O‟SULLIVAN, Timothy. The Pious Miscellany, And other Poems by Tadhg Gaelach or Timothy O‟Sullivan. Now for the first time collected [SÉUMAS Ó CASAIDE‟S COPY]

ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL BOOKS OF ITS TIME

Dublin: John O‟Daly, 9, Anglesea-Street, 1868. 12mo. pp. 96. Recent quarter morocco on marbled boards. Signed and dated by Séamus Ó Casaide, 19.6. 1915, on preface. Very scarce.

Sharpe & Hoyne 976. Petrie B Irish Type. With a Book of Kells initial T (p.III).
Séamus Ó Casaide, (James Cassidy) (1877-1943), bibliographer, was born in Fethard, County Tipperary, son of Michael Cassedy, RIC constable, and Honora Cassedy (née Manning). The family moved to Dublin,where Ó Casaide attended O‟Connell Schools. He entered the civil service where he served in the Office of Public Works and later in the Department of Local Government. He continued to study while working and earned the degrees of BA, MA, and BL. He was known as „Séamus Ó Casaide‟ by 1905 at the latest.
Ó Casaide took an active interest in many aspects of the Irish cultural revival. An enthusiastic rather than a skilful hurler and piper, he helped Éamonn Ceannt to establish Cumann na bPíobairí and was president of the body for a period. A member of the Gaelic League from about 1899, he took the initiative of establishing a library for the League‟s Ard-Chraobh, a task that contributed to his knowledge of Irish bibliography. A visit to the Waterford Gaeltacht in 1902 left him with an enduring interest in the county‟s history and literature, an early fruit of which was his bibliographical study of Pious Miscellany, by Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin, which appeared in Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge in 1903. He collaborated with Ernest Dix on a bibliography of books printed in Irish prior to 1820, which appeared in 1905. His later publications include A guide to old Waterford newspapers (1917); A typographical gazetteer of Ireland (1923), A Study of the early days of Printing in Irish Towns; The Irish language in Belfast and County Down A.D. 1601-1850 (1930); and Watty Cox and his Publications (1935). He contributed more than 400 articles, principally on bibliography and Irishlanguage writers, to a variety of journals – and especially to the Irish Book Lover, two volumes of which he edited.
Hardiman says “These compositions were so exceedingly popular in Munster, that some time before his death an edition, under the title of A Spiritual Miscellany, was printed at Limerick; and a considerable number of editions have since been published; but a copy of the Limerick edition we have not been able to trace or discover” (p. v). This follows Hardiman‟s assertion that Tadhg “devoted his talents to the composition of sacred poems and hymns, in Irish” - of which a collection was published in Limerick, under the title of A Spiritual Miscellany (Irish Minstrelsy, ii. 421-2). Hardiman then gave the date of Tadhg‟s death, causing O‟Daly to suppose an edition in the poet‟s lifetime. O‟Daly also says that, „in preparing the present edition, we had to draw on a copy printed at Clonmel in 1816, as ourguide. The task was not an easy one, the book being so replete with typographical errors; and had it not been for our intimate acquaintance with its contents in our boyhood, we might have been obliged to relinquish the task in despair‟ (p. viii). He may have had a copy with this date, but the statement is not reliable, since his edition appears to have been the work of another hand. Miche, 186