Gaeilge Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Seán Ó Dálaigh or John O’Daly was born in the townland of Farnane which is in the parish of Lickorin and in the barony of Déise without Drom in County Waterford. He was almost certainly born in the year 1800 although he has left accounts giving both that year and 1803 as the year of his birth. By the time of his death in 1878 he had been a manuscript scribe, a biblical evangelist, a Roman Catholic, a Protestant and a Roman Catholic again, an editor, publisher, founder of societies and a dealer in both books and manuscripts.

His early manuscripts illustrate the interest he had even at that stage in the Fenian Cycle or Fiannaíocht (the stories centred on Fionn mac Cumhail and his band of fianna), in the Munster poets and in the poetry of the O’Daly learned family, all themes he would subsequently pursue as an editor and publisher.

But he was not destined to spend his life in his native area, a consequence of his work as a teacher of Irish from about 1826 with the Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through the Medium of their Own Tongue and in 1828 the Rev.William Halloran, ‘superintendent’ of the Irish Society in the Youghal district (which included Sliabh gCua) let it be known that O’Daly had been under considerable pressure in Lickorin because of his enthusiasm for the work of the Biblical evangelical Irish Society:

O’Daly’s relationship with the Irish Society evidently declined early in 1840 and by the second half of the year he was no longer working as inspector. He himself claimed retrospectively that he had been trying to break with the Society’s work as far back as 1833 and certainly by June 1841, John O'Daly’s enthusiasm for the teaching of the reading of Irish with a view to reading the vernacular Bible had seriously declined.

Whether as a result of all of this or not, O’Daly had been attempting since 1843 to move his Kilkenny book business to Dublin. In 1845 he wrote a letter to the Nation which was not published but was nonetheless referred to in an article April 26 1845 in the paper entitled, “The Irish Language” in which reference was made to a “proposal” received by the Nation from “Mr. Daly of Kilkenny” to found an “Hibernian-Celtic Society… for the cultivation of the Gaelic literature and language’. Although the society he envisaged, eventually known as the Celtic Society, was successfully established O'Daly had little influence with the society he had founded and was only in erratic receipt of the pound per week which had been agreed in return for doing the entire work of organising the society’s publications and activities.

During this period O’Daly was also building up his book and publishing business at a succession of Dublin addresses – 25 Anglesea St., Aston Quay, 7 Bedford Row and finally 9 Anglesea St., which became one of the most significant addresses in the cultural history of its period and a powerhouse of activity in the field of the Irish language.

As a consequence of his dissatisfaction with the Celtic Society, O’Daly established a society “for the publication of Fenian poems, tales and romances, illustrative of the Fenian period of Irish history, in the Irish language and character, with literal translations and notes explanatory of the text, when practicable.” This became known as the “The Ossianic Society.” From the beginning the Ossianic Society was rooted in Gaelic learning and dominated by actual practitioners in the field. This distinguished it from any predecessors as, indeed, did the 5/- annual subscription, a quarter of the subscription to the Celtic Society. O’Daly managed to realise his aims for the Ossianic Society in a way which had eluded him in the Celtic Society and six Fiannaíocht texts in all were published.

O’Daly’s most enduring legacy was his work as an editor-publisher, beginning with Reliques of Irish Jacobite Poetry, which he began publishing in Kilkenny in 1844.
After only two issues the original plan was altered and with a view to improving the literary standard of the translations, the Cork poet Edward Walsh was brought on board and he supplied a series of translations of continuing literary merit.

In 1849 O’Daly edited and published the work most closely associated with his name. This was Poets and Poetry of Munster, a text as influential in Anglo-Irish as in Gaelic literature. This anthology of eighteenth-century Munster poetry includes translations by the poet, James Clarence Mangan which were based on cribs provided by O’Daly.

Poets and Poetry of Munster established a Munster poetic canon with Seán Clárach Mac Dómhnaill and the Limerick filí na Máighe, Seán Ó Tuama and Aindréas Mac Craith, an Mangaire Súgach as its principal figures and this canon persisted until Professor Seán Ó Tuama of UCC, in our own time, installed Aogán Ó Rathaille as the outstanding Munster poet, which is now the conventional wisdom.

In 1860 O’Daly edited and published The Poets and Poetry of Munster Second
Series, a further volume in the series which had begun with Reliques.

In summary then, we could say that no aspect of O’Daly’s cultural activities whether as teacher, founder of societies, editor, publisher, scribe or book dealer can be disconnected from the rest. In particular the many manuscripts he compiled cannot be separated from his many printed publications. Not only did his publications derive from manuscripts, but his manuscripts owed a great debt to printed material. Many of his manuscripts, for instance, have tables of contents, page numbers and even footnotes.

O’Daly died on May 23 1878. He did not die poor and his estate was classified among “Effects under £600”, a category indicating a person of reasonable means. By the time of his death he had been largely forgotten.