Life
1830-1883 [pseud. ‘Feardana’]; physician and poet, b. Glenosheen,
Co. Limerick, ed. Queen’s College, Cork; trained as teacher and succeeded
his br. P. W. Joyce as principal of Clonmel Model School; his ‘the
Boys of Exford’ appeared in the first issue of The Irish People
in 1863; later studied medicine at QUC [Cork]; Professor of English in
Catholic University, and MRIA; Ballads, Romances and Songs ( 1861),
containing pieces which had appeared in The Nation and other papers
over the name ‘Feardana’, followed by other lyrical collections
incl. Ballads of Irish Chivalry (1872), following his emigration
to America in 1866; wrote the ballad, ‘The Boys of Wexford’;
trans. Piaras Mac Gearailt’s ‘Rosc Catha na Mumhan’; issued
longer poems such as Deirdre (1876), an epic, and Blanaid
(1879), retelling stories from the Ulster cycle; also Legends of the
Wars in Ireland (1868) and Irish Fireside Tales (1871), collections
of historical short stories; composed his epics in his carriage on the
way to visit patients; d. at his brother’s house, 24 Sept. CAB
PI JMC DBIV IF IF2 DIB DIW DIH MKA FDA OCIL
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Works
Ballads, Romances and Songs (Dublin: Duffy 1861); Legends and
Wars (Boston 1868), Irish Fireside Tales (Boston 1871); Deirdre
(Boston 1876).
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Criticism
W. B. Yeats, ‘The Poetry of R. D. Joyce’, Irish Fireside
(27 Nov. & 4 Dec. 1886; rep. in Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose
of W B Yeats Vol. 1, 1970, pp.104-14); Mannix Joyce, ‘The Joyce
Brothers of Glenosheen’, in Capuchin Annual (1969), [q.pp.];
David James O’Donoghue, ‘The Literature of ‘67’, in Shamrock, 30 (1893). D. J. O’Donoghue has a memoir of him
in Irish Book Lover [q.d.]
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Quotations
“The Blacksmith of Limerick”: ‘... He shod
the steed of Sarsfield, but o’er it sang no song, ‘Ochon! my
boys are dead’, e cried; ‘their loss I’ll long depolore
/ But comfort’s in my heart - their graves are red with foreign gore.’
“Fineen the Rover”: ‘‘Fineen O’Driscoll the free ... The Saxons of Cork and Mayallo / They harried his lands with their powers ... The men of Clan London brought over / Their strong fleet to make him a slave; / They met him by Mizen’s wild highland, / And the sharks crunch their bones ‘neath the waves!’
“Crossing the Blackwater, AD 1603”: ‘We stood so steady, / All under fire / We stood so stead / Our long spears ready / To vent our ire: / To dash on the Saxon, / Our mortal foe / And lay him low / In thebloody mire ... Till the flight began ... Our dead freres we buried ...’
“The Wind that Shakes the Barley”: ‘I sat within the valley greeen, / I sat me with my true love ... the new [love] made me thin on Ireland dear / While soft the wind blew down the glade, / And shook the golden barley ... But blood for blood without remorse / I’ve ta’en at Oulart Hollow / I’ve placed my true love’s clay-cold corse / Where I full soon will follows; / And round her grave I wander drear, / noon, night, and morning early / With breaking heart where’er I hear / the wind that shakes the barley!’
“Naisi Receives his Sword” (from Deirdre): ‘No in the lonely hour when with her ray / The moon o’er te ocean trailed a shaimmering way ... A voice struck Naisi’s ear and bade him wake.’
“The Exploits of Curoi” (from Blanid): ‘There man a man’s dim closing eye was cast / In wonder at the strange Knight’s glittering form ... Mid showers of bolts and darts, like Crom the God / Of Thunder, towards the magic wheel he trod ... Raised high the spear that form his right hand sped / Down crashing through the monster’s burnished head ... Twin Dragons ... From the bright Mount of Monad ... No minstrel’s tongue ... could tell ... How ... amid the heaps of slain the old King fell ... the Bloom-bright One forlorn / And her fair maids were brought froth from the hold / With all the treasures of bright gems and gold.’
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References
Anon, The Green and the Red or Historical Tales
and Legends of Ireland (Glasgow 1870), contains R. D. Joyce’s
stories, ‘Galloping O’Hogans’, ‘Whitehorn Tree’,
‘Rose of Drinnagh’, ‘A Fair Maid of Killarney’ [IF2,
under anon].
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), gives bio-data: br. of Patrick Weston; Legends of the Wars in Ireland (1868); Irish Fireside Tales (1871); lived in US as a doctor, works publ. in Boston; b. Limerick 1830, d. Dublin 1883. See also FDA3, 625.
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. 2] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), Joyce, Robert Dwyer, Galloping O’Hogan, or the Rapparee Captains (Dublin, Gill, n.d.), apparently a reprinted of the four Joyce stories in the Glasgow collection.
John Cooke, ed., Dublin Book of Irish Verse 1728-1909 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 1909), gives bio-dates 1830-1883; selects ‘Finneen O’Driscoll the Rover’; ‘The Drynán Dhun’; ‘Margréad Bán’; ‘Song of the Forest’.
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904), gives six pieces, incl. extracts from Deirdre, and Blanid; biog. notice: b. Glenosheen [village], Co. Limerick; entered service of Commissioners of national Education, then became student at Queen’s College, Cork; grad. Sci., Hons; MD, 1865; emig. US 1866, settled in Boston, practised medicine; freq. contrib to The Nation, also articles on Irish literature in other periodicals; Ballads, Romances, and Songs (Dublin 1861); Legends of the Wars in Ireland (1868), prose stories founded on traditions of peasantry in northern counties; Irish Fireside Tales (1871), same sort; Ballads of Irish Chivalry (1872); Deirdre (1876), free poetical version in rhyming heroic verse [of Longes mac nUislenn]; Blanid (1879), also tragedy of real life in ancient days, period of Red Branch Knights, 1st century of the Christian era, and death of the champion Curoi, King of S. Munster, and his captive, ‘the bloom-bright Blanid’; notes resemblance to Tennyson’s Princess; d. Oct. 1883 [sic]; selects ‘The Blacksmith of Limerick’, ‘Crossing the Blackwater, AD 1603’, ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’, ‘Naisi Receives his Sword’, from Deirdre; ‘The Exploits of Curoi’, from Blanid, in terza rima [all as supra].
Ulster Libraries: Belfast Public Library holds Ballads of Irish Chivalry (1908); Blanid (1879. University of Ulster Library, Morris Collection, holds Ballads of Irish Chivalry (1908); Blanid (1879).
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Notes
Fr. Charles Meehan administered religious consolation to Robert
Dwyer Joyce on his deathbed in the house of his brother P. W. Joyce, who
speaks of his ‘intense love for of Ireland and Ireland’s lore
/ [...] as well as the ‘vigorous nationality [and] simple and transparent
style’ of his poems.
W. B. Yeats: John Frayne (ed., Uncollected Prose of W. B. Yeats, 1970, Vol. 1), writes: ‘In spite of writing on him at considerable length, Yeats did not rate Joyce highly, holding him to be a “bard”, he was like a great orator, who only when he feels all hearts beat in unison with his, rises to his best, and becomes alone with the universe and his own voice. Therefore the bardic work ever human and living [...] the poet of all external things [...] in no way a singer’ (p.114). Yeats did not include Joyce in his lists of Irish books.
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