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Life
[pseud. “Sliabh Cuilinn”, being Gl. for the Sugar Loaf Mt., Co. Wicklow)]; b. 19 March, Newry, Co. Down; barrister and judge; ed. TCD; contributed “Ourselves Alone”, a poem, to the Nation; also “Dear Land” and other lyrics as “Sliabh Cuilinn”; ed. The Newry Examiner, 1836-40; known as a Young Irelander, he followed a career at bar; defended Charles Gavan Duffy in libel suit, 1842, and in the state trials of 1843-44; supported a federal solution in Ireland; elected MP for Tralee, 1863; |
| appt. Solicitor-General, then Attorney-General, 1861-61; appt. Lord Chancellor, 1868; created peer 1870; participated in O’Connell Centenary, 1875; re-appt. Lord Chancellor 1880, resigning in 1881; appt. by Gladstone to head the Land Commission; 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 “Chanson de Roland” as Song of Roland (1883); issued Speeches and Papers (1885-86); d. 13 Nov. JMC DBIV RAF DIW DIH MKA OCIL |
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Works
Poetry, The Children’s Ballad-Rosary (1890). Prose, Chaucer, in “Afternoon Lectures” (Dublin 1864); The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson (Gill 1887); and a life of Joan of Arc (1893); The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson (Dublin 1887) 88p, being essays published in Irish Monthly, 12 (1884) [analyses Congal and discusses Ferguson’s nature poetry].
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Commentary
Joseph Sweeney, ‘Why “Sinn Féin?”’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.33-40, notes that John O’Leary, who knew him 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.
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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 -EREST -ALONE!’].
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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). [WORKS, as supra.]
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.
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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.
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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) 24p.
Hyland Books (Oct. 1995) lists Geo. Teeling, Selected Speeches and Arguments of Thomas [sic], Baron O’Hagan (1885), 527pp., port.
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Notes
Silvertongued: O’Hagan is remembered for forensic eloquence along with others in ‘Aeolus’ episode: ‘Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan?’ (under heading ‘Clever, Very’, in James Joyce, Ulysses, Bodley Head Edn., p.175).
[Sir] Charles Gavan Duffy on his death-bed 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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