John O’Hagan



Life

1822-90; 19 March, Newry, Co. Down; ed. byJesuits and . TCD, where he formed a friendship with John Kells Ingram; grad. 1842; called to the Irish bar that year, he joined the Munster Circuit; appt. a Commissioner of National Education, 1861; QC, 1865; m. Frances, dg. of Thomas O'Hagan [q.v.]; contributed “Ourselves Alone”, a poem, to the Nation; also “Dear Land” and other lyrics as “Sliabh Cuilinn” [Gl. for the Sugar Loaf Mt., Co. Wicklow]; known as a Young Irelander; defended Charles Gavan Duffy in libel suit, 1842, and in the state trials of 1843-44;

visited London with Duffy and John Edward Pigot, making a call on Thomas Carlyle [q.v.] to persuade him against anti-Irish views expressed in On Chartism and elsewhere; supported a federal solution in Ireland; participated in the O’Connell Centenary, 1875; published a study of Carlyle in The Dublin Review, impressing Carlyle himself, as appears from a memorandum in Froude’s Life; wrote a trans. of the “La Chanson de Roland” as Song of Roland (1883)]; appt. by Gladstone to head the Land Commission, following the Land Law Act (1881); d. 10 Nov. 1890, at Howth [var. 13th.].

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Works
Poetry
  • The Children’s Ballad-Rosary (1890).
  • trans. Chansons de Roland [1833.
Prose
  • ‘trinity College No Place for Catholics“, in Dublin Review (1847), rep. (Dublin: CTS [1912, 24pp.,
  • Chaucer, in “Afternoon Lectures” (Dublin 1864).
  • Joan of Arc (1893) [biography].
  • The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson (Dublin 1887) 88pp., prev. in Irish Monthly, 12 (1884) [analyses "Congal" and discusses Ferguson’s nature poetry].
Miscellaneous
  • ed., The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son 1887), 88pp.

 

Commentary
Joseph Sweeney, ‘Why “Sinn Féin?”’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.33-40, notes that John O’Leary, who knew O’Hagan in Paris, said that he was a fine conversationalist (Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism, 1806, Vol. 2, p.62; here p.38.) Sweeney notes that O’Hagan became a prominent Justice, edited the collected poems of Samuel Ferguson, published a translation of The Song of Roland, and wrote an introduction to an edition of Thomas More’s Utopia.

Nose-bleed:  Jane Carlyle wrote in her diary: ‘while they were all three at the loudest defence [sic] of Ireland against the foul aspersions Carlyle had [...]. “scornfully ” cast on it, [O’Hagan’s nose] burst out bleeding. He let it bleed into his pocket-handkerchief privately til nature was relieved, and was more cautious of exciting himself afterwards.’ (Jane Carlyle; quoted in Charles Gavan Duffy, Conversations with Carlyle, 1892, p.3; see in “John O’Hagan ”, in Wikipedia - online.)

See also Thomas Morrissey, SJ, The Most Estimable of Men: Judge John O'Hagan (1822-1890) (Dublin: Messenger Publ.,  2022) [NLI Cat. online].

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Quotations

“Ourselves Alone”: ‘The work that should to-day be wrought, / Defer not till to-morrow; / The help that should within be sought, / Scorn from without to borrow. / Old maxims these - yet stout and true- / They speak in trumpet tone, / To do at once what is to do, / And trust OURSELVES ALONE. // Too long the Irish heart we schooled / In patient hope to bide, / By dreams of English justice fooled, / And English tongues that lied. / That hour of weak delusion’s past - / The empty dream has flown: / Our hope and strength, we find at last, / Is in OURSELVES ALONE. // Aye! bitter hate or cold neglect, / Or lukewarm love at best, / Is all we’ve found, or can expect, / We aliens of the West. / No friend, beyond our own green shore, / Can Erin truly own; / Yet stronger is her trust, therefore, / In her brave sons ALONE. [// .. //] The foolish word “impossible” / At once, for aye, disdain! / No power can bar a people’s will, / A people’s right to gain. / Be bold, united, firmly set, / Nor flinch in word or tone - / We’ll be a glorious nation yet, / REDEEMED -ERECT - ALONE!’].

“Dear Land” -
A stanza of the poem is given as epigraph in William Bulfin, Rambles in Erin (Dublin & Waterford: MH Gill 1908) [t.p]:
When I behold your mountains bold —
Your noble lakes and streams —
A mingled tide of grief and pride
Within my bosom teems.
I think of all your long dark thrall —
Your martyrs brave and true;
And dash apart the tears that start —
We must not weep for you.
Dear land—
We must not weep for you.
Note that further verses from it are quoted in Canon P. A. Sheehan’s The Graves of Kilmorna, A Story of ’67 (1915) - in the episode where James Halpin is walking through the town absorbing the information that his fellow-Fenian Myles Cogan has just been arrested and transported to Clonmel jail for trial:

‘A ballad-singer was trolling out in wavering accents a verse of John O’Hagan’s song, “Dear Land”:

My father died his home beside,
They seized and hanged him there,
His only crime in evil time
Thy hallowed green to wear;
Across the main his brothers twain
Were forced to pine and rue,
But still they turned, with hearts that burned
In hopeless love to you, dear land,
In hopeless love to you!

A policeman stepped off the sidewalk, and, rudely hustling the ballad-singer, said:
“Stop that at wanst, or I’ll run you in!” But Halpin went on, the words ringing a mournful threnody in his ears:

“In hopeless love to you, dear land,
In hopeless love to you.”

The policeman followed him along the street; and then left him.’
—Sheehan, op. cit., [2nd imp.] (1918), pp.108-09; see full-copy - as attached.

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References
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. I; contrib. to The Nation as ‘Sliabh Cuilinn’; The Song of Roland (1887); The Poetry of Samuel Ferguson (1890); The Children’s Ballad Rosary. Justin McCarthy, Irish Literature (1904), gives ‘Ourselves Alone’ and ‘Dear Land.’

Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978): biog. notices in Nation (5 Jan. 1889) and Matthew Russell, in Irish Monthly 31 (1903) and 40 (1912). Russell, who thought his Song of Roland ‘one of the finest things of the kind Ireland has contributed to English literature’, wrote 3 articles solely on it, in Irish Monthly 15 (1887), 28 (1900), and 35 (1907).

John Cooke, ed., The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1909): 1822-1890; “Eire a Rúin” [‘Long thy fair cheeck was pale ...’]; “Ourselves Alone” [‘To do at once what is to do, / And trust Ourselves Alone ... Redeemed - Erect - Alone!’]. Also, H. Halliday Sparling, ed., Irish Minstrelsy (London: Walter Scott 1888), includes O’Hagan, and calls him prob. “Sliabh Cuilinn”[pseud.] of The Nation.

Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University of America 1904), quotes “Ourselves Alone” [as supra]; and “Dear land” [‘ ... crimson red ... shall spread ... Ere I am false to you, Dear land ... / ... My grandsire died his home beside, / They seized and hanged him there / His only crime ... your hallowed green to wear // ... Till all my aim on earth became / To strike one blow for you ... If death should come, that martyrdom / Were sweet endured for you, Dear land, / Were sweet endured for you.’

Chris Morash, The Hungry Voice (Gill & Macmillan 1989); b. Newry, 19 March 1822, d. Dublin 12 Nov. 1890; ed. TCD; wrote for The nation as “Sliabh cuilinn” and “Carolina Wilhelmina”; bar; chairman of Irish land Commission, 1881; study of Ferguson’s poetry. Morash choses his “Famine and Exportation” in Songs and Ballads of Young Ireland (London: Downey 1896), p.177.

Belfast Public Library holds Collected Poems (1921); Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson (1887); The Song of Roland (1883); Punishment and Reform (1861); Songs for the Settlement (1899).

University of Ulster Library, Morris Collection, holds Trinity College No Place for Catholics (CTS, c.1912) 24pp.

 

Notes
[Sir] Charles Gavan Duffy: On his death-bed Duffy reputedly murmered his verses: ‘When comes the day all hearts to weigh / If stauch they be or vile, / Shall we forget the sacred debt / We owe our mother isle?’. (See Cyril Pearl, Three Lives of Charles Gavan Duffy [q.d.], p.230; photocopy supplied by Shelley Rose, March 1998.

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