53

John O'Donovan

1809–1861

 

Eugene O'Curry

1796–1862

 

 

A nation's identity depends on more than patriots and politicians.  A crucial ingredient is a knowledge of its past and its traditions, and those traditions are bound up in many ways with the nature and history of the land itself.  In Ireland these had almost been lost when the appearance of the scholars John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry saved the remnants of the past that remains influential to this day.

      John O'Donovan was born on 9th July 1809, at Attateemore in rural Kilkenny.  His father died when he was a child, but he was educated in Dublin, thanks to the care of his uncle, Patrick O'Donovan.  Patrick proved to be an influential figure in the boy's career, for he was a native Gaelic speaker and loved all aspects of the old Gaelic culture, and he taught the boy about these.

      In 1826 John O'Donovan began his working life in the Irish Record Office, filing and translating Gaelic manuscripts, working on old law tracts, and assisting in the research for Peter O'Connell's English-Gaelic dictionary.  In 1829 he moved to the Ordnance Survey, which was then engaged with the first full-scale survey and mapping of Ireland.  In preparation for this O'Donovan travelled the country, visiting every townland (the basic land division of which there would be several per parish), to record and investigate locally and in manuscript sources the history of the place names.  He reported back to the head office in a series of letters that later filled fifty edited volumes.  At the time, however, only the first survey, relating to Derry, was published before the project was suspended.  The British authorities feared that the recording of the actual history of the places in Ireland, a record of dispossession and eviction, was not appropriate.  (This work lies behind Brian Friel's play, Translations.)

      With Eugene O'Curry he established the Irish Archaeological Society, which undertook the publication of a long series of scholarly works by both writers.  The greatest of O'Donovan's wide-ranging achievements was the editing and translating in seven volumes of the Annals of the Four Masters between 1848 and 1851 - a remarkable feat of applied industry and scholarship.

      At this time he contemplated immigrating to America, but in 1852, when the Brehon Law Commission was established, he was employed there at a much improved salary.  These laws were the old Celtic legal system, which had been supplanted by feudal and statutory law but which was vitally important for understanding all aspects of ancient Irish culture.

      His work was recognized with an honorary doctor of laws degree from Trinity College, but his real fame has come in the praise which later generations have heaped upon his skilled pioneering research into the manuscripts of ancient Ireland.  O'Donovan had lived in difficult circumstances all his life, and his health had never been good.  He died in 1861, before the appearance of the materials he had been working on.  He was only in his middle fifties, and left a widow, six small children, and an estate valued at a mere £570.

      Eugene O'Curry was also born in rural Ireland, at Dunaha in County Clare, in 1796.  He was never formally educated, but his father had a vast store of knowledge about the traditions and antiquities of Ireland and ancient Irish literature.  This he passed on to his son, and it was an education in itself.

      O'Curry worked on the small family farm and then struggled for four years to earn a living as a teacher.  With his brothers he moved to Limerick about 1824, and worked as a labourer and later a ganger.  He then managed to get appointed warden of the Limerick mental home.  At last his own scholarly skills were recognized, and he was invited to join the staff of the Ordnance Survey in 1835.

      He was employed on the survey with John O'Donovan, working with him on the survey of Clare, and when this project ended, in 1837, he was employed to catalogue and arrange the ancient Irish materials in the Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, and the British Museum in London.

      The important person in the survey was George Petrie, an artist who became a member of the council of the Royal Irish Academy in 1829, and instigated the collection and recording of Gaelic manuscripts.  So O'Donovan, O'Curry, and Petrie came together.  O'Curry then began the even larger task of editing and publishing some of these manuscripts.

      When John Henry Newman established the Catholic University in Dublin, he was hired as the professor of Irish history and archaeology in 1854.  This was the first professorship of archaeology in the world.  His inaugural lectures, published in 1861, covered the whole range of Irish manuscript materials.  Though he died on 30th July 1862, a further set of lectures, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, appeared in 1873.

      The importance of the pioneering work undertaken by these two relatives (O'Donovan was married to O'Curry's sister-in-law) cannot be overestimated.  It laid the foundation for all further inquiry and research into what they revealed to be one of the most ancient cultures in the Western world, even older than Greece in some respects.

      What Patricia Boyne, the recent biographer of O'Donovan, wrote about the one, applies to both: 'His work was responsible for the marked growth in the study of Irish language, history, folklore, and poetry in the second half of the nineteenth century.  It promoted an awareness of the significance of the Irish language and of Irish antiquities, and of their value to the Irish people.  It also proved seminal to the great upsurge of drama and poetry manifested in the Irish literary revival.'

      A writer of an earlier generation, Patrick McSweeney, saw the matter in a more nationalist light: 'In the battle for intellectual freedom it is true to say that O'Donovan, O'Curry, and Petrie are national heroes.  They loved Ireland and the Irish people with a lasting love.  They cherished the Past of Ireland, they reverenced it; and they believed in it.  They determined that the Ireland of the Future should be bound to the Ireland of the Past by the links of knowledge and of love.  They forged these links in the white heat of patriotic research.  They were, in every true sense of the word, Nation-builders; and we, their heirs, must not forget them.'

      Today their pioneering work is continued by scholars in university departments and institutions around the world, but especially in Ireland and America.  The true value of what they did lies in the love of many millions for the ancient culture they uncovered.