donovan’s version of the tale tells of a fishing crew, including O’Ley, passing an island which they did not know. They landed and were immediately confronted by an old man on the shore, who told them they had no business being there as it was an enchanted island. Before they set off from this unknown island, the old man gave O’Ley a book with instructions not to open it for seven years. In this version O’Ley again obeys the instructions and after several years found he could ‘practice medicine with much success.’ The book stayed within the O’Ley family until around 1837 when it was sold to a bookseller in Dublin. The introduction of a ‘magical book’ to the story explains better how O’Ley gained his gifts of medicine and healing. As O’Donovan notes:
‘O’Flaherty’s version is flawed and defective … affords no explanation of the manner in which the quack obtained his medical information, but the introduction of the medical book makes the story perfect. The truth seems to have been this, that Lee got this book from his relatives who were hereditary physicians and taking it in head to turn quack forged.’

Letter to Lieut. Thomas A. Larcom from John O’Donovan, August 1839 (Ordnance Survey of Ireland: Letters; Galway Vol.3 RIA, MS 14 C 22/17)

The book which features so prominently in the tales above was purchased in 1844 by the Academy, along with other manuscripts. It is still known today as the Book of O’Lees or the Book of Hy Brasil, linking it forever more to the legend of the enchanted island. The book is a fifteenth-century Irish language medical manuscript. It contains 44 tables outlining details of diseases with their prognosis, stage, symptoms and cures. The text is a translation of a Latin work Tacuini aergritundium, which is itself a translation of a twelfth-century Arabic text by Islamic physician Ibn Jazhal of Baghdad. There are drawings of strange looking creatures in the corners of many of the pages. These are later additions to the book. Could they have been added to give credence to its purported origin story?

Details from The Book of O’Lees ‘Book of Hy-Brasil’ RIA, MS 23 P 10 (ii).

O’Curry’s dismay

Eugene O’Curry was employed as a cataloguer by the Academy Library in the 19th century. His entry for the Book of O’Lees runs to many pages and includes the fantastical story of its provenance, taken from the writings of O’Flaherty, Hardiman and O’Donovan. O’Curry’s thoughts on O’Ley’s story are clear:

‘The delusion took well with his credulous countrymen, and the extraordinary arrangement of the book itself, written in all directions, was sufficient to confirm the ignorant, to whom only it was permitted to be shewn, in its miraculous history … The common sense of the above wild story is this. The O’Lees were long time hereditary physicians to the O’Flahertys. This book certainly belonged to them and descended as a matter of course to the above [i.e. Murrough O’Ley] who in consequence of the downfall of his patrons … had his expectations neglected … no practical use for the book. He adopted the above scheme to make a character and name for himself.’

RIA, Hodges & Smith manuscript catalogue, vol 3, pp 643-50, descriptionby Eugene O’Curry.

O’Curry and his peers in the 19th century were not impressed by Murrough O’Ley’s story, but who really knows what the truth is? Next time you are on the west coast of Ireland, keep your eyes open!

Sophie Evans
Assistant Librarian

Further reading:

Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The “Book of The O’Lees” and other medical manuscripts and astronomical tracts’ in Bernadette Cunningham and Siobhán Fitzpatrick (eds), Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library (Dublin, 2009), 81-91.

Barbara Freitag, Hy Brasil: the metamorphosis of an island. From cartographic error to Celtic Elysium (Amsterdam, 2013).

James Hardiman (ed.) A Chorographical description of West or h-Iar Connaught…1684…, / by Roderic O’Flaherty … ; edited from a ms. in Trinity College Dublin with notes and illustrations (Dublin, 1846).

T. J. Westropp, ‘Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the North Atlantic: their history and fable. A contribution to the “Atlantis” problem.’ Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, Vol. 30 (1912/1913), pp. 223-260.

RIA, Hodges & Smith manuscript catalogue, vol 3, pp 643-50, [unpublished] description by Eugene O’Curry.

Irish Script on Screen:
Digitized version of RIA, MS 23 P 10 (ii) (The Book O’Lees or The Book of Hy Brasil)

The Royal Irish Academy’s collection of printed ephemera provides fascinating insights into the lively trade in popular entertainment in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland. Pamphlets and playbills in the collection record human and animal exhibits, displays of equestrian skill and mechanical ingenuity, menageries and giants, all part of the wide-ranging selection of commercial shows competing for public attention during this period. Many of these entertainments were provided by travelling showmen who had already toured London and provincial England. Others, like Marsden Haddock’s Androides, travelled outwards from Ireland on tour. Some of the advertising relies on captivating illustrations as part of its sales strategy; most of it deploys hyperbole and the language of wonder and spectacle in an attempt to draw the crowds.

Theatre Royal Playbills, vol.1: 1796-1837 (SR 12 S 7)

A mid-nineteenth-century pamphlet outlining the exhibits in Mr. Garboldi’s Museum of Moving Figures is an excellent example. The show, which featured scenes of historical and architectural interest, included tableaux of Napoleon at the Battle of Marengo, The Temple of Minerva and The Ruins of Athens. Individual exhibits were animated (according to the pamphlet) with machinery which ‘surpasses imagination’. A scene of Androcles, a Runaway Roman Slave, the second exhibit in Garboldi’s Museum is singled out in the pamphlet for its ingenuity, ‘mechanised in the most minute manner’, with even the movement of the eyelids perceptible. The exhibition, mounted in Del Vecchio’s rooms on Westmoreland Street, Dublin, was clearly intended as a family show, its advertising couched in the language of education as well as entertainment. Admission was priced initially at sixpence for adults and threepence for children under the age of ten, but newspaper advertisements indicate that Garboldi dropped his prices at the end of the run, urging those who had not seen the show to ‘lose no time’, as he would not be returning to Dublin (Freeman’s Journal, 19 April 1840).

A catalogue of Mr. Garboldi’s museum of moving figures … Dublin, 1839 (HT (Box) 478/39)

Broadsides in the collection of the RIA are equally dazzling in their descriptions of circuses, magic acts, and equestrian displays, conjuring up a world of visual entertainment which must have been seductive to those with money to spend on leisure in Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One from the same period as Garboldi’s Mechanical Museum details an eclectic programme including an English giant with ‘engaging manners’, an armadillo or ‘dog in armour’ and a female glass blower. These were presented with other ‘curiosities’ at 37 Nassau Street and billed as ‘Wonderful Phenomena of Nature’.

In many ways the nature of some of these shows is a world away from popular entertainment today. Nevertheless, the advertising rhetoric used to promote them is so vivid that the tenacity and ingenuity of their promoters remains impressive even in today’s media-saturated world. Exhibits like Garboldi’s Mechanical Museum also serve as a reminder that a fascination with smart technology is not solely a phenomenon of our times.

Alison FitzGerald and Joy Sherwood

Joy Sherwood is an undergraduate student at Maynooth University. She took part in MU’s experiential learning programme this summer (SPUR) and was mentored by Dr Alison FitzGerald of the Department of History, whose current research project Spectacles and Shows focuses on the material culture of entertainment in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland.

Over the past few months we have welcomed visitors from all over the world to our exhibition on Paul Strzelecki ‘A Forgotten Polish Hero of the Great Irish Famine.’ For many visitors, particularly those from Australia and Poland, the name Strzelecki is a familiar one but for others the name is new.

Paul Strzelecki was an adventurer, explorer, scientist and humanitarian. He was born in Głuszyna, a village near Poznań, in 1797 into a Polish aristocratic family from which he inherited the title ‘Count’. In the 1820s he left Poland for England and so began his life of travel and adventure. He travelled to the United States, Canada, the West Indies, South America and Mexico. In 1838 he sailed across the Pacific to Polynesia, New Zealand and Australia. Dozens of memorials to Strzelecki have been erected in Australia to commemorate his exploratory and scientific discoveries. There is even a desert and outback track in South Australia named after him.

Keyring given to us by an Australian visitor, Strzelecki Desert is above the Kangaroo’s tail!

This panel exhibition focusses on Strzelecki’s time in Ireland where he played a leading role in relief work during the Great Famine. On his travels around the world Strzelecki had encountered much poverty and human suffering but was nonetheless appalled by the sights he witnessed in Ireland. In 1847 he volunteered with the British Relief Association; a role he took on with great commitment, heroism and empathy. He was responsible for the distribution of food and clothing to the most famine-stricken areas in the West of Ireland. He developed an effective way of ensuring children were being fed by providing them with food directly through schools. At the height of the famine in 1848, it is estimated that 200,000 lives were saved from starvation due to the efforts of Strzelecki. In 2018 the Polish Ambassador to Ireland unveiled a plaque commemorating Strzelecki in Clifden, Co. Galway.

This fascinating exhibition was curated by Professor Peter Gray (Queen’s University Belfast) and Professor Emily Mark-FitzGerald (University College Dublin) and includes several rarely seen images of Famine relief and charity, from collections of major museums and libraries in Ireland, Britain, Australia and the United States. We are delighted to host this exhibition on behalf of the Polish Embassy in Ireland. Video.

Just a few comments from our Visitor’s Book:

‘Fascinated by the Famine exhibition! Well done!’

‘Wonderful exhibition!’

‘A beautiful exhibition of a very sad time & a fine man doing what he could to save others’

Listen back to our lunchtime lecture by Professor Peter Gray, Queens University Belfast, and Assoc. Professor Emily Mark-FitzGerald, University College Dublin, curators of the exhibition

The exhibition is on display at Academy House until the 30 August except 1-14 August (annual closing). Please check website for updates on opening times – www.ria.ie/library

Check the exhibition website https://strzelecki.ie/virtual-tour/

Be sure to catch it while you can!

Sophie Evans
Assistant Librarian

‘Where in Germany, even today, would you find three such literary heroes to set beside Lord Byron, Moore and Walter Scott?’, enquired the great German writer and statesman, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1824. For many people, it comes as a surprise to see Thomas Moore in such company, in the front rank of British literary romanticism, because his reputation in the interim has dwindled to a handful of well-beloved songs from the Irish melodies, and not much besides. Moore was in fact an originary and formative presence in the development of European music and letters in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the circulation of his poetry, fiction and lyric verse exerted considerable influence on many composers, including Robert Schumann and Hector Berlioz. Schumann’s setting of the second part of Moore’s Lalla Rookh, ‘Paradise and the Peri’ (in German translation) and Berlioz’s Mélodies irlandaises (settings in French translation of Moore’s verse from the Irish melodies) affirm a more general popularity for Moore’s poetry on the continent.

Thomas Moore, Paradise and the Peri (London, Day & Son, [1860]). Image courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Queen’s University Belfast.

Moore’s long poem — Lalla Rookh — became an overnight success on its publication in 1817. The poem relates the journey of Lalla Rookh, an Indian princess, from her homeland to Kashmir for her wedding to the king there. En route she meets a poet who accompanies her and beguiles her with the story of a fallen angel (the Peri) who has to pass several tests in order to gain entry to Paradise. Lalla Rookh falls in love with the poet who turns out to be her betrothed in disguise! Schumann remarked that the verse was ‘intended for music, as if from the start’. The poem was part of a vogue for orientalism in Europe and was widely admired and translated.

This year we celebrate the 240th anniversary of Moore’s birth in Dublin on 28 May 1779 with an exhibition at the Academy Library, curated by Dr Sarah McCleave, Senior Musicologist at the School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University of Belfast.

The materials on display recapture not only Moore’s phenomenal success as a poet and lyricist in Europe, but his often neglected reputation as a novelist, satirist, biographer and historian. In recent years, these aspects of Moore’s intellectual estate have received at least something of their due from literary historians and musicologists, just as Moore’s extraordinary life has been magisterially recovered in Ronan Kelly’s 2008 biography, Bard of Erin[i]. Throughout that life, the very idea of Ireland abides, even in Moore’s imagined orient. Moore’s inventions were assuredly romantic, but they were also grounded in a scientific apprehension of scholarly sources and a lively political awareness of injustice and repression. His instincts as a romantic poet were constantly mediated by an antiquarian appeal to the authority of historical documents, and his brilliance as a biographer (particularly of Lord Edward FitzGerald) was fired by ‘that time of terror and torture’ which Moore experienced as a young student in Trinity College Dublin, following the failed rebellion of 1798. Throughout his writing career, as many of the items displayed in the exhibition demonstrate, Moore’s sense of responsibility to empirical evidence anchored the flight of his auditory imagination.

Thomas Moore. Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

The rich resources of the Royal Irish Academy (which houses the greater part of Moore’s private library) and of the Gibson Massie collection in Queen’s University Belfast combine in this exhibition to commemorate the 240th anniversary of the birth of a writer whose profound Irishness was deeply inflected by his European reception and afterlife. In the present moment of European crisis, such a commemoration could scarcely be timelier.

Harry White, MRIA, Professor of Music, University College Dublin

Margaret McNair Stokes

Margaret McNair Stokes (1832–1900) was elected an ‘honorary’ member of the RIA in 1879. The first female honorary member was Princess Dashkova, elected in 1791. Margaret, daughter of the eminent physician William Stokes MRIA (1804–1878) and sister of Whitley Stokes MRIA (1830–1909), lawyer and celtic scholar, read her first paper to the RIA stated meeting on 30 November 1899. William’s ‘open house’ at his residence, 5 Merrion Square, Dublin, brought together leading figures from science, education, law and music.

William Stokes was friendly with Samuel Ferguson MRIA, George Petrie MRIA, Edwin Quin MRIA (3rd earl of Dunraven), and James Henthorn Todd MRIA, all leading figures in the early celtic revival of the late nineteenth century, and together prominent in the affairs of the RIA. Margaret Stokes, primarily an archaeologist and artist was the most important woman antiquary of her day and a prominent figure in the early Irish celtic revival. She edited Dunraven’s Notes on Irish architecture (1875–78) and Petrie’s Christian inscriptions in the Irish language (1872). Margaret knew Thomas Westropp MRIA and Robert Macalister MRIA, amongst others, leading figures in antiquarianism and the governance of the RIA.

Margaret Stokes sketching the High Cross of Moone, Co. Kildare, photographed by Lord Walter Fitzgerald in July 1897. (Journal of the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society, Vol. 3, 1899-1902, p. 200)

Clare O’Halloran, in a fascinating 2018 lunch time RIA library talk has noted, despite the Irish Queen’s Colleges beginning to admit women students from the early 1880s, there was a clear pattern of the UK learned societies excluding married women, likely emanating from the common law doctrine of coverture. The 1918 Representation of the People Act enfranchised women over 30 who owned property, or whose husband owned property, in time for the December 1918 general election. The 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act made it illegal to exclude women from membership of incorporated societies – such as academic, learned or professional bodies like the RIA. The act allowed women to practice law, join incorporated professional societies, and study for degrees at universities. Thirty years later the RIA elected its first four female ‘ordinary’ members! Why so long?

Mary Ann Hutton

Mrs Mary Ann Hutton (Née Drummond), described as ‘a (widow) lady’ in RIA correspondence[1] was proposed for RIA membership on 27 January 1910 by an impressive group of scholars: Douglas Hyde (1860–1949), Edward Gwynn (1868–1941), Louis Purser (1854–1932), Thomas Westropp (1860–1922) and John [Eoin] MacNeill (1867–1945). Broadly put, the scholarly reputations of Hutton’s proposers, if she had been a man, would have made the election a foregone conclusion.

Certificate of candidate: Mary Hutton. 27 January 1910.

Born of supportive and open-minded liberal Unitarian parents, Mary Ann Hutton had been a pioneering woman student at the University of London, becoming an accomplished Irish-language scholar, acquaintance of Patrick Pearse and a supporter of Conradh na Gaeilge. Intriguingly, in 1908, Hutton had given the ‘Margaret Stokes memorial lectures’ at Alexandra College, Dublin. As Dr Linde Lunney notes in the Dictionary of Irish Biograhy, Hutton’s ‘main contribution to Irish scholarship was The Táin: an Irish epic told in English verse (1907), an edition of the Táin Bó Cuailnge legend with scholarly appendices of lexical terms and names. It was not a literal translation but rather a re-working in blank verse of material from various sources, and took ten years’ work. Well received, it was re-published in 1924 with illustrations in Celtic revival’.

The Táin: an Irish epic told in English verse by Mary A. Hutton (Dublin, 1907)

The RIA Council considered the nomination, in February 1910, and sought legal advice from the Academy’s solicitor W. M. Jellett. He advised, in September, that women’s membership was incompatible with the RIA charter, suggesting a supplementary charter would be necessary to admit women members. The 1919 Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act, though valid in the Irish Free State, in this instance had little impact. In 1930 the RIA again consulted Jellett, who opined the following year that women ‘may become members … but cannot be elected’ to hold office in the RIA.

W. M. Jellett

William Morgan Jellett (1857–1936), the eldest son of J. H. Jellett (1817–88), Provost of TCD and President of the RIA (1869–74), was a leading lawyer, MP for TCD (1919–22), a prominent figure in Unionism, and former private secretary to Lord Ashbourne. His father had been the only member of the TCD board to support the admission of women students. Refusing Lloyd George’s offer of the attorney generalship for Ireland and then declining a seat on the judicial bench offered to him by the new Cumann na Gaedheal government, Jellett reconciling himself to the new Free State, participating in many important legal cases through the 1920–30s, dying as ‘father’ of the Irish bar[2]. Jellett must have been aware of the impact and relevance of the 1919 Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act to some of his own close female relatives. His sister Eva Jospehine Jellett (1897–1944) was Trinity College’s first woman medical graduate (MB, 1905). Another sister, Dorothea (‘Bea’) Jellett, was a prominent violinist and conductor of the Gaiety Theatre Orchestra. In 1895 William Jellett had married Janet McKenzie Stokes (1868–1946), daughter of the lawyer Henry Stokes (1842–1920). Amongst their children was the noted painter Mainie Jellett (1897–1944), a leading artistic figure of her generation. One of Janet’s paternal aunts was Margaret McNair Stokes. Thus the question of female membership of the RIA was of more than professional interest to William Jellett.[3]

‘Four ordinary members’

Eventually in 1949 the RIA elected four women ordinary members. Mathematical physicist Sheila Christina Tinney (1918–2010), art historian Françoise Henry (1902–82), scientist and botanist Phyllis Clinch (1901–84) and the Irish language scholar Eleanor Knott (1886–1975) were the first four women members elected to the RIA. All four featuring in the DIB, their election has been retrospectively marked by their portraits being hung in Academy House in 2016.

Turlough O’Riordan
Dictionary of Irish Biography