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Life
fl.1690, poet, of learned family associated with Fenagh [Fiodhnacha] Church in Fenagh, Co. Leitrim [Muintir Eolais]; desc. of Tadhg Ó Rodacháin who employed Muirghius mac Páidín Uí Mhaoil Chonaire to rewrite the Book of Fenagh [Leabhar Caillín] in 1516; elected coarba [comharba/successor] of Caillín; ejected from coarbship by English law; in close contact with many Irish scholars, several poems addressed to him; Seán Ó Gadhra of Co. Sligo wrote to Edward Lhuyd that Tadhg and Roderic O’Flaherty were the last remaining who could interpret the old sources in Latin, Irish (‘Scoitic’), or English (letter of May, 1700); describes himself ‘Thady Roddy of Crossefield’. DIW OCIL
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Commentary
Fr. Paul Walsh, Irish Men of Learning (1947), Tadhg Ó Rodaighe, who was a contemporary of David Duigenan, was a remarkable man, though a bad handwriter, and his career and interest might be made the subject of a monograph. The Ó Roddys were thrown out of their inheritance in James I’s plantation of co. Leitrim, but a certain Teige securded a small grant in 1922. Tadhg mac Taidhg mic Briain Bhuidhe maintained a lawsuit in London for five years, against the Protestant Bishop of Ardagh, for his lands at Fenagh, and returned to ireland by way of Scotland in 1941. He was addressed in a poem on the occasion by Cúchoigríche Ó Duibhghennáin ... [&c.] [68] Numbers of the family emigrated after the wars, another poem says, and our Tadhg was left as a lone Oisín after the Fiana. he was evicted from his place at Carickslavan in 1694. I have seen no evidence that he was a lawyer. Several addresses directed to him have been publishe, and it is clear that he was widely read in his own and other languages. He describes himself as ‘none of the race of the antiquaryes, but a gentleman that has more antient books of Ireland, and that learned, and understands them as well at least as any now in Ireland; all which paines I take for my countrye’s sake, and for my owne satisfaction, and to preserve so noble and singular a monument of honour and antiquity’. In his letter to [Edward] Lhuyd, writtin in May 1700, he styles himself Thady Roddy of Crossefield. He was on terms of book-lending with Roderick Ó Flaherty and refers to Sir Richard Cox as ‘my honored friend’! (68-69).
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Notes
Ó Rodaighe [O’Roddy] is identified as a scholarly informant of Sir James Ware, in Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1.
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