RUSSELL, T.O. Ed. by. Fíor Chláirseach na h -Eireann or The True Harp of Erin. A collection of some of the most popular folk songs and short poems in the Irish language. Together with many which have never before been published, with an Appendix.

Dublin: M.H. Gill, 1900. Octavo. pp. viii, 136. Printed green wrappers, professional repair to spine. Old stain to upper cover. A very good copy.
Thomas O‟Neill Russell (1828-1908) Irish novelist and a founding member of Conradh na Gaeilge was born in Moate, County Westmeath, the son of Joseph Russell, a Quaker farmer. He interested himself in the Irish language from the 1850s. About 1850 he left to work for a Quaker firm in Dublin, subsequently (as W. & R. Jacob‟s biscuit factory) one of the country‟s most successful businesses. From 1854 Russell was a contributor to the nationalist paper The Irishman, in which he first urged what was to be the great aim of his life, the revival of the Irish language. In 1867, under suspicion of involvement in the Fenian rising, he left for America. There he worked as a commercial traveller, apparently visiting every state in the union. On St Patrick‟s day 1877 he was in Dublin to form, together with George Sigerson, the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, which aimed at the low-cost publication of Irish texts; that June he met the eighteen-year-old Douglas Hyde, who joined the society the following year. The society gave way to the Gaelic Union in 1880, and on 31 July 1893 the movement had its strongest impetus with the formation of the Gaelic League for the preservation of the spoken language. Russell, who had returned to Ireland two days previously, was on the council, as was Eoin MacNeill, with Hyde elected president, though the latter credited the former two with having done all the groundwork. He began to organise opinion in Dublin, by means of essay and lecture in the interests of a Gaelic revival. To his efforts to arouse in Irishmen a sense of the value of their ancient language and music was largely due the inauguration of the Gaelic League in 1893 and of the first Feis Ceoil (Irish musical festival) in 1897. He died on 15 June 1908 in Synge St., Dublin, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.

[L3 3C]