John O’Donovan: Commentary

W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (1961): ‘The Academy persuaded the English Government to finance an ordance survey on a large scale; scholars, including that great scholar John O’Donovan, were sent from village to village recording names and their legends. Perhaps it was the last moment when such a work could be well done, the memory of the people was still intact, the collectors themselves had perhaps heard or seen the banshee […], p.512.)

P. W. Joyce, Irish Names of Places (1869, &c.) - list of sources in the Preface cites ‘The Annals of the Four Masters, translated and edited by John O’Donovan, LL.D., M.R.I.A.; published by Hodges and Smith, Dublin; the noblest historical work on Ireland ever issued by any Irish publisher a book which every man should possess, who wishes to obtain a thorough knowledge of the history, topography, and antiquities of Ireland.’ (p.ix.)

[ top ]

John Cunningham, ‘A Quarryman in Digging in the Bowels of Antiquity, The Letters of John O’Donovan’, in Causeway (Summer 1994), pp.24-28. Cunningham quotes: ‘the downfall of the Irish families has been brought about by war, women, and madness. Capt. Hugh Maguire when an old man turned off his wife, the mother of his nine legitimate children, and kept his own house-maid … The Milesian families of uninterrupted heredity [and] respectability are ebbing fastly to their finish. Maguire left no legitimate male issue, and Lord O’Neill will soon die without issue, legitmiate or illegitimate, for he was never known to approach any of the lovely sex except another man’s wife.’ Bibl. incls. Patricia Boyne, John O’Donovan 1806-1861, A Biography (Boethius: Irish Studies 1987); Graham Mawhinney, ed., John O’Donovan’s Letters from Co. Londonderry, 1834 (Ballinscreen Hist. Soc. 1992); and The Letters of John O’Donovan from Co. Fermanagh, 1834 (St Davog’s Press, Belleek 1993).

[ top ]

Paul Walsh, Irish Men of Learning (Dublin: Three Candles [1947]): ‘[H]ad O’Donovan not edited the Four Masters, neither Hennessy nor MacCarthy could have edited the Annals of Ulster, Todd could not have edited the Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill, and Hennessy could not have edited the Annals of Loch Cé or Chronicum Scotorum. Others who have ytouched this class of literature have been satisfied to be transcribers not commentators…. O’Donovan’s edition of the Annals of the Four Masters is the fount and origin from which most of our subsequent historical commentaries have been derived.’ (p.263ff). Further (1947 Edn.): The latest transcript of the Book of Fenagh was made by John Ó Donovan in 1828. From it the edition of 1875 was prepared. The printed text therefore, in particulars, deviates from the MS of Muirgius. In extenutation of O’Donovan’s apparent carelessness, it has been stated that he was only eighteen years of age when he made the transcript. The fact is that he was all but twenty two when he finished the work. His baptismal entry, as verified by Canon Carrigan gives his birth date as 26 July 1806. [68]. See also further remarks on O’Donovan in this text, Cap. xxii passim [‘John Ó Donovan, Irish Historical Scholar’], ed. Waterford, then Dublin in a Latin school to 1827; worked for Hardiman, 1827-30; transcribed Peter O’Connell’s Irish Dictionary [BML Egerton MS 84, 85]; facsimile copy of Book of Fenagh, and subsequent English translation, 1828; taught Liet. Thomas Larcom; studied Ussher, Ware, and Colgan; Petrie’s Essay on the Hill of Tara embodies O’Donovan’s identifications and observations in letters from co. Meath [265]; Walsh writes, ‘he was steeped in the work at hand, and readers of the Ordnance Survey collections will recall his almost uniform bouyancy, and the evident zest with which he pursed his various lines of enquiry, or laid the spectres of what passed for archaeological knowlege in the school of Vallancey, Ledwich, and others in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’; his extended walks in all weather; only printed essays from his pen appeared in Dublin Penny Jouranl, 1832-33; collaborated with Petrie in description of Ó Clery castle at Kilbarron, Co. Donegal [265], reply to notions that there were no traces of civilisation in remote times in Ireland; disappointed in effort to secure endowed post at TCD, 1836; Irish Arch. Soc., first meeting, 3 May 1841; essay on Muirhertach king of Ailech, 68 quarto pp., with major text of 942 (as Tracts relating to Ireland, I), marked first successful return to method of Charles Ó conor; The banquet of Dún na nGedh and the Battle of Magh Rath (1842), trans. with wealth of commentary; ed. genealogies from Book of Lecan, and Book of Genealogies of Dubhaltach mac Firbhisigheds, producing tracts relatng to Uí Maine and Uí Fiachrach territories in Connacht as Tribes and Customs of Hy-Many (1843) and Tribes and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach (1844); Leabhar na gCeart (Celtic Soc. 1847), edited from Book of Lecan and Book of Ballymote, repesenting political framework of ancient Ireland; Miscellanies of 1846 and 1849 for in part for Irish Arch. Soc, and the later entirely for the Celtic Society, incl. Irish charters in Book of Kells; also The Annals of Ireland in the year 1443 and 1468, translated from the Irish of Dudley Firbisse [Mac Fhirbisigh], ed Ó Donovan in Miscellany (IAS 1846); his edition of The Annals of the Four Masters here called ‘the fount and origin from which most of our subsequent historical commentaries have been derived’; on criticisms of O’Donovan he writes, ‘O’Donovan now and again made mistakes, the possibility of which he did not deny. Where he failed, copyists who came after him invariably failed too. Also, since his time, numerous lists of placenames have been provided by editors of texts of non-historical character. In every instance it might be said that the vast majority of their identifications are not original but second-hand. They are common property now, but in the first instance they were, as Standish Hayes O’Grady once bluntly characterised them, ‘pillaged from the printed works of John O’Donovan’ [270]; closing years absorbed in work for Brehon Law Commission; Three Fragments of Irish Annals (1860); postum., The Topographical Poems of Ó Dubhagáin and Ó hUidrin, and the Martyrology of Donegal, printed with essay on Irish family and other names written for Irish Penny Journal in 1841, anbd condensed for publication by John Gilbert [orig. essay with Gilbert’s emends. in Ó Lochlainn’s possession; ftn.]; ed. of Cormac’s Glossary (posthum. 1868), ed. Whitley Stokes; d. 9 Dec. Bibl.,John T Gilbert, memoir of O’Donovan, in Dublin Review, cii (1862); also Duffy’s Hibernian Magazine (1862); O’Curry’s statement on the Brehon Laws Commission, pb. by Dr Sigerson, Journal of National Literary Society of Ireland; ‘John O’Donovan and Dr Todd’, IBL, xxvii, p.161; ‘John O’Donovan’s Family’, IBL, xxvii, p.207; ‘John O’Donvan and the Annals’, ibid. 179. INDEX: Further remarks also at 2 [gathered location of Ó Duigenan bardic school at Castlefore from tradition’, 4 [err. listing of Conaire Ó Clérigh among Four Masters], pp.17, 22, 42, 48, 50n, 51n, 68, 82-8, 91, 92, 95, 99, 101, 112, 115, 120, 123, 124, 149, 232, 242, 252, 280, 283.

[ top ]

George A. Little, Dublin Before the Vikings (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1957), givces citations from O’Donovan: ITEM I] ‘I cannot at all believe that the settlement of Dublin as a place of commerce and as a fortified town can be attributed to the Scandanavian pirates, in the ninth century.’ (John O’Donovan, ‘Annals of Dublin’, Dublin Penny Journal, vol. I, no 1, p.174). ITEM II] In regard to the use of the Scandanavian v form which reflects the phonetic rendering of the compound word Duibh/linn in its genitive case Little also cites infra, O’Donovan, Annals of Dublin of 1832 (Dublin Penny Journal, vol. 1, No. 22., 24 Nov. 1832). ITEM III] Little aligns what he calls ‘a school of romantics’ that ‘postured to fashionable prominence [and] attracted a swarm of imitators and admirers’, being made up of Stanihurst, Holinshed, Vallancy, Ledwich and Beetham who suppress all matter that reflects credit on Ireland, summoning the fullest efforts of Keating, White, Lynch, Petrie, O’Donovan, and O’Curry to dislodge them. [xv] ITEM IV] The translation of The History of the Galls of Ath Cliath - concerning the arrival of St Patrick and his clerics - was done by O’Donovan. [Little, 1957 App. on various Irish Annals.] ITEM V] In a note in the Book of Rights, O’Donovan states without authority that Dún-na-n-Gall us intended to denote Dún Duibh-linne’ (p.226, n.) [30] ITEM VI] O’Donovan, in his preface to the Annals of Dublin uses this name [Ath Cliath Duiblinne] with an assurance that leaves no doubt that [it] was in his opinion the full and proper title for the city … he repeats (if indeed the introduction is his) the Book of Rights. (Annals [for] 1650, ed. O’Donovan, p.127). ITEM VII] O’Donovan, [The esker] ‘extended from High St. in Dublin to Ath Cliath Meadhraighe in Galway. This esker, which is a continuoous line of gravel hills, is describied in our ancient MSS … The writer has walked along this ridge, and found it to extend by the (Greenhills) hills of Crumlin, and so along by Esker of Lucan, then south of Liffey, near Celbridge, and so across that river near Clane onwards to Donadea, until it strikes the high-road near Clonard, thus extending southwards of the conspicuous Hill of Croghan, until near Philipstown a line of road takes advantage of its elevation to run between bogs. It is next to be seen in a very conspicuous ridge two miles north of Tullamore, where Conn and Mogha fought the batte of Maggh Léna, and then it extends in a very well developed line through the Barony of Garrycastle unti its strikes the Shannon at Clonmacnoise. It can be sen in a very distinct line at Clonburren on the west side of the Shannon, and at the town of Ballinasloe, whence it extends in the direction of the abbey of Kilconnell; thence it wends in the direction of Athenry, and son to the promontory of Tinn Tamham (now Towan Point) in Meadhraighe, or th parish of Ballynacourty, a few files south of the town of Galway.’ (‘Tracts relating to Ireland’, Irish Arch. Soc., vol. X, p.45) [50] ITEM VIII] Fragments of Annals of Ireland, ed. O’Donovan, incl. Annals of Tigherach, or parts thereof. [69-70] ITEM IX] John O’Donovan, ‘There is sufficient foreign and domestic testimony to prove that Ireland had commerce, and several cities of note, at a very early period, and unquestionably several centuries before the Danes obtained any footing in it.’ (Probably from the same source as the ‘joining of issue’) [95] ITEM X] In his Preface to The Book of Rights, O’Donovan quotes Cormac’s Glossary in regard to the grades of road in ancient Ireland, rot, i.e., ro-shet, a great set or path, ró-set, a chariot goes upon it to a fair ..; ramhat, wider than a rot, … an open space or street, found in front of the fort of kings; slighe, sufficiently wide for the passing of two large chariots ..; Lamhróta, avenue connecting two slighte … to a fort or important seat; tuaghróta (farmer’s road), for the convenience of husbandmen ..; bothar, two cows fit upon it, one lengthwise and the other athwart. [Little does not cite the page in O’Donovan.] ITEM XI] Book of Rights work of St. Benin, companion to and successor of St Patrick to the see of Armagh; various editors of the same tradition transmitted it; among them Cormac Mac Airt and Brian Bórumha; included in a compilation of tracts, the Psalter of Cashel, in the 10th or 11th c. The editor of the Book of Rights, O’Donovan, supposes the Book was not - could not have been - compiled until the era of the Norse possession of Dublin. In Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, note, O’Curry speaks of the authorship of the introduction of that edition, ‘The admirable edition of this work [Book of Rights] by the Celtic Society was prepared by the late J. O’Donovan, with the assistance of Prof. O’Curry; the valuable introductions were the work of the late WE Hudson, who superintended the publication on the part of the Council of the Society.’ (vol. II, lect. II, pp.45). In other parts of the Manners &c., O’Curry refers to O’Donovan’s opinion in the same Introduction (viz, in Lect. VIII, ibid, p.137). The solution is apparent in the fact that the said Introduction is comprised untypically of nine unconnected essays. O’Rahilly (Early Irish History & Mythology, Chp. VIII, p.487) comments that the introduction is usually accredited to O’Donovan but that according to WK Sullivan it was ‘work of the late W.E. Hudson.’ Little considers it of some importance to decide which portion is O’Donovan’s since the ‘opinion of this great scholar may never be dismissed lightly.’ [172] ITEM XII] In his introduction to the Annals of Dublin, [O’Donovan] admits that pre-Norse Dublin was a large and important city, and in his commentary on the Book of Rights his opinion appears to have remained unchanged; but the conviction that Gaill in this context meant Norsemen left him no alternative but to impugn the authenticity of this source … influencing O’Curry, Hudson, and many more to acquiesce in this opinion. / Surely nowhere is the confusion of Irish history, resulting from the idée fixe of a Norse-founded Dublin, better exemplified than in the illogical position into which these experts were forced. [173] ITEM XIV] Gne. bibl. O’Donovan; ed., Annals of Dublin; ed., Martyrology of Gorman; ed., the Book of Rights; Tracts relating to Ireland. [END]

[ top ]

Robert Welch, A History of Verse Translation from the Irish 1789-1897 (Gerrards Cross 1988). O’Donovan wrote to Thomas Larcom the Ordnance Survey director, ‘The Irish writers of the last century were a mean ignorant and distasteful lot … Vallancey, Beauford, Roger O’Conor [sic], etc. were either fools or else they were charlatans who could not understand the truth of ancient or of modern history.’ (11 Aug. 1836) [183, n.10]. O’Donovan is a major figure in Welch’s account of the circle gathered around Petrie, including Mangan (Chp. 8). In a letter to Thomas Davis, O’Donovan questions the authenticity of Mangan’s poetical versions of Irish poems, ‘the translations from the Irish by Mangan … are very good; but how near are they to the literal translations furnished to Mangan by Mr Curry? Are they the shadow of the shade?’ (Quoted in Desmond Ryan, The Sword of Light, 1939. p.169) [107].

[ top ]

Cathy Swift, ‘John O’Donovan and the Framing of early Medieval Ireland in the Nineteenth Century’, in Bullán, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1994), pp.91-103: quotes, Donovan, ‘I have a letter from Mr Petrie complainging that I am becoming a dry topgraher. Iagree with him entirely but I do not understand how he conceived that I could do more than I am doing; all my time is consumed looking for townlands, lochans, and bits and noses of townlands to ascertain their correct hames; this is what I conceive I am employed to do and nothing else. I don’t look on the letters I write as any part of my business. Be this as it may, I have made every enquiry for traditiosn connected with the monuments which he alludes to …’ (Letter from Boyle, 27 July 1837; in M. Flanagan, ed., Letters containing Information Relative to the Antiquities of the Country of Roscommon [ … &c.], 2 vols., Bray 1927; Swift, p.94); notes that O’Donovan misled revivalists in locating the site of St Patrick’s Paschal fire at the Hill of Slane rather than at Trim, favouring Colgan over Dr. Charles O’Conor [Rerum Hib.] (p.97-98); ‘O’Donovan’s identifiaction, even when based entirely on oral information, must still be considered carefully by the contemporary Irish scholar and the grounds fro rejection of his suggestions shoud be stated’ (p.99); ‘O’Donovan’s legacy in terms of the identitifiaction of the political organisation of the landscape is a rather less happy one. Although he recognised the incursion of new families into the Irish landscape and the possibility of changes in political control, he appears to have visiaulsied the land-units themselves as being largely permanent. […] Likewise in the topographcial poemsof the fortheen-century poets O Dubhagain and O hUidrin, also edited by O’Donovan, the poets themselves appear to ignore the possibility of territorial change. O’Donoacvn is, therefore, merely publishing long-held tenets of Irish literature [and these] appear to have effected his own interpretation of historical change’ (p.99); ‘territorial unit[s] remained inteact from prehistoric times [and] the boundariers of this ancestral unit remained sufficiently well-knownf or them to be identified with some certainty in the nineteenth century’ (p.100); ‘In recend years, the historians of later medieval Ireland have increasingly emphasised the extent to which this model of a largely unchanging landscape can no longer be substantiated’ (p.100). Bibl. incl. J. H. andres, ‘The survey of Ireland to 1847[, in W. A. Seymour, ed., A History of the Ordnance Survey (Folkestone 1980); Andrews, A Paper Landscape, the Ordnance Survey in Nineteeth-Century Ireland (Oxford 1975); ‘T. J. Clohesy, ‘John O’Donovan’, in Old Kilkenny Review, xiv (1962);

[ top ]

Tim Robinson, ‘Listening to the Landscape’, Irish Review, 14 (Autumn 1993), ‘According to John O’Donovan, who was the Ordnance Survey’s expert on placemanes for the first survey in the 1830s, Tullaghlumman meant ‘Lóman’s hill’ - whenever O’Donovan could not otherwise interpret a placename he would derive it from some personal name, and he invented an amazing number of peculiarly named persons in the process…… In Ireland O’Donovan himself, the greatest Irish scholar of his age, presided over the systematic corruption of Irish placenames - after the sappers on the ground had noted down the placenames from the locals as best they could, it was O’Donovan who checked the earlier textual and cartographical sources, and having decided on the correct Irish form of each name, wrote down not the Irish but the anglicised form that was to appear on the map; it was a very great betrayal, for as he himself noted, many of these names become very indistinct when transcribed in English phonetic values…. the second great trauma of the sense of place in Ireland [… &c.]’ (pp.25, 28-9). Note that Robinson talks, in conclusion, about the geophanic language of Ireland.

[ top ]

The Spark (Fermanagh; q.d.): Ist serialisation of letters of John O’Donovan written during his participation in the Irish Ordance Survey in Fermanagh. ‘The Great Irish Speaking Archaeologist’ was remembered by William Copeland Trimble who ran the letters in The Impartial Reporter (Enniskillen) in 1934; now rep. in The Spark. The first letters are dated Oct 10th, 12th, 1834. Specimens, 1] ‘I have caught a slight cold and will remain within door tomorrow, to arrange all my papers. I shall have a great many further questions to ask about the Annals of the IV Masters. O’Keefe has done his business right well and satisfactorily. hat are you doing with Derry? O’Keef has not sent me all the passages from the Annals about Devinish. Let him do so immediately that I may lose no hint.’ 2] Item 6, 12 Oct., ‘Tir enda. I am inclined to think that the tir enda of the Annals is the barony of tir Kenedy in the Co. of Fermanagh. Where does Harris or the Abbé Mac Geoghegan place this territory?’ 3] ‘Send every passage in the Annals relating to the twenty-four places above mentioned. Send me also that part of O’Dugan’s Topographical Poem which treats of the families and sub-divisions of Fermanagh. It will be found in O’Kane’s MS, which Mr Petrie has at present.’ Further, Serialisation 2 [Spark, 4, Mar 1993], 15 Oct., 17th, 20th. On the first date, he calls on Thomas Maguire, shopkeeper, the Maguire and lineal descendent of the Irish lord of Enniskillen. He makes reference to one topographical word frequent in local place-names, viz tate (taite, tatty), ‘I know that Vallancey explains it in his Collectanea, but in what part I do not remember. Perhaps Petrie may remember. I think that Tatte is much the same as Carrow or quarter of land and may perhaps be a corruption of Latin, stadium, but this I give as a wild conjecture. I wish you could send me Vallancey’s definition of it.’ O’Donovan gives a list of the succession of the Maguires, lords of Enniskillen, down to Connor Maguire, the last, who was executed at the Tower, 1644. Nowhere in this reprint of the letters is the name of the correspondent given, by O’Donovan, Trimble, or the current editor.

[ top ]

Willie Smyth, review of Michael Herity, ed., Ordnance Survey Letters: Donegal, pref. Brian Friel (Four Masters Press [2000]), 148pp., Irish Times, 18 Nov. 2000. John O’Donovan records that he has ‘a large field to work in’ during his employment by the commission 1834-43; writes at speed under poor conditions; ‘I shall now proceed to decide, to settle the names of Kilmacrenan barony’; notes O’Donovan’s metaphorical use of ‘attack’ and ‘conquest’ to describe his work in Tir Connall; ‘Are we keeping pace with the engravers?’; of Archdall: ‘I am sure he is wrong’; admits no authority except Moses and Keating; sensitive to what he calls ‘constant tradition’, for tradition [he says,] ‘always retains some glimmer of truth’; notes nutritional over-dependence on potato, a ‘present state of things [which] must end in destruction’; ‘I am anxious to collect all the rhymes and rags of history […] that they may be hereafter digested and arranged in proper order.’; remarks that the predominantly Presbyterians inhabitants of Upper Fahy and Raphoe as ‘Scottified and never talk of old times’; underestimated the Norse-Scandinavian contribution to Donegal and Irish place-names, viz., Tory Island; 12 weeks in Donegal, 1835. There is a portrait by Charles Grey (NGI).

[ top ]

Tony Canavan, reviewing Stiofan Ó Cadhla, Civilizing Ireland, Ordnance Surgey 1824-1842 - Ethnography, Cartography, Translation, in Books Ireland (Nov. 2007): ‘[….] Ó Cadhla does recognise that O’Donovan and his colleagues did record much of folklore, customs and rituals but he is sceptical as to their overall value since every observer chooses what to record. The memoirs are riddled with absences where the memorialist states that he did not record what he was told because he considered it “uninteresting and worthless ”. Even what was faithfully recorded did not necessarily get into the final reports as there was editing and selection by others higher up the chain of command. 0 Cadhia shows that there was tension between the Irish scholars working for the Ordnance Survey and their English, or anglicised, superiors and that the work of O ’Donovan and O ’Curry was routinely downgraded. He claims too that the English officers in the survey must have been familiar with farming practices in Ireland as they did not differ much from those of England but that they chose to highlight the differences and present Irish society as being wildly different. I am not sure how far this is true as even before the Industrial Revolution there was a different landlord and social system in Britain. However in the chapters of the book dealing with these issues, he does make some valid points about translation and ethnographic study. He also brings out the assumptions of superiority that coloured what the memorialists saw and recorded. […] I agree with most of Ó Cadhla ’s arguments and conclusions but disagree with how he says it. There is an element of the chip-on-the-shoulder about his writing and a seeking to be offended. He cites language used in the Ordnance Survey as being offensive even if, as with the word “vulgar ”, he admits that its meaning in the nineteenth century was different from its meaning today. I think too he attaches too much weight to the Ordnance Survey in the decline of Irish culture and the anglicisation of placenames. As Smyth makes clearthis was a process that began in the sixteenth century and was well under way by the seventeenth. Ó Cadhla bemoans the decline of the Irish language but the Great Famine and other factors, 1 would say, had more to do with that than mapmakers or anglicising bureaucrats. He is particularly hard on O ’Donovan whom he characterises as being dismissive and cynical of the native culture. 1 have read O ’Donovan ’s letters myself and find him amusing and ironic. I think Ó Cadhla is being a tad curmudgeonly in his attitude to him. Is O ’Donovan really being cynical when he compares the Irish fairy to the Muslim genii? When he recites the names of old Milesian families in an area, is he really mocking them or in fact drawing attention to the parvenu status of their English landlords? […] ’ (p.257.)

[ top ]

Claire Connolly, ‘Irish Romanticism, 1800-1839’, in Cambridge History of Irish Literature (Cambridge UP 2006), Vol. I [Chap. 10]: ‘Although they form no part of the print culture of this period and do not constitute travel literature in any ordinary sense of the word, it is also worth noting here that the 1820s and I830s saw the composition of Gaelic scholar john O'Donovan's (1806-61) extraordinary field reports detailing Irish place-names and local history. The letters languished in the Ordnance Survey office in Phoenix Parkin in Dublin until the period of the Literary Revival. For readers keen to know more of the world represented in the texts of Irish Romanticism, they stand as a rich and densely textured resource with which our scholarship has yet to fully engage.’ (p.425; Connolly cites J. H. Andrews, A Paper Landscape: The Orddnace Survey in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2002.)

[ top ]