Irish History

Marconi and Brow Head

WordPress, to my dismay, has now labelled all the content on this blog as ‘by Finola’. This is due to the necessity, for various reasons, of adjusting ‘ownership’ and management parameters. It’s a bit heartbreaking, though, as it’s no longer easily discernible which of the posts (approx half of the 1,132 posts so far) were written by Robert. So every now and then I thought it would be good to highlight one of his older posts. So here is his wonderful account, written originally in 2014, and titled In Search of Ghosts, of the spirits that haunt Brow Head.

ruin

 Lonely and wild – Brow Head is the most southerly point on the mainland of Ireland. There are ghosts here: ghosts of ancient people who created the stone monuments, perhaps 5000 years ago, that are now inundated by every tide in the bay at Ballynaule below this Irish ‘Lands End’; ghosts of early farmers who began to lay out field boundaries criss-crossing this windswept promontory; ghosts of the defenders of an empire who feared a French invasion that never happened; ghosts of the prospectors who sunk two shafts – now barely protected by rusting wire – during the nineteenth century copper mining era; and, lastly, ghosts of the pioneers of our own digital age, represented in the brooding ruins that crown the hilltop here above West Cork’s remotest village, Crookhaven.*

Brow Head - haunt of ghosts
Brow Head – haunt of ghosts
Charles Motte
Napoleon setting his sights on the British Empire 1804 (Charles Motte)
Facing up to Napoleon: Brow Head Signal Tower, built in 1804
Facing up to Napoleon: Brow Head Signal Tower, built in 1804 in anticipation of a French invasion

 We can be very specific about one ghost: Guglielmo Marconi – born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874 to Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian country gentleman, and Annie Jameson, daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland. The Jamesons were and are renowned distillers of Irish Whiskey. It’s reasonable to say that Marconi was an ‘Irish Italian’, and that heritage was reinforced when in 1905 he married Beatrice O’Brien, daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin. Marconi’s fame is that he pioneered the commercial application of electromagnetic waves – or Radio.

 

Marconi - wishful thinking!
Marconi – wishful thinking!

At the age of twenty one, Marconi was able to demonstrate to his father how, without any visible physical link (without wires), he could transmit dots and dashes through the rooms of their home in Pontecchio. “…When I started my first experiments with Hertzian waves…” he is quoted as saying, “…I could scarcely believe it is possible that their application to useful purposes could have escaped the notice of eminent scientists…” His parents used their influence to help him travel to England to meet the Engineer-in-Chief of the British Post Office with the result that in 1896 Marconi obtained the first ever patent in wireless telegraphy.

Signal Station at Poldhu, Cornwall, 1914
Signal Station at Poldhu, Cornwall, 1914

Marconi’s ambitions started in a room in Italy: by December 1901 he was able to send messages from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St John’s, Newfoundland, a distance of 2100 miles – an historic achievement. In his attempts to bridge the Atlantic with Radio waves he had explored the west coasts of Britain and Ireland for suitable telegraphic locations. One of his destinations was Crookhaven, which he visited many times – using the Flying Snail en route!

The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Station at Brow Head - exactly 100 years ago
The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Station at Brow Head – exactly 100 years ago

 Brow Head was one of a number of transmitting stations set up by Marconi and it got off to a flying start soon after opening in 1901 when, in the presence of Marconi himself, Morse signals were received from Poldhu, 225 miles away. The fact that the Atlantic gap was conquered only a few months after this shows the rapid pace of developments at that time.

Calling America...
Calling America…

 The village of Crookhaven had long been the first and last port of call for ships going between Northern European ports and America. Over the centuries ships stocked up here with provisions before tackling the open sea. Because of this, the major shipping lines had agents here. Reuters and Lloyds had flag-signalling and semaphore equipment on Brow Head to communicate with the maritime traffic, superseded by the telegraph station. At the end of the 19th Century it was said that “…you could cross the harbour on the decks of boats…” Up to 700 people are reputed to have lived in the area at that time: now, Crookhaven has a permanent population of no more than 40. An article written by one of the telegraph operators in 1911 summarises:

…As Crookhaven is the first station with which the homeward bound American liners communicate it is naturally a busy station. By the aid of wireless all arrangements are made for the arrival of the ships, the landing and entraining of the passengers and mails, whilst hundreds of private messages to and from passengers are dealt with. Messages are also received from the Fastnet Lighthouse, which is fitted with wireless, reporting the passing of sailing ships and steamers. These messages are sent by vessels not fitted with wireless by means of signals to the Fastnet, thence by wireless to Crookhaven, whence they are forwarded to Lloyds and to the owners of the vessels…

Engraving by Mary Francis Cusack, 1875
Engraving by Mary Francis Cusack, 1875

 We have some first hand accounts of the workings of the signal station in its heyday from the handwritten log books of Arthur Nottage – for many years landlord of the Welcome Inn at Crookhaven – who died aged 90 in 1974. In 1904 he arrived in West Cork (from England) to work on a shift basis with one other man as Marconi telegrapher at Brow Head. Until 1914 he operated the Morse code apparatus with a salary – generous for the time – of £1 per week.

Arthur Nottage of Crookhaven
Arthur Nottage of Crookhaven

 A hundred years ago telegraphy had advanced to such a stage that it was no longer necessary for stations to operate close to the shipping lanes, and small, isolated sites such as Brow Head were closed down. Legend has it that in 1922 the Irregulars destroyed the buildings during the Civil War.

Becoming Archaeology: the ruins on Brow Head today
Becoming archaeology: the ruins on Brow Head today

 Finola and I have both been inspired by the landscape and atmosphere of this Atlantic frontier. It’s a place we will return to. All West Cork landscapes are impressive, but this is a place apart. If you want to feel at the end of the world, walk here: you won’t meet many others, even in the height of the visitor season. Perhaps that’s because it’s haunted – but in the best possible way. Like so much of Ireland the world has come here – a mark has been made – memories have been left behind. Now, you hear the ghosts in the ever-present currents of wind and surf.

Base of Marconi's mast at Brow Head
Base of Marconi’s mast at Brow Head

 *I am grateful to Michael Sexton and the Mizen Journal (Number 3 1995) for many fascinating items on the Crookhaven Telegraph Station not recorded elsewhere.

The Anglo-Normans in West Cork: Hiding in Plain Sight, Part 1

Here’s a nutshell of what I have always known about the Anglo-Normans in West Cork (cheesy and improbable image above courtesy of ChatGPT – DALL·E). After they landed in Ireland in 1169, it took them about 50 years to get to West Cork. Once here, they established some castles or fortifications and intermarried with the local families. This state of affairs lasted until 1261, when a combined army of Irish, led by Fineen McCarthy, defeated them at the Battle of Callan driving them out of West Cork and destroying all their castles. For more on the Battle of Callan, see the post Sliding into Kerry, from 2017, by Robert.

So is that why there is no trace to be found of the Anglo-Norman establishments in West Cork? In the rest of the country, at this early stage, they were mostly building motte and baileys, but there isn’t a single motte and bailey anywhere near West Cork – see the distribution map below, courtesy of National Monuments. And the masonry castles (or tower houses) we have were all built by the great Irish families. For a while I thought maybe Baltimore Castle was an Anglo-Norman building, but Eamonn Cotter has brought me up to speed on the excavation results and shown me it was much later.

There is quite a bit of documentary evidence of their presence, though, including references to their ‘castles’ so it has always been a surprise that west Cork is not littered with mottes or ruined towers. Even given the tradition that they were all destroyed after the Battle of Callan, it is impossible to imagine that a motte could be obliterated from the landscape. They were substantial earthworks, as can be seen from the brilliant JG O’Donoghue‘s reconstruction drawing below.

It turns out we have been looking but not seeing – with some exceptions, archaeologists have not recognised Anglo-Norman structures when they saw them. The most notable exception was Dermot Twohig (a contemporary of mine at UCC in the early 70s) who, as early as 1978 described Norman ringworks in Cork. In the Bulletin of the Group for Irish Historical Settlement for 1978, buried within an annual conference report, Twohig reports:

Although I have not succeeded in inspecting, on the ground, all of the early Norman castles in Co. Cork, three of the sites I have examined – Dunamark (Dun na mBarc), Castleventry (Caislen na Gide) and Castlemore Barrett (Mourne/Ballynamona), can be classified as ring-work castles. Dunamark is one of the best examples of a ring-work I have seen in either Britain or Ireland. Castlemore Barrett had a hall-keep built within the ring-work c.1250, to which a tower-house was added in the fifteenth-century. Castleventry may have had a stone built gate-tower similar to the one at Castletobin, Co. Kilkenny. . . Further field-work and excavation will, I believe, demonstrate that the ring-work castles constituted a very significant element of fortification in the Norman conquest of Ireland.

I don’t know what happened, but Dermot’s analysis does not appear to have become part of what students were taught at UCC. Those students in turn became the mainstay of the Archaeological survey of the 1980s and they labelled Dunnamark (i’m using the OS spelling) a cliff-edge fort and Castleventry a ringfort. 

In fact, the very term ringwork (or ring-work, or ringwork castle) seems to have become an archaeological football, with some scholars asserting that we have no useful definition of its distinctive features and most of them are probably just ringforts, while others have championed the use of the term and tried to bring clarity to the debate.* in the heel of the hunt, it now seems likely that ringworks were indeed part of the system of land-claiming exercised by the Anglo-Normans, that they were usually larger and more solidly built than ringforts, and located strategically – near water or with commanding views. As you can see from the photograph below, the Castleventry banks are high, and were originally stone-faced.

In the course of 2023 and early 2024 Robert and I visited four locations with Con Manning, retired archaeologist with the National Monument Service and a recognised authority on Irish medieval archaeology. Con has now written about the four sites in the latest issue of Archaeology Ireland, naming them as Angle-Norman ringworks. The first is Castleventry, to which we were brought by local historians Dan O’Leary and Sean O’Donovan, and I wrote about our visit to that that one here. So go back now and read what we found there and how intrigued Con was by what he saw. This was the site that set him off on his investigations. 

The description of this site in the National Monuments record is as follows:

In pasture, atop knoll on E-facing slope. Circular, slightly raised area (32.6m N-S; 34.5m E-W) enclosed by two earthen banks, stone faced in parts, with intervening fosse. Break in inner bank to W, now blocked up; modern steps to E. Outer bank broken to W (Wth 3.5m), blocked up; S gap leads to laneway; modern break to NNW. Church (CO134-025004-), graveyard (CO134-025003-) and souterrain (CO134-025002-) in interior; second souterrain (CO134-089—) beside outer bank to E.

Recognising that not all readers have access to Archaeology Ireland, and with Con’s permission, I will tell you that he notes that after the Battle of Callan 

in that same year many of the castles of the colonists for burnt or destroyed. Two were mentioned in a single entry in the Annals of Inisfallen as follows: “the castle of Dún na mBarc, and Caislén na Gide also, were burned by Mac Carthaig and by the Desmumu.”. Caislén na Gide has been identified as Caisleán na Gaoithe or Castleventry. . . No likely site for this clearly important castle has to date been identified on the ground. 

After more information on the history of the site and its association with the Barrett and the Barry families, Con concludes, I have no doubt but that this monument is the castle of Castleventry, a substantial and impressive ringwork reusing an older ringfort.

Next week I will write about the other three sites (spoiler alert – one of them will be familiar to regular readers already) and come to conclusions about the evidence we’ve been missing for the presence of the Anglo-Normans in West Cork.

* I applaud particularly the work of Grace Dennis-Toone, Her thesis brings considerable rigour and analysis to the topic. When is a ringwork a ringwork? Identifying the ringwork castles of County Wexford with a view to reconsidering Irish ringwork classification.

Books for Christmas 2024

What do we need for Christmas? More books! Where will we put them? We’ll figure that out later. (You know who you are.) Or are you stuck for ideas on what to get other people? Or someone has asked you for a hint on what to buy for you?

So here are my recommendations for your wish list this Christmas, and I am doing you a favour because I’m keeping it to four. I have a personal interest in all of them – but I am of course completely unbiased. The first is On Land and Water, a truly beautiful production from Menma Books (available through their website or in bookstores) that combine the poetry of lighthouse keeper DJ O’Sullivan, and the exquisite wildlife images of renowned photographer Sheena Jolley.

I cannot overstate what a lovely production this is. DJ O’Sullivan spent his life in close communion with the birds and sea-creatures of Ireland’s remotest places. He writes with the insight of one who has honed his observations skills through long hours and days.

Sheena is one of Ireland’s top wildlife photographers. At the launch in Skull we were all transfixed by her relation of what that takes – being dropped off on an uninhabited island with your equipment and food, and making the boatman promise he will remember to come back for you in a couple of days. Then getting up before dawn and being ready for that golden light when the animals stir.

This is Sheena out to photograph some choughs

Besides the photographs, Sheena provides text that describes the creatures, their habitats and habits. This is the kind of book you will dip into over and over. And the same is true of my next choice – Cork by the artist Brian Lalor and the poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.

I have written about this book before – four years ago, in a two-part post titled Cork, Part 1: Brian Lalor and Cork, Part 2: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. At that time, I was writing about a treasured gift given to me by my parents in the 70s – the amazing news is that 50 years later the book has been re-issued! It was launched (re-launched!), in a revised edition, in Waterstones in Cork at the end of October. Both Brian and Eiléan were there!

Take a look at the two posts above for a real flavour of what this book is all about. If you have ever lived in Cork, or even if you’ve visited, this is the book for you.

Wild Looking But Fine, by Ciara O’Dowd is my next recommendation. You might remember my post about Ciara and the chocolate box of letters between my mother, Lilian Robert Finlay, and other people associated with the Abbey Theatre. Eight years, and one child, later, Ciara’s book is finished and my brother and I attended the launch in Dublin. Ciara’s account of how difficult it was for women in 1930s Ireland to forge a professional and autonomous life is riveting. In her review of the book in Books Ireland, Jane Brennan asks, Why don’t we know more about their lives and achievements? Why, for example, is Ria Mooney not more widely remembered as the renaissance woman she was? Why had I never before heard of Aideen O’Connor (but am well acquainted with the name and reputation of her husband Arthur Shields)?

Shelagh Richards, Sarah Allgood and Ria Mooney in a 1937 film of Riders To The Sea by J M Synge

My final choice is a finalist in the An Post Book Awards. It’s 1588, The Spanish Armada and the 24 Ships Lost on Ireland’s Shores, by Michael Barry, published by Andalus Press.

The thing is, the story of the Spanish Armada was taught to us through an English lens. Prepare to have everything you thought you knew questioned and turned on its head. That’s because Michael has done his research in Spanish and Irish sources and, as is his wont, (see this post from eight years ago about his books) the book is profusely illustrated with lots of images sourced from unusual archives as well as his own fine photography.

The books are all available from their publishers or in all fine bookshops. You can think me in the New Year, once your loved ones have taken the hint and bought you one or all of the above.

Vallancey: the Collectanea, End of Vol I and Part of II

Remember I told you that Vallancey was not above publishing the work of others, and omitting the name of the author, thus giving the impression that he had written it?  Was this deliberate or not? Were the standards of plagiarism the same then as they are now?  He does give a kind of attribution in Vol II, below, but it’s not precise.

The second part of Vol I begins with just such a treatise: Dissertations on the National Customs and State laws of the Ancient Irish. However, although no author is given, implying this was Vallancey’s work, in fact it was written by John O’Brien, Catholic Bishop of Cloyne and Ross from 1747 to 1767, and originally titled A Critico-Historical Dissertation concerning the Antient Irish Laws, or National Customs, called Gavel-Kind, and Thanistry, or Senior Government. O’Brien was a considerable scholar, author of one of the earliest Irish-English Dictionaries (below). [Most of the illustrations in this blog post are not from the Collectanea.]

Although this is all about gavelkind – the Irish custom that dictated how land was divided between male heirs, the first section is devoted to how succession works in various countries (much talk about the Franks) and to the exclusion of daughters from succession and inheritance. Yes – those of you who think that women had more agency and autonomy in ancient Ireland than in other cultures, should bear in mind that this was a deeply patriarchal society. Here’s what O’Brien has to say about succession and property rights for women:

No inasmuch as I have treated the good old ladies of antient times with all the severity of the primitive maxims by excluding them from the enjoyment of all landed properties, it is fit and decent, that before I take my leave, I should provide for them otherwise in some becoming manner; their fortunes and natural establishments were not the less secure for such an exclusion, they were under no necessity of providing a marriage portion to attract courtiers, or satisfy husbands; on the contrary their husbands were obliged to portion and endow them according to the wise maxims of the primitive times, and without this condition they could obtain no female conforts. Women were therefore as earnestly courted and demanded in disinterested marriage in those days, as they are now haunted and in some countries run away with for their fortunes, more than for any conjugal affection. And hence we may assure ourselves the unfortuned good women of antient times found the marriage state much happier, then some of our modern ladies find it with all their thousands.

In short – the ladies, like the delightful one below*, should count themselves lucky!

He finally gets down to describing how gavel worked. Several forms existed but all consisted of dividing the property between sons or brothers. He asserts this was common in many countries – or antient lands – and also describes the practice of tanistry, whereby clan chiefs and their successors were chosen. Page after page is devoted to Scythians, Egyptians, Franks, Saxons, etc as precedents, showing it to be a common form of inheritance in the ancient world. This seems to be in service of counteracting the English prejudice agains it as barbarous and conflict-promoting. Clovis is mentioned, Gregory of Tours, the Visigoths and Vandals . . . O’Brien was obviously a man after Vallancey’s heart.

Chap 2 deals with all the tributes due to the king or chief (Above*) and his fiscal rights.  The king or chief was NOT king or chief until inaugurated. I was surprised to find that the traffic went both ways – the king bestowed gifts on the chiefs within his sphere of influence and received tribute from them in turn.

For example the King of Munster (or Cashel) paid to the Dal-Cassian king 

10 golden cups,  30 golden-hilted swords, 30 horses in rich furniture, 10 coats of mail, 2 cloaks richly adorned, 2 pairs of chess boards of curious workmanship

Another one mentions 

10 men slaves, 10 women slaves,10 golden cups, 10 horses in full furniture

The King of Cashel, in return, received from his subject chiefs large gifts of livestock – bullocks, milch cows, hogs, weathers and beehives, along with, for some reason, many cloaks, some specifically described as scarlet.

The King also paid visits to other kings, as a constitutional cement of mutual friendship and harmony between the princely chiefs of the Irish republic (sic), and as a mark of their political dependence on each other for the common interest and welfare. The photo above sets out some of those kingly visits and what was involved for the visitor and the host. Lots of mentions of cups – perhaps like this one from the Hunt Museum Collection?

The second part of this Treatise is essentially a history of the O’Brien’s of Munster, offered as an illustration  of the laws of Tanistry. It certainly offers many examples of conflict and treachery in the line of succession! And once again it wanders all over Europe and the ancient world as it traces the origin of the practice

The final, and most interesting part of Vol 1 is about the Brehon Laws. This part indeed may have been by Vallancey. It consists of a number of fragments (above and below), originally collected by Edward Lhwyd (1660-17090, below) one of the earliest antiquaries to visit Ireland, document ancient sites and collect textual material.

The section consists of individual laws, mostly pertaining to the value and goods and therefore the fines that were to be levied if something was stolen. 

My favourites of these has to do with the value of the clothing of a poetess or the wife of a bard – three milk cows, apparently. However, if the clothing is embroidered the value goes up. For work properly done and completely finished, the reward is an ounce of silver. More is to be paid for extraordinary work in proportion. However, beware – if she be divorced for adultery this law is reversed and the woman must pay two thirds of the said value.

Having spent so much time on Vol 1, I am going to gallop, if I can, through Vol II. It starts with an essay called Brehon Laws and Gavel Kind Explained. This is mainly a  defence agains the accusation by English of ‘barbarous’ customs’ and dwells on obscure points of orthography, such as when the letter P was introduced to Irish. It also deals with more of the practice of gavelkind, the exclusion of women, where else it was practiced and uses the marvellous term Strongbonian for the Anglo Norman settlers. 

An Inquiry Into the First Inhabitants of Ireland follows. This is where Vallancey introduces his claim that the first Irish Irish were Phoenicians. I have dealt with this in the first post so I will not cover this in detail. 

The next section was written by Edward Ledwich another of the early Irish antiquaries – see my post on the marvellous Monaincha for more about Ledwich. What’s fascinating about this is that Ledwich and Vallancey were subsequently at war with each other and Ledwich had views that were just as biased and erroneous as Vallancey’s.

For more on Ledwich see the The Dictionary of Irish Biography entry, which has this to say:

Ledwich afterwards openly and very strongly opposed Vallancey’s views on ancient Irish history, particularly his beliefs about the Phoenician origins of the Irish people. Ledwich was convinced that the ancient Irish had been as barbarous as the scanty Greek and Roman descriptions suggested; that they originated in Scandinavia; and that English colonisation had brought to the island such civilisation as it had subsequently enjoyed. Both Vallancey and Ledwich, along with Charles O’Conor (qv) of Belanagare and William Burton Conyngham (qv), were founder members (1779) of the Hibernian Antiquarian Society, which collapsed in 1783 in the bitter disagreements between Vallancey and Ledwich.

The piece on round towers was written by Ledwich, (although these illustrations are from his later Antiquities of Ireland) presumably before the great falling out between the two men. Whereas Vallancey saw round towers as observatories for an astral, or sun-worshipping, cult that had been brought to Ireland by the Phoenicians, Ledwich believed that the round towers were Danish works. In fact, he was as obsessed with the Danes as Vallancey was with the Phoenicians. They were built, he says as ‘watch towers against the natives’, thus neatly upending the most common belief in Ireland about round towers – that they were watch towers against Viking Raids. (In fact they were bell towers, but that’s another story.) Here, Ledwich obliquely refers to Vallancey’s work that towers were erected by Phoenicians and says ‘this description is plainly the work of fancy’.

Ledwich was convinced that nothing of any architectural value could have been constructed by the Irish themselves. Reading his argument (and Vallancey’s) I was struck by how it foreshadows the pseudo-archaeolologists who claimed that big impressive monuments must be the work of superior races – people like Von Daniken in his Chariots of the Gods in the 60s who assigned them to aliens, or more recently the conspiracy theorist, inexplicably given a platform by Netflix, Graham Hancock. Hancock’s series Ancient Apocalypse tries to find a race of Ice Age people who must have constructed many of the ancient monuments (or even odd geographical features) around the world. Hancock (‘I’m just asking questions’) is a true inheritor of the nuttiness and hubris of both Vallancey and Ledwich. Later, Ledwich felt sufficiently incensed by Vallancey’s theories to say this, in his Antiquities of Ireland:

No wonder they were at war! Can anyone translate the Latin? I suspect it’s a further insult. I do absolve Vallancey, by the way, of the baser motivations visible in Ledwich and Hancock – that is, a racist and colonial ideology that sees indigenous people as incapable of building impressive monuments. No – Vallancey had no difficulty at all in promoting the ancient Irish as one of the great and noble races.

I’ll leave you with this view of Cashel from Ledwich’s Antiquities of Ireland. Despite all my best intentions of getting through several volumes, I am still only half way through Vol 2 of 5. Any suggestions, dear readers, on how I can wrap this up so that I can get my life back?

*Kostüme der Männer und Frauen in Augsburg und Nürnberg, Deutschland, Europa, Orient und Afrika available here.

Vallancey: The Collectanea, Vol 1

Though often derided by his contemporaries and later critics for his more outlandish theories, Vallancey arguably did more than almost anyone else in the late 18th and early 19th century to stimulate interest in Irish archaeology and history. Much of this was accomplished through the essays and papers he published in his Collectanea, through which he reached an educated audience.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the Collectanea (pronounced, I have found, collecTAYnea) now. But be warned – these are  my own quirky interests on display here, not a scholarly analysis. I can’t always account for what catches my attention, but isn’t that the real delight of browsing a set of volumes like this – the treasures you will unearth? The other pleasure is just holding it – the feel and smell of such old books, and getting used to the typeface. 

There’s another reason too – the provenance of the set. Hidden inside Volume IV is a telling letter (above) that proves that this set originally belonged to Abraham Abell (1783 – 1851). A vital figure in the antiquarian community of Cork, Abell was  a true eccentric who amassed an enormous library, burnt it all in 1848, and then started again to amass thousands more. In his retirement, he rented a room in the Cork Institute (now the Crawford Art Gallery) where he lived out the rest of his days with his thousands of books stacked from floor to ceiling.

We know that this set of the Collectanea belonged to his first library since it was given to him in 1841 by John Bennett, and that somehow it was not consumed in the burning. I have read two accounts of the burning – one that he did it in a depressive episode, the other that he did it to make room so he could start afresh. However it happened, it’s a minor miracle that the set has survived that cataclysmic event.

Vol 1 begins with A Chorographical Description of the County of West-Meath,1682, by Sir Henry Piers, accompanied by a map of the county. Vallancey published this in 1770 and it is likely that the map dates to then rather than the 1680s, when map-making was far more rudimentary. Chorography, a word not much in use nowadays refers, according to Wikipedia, to the art of describing or mapping a region or district.

While some of the introduction especially refers to the geographical features of the country, much of it, in fact is made up of descriptions of customs, ancient battles, significant places (e.g. Cat’s Hole Cave), ruined monasteries and saints, ways of making a living, and accounts of the degenerate English and oppressive landlords.

Piers belongs in the ranks of those who believe the English civilised the Rude and Barbarous Irish, although he admits that some are not quite civilised to this day. By degenerate, Piers meant Englishmen who had ‘gone native’, married Irish women, spoke Irish and fostered their children with Irish families. From men this metamorphosed, he queries, What could be expected? He admits that English Kings neglected Ireland and that there was substantial corruption among officers of justice. The Irish, he says are given to learning and hospitality and the women are generally beautiful, and love highly to set themselves out in the most fashionable dress they can attain. However, the landlords of old, by which he presumably means the Irish clan heads, were and still are great oppressors of their tenants.

He describes agricultural practices (very dysfunctional and leading to many quarrels) and Bearded Owen’s Law, by which shares in bog-cutting are apportioned, and the practice of driving the cattle through water once a year. Marriages (above) are negotiated between parents and friends on each side. He writes about the May bush, bonfires on St John’s Eve, wakes more befitting heathens than Christians, and the practice of the Month’s Mind (below) which involved a great feast and many masses said in the house, after which every priest and friar is discharged with his largess.

I’ve only picked out a few details from the essay on Westmeath, but you can see from these examples what an incredibly valuable this resource is. We have very few descriptions like this of what life was like in 17th century Ireland, and the fact that Vallancey recognised its importance and published it says much about his appreciation for Irish customs and lore.

The second document is a Letter from Sir John Davis written to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury (above) in 1607. This was shortly after the Battle of Kinsale (1601) which marked the end of the power of the old Gaelic families. In this letter, Davis describes the state of the counties of Monaghan, Fermanagh and Cavan, in preparation for a visit by the earl. 

In 1607 Hugh O’Neill (above) had been restored to his estates in Tyrone following the Treaty of Mellifont, but was to lead his followers into exile in 1607, an act known as The Flight of the Earls. This cleared the way for the English to plan a plantation – the Plantation of Ulster became in effect what established the modern jurisdiction of Northern Ireland. And that’s exactly what is described in the letter – who owns what land (including clerical lands) and what should be done with it. It’s crucial to understanding the development of modern Ulster. That’s a plantation map, below, but not from this volume. It lays out what land the haberdashers could have, or the skinners or the drapers.

And next – who have we here? It’s none other than Archbishop James Ussher (1581 – 1656), later the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. This is the same man who established to his own satisfaction that the world was created on 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC. Harmless speculation, you say? Alas not so – there are many people in the world today who still believe this, and it was certainly a commonplace belief up to the 20th century.

[Aside – what is extraordinary to me is that Trinity College still has his portrait proudly on display (below) in their Exam Hall. Meanwhile, George Berkeley is being erased from their history – correctly, perhaps – but for the same crime of being ‘a man of his time.’]

Ussher’s piece was written originally written in his own hand in 1609. It is titled Of the Origin and First Institution of Corbes, Erenachs, and Termon Lands. All these were common terms on the early Irish monastic system, to denote land holdings and those who held them. For example, a Termon was thought to be a sanctuary, hence the town of Termonfeckin was originally Tearmon Feichín, or St Feichín’s Sanctuary. Corbe was more usually given as Coarb. In the period following the dissolution of the monasteries, and the plantations that followed the Battle of Kinsale, there was a need to define these terms so that the land could be divided among English settlers. This is a very difficult treatise, written half in Latin, which lays out the meaning and origin of the terms and also the men who held the lands, to whom they paid rents or annuities, or owed labour. Ussher disingenuously disclaims any interest in this treatise besides having described without any partiality the meaning of the terms.

However, a little reading in the late lamented Peter Harbison’s Cooper’s Ireland yields the information that Ussher, in fact, had possession of Termonfeckin. Here’s what Harbison says: 

This ‘palace’, referred to as ‘Termonfechan’ by Austin Cooper, was named after a monastery that once stood on this site, founded by Saint Fechín of Fore in the seventh century.

But the reason why the primate – that is, the Archbishop of Armagh – should have a palace here at all was not out of homage for this early Irish saint. It had much more to do with the religious politics of the later mediaeval period, when the Archbishop – usually an Englishman by birth – was surrounded by native Irish whose language he did not understand. He felt much safer when he could get away from his See at Armagh and reside at Terminfeckin, the southernmost tip of his Archdioceses, and its nearest point to the centre of English power in Dublin some 35 miles away.

The siege mentality of those within is reflected in the small, defendable window slits inserted in the severe looking wall face, as seen in Coopers drawing…Its last inhabitant had been…Archbishop James Ussher.

A Short Account of Two Ancient Instruments, by Vallancey follows. Here we can see many references to Phoenicians and Egyptians. He had recourse to the writings of Homer to inform us that the weapons of the Trojan war were made of copper, thus, of course, implying a Classical date for them. He rambles on about Sabean priests, Arkite forms of worship and fire feasts of Baal, before finally getting to describe the instruments – neither of which appear relevant to the previous discourse. In this case, the instrument are of silver. There is no attempt to interpret their use, and they certainly don’t look like musical instruments but rather perhaps cloak fasteners. 

I had intended to cover all of Vol 1 in this post, but I am not even half-way through. I will have to get a lot better at skimming and summarising if I am ever to emerge from this mountain. But I am hoping that this gives you a flavour of not only the diversity but also the value of the Collectanea. In the first 250 pages alone we have had original documents, not by Vallancey (except for the ‘Instruments’) but collected and published by him, that are invaluable to the understanding of Irish history and culture. This – the collecting, preserving and publishing important documents, as well as listing where others can be found (see Part 1) – may in fact have been his greatest contribution to Irish scholarship. 

I’ll finish with an illustration from one of the Volumes – it is not identified and is certainly not by Vallancey. In fact it looks like one of Beranger’s. Perhaps one of our readers might know what ruin this is. [EDIT: identified! See comments below] The lead image, by the way – the portrait of Vallancey, is taken from VH Andrews’ essay on Charles Vallancey and the Map of Ireland (see previous post) and is described as from an oil painting by Solomon Williams.

Charles Vallancey: A Colossus and his Collectanea

General Charles Vallancey, in the words of one of his biographers, ‘bestrode the world of Irish antiquarians for almost half a century.’ *

His origins are shrouded in mystery – although he is believed to have been born in Flanders to a French family, moved to England as a child, and attended Eton, there is no absolute proof of any of these facts of his early life. Even the date of his birth is contested – any time between 1720 and 1726. What is certain is that he joined the army, was posted to Ireland before 1760 as a military engineer, and spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1812, engaged with many aspects of Ireland, the country that one writer has called the great love of his life. Given that he had three wives (or maybe four) and twelve children (or maybe only 10, or maybe 15), that’s quite an assessment.

Dublin’s oldest bridge still in use, photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. It was designed by Vallancey and originally called the Queen’s Bridge, but re-labelled the Queen Maeve Bridge after independence, and eventually the Mellows Bridge

As a military engineer, Vallancey made real contributions: mapping and surveying large tracts of Ireland including the bogs and the canal systems; proposing a major transport route for Cork which, had it been realised, would have greatly aided trade and commerce in Ireland; building strong defences, such as on Spike Island; designing elegant bridges, and supervising the construction of an earlier version of the famous Dun Laoghaire Pier.

His cartographic achievements have been praised by experts – the extract above from a map of Tipperary is from Charles Vallancey and the Map of Ireland** by JH Andrews, our foremost cartographic historian who notes that Vallancey’s cartographic achievements were far from negligible. He made copies, in Paris, of the Down Survey Maps that had been lost to Ireland when they were captured by the French in 1707 en route from London to Dublin (unfortunately, those copies were destroyed in the Four Courts Fire of 1922).

But it was as an antiquarian that Vallancey made his greatest, and most controversial mark. He was a member, sometimes a founding member, of the serious societies of the time – the Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy and its important Committee of Antiquities, and the short-lived Hibernian Society of Antiquarians. Nevin tells us that at least three academic honours were conferred on Vallancey in the 1780s. He received an LLD from Dublin University in 1781 and became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1784: he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1786. Even the French Academy of Belles-Lettres and Inscriptions honoured him.

Unusually for the English and the landed classes living in Ireland at that time, he learned Irish. This allowed him to become familiar with the ancient manuscripts and annals which were being discovered and conserved at the time, and to translate some of them, including fragments of the Brehon Laws. It also led to his interest in Ogham, an alphabet used for inscriptions in stone in a form of Old Irish and he recorded examples of Ogham and reported on others.

His interest in antiquities, fostered by his extensive travels around the Island,  led him to record and draw many, including early plans of Newgrange, and to support the efforts of others, including Beranger, and perhaps Bigari, to record them. In some cases, Vallancey’s drawings are the only early records we have of some monuments.

Most importantly, Vallancey, even if he didn’t always get it right, strove to establish for Ireland and the Irish, a noble heritage, far from the view of most Englishmen at the time of a benighted people speaking a savage tongue. In this, he prefigured the work of Petrie, Wilde, Windel and others to show how the Irish past, and incredible heritage of archaeology, language and mythology, could stand against that of any civilisation. 

His least known but most important contribution to Irish scholarship was his Rerum Hibernicarum, Scripti, et Impressi. This is a handwritten

alphabetical list of material relating to Irish history divided into two sections; a list of manuscripts held in multiple archives and a supplementary list of printed works. The volume is undated, but as the most recent printed work cited is from 1777 the compilation was probably made shortly after this time.

Taking the long way home: the perambulations of Harvard MS Eng 662, Rerum Hibernicarum, Scripti et Impressi, by Charles Vallancey

Dr David Brown

The Rerum Hibernicarum disappeared – it had an interesting journey, entertainingly told by David Brown in his essay for the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, in which a digital copy now resides. An incredibly valuable piece of research, it was the seminal book that initiated a more rigorous approach to Irish studies in the nineteenth century by providing sources for Irish manuscripts, folklore and language to the next generation of antiquarians. Brown says:

All four men, Larcom, Todd, O’Donovan and O’Curry, were committed members of the Royal Irish Academy, the institution Vallancey had co-founded in 1785. Together, this quartet placed Irish studies on a scientific basis and at the centre of Ireland’s main places of scholarship.

Vallancey’s best known work was his Collectanea de rebus hibernicis – Collection of Irish Matters. It is also his most complex and most characteristic – containing as it does a staggering variety of materials, much of it written by him. It contains work by others too, sometimes credited and sometimes presented as if written by Vallancey. He published it himself in limited editions, so that now it is very rare. 

I am honoured to have been entrusted with a set to examine and write about, by Inanna Rare Books and have spent many happy hours browsing through the volumes. Reading it thus, from cover to cover, I began to see how enormously clever he was – and how obsessed, as he returns again and again to his favourite theme: that the Irish were a noble race descended from the ancient Phoenicians.

In this pursuit, Vallancey was not merely riding a personal hobby horse. In fact, he was very much in the mainstream of European intellectual thought. Vallancey believed that the Irish people were descended from the Scythians, Phoenicians, and Indians, and he used linguistic analysis, comparative mythology, and archaeological evidence to support his claims. In his essay, Phoenician Ireland: Charles Vallancey (1725–1812) and the Oriental Roots of Celtic Culture, Bernd Roling posits that Vallancey’s work, while ultimately based on speculation, reveals the powerful influence of ‘orientalizing’ models of history that were popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. He argues that Vallancey’s work is not simply a collection of outlandish ideas but rather a reflection of the enduring influence of ‘baroque’ antiquarianism and its commitment to finding connections between cultures and languages, even if these connections were ultimately based on speculation and incomplete understanding of the past.

Perhaps it was his enthusiasm for technology and the continuous journeys through Ireland required by his work that led Vallancey to find there the great love of his life of his life, namely Ireland herself. . . 

In the eighteenth century Ireland was not the centre of the world. It was a land dominated and exploited by England, with a rural population who were regarded as barbarians at best by the gentlemen at home in the clubs and coffee houses of England’s cities. For them, the native language of the Irish was no more than an incomprehensible squawking that needn’t be accorded any further significance. Would it not, then, be a magnificent surprise, almost a humbling of Anglophile arrogance, if the Irish turned out to be the descendants of the ancient Chaldees, Phoenicians, Scythians and Indians, the crowning jewel in a chain of heroic acts reaching back into a prehistory, which was able to supersede any other chain of historical events? Would it not be a wonder if the Land of Saints and Scholars, with its ancient monuments, poetry and songs, were the final record of a primordial European people whose wisdom united the learning of the whole ancient East?

Yes, indeed, Vallancey, himself a bit of an outsider, was consumed with the need for that humbling of Anglophile arrogance. Unfortunately, as with anyone blindly obsessed with a cause, and simultaneously lacking self-doubt, this led him into many false conclusions and leaps of imagination in his interpretations of how Irish Gaelic related to ancient and oriental languages. His philological arguments were thoroughly debunked, starting almost immediately upon publication. 

And it wasn’t just language – he had equally startling views about round towers, proposing that they were built by Scythians. He suggested that they were part of the “Scytho-Phoenician settlement of Ireland” and linked to ancient Chaldean religion. He drew on the work of other scholars to support his argument, citing the discovery of similar towers, called misgir or “fire towers,” in the Volga region formerly inhabited by the Bulgars. Vallancey also referenced Geoffrey Keating’s account of a druid named Midghe, who supposedly taught the Irish the use of fire during the third invasion by the followers of Nemed (from the Book of Invasions, a mythological origin story for Irish History). This association with fire, combined with the architectural similarities to the towers in the Volga region, led Vallancey to believe that the round towers served as observatories for an astral, or sun-worshipping, cult that had been brought to Ireland by the Phoenicians.

Similarly, with ogham, an early Irish script mainly found carved into standing stones, he argued that the word ogham itself was derived from Sanskrit, meaning ‘sacred or mysterious writing or language’ and pointed to the visual similarities between ogham and the Old Persian cuneiform script found at Persepolis as further evidence of an oriental connection. This view aligned with his broader theories about the druids as practitioners of a sophisticated astral cult with origins in Chaldea and connections to the Indian Brahmans

His research on ogham was extensive, including the study of ogham inscriptions and the publication of scholarly articles and drawings of ogham stones in his Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis. Next week, we will take a deep dive into that Collectanea. Meanwhile, I’ll try to figure out how to pronounce that word correctly.

*General Charles Vallancey 1725-1812 by Monica Nevin. The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland , 1993, Vol. 123, pp. 19-58

** Charles Vallancey and the Map of Ireland, JH Andrews. The Geographical Journal, March 1966. Available here. Highly recommended if you want to know more about Vallancey as a map maker, which is slightly outside the scope of this series.