School in Slieverue and Waterford city (1821) and in Dublin 1823-27

Work for James Hardiman 1828-30 for Myles John O’Reilly 1827-

36 The Ordnance Survey 1830-42 First publications in DPJournal,1834 Major works after 1842: Irish Grammar

and Annals of the Four Masters

JOHN O’DONOVAN’S WORK FOR THE ORDNANCE SURVEY 1830-61

THOMAS LARCOM, LESSONS IN IRISH

August 16th 1828John O’Donovan, having called to “Irish Society, 16 Sackville Street,” was desired to call to Lt Lacrow, Royal Engineers, in order to give him instructions in the Irish language.He enquired for Lt Lacrow, at the Castle, but did not learn, where he could see him:-- now the object of this note is: to beg of Lt Lacraw (if he wish to receive any instructions in the Irish language) to write to J. O'Donovan, 28 Ransford Street, Dublin, informing him of his place of Residence – the time he could attend – &c. He hopes to be excused for the present trouble as he deemed it a duty to diffuse a more Philosophical Knowledge of his native language than what is commonly known.He expects an answer on Monday evening, if not then, nunquam. Glóire do Ḋia. Lt Lacrow, Royal Engineers

[NLI MS Larcom 7924]

JOHN O’DONOVAN JOINED THE ORDNANCE SURVEY, OCTOBER 28TH 1830

GEORGE PETRIE. O’Donovan made his acquaintance in the autumn of 1831 and advised him on the interpretation of texts relating to the Round Towers through the summer of 1832.

Tee-Petrie

O’DONOVAN EMPLOYED, LATER RESIGNS!! JAN.18, ‘33.

O’Donovan was employed as Orthographer and Etymologist at 2s 6d a day at Mountjoy House on October 28, 1830, his research at first being conducted in the library. In October, 1831, his pupil, young Patrick O’Keeffe of 4 New Church St., off Smithfield, who had ‘a most extraordinary talent for learning languages,’ was employed as ‘draughtsman and calculator.’

In the evenings John did research for Myles John O’Reilly of the Heath House, Portarlington; May 8, reported that he had ‘finished the translation and elucidation of the first volume of the Annals of the Four Masters’ begun in 1830.

January 14th 1833, Larcom forwarded a list of 18 questions from O’Donovan relating to the Parish of Culfeightrim (Cúl Eachtrann) in Antrim to … Lt. Robe of the Royal Artillery. One question asked if Bonamargy was sited at the mouth of a river – the words of the question suggested that the ‘Bon-’ was derived from bun -- the mouth of a river. Robe’s reply of the 16th was testy: ‘a reference to the plan would have rendered this unnecessary.’

We have no direct evidence of what happened next. Was the ‘plan’ available to O’Donovan? Was Larcom caught between loyalty to a brother officer, ‘dear old Robe’ with whom he had ‘lived …in great intimacy in London,’-- the two taking a set of chambers together on his return from Gibraltar -- and the civil assistant O’Donovan who was offended? Were angry words exchanged?

O’Donovan suddenly tendered his resignation, his library permissions at the Academy and the RDS being revoked instantly.

FIRST MAPS; OS MEMOIR. O’DONOVAN RETURNSOn May 9, 1833, Colby presented the ‘whole atlas of Londonderry,’ just printed, to King

William, who expressed his approbation. Each sheet of the set in the RIA is initialled by J. D[uncan] on dates in June and July, 1833, the latest, Sheet 48, on July 17. On July 12 Colby applied to the Treasury in London through Anglesey, the Lord Lieutenant, seeking permission to prepare and publish a county Memoir for Londonderry. A favourable reply was received, dated August 8.

Colby and Larcom set up three units: Geology, Natural History and Productive Economy under Portlock, Natural Features and Social Economy under R K Dawson, and History and Antiquities under Petrie. O’Donovan returned to work at 21 Great Charles St.

On August 2 Larcom reported to Petrie, who had earlier left for the North with Ferguson: ODonovan is at work today! & as yet all seems harmony, if it should continue as I

earnestly hope it may I think things may be so settled in the course of a week that I may send him down to you, & then if nothing unforeseen occurs I may indulge my anxious wish to join you myself.

I have tried so to organise the Department generally so as to guard against a split & I assure you I am watching its results with an anxious eye.

Larcom’s note suggests that O’Donovan’s resignation in January had come after a ‘split’ and an absence of harmony. And he was planning to do trial fieldwork with Petrie and O’Donovan in Derry towards a Memoir of the county which had been recently mapped and published.

August 25, Larcom reported to Colby in Dublin: ….The light thrown on names alone by local enquiry is quite curious; I may instance Aghanloo,which has been most wildly derived. O’Reilly thought achadh an lua field of the heap. Donovan thought the first particle was Áth a ford ...when I asked Lancey he said there was no such thing as a ford.

Now, Petrie and I learnt that a boat & more recently an anchor had been found in the Td. Ballycastle of Aghanloo -- this was something; yesterday Donovan learnt from an old Seanachie that the ancient name of Ballycastle was Caislan ath na long – Castle of the ford of the Ships – here was confirmation ....

Thus the subject is cleared & I think an interest given to connecting them with history & raising them above mere words & the whole of it due to local enquiry....

FIELD TRIAL TOWARDS THE MEMOIR IN DERRY, AUGUST ‘33

Towards the end of August 1833, we find the trio at work at Dungiven ‘with a view to the actual publication of the Memoir of that County.’ O’Donovan’s field notes from that sortie, some written in pencil and later inked, have survived, they run to about 50 pages recording informants, lists of townlands and family names in the parishes of Carn, Balteagh, Banagher, Maghera, Ballynascreen. At Aghanloo he noted: Áṫ an Lú, so pronounced. Mr. O’Conor pronounces the first syllable of this name áh, ahanloo, which shews that it is not from aċaḋ, a field.

This made a clear case for sending O’Donovan to meet the people in the country; so John O’Donovan began his first campaign of fieldwork in Co. Down in March 1834.

O’DONOVAN’S WORK IN THE FIELD 1834-41 [1834] ‘I am travelling through the County of Down to ascertain the correct names of Parishes, Townlands, Villages, rivers &c. for the Ordnance Maps. I have been appointed by the Superintendent of the Ordnance Survey to superintend this particular Department…’

Delight at being out in the country, meeting and hearing the people, making discoveries like Ballykinler,

FIELD NAME BOOKS.Parish Name Books were the primary document.

Ballykinler: ‘as soon as I heard it pronounced by an old Irishman, I said it must mean the town of the candlestick’; this potentially ‘silly conjecture’ became the true derivation, when he found in Smith’s History of the county (1744) the information that the tithes of the small ecclesiastical parish of that name were appropriated to Christ Church, Dublin for ‘Wax Light.’

PROGRESS OF THE ORDNANCE SURVEY, IRELAND1829-- Survey proceeded parish by parish and county by county from north-east to south-west.

Each civil parish was surveyed and mapped onto a MS Fair Plan; these were later combined to make a county map. Survey officers entered in a Parish Name Book the forms of the names used locally; Petrie’s staff later added forms of the names from research in libraries.

From March 1834 John O’Donovan decided by local enquiry in the field the orthography of names to appear on the engraved map, noting these in the Parish Name Book.

Each county was published on a grid of six-inch sheets measuring 3 by 2 feet.

Map by John Andrews.

  JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

1830                        

1831 Mountjoy House, Dublin

1832                        

1833  

Resigned Post           Coleraine        

1834     DOWN     LONDONDERRY FERMANAGH

1835      ARMAGH/

MONAGHAN     DONEGAL TOCLOUTH* TOC POK

1836 LOUTH* TOC POK    CAVAN/ LEITRIM

TOC MEATH TOC SLIGO* TOC POK Tara

1837 Research in Dublin LibrariesDUBLIN

ECLONGFORD

TOC ROSCOMMON WESTMEATH TOCKILDARE TOC POK

1838 OFFALY TOC     MAYO TOC GALWAY, i, ii TOC POKLAOIS

TOC POK

1839 WICKLOW EC TOCGALWAY iii WFW CARLOW TOC POK EC KILKENNY EC CLARE EC

1840        WEXFORD

AC POKLIMERICKAC TOC POK

TIPPERARYAC POK TOC    

1841         WATERFORD TOC KERRY TOC      

1842                        

GALWAY, ANCIENT TERRITORIES

THE MAN AND HIS WORK

Wakeman: At the time of my appointment to the office O'Donovan was about thirty years of age. As in the case of almost every man who has risen from obscurity to distinction, he was an incessant worker, never sparing himself, and evidently holding his occupation as a labour of love. With all employed in the office he was a general favourite, and in the intervals between his more serious business would not unfrequently give us some of his experience as a traveller, telling his tale in a rich, emphatic manner peculiarly his own.

Richard Niven – An Claidheamh Soluis, 1899: He was a jovial-looking, little stout man, with a clean-shaven, typical Irish face of rosy complexion, and with a merry twinkle in his eye, full of anecdote of the droll kind, and particularly clever at repartee. He always interlarded his conversation with Irish words and phrases. I often heard him holding an Irish conversation with Dr. Reeves, and he was most particular in endeavouring to impress upon the latter the true pronunciation of the words.’

John Andrews in Sheetlines 62: O’Donovan’s ...fame and popularity remain thoroughly well deserved. As a letter-writer he is often brilliant, not only informative about place-names, antiquities, genealogy, and historical geography, …but also a rich series of hints about Irish social and economic problems, cultural and religious preoccupations, …the texture of life in town and countryside, and the hazards of travel in the 1830s.

THE BIG HOUSEOctober 1835: I called at CASTLE CALDWELL & the Major received me very kindly. I stopped two days, but a fashionable Gentleman’s house is no place for such a hardworking person as I am—there is too much time spent {or wasted} at dinner, tea &c. &c. I thought it better to get rid of Castle Caldwell hospitality as soon as possible. I stopped however long enough to get my business done in that neighbourhood, & Major Bloomfield exerted himself to assist me.

Excuse hurry, and holly-eve night’s disturbance in a wild country village.

CASTLEKELLY, Roscommon, June, 1837: I have been able to write very little here, and intend to go away as soon as possible as in the house of an Irish prince of large fortune [Denis H. Kelly] too much time is wasted at dinners &c. which is so contrary to my habits of working all day and night, that you would soon have to set me down as an idler were I to remain here many days longer.

NEWPASS HOUSE, Rathowen, Westmeath, autumn 1837. O’Donovan reported from his office on the top floor of the local Ordnance Survey headquarters, Newpass House at Rathowen, that he could see the very conspicuous hill of Freamhainn, a place celebrated by the Irish annalists and Bardic writers as the site of many battles, writing: This hill is now cultivated and studded with corn stacks to the very top, so that every trace of its monuments, if any existed, are in all probability destroyed. There appears to be a small tumulus on its top.

VISITATION OF TARA, AUGUST 13, 1836.

Petrie and Larcom, with Lieut. Bordes, who had drawn the Fair Plans of the Parishes of Tara and Skreen, and O’Donovan, who was then working in Co. Meath, inspected the monuments on the hill. Several sites found not to be depicted on the Fair Plan.

On a trace combining the Fair Plans of these two Parishes Larcom began the task of adding pencil sketches of monuments not marked on the Fair Plans by Bordes and his field party.No evidence that George Petrie visited Tara later except on that one occasion.

BORDES’S FAIR PLAN -- LARCOM’S PENCILLED ADDITIONS

Bordes’s Fair Plan, completed and signed on July 2, had omitted several monuments and their features.

When the party of four visited the hill, the missing features had first to be discovered, examined and sketched in pencil on the trace by Larcom; Ráth Laoghaire, Ráth na Ríogh and Ráth na Seanad.

The second large Claonfheart and the concentration of ring-barrows nearby at the north-west were not marked by Larcom.

O’Donovan’s letters of the following week state that the party made no identifications with the Dinnseanchus names on August 13.

O’DONOVAN’S ADDITIONS TO LARCOM’S TRACE

The numbers (figures) on this map refer to sites named by Kineth O’Hartigan about the year 1000 and identified by O’Donovan.

‘The chasms [numbers omitted] will shew the features now destroyed or not identified.’

MONUMENTS ON TARA AFTER KINETH O’HARTIGAN

After August 13, 1836, O’Donovan continued the task of identifying the sites described in the Dindseanchus account of Kineth O’Hartigan with the monuments on the Hill of Tara. Two letters of his written on successive days report his discoveries; his identifications were then incorporated in a new map of over 30 sites made by Patrick O’Keeffe and based on Larcom’s ‘rough sketch’ on a trace of Bordes’s Fair Plan, in which on the previous Saturday Larcom had added a number of monuments not included by Bordes.

This was the basis for Petrie’s Plate 7 in the 1839 publication: On the History and Antiquities on Tara Hill.

O’DONOVAN PLAN 1836 = PETRIE’S PLATE 7

HILL OF TARA, THE PUBLISHED MAPMAY, 1837

GEORGE PETRIE’S VERSION OF DISCOVERY OF TARAIn the week following the visitation, O’Donovan returned to the hill, added further monuments and observed in OS Letters Meath: ‘The failure in identifying the remains on Tara hill was altogether the result of a want of due consideration’.

It was only when he ‘set it down hypothetically that Croppy Hill was in Rath-na-riogh near the Mur of Tea and the House of Cormac’ that ‘every thing then followed as clear as noon-light’ and the identification of the focal well Nemnach was made possible. This well was then numbered 1 in his version of the trace dated August 17.

From September 1836 to May 1837 O’Donovan and the team in Great Charles St. searched the Irish Mss. in the Dublin libraries. Petrie then read his paper in three parts, April and May 1837. O’D. Granard, May 8th 1837: ‘Now for a Summer’s work! Last winter was the dreariest season I ever suffered from. I find myself awakened from it as from a nightmare.’

Although O’Donovan corrected Petrie’s conflated account of the visit in a letter from Baltinglass in January 1839, the published volume did not state clearly that the written documents were not consulted until the following week and then only by O’Donovan working alone:

‘Our first labour was to go over the ground with the map, in order to be satisfied of its accuracy, and that no vestige of any ancient remain had been omitted. Till this task was completed we made no use of the written documents…. Having satisfied ourselves that we had omitted nothing…we commenced, with the map in hand, a second examination of the remains in the order pointed out by the ancient descriptions.’ [Essay on Tara pp. 2-3.]

ROSCOMMON: ERRORS IN THE NAME BOOKS!

1837. Aug. 8: ‘Innumerable errors have been committed by the person who transcribed those names; for example, he has transcribed … Ballyraughan for Ballyvaughan (vahan), Liss-na-Bilarig for Lissabituny, an English square fort in Clooncusker called after the English family of Byton, and has committed countless other blunders. …Here I am stuck in the mud in the middle of Loughs, Turlaghs, Lahaghs, & Curraghs, the names of many of which are only known to a few old men in their immediate neighbourhood, and I cannot give many of them utterance from the manner in which they are spelled.’

TAL : What proof have you that Mr Casey wrote Lissabitunny which you say ‘of course’ he did. I feel it my duty to desire that whatever you may write in your letters – you will not disfigure official documents with remarks of this description.

I wish you to write the name in the Irish character – with an English translation & any information you possess on the subject.

But by this destruction of documents by ribaldry – you really lower yourself in the opinion of every one.

[Memoranda]

O’DONOVAN’S REPLYI wished to show the… process by which the mistake was committed. I saw that if Mr. Casey heard the name pronounced he could not have written Lissabitunny as Lissabilarig. Such things should be very carefully transcribed, and the descriptive remarks should have been inserted on the ground and not from the plans. You may ask how do I know that such may have been the case? I answer that I know by induction: when a Cave is described as a well, the describer cannot have seen the object [Oweyaniska west of Rathcroghan]. Does this follow?

I fully consent to give up this style of writing, for the future, and to become very serious, cold and un-Irish. That I have laid myself open to censure is too true {and I will be sorry for it yet} but that what I have censured deserves censure no one will deny. J. O’Donovan – Sep. 8th. 1837.

[footnote] ‘Let Mr. Casey’s hand-writing be produced and you will then be able to see whether my inference be right or wrong.’ [Roscommon Memoranda, 152.]

However, a fortnight later, Larcom, generous and fair-minded, acknowledging the justice of O’Donovan’s complaint and his pertinacity, expertise and wit; observed in a note to Petrie : ‘I often wish – as O’D. says -- that like the people on the moon – I could take my head off and put it by to rest for a time.’

RIBALDRY?O’Donovan at Elphin: ‘There is a tradition here that the Goldsmiths are descended from a foreign friar who came to Ireland about a couple of centuries ago, and who seeing every inducement to embrace the Religion of the state broke his vows of chastity, poverty &c and became a Minister legens. And hence the family were called by the old Irish in their own language lioċt ꞅṁagaꞃlaiḋe an t ean ḃꞃáṫaꞃꞅ , which I avoid translating for the sake of decency. This may or may not be true, but it is worthy of remark that the family are remarkable for lasciviousness and that almost all the Goldsmiths now living here are illegitimate…. [See Parish Name Book]All this has little to do with topography.’ [Larcom had received new evidence from Lt. Lancey at Athlone about Goldsmith’s birthplace only a month earlier and was considering publication.]

Petrie to O’Donovan Sep. 4th. 1837: ‘….And first I must tell you that I have read the said letters with great pleasure and interest, notwithstanding their Pinkertonianism of style, which I cannot help thinking a deformity. However this is a matter of taste and character, and you cannot help indulging even perhaps though you desire to do so, an Irish pugnacity of expression in criticism, the shillelagh style, which is certainly the most striking in effect, as it is the national demonstration of energy and power. You knock down with such admirable form that it would be a pity to restrain your arm, so more power to it!’

SPRING 1837--LARCOM STRESSED FROM OVERWORK. Feby. 13 1837, L to P: I find it so perfectly impracticable to be free from business here

-- for the moment I approach it I am drawn into the full vortex – that I have resolved to yield to the general will of all my friends & run across the Channel – but I go no further than Carnarvon & only for a week or ten days.

The Kennedys are there & I shall join them. Tomorrow I sleep at Kingstown & cross the next morning.

I have been trying to arrange the names & raths at Tarah – but my head is not very clear & I have deferred it till I come back – when you must help me.

About March 13, Larcom departed for home in Hants. March 21: Sharkey reporting progress on Tara to Larcom: I sincerely trust you will return, perfectly restored to health ….

Highfield, Southampton, March 26, L to P: ….I do not go again thro’ London but much as I find home tugging at my heart I must tear myself away – on Tuesday I start for Bath & about the end of the week shall be at my work again.

April 22: Petrie read Part I of his paper on Tara at the Academy, displaying Sheet 31 of the six-inch map of Meath including Tara. Larcom was absent, suffering from sore throat and cold brought on, he wrote, by ‘the worry of this plan… enough to kill ten horses.’

PORTRAIT OF JOHN O’DONOVAN, 1838, BY CHARLES GREY

GLENDALOUGH, JANUARY 6/7 1839

On Sunday, January 6, O’Donovan and O’Conor continued east on foot over the hills ‘sinking thro’ the half dissolved masses of snow’ to St. Kevin’s Shrine: ‘Horribly beautiful! And truly romantic, but not sublime!’

O’Donovan, kitted out in knee-breeches and a pair of woollen stockings at the hotel, and looking ‘like a madman,’ went at once to see the churches, ‘which gave me a deal of satisfaction.’

After a very bad dinner they went to bed at half past midnight, O’Conor falling asleep at once, O’Donovan lying awake, thinking of the work on the churches that lay before them, apprehensive of the chance of their being delayed by more snowfalls.But no snow fell. Instead, a most tremendous hurricane rocked the house ‘as if it were a ship!’ O’Conor slept on. Soon the window was blown in and ‘a squall, mighty as a thunderbolt,’ followed. O’Donovan, fearing that the roof would be blown off, tried to hold the shutter closed, only to be blown in by the next squall. At this O’Conor awoke.

The havoc wreaked by the storm appeared in the morning; a tree down; cabins in the glen ‘much injured,’ the boat of the upper lake ‘smashed to pieces.’

O’Donovan and O’Conor measured and sketched the monuments on 24 pages of rough paper on Monday, January 7.

24 PAGES OF ROUGH SKETCHES WITH MEASUREMENTS ON JOTTER PAPER

DOORWAY, OUR LADY’S CHURCH

Fair drawing made by O’Donovan in the office and included in the letters for Wicklow.Measurements made and noted on the site are repeated in this drawing.

BETHAM: ‘A SMALL BIT OF CRITICISM’

A draft copy, 200 pages long, of the Derry Memoir prepared for the members of the British Association meeting in Dublin in August 1835 was presented by RK Dawson to a busy Sir Francis Beaufort at the Admiralty. He passed it to T. Crofton Croker from whom this criticism came to Larcom. It appears that Betham was involved in drafting it.‘The part entitled Pagan Antiquities is written with rather too great an appearance of decision on some long disputed questions, — former writers may have been all wrong, but the magic words ‘Ordnance Survey’ will not alone prove that this author is right. Reference to authorities and to M.S.S. are not sufficiently explicit, and the libraries in which the latter are deposited should be recorded.Caissiol — Cahir & Cashel are given as synonimous, but Cahir & Cashel, have also other meanings, — and no authority for this is produced, — O’Reily’s Dictionary is not considered as at all equal to O’Brien’s as an authority, by any Irish scholar, but he indulges his readers with many fanciful reveries in Etymology.It seems somewhat inconsistent with the laws of good taste that Mr. Petrie, who appears from the introduction to be the author employed in this work, should quote himself as a positive authority. It is to be hoped that a full and lucid index will accompany each volume.

SIR WILLIAM BETHAM: ‘ON THE AFFINITY OF THE PHOENICIAN AND CELTIC LANGUAGES, AND ON THE CABIRI AND THEIR MYSTERIES.’ PRIA I(1836-37), 63-65.

April 24, 1837: The initiated of the Cabiri were enjoined to the strictest secrecy regarding the names of the great Gods. The reason of this is now obvious. Had they been known, the sources of the wealth of the Phoenicians would have been revealed.Feb. 13, 1837: On the Cabiric Mysteries and Phoenician Antiquities – ‘The author concluded by observing, that such members of the Academy as are Freemasons must be struck by analogies which I can not more clearly explain.’

MINUTES OF MEETING OF MONDAY, NOV. 26, 1838:The author has taken undue liberties with the documents he professes to explain. In this inscription the words are separated by points or stops, so that the problem is, not given a series of letters to separate them into words and then to find a translation, but given a number of words, separated and distinguished already, to find the translation. Sir William Betham, however, has not considered it necessary to follow these marks of distinction, and has also occasionally taken the liberty of altering letters without any authority from the original inscription. But even though we should admit the legitimacy of the alterations the author has made in the text of the Inscription, the language to which he has reduced it, though apparently consisting of Irish roots, is not Irish, possesses no grammatical structure, or uniformity and would not be intelligible to any Irish Scholar. No evidence, therefore, is afforded by such an analysis, of the alleged identity of the Etruscan with the Irish language….But further, it is possible, if the same licence be allowed, to resolve into Irish almost any words of any given language. Take, for example, the following words of Virgil:

Quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando Explicet et possit lacrymis aequare dolorem…[laborem].

O’DONOVAN’S PARODY OF BETHAM’S METHOD Quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando Explicet aut possit lacrymis aequare dolorem…[labores]• [Urbs antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos] Aeneid II, 362

Cuiċ iſ clad-im illeiġeaſ noct? iſ Cuiċ iſ fiú an ɼáḋ fán do? Aſ ph cet áit póſſet la cɼuí míſ E’gáiɼ a dol oɼem!

The litteral [sic] English of which is:

What is a lump of butter, as a cure, to night? AndWhat is the wavering saying worth to himGoing from a hundred places; I will marry with a month’s heart

Injustice going upon me.

What is the use of suggesting butter as a cure on such a night as this? And what is the value of such an uncertain remedy to a man who is travelling about to a hundred places, and cannot rest any where; and, as to marrying, how could such a person marry, except it were for a month, or except he could be so hard hearted, as to abandon his wife after that period: injustice should first become my character.

LT. THOMAS LARCOM, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE ORDNANCE SURVEY IRELAND, 1828-46