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On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish
by
Eugene O'Curry
A MONUMENT TO ONE OF OUR GREAT CELTIC SCHOLARS.
A series of lectures delivered by the late Eugene O'Curry, M.R.I.A., Professor of Irish History and Archaeology in the Catholic University of Ireland. Edited, appendices etc, by W.K. Sullivan. With a new introduction by Nollaig O'Muraile. Three volumes. Dublin, by Eamonn de Burca for Edmund Burke Publisher, 1996. pp. (1) xviii, 664, (2), xix, 392 (3) xxiv, 711.
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Eugene O'Curry, the distinguished Irish scholar and self-taught authority on Irish manuscripts, was born at Dunaha, Co. Clare, in 1796. Learning was in the genes, his father and forefathers possessed a vast knowledge of the history, antiquities, and traditions of the country as well as a great love of the Irish language and were owners of a vast collection of Irish manuscripts.
Following the depression in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, his father had to vacate their small farm in Co. Clare and most of the family were scattered. Eugene got employment in the Limerick Lunatic Asylum. It was not until his father's death that he really took Celtic studies seriously. He recalled: "It was not until my father's death that I fully awoke to the passion of gathering those old fragments of our history. I knew that he was a link between our day and a time when everything was broken, scattered, and hidden; and when I called to mind the knowledge he possessed of every old ruin, every old manuscript, every old legend and tradition in Thomond, I was suddenly filled with consternation to think that all was gone forever, and no record made of it".
He got to know and work with John O'Donovan (afterwards his brother-in- law), Dr. Petrie, Mr. Wakeman and James Clarence Mangan in the topographical and historical department of the Ordnance Survey. His duties led him into researches amongst Irish manuscripts in the libraries of Trinity College, the Royal Irish Academy, Oxford, and the British Museum. Along with O'Donovan he contributed to the Irish Archaeological Society, the Celtic and Ossianic Societies. In 1849 he made important discoveries among the Irish manuscripts in the British Museum and he compiled in his own hand a catalogue of these.
O'Curry was appointed Professor of Irish History and Archaeology on the establishment of the Catholic University of Ireland by John Henry Newman, who was known to have attended many of his lectures. Thomas D'Arcy McGee described him at his work: "There, as we often saw him in the flesh ... behind that desk, equipped with ink-stands, acids, and microscope, and covered with half-legible vellum folios, rose cheerfully and buoyantly to instruct the ignorant, to correct the prejudiced, or to bear with the petulant visitor, the first of living Celtic scholars and palaeographers".
His twenty one Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History, delivered at the College during the terms 1855 and 1856 were published with an appendix in one volume (see item below). They are a mine of information on the subject of our Irish manuscripts and are illustrated with numerous facsimile specimens.
His thirty eight lectures On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, delivered at the University between May 1857 and July 1862 (the last one only a fortnight before his death) were published in Dublin in three volumes. These were edited with an introduction (which takes up the whole of the first volume), appendices and other material by Dr. W.K. Sullivan. O'Curry's works stand to this day as a monument to one of our greatest Celtic scholars.
This edition is further enhanced with a new introduction by Nollaig O Muraile.
Updated: January 19, 2006 © deburca 2002