Charles Vallancey

Vallancey: The Collectanea 4 and 5 and Conclusion

As promised this will be a skip and a hop over Vols 4 and 5, as this is my last post and I want to leave time for a final evaluation of Vallancey and his work. I’m just going to pick out items that caught my attention or appealed to me for my own quirky reasons. For everything I write about, there will be a dozen that might appeal to you more. But then, as a friend of mine said recently about an interminable novel – we’ll be reading it at your funeral.

After his usual lengthy preface (this one is only 60 pages and yet another opportunity to talk about Phoenicians) we come to a series of short articles about archaeological objects.  Below is what archaeologists call a gorget – its a gold collar, beautifully worked. There are fewer than a dozen of them known from Irish contexts and they have some parallels with others found on the continent. 

Of solid gold, they were heavy and obviously made to be worn by a high-status individual, perhaps a king. Vallancey concludes it is a Druid’s (what else?) breast plate and christens it the Iodhan Morain. He comes to this conclusion by examining the Bible and accounts from ‘the Chaldees’. It is to be worn, he asserts, as the Druids are making their most solemn pronouncements. And while he’s on the subject of druids, here’s another one of his evidence-free assignment of purpose. This is what he calls the Liath Meisicith.

It is a box, the size of the drawing, and two inches deep, it is made of brass cased with silver : it contains a number of loose sheets of vellum, on which are written extracts of the gospel and prayers for the sick, in the Latin language, and in the Irish character. There are also, some drawings in water colours of the apostles, not ill executed : these are supposed to be the work of Saint Moling, the patron of that part of the country.

So – a fairly straightforward conclusion might be reached that this box dates from the medieval period and was some kind of Christian votive object, right? Alas no – for Vallancey sees only the absence of a cross or any other Christian symbol, and concludes that this is for containing incense or oil to be used as part of a druidic fire ceremony.

How this fire was communicated, I cannot pretend to say, but, as it is well known, that Cobalt ground up with oil, will lye an hour or more in that unctious state and then burst into an amazing blaze :  it is probable that the Druids, who were skilled chimysts, (for their days) could not be ignorant of so simple an experiment. A fire lying so long concealed, would afford them ample time for prayers and incantations.

I think this one example gives you, as a microcosm of the whole Collectanea,  how eagerness to embrace an exotic and far-fetched explanation, and shoehorn it into your overall theory, can get the better of a man. And it was this exact kind of thing that led to him being derided by his contemporaries and those who followed.

A final example, as it is meaningful to me – a little reliquary figure comes next. This figure bears a striking resemblance to one of the figures on St Manchan’s Shrine. One of the missing figures was located and returned to it – it’s known as the 11th figure and it’s on the far left, below.

Could this be a 12th – and what has happened to it? We know it was still extant when our old friend George Victor du Noyer was recording archaeological items – here is his sketch of the same one as in Vallancey’s volume, done in 1837.

I put the question to Dr Griffin Murray, author of the superb book on St Manchan’s Shrine and he told me that this one was known as the Beard Puller, that is was from Co Roscommon and was in the Trinity College Museum, but is now lost. It could definitely be from St Manchan’s the shrine, he says, although equally it could be from another one. Why is this little guy meaningful to me? Well, I subscribed to the publication of the book, and a reproduction of the 11th figure was my reward!

This section contains important illustrations of prehistoric objects – important because this was the first publication to bring them to the notice of the general public. I will use some of these to illustrate the rest of this post, so look out – they will not all relate to the text around them..

However, I am going to skip down now to a section called Proposals for collecting materials for publishing the ancient and present state of the several counties of Ireland. This is an significant section in that it lays out the need for actual knowledge of the country of Ireland, including its natural assets – air, water, geology, animals – and man-made such as buildings, charities, manufactures, and antiquities.

Vallancey lays out the questions to be answered. It all seems so elementary, doesn’t it – and that’s what is so staggering, that there could have been so little in-depth knowledge of the actual country at that time.  You might remember that we read about one of these county surveys for Westmeath in Vol 1. What a wealth of detail we might now have of life in 18th century Ireland if only this had been accomplished as Vallancey described it. My friend Amanda, of Holy Wells fame, would be particularly grateful!

The rest of this volume is taken up with A Vindication of the Antient History of Ireland, with lots of Vallancey’s pet theories on display. It contains a really excellent plan and section of Newgrange – a truly outstanding piece of mapping, given the fanciful nature of most drawing of prehistoric monuments of the time. His conclusion about Newgrange, that it was a Mithratic Fire Cave, turned out be in fact not so far-fetched as some of his other notions, given what we now know about the winter solstice at Newgrange. 

There is also some fascinating stuff about Irish paganism and Irish saints. The sequence is based on the mythological original story for Irish history called the Leabhar Gabhala. It’s a pity to give it such short shrift, but I am determined to press on and so I now pass to Volume 5, which is the last volume in the set. There is a Volume 6, and I can access that online only, so have decided to finish with the last volume I have been able to examine in person.

As you can see from the Table of Contents (which, by the way, never seems to be quite the same as the frontispiece that lays out What This Volume Contains), there is a certain amount of repetition here from previous sections on The Scythians, Ogham, the Chaldeans, and the Brehon Laws. So, I am going to confine myself to the part about the Irish Feudal System of Government, as it so well represents what it’s like to read Vallancey. 

After a preamble of many, many pages in which are mentioned the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, Aristotle, the Belgae, gold from Wicklow, Alexander the Great, Mr Wilkins (I’m not making this up), Aboul-Hassan-Aly, Armenians, the Empress of Russia (honestly), Father Georgius (who resided long with the Tibetans but who wrote in Latin, quoted at length here), the Huns (we might actually be Indo-Scythian-Huns, apparently), the Japanese, the Peruvians, the Great Mogul, Vallancey, perhaps not surprisingly informs us that the feudal system in Ireland was based on all of the above, except for two things.

The Tuarasdal, wages or subsidies paid annually by the sovereign to his feudatory chiefs, for which he received from them a certain supply of military forces, or some other state contributions tending to the common interest.

The Tribute for Protection. It is called in the Irish laws. . .  eneclann, (i. e. protection of the clann). . . It does not appear that these vassals were originally obliged to furnish troops for their chiefs, but to pay a certain impost or tax for their protection.

He’s particularly fond of the oriental influences here and to hammer home his point he provided a dictionary of topographical terms all of which he assures us come from Oriental Languages. Some examples, including their Arabian, Hebrew, Chinese, origins, etc:

My head hurts, so this is a good place to stop. How do I sum up this amazing man and his colossal and controversial achievements? The marvellous site Ricorso has a whole section on him which brilliantly sums up the person (although by one authority in here he has acquired 27 children!) and is worth reading in its entirety. The following quotes all come from there. It gives me the new information that Vallancey, despite all claims to the contrary, never actually learned Irish, although he owned a grammatical dictionary compiled by a school-teacher named Crab. One commentator, James Hardiman, confirms this, stating

 
It is well known, that the late General Vallancey obtained much literary celebrity, both at home and abroad, and, in fact, first acquired the reputation of an Irish scholar, by the collation of Hanno, the Carthaginian’s speech in Plautus. . . but it is not so well known that that speech had been collated many years before, by Teige O’Neachtain, an excellent Irish poet, and author of the extempore epigram, Vol. ii. p. 120, of this collection. Vallancey had this collation in O’Neachtan’s hand-writing, in his possession; and I am obliged (with regret) to add, that he never acknowledged the fact, but assumed the entire credit of the discovery to himself.

Thomas Davis says:

His “Collectanea”, and his discourses in the Royal Irish Academy, of which he was an original member, spread far and wide his oriental theories. He was an amiable and plausible man, but of little learning, little industry [not fair, I think], great boldness, and no scruples [nor this]; and while he certainly stimulated men’s feelings towards Irish antiquities, he has left us a reproducing swarm of falsehood, of which Mr. Petrie has happily begun the destruction. Perhaps nothing gave Vallancey’s follies more popularity than the opposition of the Rev. Edward Ledwich, whose Antiquities of Ireland is a mass of falsehoods, disparaging to the people and the country.

Here’s a good summation, from Joseph Leerssen


The successor of the Select Committee was the Hibernian Antiquarian Society, 1779-83, which in turn set in motion the creation of RIA in 1782, with Vallancey as one of its founding members. Vallancey was the son of a Huguenot émigré, Army officer; derided by many as a charlatan or at best a naive nitwit, Vallancey contributed few ideas of any value to the study of Gaelic antiquity, but much badly-needed enthusiasm, energy and social/religious respectability. He had founded his periodical Collectanea de rebus Hibernicis as a forum for antiquarianism. Further, it was the additional merit of Vallancey to open this world [of Ascendancy] enthusiasm for Irish antiquity] to his friend and mentor Charles O’Conor, in whose wake younger Gaelic, Catholic scholars like O’Halloran and Theophilus Flanagan could begin to function in close collaboration with Ascendancy Protestants.


So what have I concluded after lo these many weeks of sitting with Vallancey? The first is that it was a wonderful experience to be able to read the five volumes ‘in the flesh.’ The second was the whole things gave me a unique insight into the origins of my own discipline of Irish archaeology – how it was born out of a cauldron of claim and counter-claim, hubris and argument, ideology and fieldwork, nationalism and orientalism. None of that can be understood and appreciated without the towering, if ultimately misguided, figure of Charles Vallancey. Thank you, Holger of Inanna Rare Books, for this opportunity. 

Vallancey: the Collectanea, Vols 2 and 3

I took a breather last week, but I’m back with more Vallancey. I’ll dispatch Vol 2 as quickly as possible now by telling you that it contains a section on Druidism by William Beauford, an ardent student of Irish antiquities and ancient music and an accomplished draughtsman. He, along with Vallencey, Wm. Burton Conyngham, Ledwich and others, founded the Hibernian Society of Antiquarians – the ill-fated organisation that broke apart under the strain of the quarrels between Vallancey and Ledwich. He was also an artist, contributing drawings to several publications. Below is a piece of his I found online. I think it’s an evidence-free depiction of how these antiquarians saw the antient Irish. And – is the man on the right about to bite the head off a fish?

In this piece, his thesis was that the druids had writing long before Christianity and we can see their symbols in Newgrange and other places and figure out their meanings. Since the cup and circle is the central motif of Irish rock art (on which I wrote a theses) I was particularly interested in his interpretation of the dot-and-circle:

Number eight is a circle found on several Irish coins. The circle among the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians etc generally represented the Sun and sometimes the World. With the Celtic Druids it also represented the Sun, and with a dot in the centre, the whole universe. The ancient Irish retained it during the Middle Ages as the symbol of a country, and with a point in the centre, for the whole kingdom, or Ireland in general.

The spiral, by  the way, was a serpent, ‘symbols of the Divine Being,’ the cross hatch or trellis is the symbol of ‘fate, providence, chance or fortune.” So now!

One of the many problems with this, of course is that while Beauford asserts this all flows from Egypt, we know that Newgrange predates the pyramids and hieroglyphic writing. Another problem is that the above illustration bears no resembance ot the carvings at Newgrange. Volume 2 continues with more on Druids, including a spirited defence of the ancient beauty of the Irish language, which “should be taught in our university”, and a grammar of Iberno-Celtic. As might be expected, there is much discussion here about Phoenicians and Carthaginians. 

There’s more, but I’m going to move on now to Vol 3. At last – I hear you cry! This one is full of more arguments about the origins of the Irish and our language, including a lengthy section on ‘Japonese’ and Chinese ‘collated with the Irish’. And, as is his wont Vallancey provides his usual lengthy preface (70 pages!), full of interesting titbits. One that caught my eye was his claim that the Irish word Pósadh, meaning marriage, was based on the word Bósadh (Bó is a cow in Irish), and the sense of it was a dowry ‘endowed with cows’. Asserts Vallancey:  

The men of quality amongst the old Irish never required a marriage portion with their wives, but rather settled such a dowry upon them, as was sufficient maintenance for life, in case of widowhood. 

He can’t resist adding and this was the custom of the German nobles and of the Franks. This is followed by another interesting section on the Brehon Laws. These laws of medieval Ireland (a Brehon was a judge) were concerned mostly with fines and compensations for wrongdoing, and this section deals for example with trespass.

It also talks about children born to unmarried women. Although it refers to men guilty of ‘whoredom’ and the logh eineach (honour price) they must pay, it goes on to say that such bastards are sons of darkness and must not be foisted upon the tribe by the harlot. Here we see how important it is to preserve inheritance within the ruling sept of the tribe, and how women were expendable in that process.

And now we come to yet another of the cohort of antiquarian scholars that were contemporaries of Vallancey – Charles O’Connor of Belanagare. Perhaps the most learned of them all, O’Connor came from old Irish nobility. See the fascinating biography of him in the always-superb resource from the Royal Irish Academy – the Dictionary of Irish Biography. Fluent in Irish and a collector of manuscripts, he was connected to many gifted and interesting scholars and scribes in Irish. and eventually acquired or obtained sight of practically every important Irish manuscript in the country. He was, with Vallancey, one of the founders of the ill-fated Hibernian Antiquarian Society, and later the Royal Irish Academy. The portrait below is from Wikimedia Commons.

He had previously written a manuscript titled Dissertations on the antient history of Ireland in 1753, but for this volume of the Collectanea he produced a further essay, a letter really, addressed to his friend Vallancey, titled Reflections on the History of Ireland During the Times of Heathenism. In it, he coined the term “Fenian” for Fionn MacCumhaill’s band of warriors, a term that certainly had sticking power in Irish History. In this letter he appears to support Vallancey’s daft ideas about Phoenicians. However, he was a better scholar than Vallancey and pioneered the use of primary sources including manuscripts from his personal collection, to research and write about Irish history, and his familiarity with these sources is obvious in this piece. Here’s his list.

William Beauford makes another appearance now, with his Antient Topography of Ireland. Unlike what it sounds, this is actually a dictionary of place names, with an explanation of the meaning of the name and some historical associations. 

However, there is also a wonderful map! It’s a fold out, and dedicated to yet another of the Hibernian Antiquarians, Willian Conyngham. Regular readers know how I love a good map!

And now all the dictionary entries become clear, as Beauford matches the placenames with the map.

Above is his section on Corcaluighe (Pronounced Kurka Lee) while below is the section of the map showing the location of Corcaluighe.

Of course, I had to choose West Cork. But just to show you how broadminded I am, here is the area around Dublin. How many names can you make out?

I’ll leave it at that now for Volume 3. I’m actually still only half way through it, but I’m going to skip over the rest of it now, in favour of covering 4 and 5  next time – at least that’s the plan! Wish me luck.

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.

Cashels in Kerry 4: Staigue

Our last, and most magnificent, cashel in this series is Staigue. Majestic, imposing and mysterious, it sits at the head of a long valley with views down to the sea, almost 4kms away.

Staigue is the one that has never been excavated, and so it is the one that we can project our own speculations on regarding its age, its function, and its association with the fairies.

The thing that distinguishes Staigue from the other Cashels in Kerry I have written about so far is its sheer size. It’s what provokes awe. The first to write about it, in 1821, was the then-landowner F C Bland, who said:

When the appearance of the country, which is barren and uninviting, is considered, it must create surprise, what could have been the inducement to erect such a structure in such a place; and, when the  traveller, whose curiosity has supported him through a long journey, the latter part of which for ten or twelve miles has been through a wild, uncultivated, though not an uninteresting country, first approaches it, he experiences a sensation of disappointment. For it stands a single object on a hill, and from its figure (being round) producing but little effect of light and shade; and, having no familiar object by which to measure its magnitude, and its importance being rather diminished by the extent and desolation of the surrounding scenery, he attaches a meaner opinion to it than it deserves. But when he enters it, he is struck with astonishment; and his imagination almost instantly transports him to distant ages lost in remote antiquity. He vainly endeavours to figure, in his “mind’s eye,” the beings who erected it, their manners, habits, and costume; until, “lost and bewildered in the fruitless search,” his mind returns to sober investigation, again to lapse into conjecture. This effect is not lost by familiarity:—I have visited it a hundred times, and have always experienced the same sensation.

Description of a remarkable Building, on the north side of Kenmare river commonly called Staigue Fort. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol XIV, Dublin, 1825

I know how he felt. Bland did a series of measurements and drawings of the fort, and they provide a charming antiquarian look at how it was 200 years ago, when it had been in use as a cattle pound. That’s one of his drawing at the head of this post. Here’s another.

But his account is more than charming – it provides an indication of how the fort looked at that time (even though the drawings are not exactly accurate). This is important because we need to know what interventions have been made over the years to the fort – interventions that can significantly altar the profile and appearance of the fort, as we have seen in the other three. For example, he referred to an ‘eve stone’ a term that is unfamiliar to me, and said:

In one part, where the wall is perfect, it is surmounted  by a projecting eve stone, which, when complete, must have added greatly to the effect of the whole. This is indeed the only attempt at ornament in the entire building.

His own drawing do not show any special feature and whatever it was, no really obvious eve stone has survived the two centuries since he wrote this account. However, the National Monuments record does state The rampart stands to a maximum external height of 5.7m at N, where both Bland and Dunraven noted a number of coping stones projecting slightly over its inner wall-face (1825, 18-19; 1875, 24). Two of these remain in situ, and average 1m x .4m x .08m thick. Perhaps I need to go back and take a closer look.

The good news is that, of all the cashels we have examined so far in this series, Staigue seems to have remained most true to its original state. That is not to say it is identical to how it was 200 years ago – it has been tidied and stabilised, although when and by whom remains uncertain. There is a suggestion that Bland himself employed local workmen to do some restoration work, and another that the OPW did some in the 19th century. 

While no records of these works remain, overall, the fort looks similar now to the older images we have of it. Historic edifices like Staigue cannot be left to crumble if significant numbers of people are visiting it. Sooner or later, as people climb on the walls, knocking off stones, it will deteriorate, creating a safety hazard and a dangerous situation for the monument itself. 

The trick is to intervene as sensitively as possible while still providing safe access and I would say that this has been done well at Staigue, although readers may want to weigh on on this question. The photos above and below are from the Irish Tourist Board collection (used in compliance with their Creative Commons License) – they amply demonstrate that climbing on the walls was as irresistible in 1964 as it is now. The ditch around the fort is also quite obvious in the aerial photo.

In essence, Staigue is similar to the other Cashels, with massive walls, two internal rooms or ‘cells’ in the walls, an entrance through the walls on the south side, and sets of stairs giving access to the top of the walls.

The stairs – the Irish word staighre (pronounced sty-rah) may have given the cashel its name – are the most striking feature. Commonly referred to a X-pattern, the first set lead up to a flat ‘landing’ from where the next set take off in both directions. You can see this really well in this 3D model of Staigue done by The Discovery Program. The image below is a still from the model – click here to go to it – it’s fun to manipulate it for yourself.

The entrance, surmounted by not one but two massive lintels, leads through the south wall, with a slightly inclined profile. The walls is lowest at this point. 

The two mural chambers are to the left of the entrance and opposite it. Their use is unclear, but they may have functioned, like souterrains, as cold storage for food.

We do not know what buildings may have been inside the fort, although, as we saw in the other three, it was common for these cashels to have houses, whether for dwelling or for ceremonial use (as at Cahergal) or both. It is highly likely that any future excavation of Staigue would reveal similar constructions. The OPW sign (extract below) makes that assumption and says The fort was the home of the chieftain’s family, guards and servants, and would have been full of houses, out-buildings, and possibly tents or other temporary structures.

You remember our old friend General Vallancey from Beranger’s West Cork? In that post I told you that he was an antiquarian of the fanciful sort – forever banging on about druids and Chaldeans and coming up with far-fetched theories. In fact he pronounced Staigue to be a Phoenician amphitheatre! Perhaps Bland’s romantic illustration, below, put him in mind of such an interpretation.

Westropp, one of whose main activities was bringing common sense to antiquarian discourse, in a series on forts written between 1896 and 1901, situated Staigue very much in line with other stone forts on the Western seaboard. The photograph below is from that series. He acknowledges the defensive nature of the huge walls, but declined to use what he saw as the simplistic term “fortress”.

As for their use as cattle pens (as Bland had suggested), he says:

It was, however, not unusual to keep the cattle in the residential fort; we find this in legend, as in the case of the cattle of Iuchna the curly-haired, and in that story, so often quoted, of the three forts of Ventry. What is stronger evidence is that the ancient laws of Ireland made provision for seizing cattle kept in forts, and even for keeping them impounded therein on dark nights. That this extended to later times we have seen in the fort-names Cahernagree, Lisnagry, &c., and perhaps even in the “pounds” of Dartmoor and the local name for Staigue fort “Pounda-na-Staigue.”


The Ancient Forts of Ireland: Being a Contribution towards Our Knowledge of Their Types, Affinities, and Structural Features. (Plates LII. to LIX.). Author(s): Thomas Johnson Westropp Source: The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1896/1901, Vol. 31 (1896/1901)

Westropp saw these forts as having multiple uses, much as Con Manning did more recently – places of assembly, of ceremony, and, if a dwelling, that of a high status individual. Indeed the command of resources it would have taken to build Staigue is staggering. The fact that it was surrounded by an outside ditch (no longer very obvious) might also add to its indentification as defensive. The photo below is from a 1950 piece by Angus Graham (Some Illustrated Notes from Kerry, in
The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 81, No. 2 (1951), pp. 139-145)

We have seen that the three other Kerry Cashels have been dated to the Early Medieval and Medieval period: Leacanabuaile to the 9th and 10th centuries, Cahergal in use between the 7th and 9th centuries and again during the 11th and 14th, and Loher from 400 to 1600. It is puzzling therefore, that the OPW sign at the fort assigns a likely date of the early centuries AD before Christianity came to Ireland. In other words, the Iron Age. This assertion, of an Iron Age date, is repeated in various online sources about Staigue (including an even more vaguely worded reference to “during the Celtic Period.”). There is no evidence that Staigue was built significantly earlier than the other Kerry Cashels. In all likelihood, it belongs in the same medieval tradition of cashel-building.

If you get to Kerry, go visit all four of these remarkable testaments to our past. You will find yourself wondering at the context in which they were built, and the complex and highly stratified society in which resources could be marshalled to build something that would serve to remind all who saw it, who’s in charge here!

All four posts in this series can be found here.