Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in Houghton Library, Harvard University

By Cornelius G. Buttimer

The first full account of North America’s largest collection of traditional Irish-language manuscripts.

Harvard University has the largest collection of Irish-language codices in North America, held in Houghton Library, its rare book repository. The manuscripts are a part of the age-old heritage of Irish book production, dating to the early Middle Ages. Handwritten works in Houghton contain versions of medieval poetry and sagas, recopied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to which period most of the library’s documents belong. Contemporary writings from that time, as well as ones by the post-Famine Irish immigrant community in the United States, are included. This catalogue describes the collection in full for the first time and will be an invaluable aid to research on Irish and Irish American cultural and literary output. The author’s introduction examines how the collection was formed. This untold story is an important chapter in America’s intellectual history, reflecting a phase of unprecedented expansion in Harvard University’s scholarship and teaching during the early twentieth century when the institution’s program of studies began to accommodate an increasing range of European languages and literatures and their sources. This indispensable guide to a major repository’s records of the Irish past, and of America’s Irish diaspora, will interest specialists in early and post-medieval codices. It should prove of relevance as well to scholars and students of comparative literature, cultural studies, and Irish and Irish American history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9780268201005

Cornelius G. Buttimer

Cornelius G. Buttimer is a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish, School of Irish Learning, University College Cork. He is the author and co-editor of a number of books, including Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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Introduction

Various factors underlie creation of the collection at issue in this account. Its formation towards the turn of the twentieth century coincided with a highpoint of Irish presence throughout North America.¹ Primary sources for the Gaelic past then came to the attention of noteworthy public representatives² and booklovers.³ At the same time, United States’ universities witnessed considerable expansion of their curricula, when more disciplines were admitted to programs of instruction as the boundaries of knowledge expanded.⁴ While such considerations were influential, credit for assembling the archive goes principally to one distinguished academic. He is Harvard graduate, and later the university’s second Gurney Professor of English Literature, Fred Norris Robinson (1871–1966).⁵ Interaction from a young age with recent immigrants to his native Lawrence, Massachusetts, gave him direct awareness of the Irish-speaking world.⁶ Subsequent training placed Robinson among this subject’s front ranks. When Celtic was first offered at his alma mater in 1897,⁷ he was assigned a separate library budget to make purchases in this new area.⁸ Manuscript materials that forward-looking scholar attempted to obtain almost immediately⁹ were acquired as an aid to research and teaching within an ambiance where interdisciplinarity was promoted actively. Robinson also formed a personal treasury of codices. Some were donated to Harvard University in his own lifetime, whereas others were willed to it after he passed away.¹⁰

The holding that emerged from this process numbers thirty-eight original and six photostat items, one of the latter reproducing documents whose whereabouts remain to be determined.¹¹ Harvard’s collection is the largest of its kind in the United States, apparently.¹² The majority of them continue the practice of manuscript production established in Ireland on the arrival of Christianity, probably by the fifth century A.D., and lasting down until the end of the 1800s,¹³ to which concluding phase most here belong.¹⁴ Our compilations’ contents comprise creative and functional compositions of the Middle Ages, in addition to prose or verse texts contemporary with the later time frame when copies were completed.¹⁵ Certain of the university’s Irishlanguage documents engage with oral lore in a manner underscoring its distinctive outlook.¹⁶ Some reflect a blossoming in imaginative Gaelic writing throughout Ireland and America itself immediately before and after 1900.¹⁷ Describing these sources is the catalogue’s objective. It focusses on codices’ make-up and entries, accounting for those features in line with guidance set out further below. The current introductory section concentrates on documents’ provenance or ownership, clarifying or supplementing any existing information relating to such topics.¹⁸ In so doing, the evolution of university structures within which the pieces were accommodated from the 1890s to the present is charted. Manuscripts were registered and retained in conformity with criteria and circumstances particular to each repository. Those conditions shaped the collection and illustrate how it came to be understood within the Harvard system. Although positive and supportive in the main, institutional appreciation of the compilations may not have been fully informed in all instances.¹⁹

GORE HALL

Manuscripts 1–18 were housed in this library building, constructed during 1838 to honor Christopher Gore (1758–1827), Harvard alumnus, one-time governor of Massachusetts, and member of the university’s Board of Overseers. It was Harvard College’s first purpose-built library and had the world’s first self-supporting book stacks.²⁰ The connection between Gore Hall and its Irish codices is reflected in the records’ former shelf-marks, now cancelled in the relevant volumes but still recoverable from them (see Table 1). A suite of wings and extra floors would be added to the library after capacity in the original space became inadequate by the 1860s. Two distinct areas within the enlarged structure held Gaelic compendia. One was the Bibliography and Literature section on the Second Floor of the West Stack. A pair of compilations (1–2) carries the primary classification, ‘IV’, of this location. Sixteen other sources (3–18) were in the Rarities and Manuscripts Closets in the History Reading Room, situated on the Fourth Floor West of the East Stack. The class mark for pieces there is ARa–ARg (AR standing for Art Room), the Gaelic documentation being in the ‘ARf’ section.²¹ It is not now fully clear why items in ‘IV’ were kept separately from their counterparts. We shall observe how the ordering of the tranche under the ‘ARf’ heading can appear anomalous as well. Any such discrepancies are noted hereinafter insofar as they have implications for perceptions of the holding’s completeness as it now stands.²² While exhibiting what look like inconsistencies, the Gore Hall numbering may be seen to mirror the assemblage’s evolution better in many respects than the designation which replaced it.

Table 1. Gore Hall Acquisitions

Early Arrivals

Although there appears to be no direct evidence confirming the fact, Fred Norris Robinson could have played a part in obtaining the university’s first Gaelic documents. Harvard made its initial acquisition, 14, in 1894.²³ Handwriting suggests this item is attributable to James McQuigg, a scribe involved in proselytizing efforts to promote Protestantism among speakers of Irish during the early part of the nineteenth century,²⁴ but who copied works representing strands of the pre-Christian poetic and storytelling heritage into 14.²⁵ A note in it indicates the compendium came from the library of William Gibbons Medlicott (1816–83). That native of Bristol, England, went to the United States during the 1830s and enjoyed success in clothing manufacture. Harvard University bought documentation, including this, from the industrialist’s sizeable collection of codices and incunabula after he died, having taken some 250 lots in 1878 when financial reversals encouraged him to sell off certain possessions.²⁶ Manuscript 14 does not state why the library chose it, but the purchase possibly reflects Robinson’s prior interest in the contents of another Medlicott source.²⁷ Item 8 entered Gore Hall in 1898.²⁸ Coming as a gift from its scribe, Diarmaid Ó Mara, the short work comprises a lecture he gave to the Boston branch of the Philo-Celtic Society, a body that sought to foster Gaelic civilization among exiles from Ireland.²⁹ Jeremiah Mara’s talk encouraged his compatriots to follow the lead of European communities that promoted their traditions in the United States rather than foresake this inheritance. The speaker acted as one of the Boston Society’s Irish-language instructors and served as its vice-president.³⁰ His donation may have marked the granting of honorary membership in the Philo-Celtic Society to Robinson around the time of the Mara bequest,³¹ while simultaneously saluting Harvard’s recent initiative on behalf of the Celtic languages. The original library numbering of 8 reveals some distance in shelving between it and 14, indicating that their identity as components of a related set might be tenuous.

Development

Acquiring manuscripts became organized rather than fortuitous as the twentieth century commenced. One reason for that step would seem to be initiation of contact between Fred Norris Robinson and an Irish-based dealer whose affairs the following notice issued shortly after his passing on April 7, 1912, captures succinctly:

Mr Nassau Massey, the well-known antiquarian bookseller in Cork, died on Easter Sunday, aged 86. The deceased gentleman, whose business was established as far back as 1827, had a wide and varied knowledge of works relating to Ireland, and his name was a household word amongst Irish book lovers over the world. He leaves a large family, all, we believe, engaged in the book trade, amongst them Mr Edward Massey, of Dublin, and Mr Chas. Massey, of London.³²

Nassau’s enterprise³³ probably benefitted from the residual strength of the nineteenth-century Gaelic scribal tradition throughout the south of Ireland and from renewed attention devoted to this output as the 1800s drew to a close. The necrology’s claim regarding his operations’ extent seems valid. Irish scholars dealt with him,³⁴ while overseas figures apparently did know the Munster bookseller too.³⁵ Robinson could have heard mention of the Cork vendor within academic circles in Ireland during his stays there throughout the late 1890s, when his ambition to establish a Gaelic manuscript archive was already clear.³⁶ Surviving letters hint at how they interacted with each other. Wording on the shopkeeper’s stationery indicates that, as one aspect of his service, Scarce Books were Sought for, and Reported free of Charge. Our Harvard Celticist may have requested Massey to function in such a capacity on his and the university’s behalf. The Corkman is likely to have treated documents written by hand in the same way as printed books he dispatched to the United States, proposing them initially for consideration, with the option either to retain or return them. That Nassau Massey gave the Harvard instructor the choice of keeping one manuscript if the university did not wish to buy it is independent confirmation that Robinson had a personal holding. The agent’s correspondence states the costs of items sent.³⁷ Those estimates reveal the contemporary value of Gaelic handwritten productions, while also shedding light on financial parameters within which either Fred Norris Robinson or the university library operated when purchasing such pieces. Harvard’s evidence shows, furthermore, what codices were available to an early twentieth-century provincial bookseller in Ireland.

Four works, taken in the order of their appearance in the catalogue (3, 7, 9, and 13), were obtained for Gore Hall in 1902. Manuscripts 3 and 9 are from, or have ties to, Tipperary. Tomás Ó Briain, scribe of 3 (a), seemingly an educationalist, involved with Irish writing from the late 1810s to the early 1830s,³⁸ gives a location in that county as his address. Item 3 (b), although not signed, is to be credited, on penmanship grounds, to his fellow Tipperaryman and near contemporary Tomás Ó hÍceadha (1775–1856), a laborer.³⁹ Even though 9 has no scribal signatures as such, its section (a) has been attributed to Connacht-born wandering scholar Seán Ó Domhnaill Ó hAodha (1792–1863),⁴⁰ who spent some time in Tipperary, while (b)’s creator, evidently one Tomás Ó Conchubhair,⁴¹ resided there. Accordingly, 3 and 9 are broadly alike in terms of their place of origin, probable chronology, and entries: prose narratives⁴² and verse material.⁴³ Links between them may be thus more than simply accidental, such that it cannot be discounted entirely that they derive from a prior unitary collection.⁴⁴

The other 1902 acquisitions hail from a contiguous Irish region. Manuscript 7 comprises four sections, and includes what appear initially to be different writers’ names, Peadar Mac Cárthaigh (in English, Peter McCarthy) in (a), and Peter Cremin in (c). However, an identical hand throughout and the following consideration suggest a single copyist is involved: Peter McCarthy Cremin. This is the full name of a mid- to late nineteenth-century agriculturalist from southwest Co. Cork.⁴⁵ Peter’s extended surname reflects a previous practice of distinguishing, with a byname, his branch of the former aristocratic McCarthy clan from other offshoots of a family widely dispersed throughout southern Munster in the Middle Ages.⁴⁶ Item 7 is a verse anthology,⁴⁷ like 13,⁴⁸ and the latter is also complex, but in a contrasting sense. Tadhg Ua Catháin (d. 1901), a prosperous mid-Cork landholder during the 1850s to the late 1890s,⁴⁹ was the former owner, and part compiler, both of 13 and 40. I believe the handwriting of a second contributor, Fínín Ó hAllúráin, occurs in 13 as well. This near neighbour of Ua Catháin’s flourished from the 1830s to the 1850s, when his occupations included laboring and teaching.⁵⁰ It is difficult to distinguish Fínín’s and Tadhg’s entries in 13 from the other’s. That problem does not arise to the same degree regarding 40, in the production of which both also participated, but where Ó hAllúrain’s role predominates. While Ua Catháin was undoubtedly his contemporary, given an apparent difference in life span between them, Timothy Keane (the English form of this writer’s name) might have been Fínín’s pupil or come under the latter’s tutelage as a more senior figure in a local scribal entourage.⁵¹

Although 13 was the last 1902 acquisition looked at above, it appears to have been the first the university obtained in that year. The codex itself carries an accession date of October 6, 1902, stating it was bought with monies from a bequest to Harvard made by Boston politician Henry Lillie Pierce (1825–96).⁵² University accounts note payment to Nassau Massey from this fund on September 7, 1902, of a bill in the amount of £3 3s. 0d. Its record does not specify what exactly the disbursal was for, but the timing, funding source, and payee suggest the outlay was for the document at issue. The transaction’s total value in U.S. currency terms came to $15.33.⁵³ Manuscripts 3, 7, and 9 were accepted formally into the library on November 28, 1902, according to identical annotations in each. All were purchased with support from a different benefaction, named for Massachusetts-born railway executive Charles Minot (1810–66). Accounts also indicate payment from this bequest on November 15, 1902, of a bill totalling £2 8s. 0d., to Nassau Massey. Once more, the relevant accounting record offers no precise indication as to what exactly was bought, but, equally, the coincidence points to the three compilations under discussion. The deal was valued at $11.70.⁵⁴ If he spent over $27 for the combined 1902 purchases, this meant Fred Norris Robinson allocated approximately one-third of a twelve-month library budget to securing those original sources. That encumbrance could have had a bearing on his purchasing in the next session, given a need to cater for all other Celtic languages besides Irish. Aspects of Massey’s pricing policy may emerge when the costings of 13 and 3, 7, and 9 are compared. One basis for the Cork bookseller’s calculations seems simply to have been size. The numbers of pages in 13 (418) show their amount as greater than that of the three others combined (380), and hence proportionate charges.

Earlier Gore Hall shelf-marking, crossed out in the compendia but nonetheless retrievable from them, offers an accurate indication of the timing of their arrival at Harvard. Item 13’s previous ‘ARf 4.46.5’ designation, on being compared with the ‘ARf 4.46.7’, ‘ARf 4.46.8’, and ‘ARf 4.46.9’ descriptors of 3, 7 and 9, respectively, confirms that the first came in on its own initially, followed by the three others as a unit. Their acquisition together probably explains why the statement of disbursal from the Minot endowment just mentioned does not itemize payment individually for each. When considered further, the same initial library numbering the four 1902 compilations were given is out of kilter with that of the first two tomes to have been accessioned, 14 and 8. Manuscripts 3, 7, and 9 in particular are rather oddly lower in numerical order than 8 within their shared, older library subcoding, despite the latter reaching Gore Hall before those others.

Four Gaelic productions (10 and 38–40) bring the story forward to 1903. Only the first became a university resource immediately then. Item 10’s scribe, Mícheál Ó hArgáin, enjoyed links with Co. Kerry, possibly, and an eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century floruit.⁵⁵ His document, a distinctive collection of legendary military verse,⁵⁶ was bought with monies from the aforementioned Pierce bequest and accepted into the library on March 23. Harvard papers register payment from this fund to Nassau Massey of a bill dated March 7, 1903. Its amount was £2 6s. 6d., or a U.S. currency equivalent of $11.34.⁵⁷ While the requisitioning note does not specify what its payment was for, the fund, beneficiary, and dating combined suggest 10 is intended. There would seem to be an alternative indicator that the piece was obtained from the Cork trader. Another institutional record speaks of buying an unspecified single vol. from Massey on March 23, 1903.⁵⁸ This is the same day on which entries in 10 itself confirm the source was received into the library. Here, it was assigned the Gore Hall identifier, ‘ARf 4.46.10’. The next numerical subcode was allocated to it following those given to its three immediate predecessors, 3, 7, and 9 above. Item 10’s former descriptor therefore mirrors closely in this instance the timing and order of the collection’s growth. Continuity in call numbering allows one to propose that Irish manuscript material was gaining recognition within the library as an identifiable amalgam, reflecting awareness that the Celticist’s arrangement with Massey regarding the purchase of such codices would endure.

Robinson Manuscripts

Items 38–40 also came to Massachusetts in 1903. They were not handed over to Harvard until Fred Norris Robinson’s 1966 donation adverted to earlier, a benefaction whose circumstances are revisited below (see Table 3 to follow). However, as they reached New England in the same year as 10, and because their history is closely interwoven with Gaelic compilations the university did take in during this initial acquistion phase, it is appropriate to examine them now. All appear to be the nucleus of a private manuscript archive the Harvard teacher established out of interest, assuredly, and perhaps to keep up dealings recently established with Nassau Massey by using his own finances instead of relying on a limited library book fund.⁵⁹ Each bears Robinson’s signature and location in Cambridge, while also mentioning when they were acquired. It looks as though their new proprietor wished afterwards to give them a distinctive character by marking every one with what I take to be the intial ‘R’ of his surname, followed by a numerical sequence. That same letter is found in 41, which he obtained in 1904. The actual numbering of the four documents within the ‘R’ series does not mirror correctly the dating of their arrival in the United States. A degree of difference is to be noted in those figures’ employment, whether they are rendered as closely spaced, as superscript, or otherwise. The 1903 set is ‘R1’ (38), ‘R²’ (39) and ‘R 4’ (40), respectively. ‘R³’ was allotted to what is 41 in the present account, acquired the following year. This suggests Robinson could have assigned his customized siglum and serial numbers to his acquisitions retrospectively in 1904 rather than as the items came in. Despite any anomalies, it seems logical, following the order that scholar gave the first two 1903 works, to allocate 40, his ‘R 4’, to the current part of this study, on the basis that the professor’s signing and timing attribute the compendium to the developmental period under consideration. His practice in the early 1900s was not sustained because Robinson abandoned entering the R symbol and a numerical accompaniment into his later manuscript purchases or into donations made to him thereafter.

Item 38 has a pronounced devotional element, as the inclusion of saints’ lives, litanies, repentance poetry, and other similar compositions affirms. Among its intriguing aspects is the presence therein, as front endpapers, of printed sheets from the late 1840s recounting the activities of Roman Catholic missionary priests in locations as far apart as the Americas and southeast Asia.⁶⁰ The core contents match those of other documentation ascribed to its compiler, Seán Ó Dreada (ca. 1771–1840), a productive Cork writer from the eastern barony of Imokilly, employed as an engraver of tombstones and other stonework.⁶¹ Manuscript 38, dating to 1814, appears to be the earliest of his extant codices. Item 39, the work of Fínín Ó hAllúráin, spoken of previously as a participant in writing 13 and 40, has a religious dimension as well. It is taken up entirely with his copy of Trompa na bhFlaitheas, a mid-eighteenth-century translation into Irish of the seventeenth-century pietistic tract La trompette du ciel, by French clergyman Antoine Yvan (1576–1653).⁶² That the Gaelic version remained of interest to churchmen may be seen from the signature of one ‘Rev. David Horgan’ in 39, perhaps revealing the latter to have been a former possessor. He could be identical with a cleric of the same name who was pastor of the Cork Roman Catholic parish of Ballincollig from 1847 to 1872, the year of his death, with alternative sources offering additional confirmation of his engagement with the Gaelic or scholarly worlds.⁶³ Manuscript 39 clearly formed part of Fred Norris Robinson’s holding between 1903, when he first owned it, and 1966, the date of its bequest to Harvard. Nonetheless, an observation by him during the 1940s seems to suggest the compilation was already in the university’s care at that point.⁶⁴ The remark reveals the Celticist must have decided definitively by the mid-twentieth century to leave what remained of his own manuscript treasury at this stage to Harvard Library.

Item 40, third among Robinson’s personal 1903 acquisitions, was considered earlier when examining 13, because their entries, scribes, and erstwhile proprietorship overlap. In view of the fact that 13 could have been obtained from Nassau Massey’s premises, it seems reasonable to surmise 40 also came from the same vendor. Correspondence, now enclosure (ii) in that last codex, may represent additional testimony in support of this second of Timothy Keane’s documents having been once also among the Cork trader’s stock. The letter, by literary historian Standish James O’Grady (1846–1928),⁶⁵ would appear to have no overt connection to Keane, even if the former’s nationalistically tempered unionism might have found favor with him. O’Grady’s note could have been placed in the Ua Catháin codex by accident in a bookshop that apparently held an assortment of materials, perhaps readily confused.⁶⁶ It seems improbable that Fred Norris Robinson obtained the message directly from Standish James O’Grady. Conversely, he may have retained it when realizing the piece’s ties with a personage celebrated for his role in reevaluating Irish culture at the close of the 1800s.

University and Personal Purchases

Three codices (1, 2, and 11) came straight into Gore Hall in 1904. Robinson made one other private acquisition, 41, discussed here together with the others for the following reason. It is by Pádraig Stúndún (d. 1908), as are 1 and 2, in addition to 15, whose circumstances are considered later. From Ballymacoda in east Co. Cork, Patrick Stanton (as he rendered his name in English) was a small farmer, publisher’s representative, and court interpreter during different stages of his career, residing afterwards in Cork city. He made plentiful copies of earlier Gaelic documentation, particularly for clerical patrons. In this respect, Stúndún is regarded with good cause as one of the final practitioners of Ireland’s age-old scribal tradition.⁶⁷ Manuscripts 1 and 2 together are characteristic of his absorption with the poetry of the eastern Co. Cork barony of Imokilly, especially the output of composer Piaras Mac Gearailt (1709–ca. 1792), commentator in verse on communal and political topics in his day⁶⁸ and with the early Irish Ogham cypher-based writing system.⁶⁹ Most of 41 is an eighteenth-century burlesque tale concerning the alcoholism and vagrancy of its eponymous hero, Éamann Ó Cléirigh, composed by Seán Ó Neachtain (d. 1729), Co. Roscommon–born descendant of a family of hereditary historians who settled subsequently in Dublin.⁷⁰

Pádraig Stúndún wrote 1 for Fr. Thomas Ferris (ca. 1830–91), parish priest of Castlelyons in the Roman Catholic diocese of Cloyne, Co. Cork, from 1879 until his death. This churchman, active in public affairs, is likely to have appreciated that Irish was still prominent as a vernacular throughout his region during the mid- to late 1800s.⁷¹ It is unclear how Thomas Ferris and Patrick Stanton were known to each other. The fact that they came from the same diocese and appear to share an interest in Irish culture must have played a part in contact between them. Manuscript 1 was completed in 1885, 2 was written one year later by the same copyist, and 41 was created in 1887. Therefore, all three had been compiled before Fr. Thomas Ferris died, and on proximate dates. While the clergyman’s name does not occur in 2 or 41, the possibility that those two codices were also produced for him must be considered. A paper label in 41, from which the reading ‘Lot 1(4)’ is recoverable, suggests it derives from a sale, conducted perhaps on the break-up of Ferris’s possessions. Its writer also mentions another aspect of the document’s prior history. Stúndún claims as source for 41 a compendium previously owned by Fr. Domhnall A. Ó Súilleabháin (1790–1858), former pastor of Enniskean parish in the west Cork barony of Carbery East and an Irishlanguage enthusiast as well.⁷² Should the Stanton assertion be genuine, our Harvard codex adds a further entry to the list of papers Ó Súilleabháin once held.

Dated stamps in 1 and 2 indicate these were accepted into the library on July 5, 1904. It is probable, therefore, they are the two items, otherwise unspecified, of which a Harvard record for that exact date states bought Massey.⁷³ The figure ‘2/2/-’ given in each may be their sterling value of £2 2s. 0d. While the sum appears separately in both sources, other evidence appears to indicate the ‘2/2/-’ at issue could be their combined worth. The two were purchased with the aid of the Price Greenleaf Fund, as annotations to them indicate. A Harvard accounting filing reports payment from Greenleaf monies to Nassau Massey on July 12, 1904, again close enough in time to suggest 1 and 2 are intended, even if not ostensibly linked with the deal. The amount released was £2 10s. 0d., a total in which postage costs may have been added to the base price, or $12.19 in U.S. terms.⁷⁴ Why 1 and 2 were shelved in a different part of Gore Hall to the library’s other Gaelic works, as may be determined from their respective markings, ‘IV.6767’ and ‘IV.6768’, is not immediately evident, particularly because the collection had been accommodated up to then in another location, by and large. Nassau Massey’s Cork city Buchhandlung most likely involved in 1 and 2 may again have provided the Harvard instructor with 41. The figure ‘8/0/-’ inside its front cover might be that compendium’s price. If this is £8 0s. 0d., as opposed, for the sake of argument, to 8s. 0d., then the document was highly expensive when compared either with 1 or 2 or with the cost, quoted above in sterling terms, of 3, 7, 9, or 13. Accordingly, Robinson could have felt it best to pay for that piece from his own resources. He set store by this Stanton production as an example of Irish penmanship when showing the manuscript at a commemorative exhibition during 1938, almost as though it were already a Harvard document.⁷⁵

Item 11 is the remaining entry in the list given above of codices Gore Hall accessioned formally in 1904. Its contents, largely north Munster poetry of the 1700s, and the early nineteenth-century dating in its watermarks, may offer some further guidance as to who wrote it. The compiler, Diarmaid Ó Conaill, could be a scribe so named who supplemented the work of another copyist, Séamas Stúndún. The latter completed a set of tales and saga material throughout 1799–1801. This volume was produced in north Cork, while the Diarmaid Ó Conaill under consideration added to it during 1836.⁷⁶ Manuscript 11 was probably again sent from the city of Cork. The relevant accessions account records 1 MS Bought Massey, without clarifying the purchase further as such.⁷⁷ However, the acquisition is dated May 2, 1904, sufficiently close to the April 30, 1904, 11 gives as the timing of its acceptance into Gore Hall. A jotting in the same manuscript suggests it was secured with the assistance of the ‘Hunnewell Gift’. In a separate notice, one finds a statement of payment from the Henry S. Hunnewell Gift Fund to Nassau Massey, dated May 10, 1904.⁷⁸ Proximity in time makes it probable this entry refers to 11 also. If so, it cost £1 5s. 0d., or $6.09. Neither institutional source indicates where the aforementioned bookseller might have obtained the work. Item 11 reached Massachusetts during the same year as 1. Because the latter was associated with north Cork by virtue of the connections of its patron, Fr. Thomas Ferris, to the area—there being a chance that 2 and 41 may be linked to him as well—it too, perhaps, could have derived from that cleric’s collection, to the extent he had such possessions, given his apparently nonmaterialistic outlook. One might envisage the Ferris holding, if it was extensive, having, in essence, writings made available to him from his own locale. The manuscript’s previous call number was ‘ARf 4.46.11’. That shelf-mark thus perpetuates in an unbroken fashion the sequence ending with 10’s earlier library enumeration. Storage, discussed above, of 1 and 2 away from a zone apparently intended primarily for Gaelic compendia is, accordingly, harder to fathom.

Ongoing Institutional Acqusitioning

Only one Gaelic document, 6, entered Harvard Library in 1905. It is by far the best-known of the university’s Irish-language possessions. The volume comprises, mainly, an early eighteenth-century copy, at whatever remove, of encomiastic verse to some four generations of the aristocratic O’Byrne family of Ballinacor, Glenmalure valley, in southern Co. Wicklow (ff. [iii]–64). Leaders primarily at issue are Aodh (d. 1579), son of Seaán Ó Broin; Aodh’s son, Fiachaidh (d. 1597); Feilim (d. 1630), Fiachaidh’s son; and Brian, son of Feilim. Other pieces by poets who composed for those principals feature in the compilation as well (ff. 65–99). Records detailing the O’Byrnes’ later history are also included (ff. 114–18).⁷⁹ Many yield important guides to interaction between O’Byrne representatives and the English administration. The clan often opposed Great Britain’s attempt to control Ireland before and after 1600 A.D. at a transformative stage in the country’s history.⁸⁰

Item 6 is from the pen of Mícheál Ó Broin, identified as a descendant of the Ballinakill O’Byrnes,⁸¹ with the latter inventorying his branch’s late seventeenth-century land holdings. Ó Broin seems to have received formal education as a youth in Co. Wicklow before moving to Dublin, where he was active from the 1720s in manuscript work and perhaps teaching. Documents attributed to him suggest he was concerned with genealogical and historical lore, in addition to prose and poetry. Mícheál Ó Broin may have benefitted in that regard from the fact that O’Byrne family members before his time owned, consulted, or seem otherwise to be associated with a range of additional handwritten treasuries, all dating to the high Middle Ages. Taken together, they underline the scale of the grouping’s exposure to a full spectrum of Irish-language tradition.⁸² Michael himself appears to have won recognition as a well-trained copyist by the standards of his age.⁸³ The clarity and orderliness of the Gore Hall acquisition under consideration bear witness to those characteristics.

Michael O’Byrne would seem to have been involved with Dublin’s large early eighteenth-century scribal community.⁸⁴ Certain entries in 6 are shared with documents drawn up by metropolitan writers.⁸⁵ Appearance in the Harvard codex of the scribe Aodh Ó Dálaigh’s signature (f. 119 v.) confirms that interaction.⁸⁶ Hugh O’Daly (the version of his name by which he was known in English) resided at various moments between the 1720s and 1750s in Dublin’s Nicholas Street⁸⁷ and the neighborhood of Thomas Street.⁸⁸ Aodh was probably also a teacher, and enjoyed the patronage of Trinity College jurist Francis Stoughton Sullivan (1715–66), for whom he prepared copies of Gaelic manuscripts.⁸⁹ Hugh is likely to have derived various of his reproductions of O’Byrne material either from 6 or other codices associated with Michael O’Byrne.⁹⁰ The latter could have been motivated to share data with Ó Dálaigh because of a poem this penman composed (6, f. 112 r.), mentioning Michael’s father, Cathaoir, when lamenting his demise and that of other Irish notables at the fateful Battle of Aughrim in 1691.⁹¹ This pivotal event saw the forces of William III (1650–1702), from Holland, defeat those of King James II (1633–1701), in a major conflict in east Co. Galway as part of a struggle for decisive domination of both Great Britain and Ireland, following which the Dutch prince replaced his adversary on the English throne.

While Mícheál Ó Broin may have lent manuscripts to Hugh, it is unlikely the latter became 6’s owner. If this happened, that item would probably have come into the possession afterwards of one of Dublin’s libraries, the destination of various O’Daly papers. There may, in fact, have been independent access in the city to 6 throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s following Michael’s time, as the existence of texts held in common with this codex by compilations from that later phase allows one to deduce.⁹² While it seems our Harvard work remained in eastern Ireland during some, at least, of the nineteenth century,⁹³ thereafter Mícheál Ó Broin’s document looks less accessible in the capital or its surrounds, ultimately leaving those environs. One reason for this situation could be its possible transfer from Leinster to Cork. It may be concluded 6 moved southwards because Harvard is likely to have sourced The Book of the O’Byrnes at the same premises from which the university obtained its other Gaelic manuscripts during the time horizon explored here. A record of April 22, 1905, claims the institution Bought Vols 1 Massey on that date, without revealing what the transaction comprised.⁹⁴ However, this statement of accession was made just one day before a note written into 6 itself confirming the manuscript’s acceptance at the library. Its probable cost can also be inferred. A further marking in the codex indicates the Minot Fund supported its acquisition. One Harvard accounting note verifies payment to Nassau Massey from the latter bequest on April 27, 1905, a mere four days after 6 reached Gore Hall. The University gave £4 10s. 0d., or $21.90, for this purchase from the Cork bookseller.⁹⁵

If, as appears most likely from those details, the outlay was for the Ó Broin compendium, it represents the largest payment for an Irish-language manuscript down to this year from the Celtic library monies Fred Norris Robinson administered. That might explain why only a single purchase of its kind could be afforded out of such financing in 1905. The expense also suggests Massey recognized he had a worthwhile commodity on his hands. He could have understood as much from 6’s dating, its illumination, or a perusal of its entries. Unfortunately, no data seem to survive among Harvard papers to indicate how the Munster dealer came by it. One might speculate it reached his store through the intervention of Nassau’s son, Edward Massey, whose Dublin bookshop was then gaining prominence.⁹⁶ It was, perhaps, a suitable firm to which to convey a work like The Book of the O’Byrnes. The Gore Hall shelf-mark, ‘ARf 4.46.13’, assigned to 6, suggests the numbering of 11, acquired immediately before it and to which ‘ARf 4.46.11’ had been allocated, was kept in mind. We have seen that ‘ARf 4.46.12’ was put aside previously for 8, Harvard’s second Gaelic handwritten source, donated in 1898.

Robinson realized 6’s value accurately, describing it as the most important of Harvard University’s Gaelic manuscripts (not, one imagines, that he would seek thereby to diminish the standing or relevance, each in its own way, of the holding’s other components).⁹⁷ He made a reproduction of it available promptly to persons in Ireland who either proposed to edit the O’Byrne material or actually completed this task.⁹⁸ Joseph Lloyd (1865–1939), a Dublin-based researcher, prepared transcripts from a copy of 6,⁹⁹ while Eleanor Knott (1886–1975)¹⁰⁰ included one distinctive composition for the chieftain, Aodh Ó Broin, in her groundbreaking edition of the works of its acclaimed author, associated mainly with high-status families in Connacht and Ulster, Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (fl. 1550–91).¹⁰¹ Tadhg Dall’s eulogy for Aodh Ó Broin would be re-issued when, as indicated above, all poems to the O’Byrnes in our Harvard manuscript were published subsequently by a scholar, Seán Mac Airt (1918–59),¹⁰² at the commencement of a brief but productive career. His volume relied principally on a photostat of 6 and was largely welcomed when issued.¹⁰³ The codex thus became the first of Harvard’s Gaelic handwritten holdings the majority of whose contents appeared in print. Its data are being drawn upon continuously in studies of the history, language, metrics, and compositional techniques of the Classical period with which the O’Byrne testimony is engaged.

Gore Hall witnessed a return to a larger purchasing pattern during 1906 in that three items (4, 5, and 16) were then acquired. All again have substantial ties to the Irish south. Manuscript 4 is a composite document, a type of scrapbook, with its part (a) consisting of various elements. That main segment is linked firstly to Cork-born Thomas Crofton Croker (1798–1854),¹⁰⁴ well known for his observations on Ireland’s oral culture and belief systems.¹⁰⁵ This Corkman discovered other resources for the Irish past when he relocated to London as an Admiralty employee. Much of 4 (a) comprises listings of printed material involving his country of origin available for purchase in the imperial capital, or confirms the identity of publishers there who provided outlets for Croker’s own writings.¹⁰⁶ His presence in London also facilitated Crofton Croker’s accessing, in the British Museum, established at Bloomsbury since its foundation during 1753 and opening to the public in 1759,¹⁰⁷ that center’s major collections of printed¹⁰⁸ and manuscript¹⁰⁹ work. This component of the Houghton volume illuminates the broader story of how primary sources from the Gaelic world were rediscovered gradually during the early 1800s.

A second step in the first section’s history occurred following Thomas Crofton Croker’s death. Part 4 (a) seems to have returned to Cork at that point, to be included in the holding of John Windele (1801–65).¹¹⁰ A native of the same city as Croker, and in state service as well, at Cork’s sheriff’s office, he shared with his London counterpart an interest in countryside antiquities and lore. The Houghton piece under discussion must have increased his knowledge of what could be tracked down outside Ireland on such matters by a researcher like Crofton Croker, with whom he was undoubtedly familiar.¹¹¹ Section 4 (a) also testifies to support that Windele provided to his area’s sizeable community of Gaelic copyists. It is John Windele who probably engaged Cork-born scribe Joseph Long (1817–80) to supply the Harvard codex’s summaries of Irish-language manuscripts held by the British Museum and Trinity College, Dublin (beginning on f. [1] r.).¹¹² Seosamh Ó Longáin (as Joseph signed himself in Irish) also listed the substantial number of Gaelic works in his employer’s possession (ff. [58] r.–[73] r.). This repertory now yields significant information about papers of that type Windele owned shortly before his death.

It looks as though 4 (a) passed on afterwards to a third proprietor, Charles Guilfoyle Doran (1835–1909).¹¹³ Born in Wicklow, Charles relocated to Cork during his early years, where most of the rest of his days were spent as an architect and engineer. Doran’s interests, if not his political outlook, would have paralleled those of Croker and Windele. Active in nationalist causes,¹¹⁴ Charles Doran was also culturally aware, having a command of the Irish language and issuing articles on regional traditions.¹¹⁵ He assembled a significant collection of publications on Ireland, the sale of which in 1910, shortly after he passed away, attracted attention.¹¹⁶ If he had been 4 (a)’s previous possessor, the document’s acquisition by Harvard University in 1906 might indicate that dispersal of his library commenced before this time, perhaps around 1905, when he moved from Queenstown (now Cobh) to Union Quay in the city of Cork. When or how Doran himself obtained the record is unclear. That step most likely dates broadly from the mid-1800s following John Windele’s demise and the sale of this antiquarian’s possessions.¹¹⁷ Doran may have taken it for the same reason it was probably acquired for Gore Hall. Few if any modern published catalogues of Irish manuscripts of any consequence were available in the late ninteeenth century, or early on in the twentieth. Even if only mere sketches, guides like 4 (a) were thus to be treasured for perspectives on sources, whether handwritten or published, widely scattered and still difficult to access. Doran’s accurate summary, in the compilation’s section (b), of 4 (a)’s contents suggests he had indeed read the latter, and realised what it contained.

Manuscript 5, the second 1906 piece, is a verse and prose miscellany whose copyist, Conchubhar Ó Ceallacháin, came originally from the townland of Lower Ballygroman in Co. Cork’s barony of Muskerry East.¹¹⁸ A contemporary patronage and scribal nexus of a kind that may have trained him in basic writing and exchange practices would seem to have existed in this area.¹¹⁹ Indebtedness by Cornelius O’Callaghan (the English form of his name) to that heritage may be seen from his conventional choice of entries and their local emphasis,¹²⁰ even if his codex’s orthography does not uphold traditional norms but typifies, rather, a growing nineteenth-century trend of presenting texts in quasi-phonetic spelling and cursive italic, combined with Irish characters.¹²¹ The penman had relocated to Cork city’s north side by the stage the Harvard volume was completed during the 1860s, to seek employment in its service industries, perhaps. Certain of 5’s compositions confirm that cultivation of Gaelic letters in an urban setting was ongoing even throughout post-Famine times.¹²² Item 16, Harvard’s last 1906 compendium, confirms that a tendency towards city and rural interaction predates the mid-nineteenth century. This sizeable collection of prose tales is ascribed to schoolteacher Peadar Ó Féichín,¹²³ whose whereabouts are given as ‘Saint Finbarry’s’. That place of writing is either the quarter south of the River Lee where Cork’s patron saint reportedly founded the city during the sixth century, or the nearby eponymous early eighteenth-century Church of Ireland cathedral featuring in Gaelic literary creations of similar age to this manuscript.¹²⁴ Ó Féichín also enjoyed associations with centers outside the city of Cork, such as Blarney, and with various county-based copyists. These ties may explain how 16 came later to circulate in north Cork, as annotations claiming possession of it during the period 1804–18 by the penman, Éamann Ó Tréasa, of Ballyhooly, in the barony of Fermoy, reveal.¹²⁵

An entry in 5 states Gore Hall obtained this codex with the assistance of the Minot Fund. University accounting sources indicate payment was made from the same bequest to Nassau Massey on May 23, 1906, without confirming what was purchased.¹²⁶ While there is some distance between the date in question and the occasion of the manuscript’s acceptance into the library on April 8, 1906, 5 may be intended nonetheless. If it is, the piece cost £1 10s. 0d., or $7.27.¹²⁷ Library notes in them demonstrate that 4 and 16 were accessioned together on the same day, June 5, 1906. Harvard ledgers record 2 MSS Bought Massey on that date, suggesting these compilations are at issue.¹²⁸ Markings in both sources reveal they were acquired with the aid of the Pierce Bequest. Institutional accounts confirm a disbursal from the Pierce donation to Nassau Massey by August 1, 1906, without supplying details of what was bought.¹²⁹ A gap is thus to be observed between the payment’s comparatively later dating and the aforementioned timing of the volumes’ admittance into the library system, that tardiness occurring as a consequence of the summer vacation period, possibly. The financial outlay’s size could confirm that 4 and 16 were involved. A total of £5 10s. 0d., or $ 26.70, was disbursed from the Pierce fund, making it what would have been the largest expenditure down to this point on Irish-language related manuscript materials. One element of 4’s cost could reflect the celebrity of its main compiler, Thomas Crofton Croker, as the vendor most likely understood. Item 16’s relative earliness, not to mention this eighteenth-century tome’s robust penmanship, might be responsible for its valuation. Their old Gore Hall shelf numbering once more matches the acquisition sequence better than later descriptors. Its ‘ARf 4.46.14’ duly places 5 first, followed by ‘ARf 4.46.15’ for 4 and ‘ARf 4. 46.16’ for 16, an order in accord with the timing, just noticed, of their purchase. The former Library’s classification series therefore also picks up in an unbroken manner from where Gore Hall’s designation of 6 ends.

The year 1907 was the last one during the former library’s existence in which three manuscripts (15, 17, and 18) were acquired. Pádraig Stúndún, who wrote the first of these, we saw earlier as scribe of 1, 2, and 41. Item 15 comprises a seventeenth-century version of the Gaelic life, with accompanying English-language translation, of St. Finbarr, Cork’s patron. Stanton made copious versions of this text.¹³⁰ Manuscript 17 is by Mícheál Ó hAnnracháin, a prolific nineteenth-century Co. Clare legal clerk and penman, well over twenty of whose documents have come down.¹³¹ The contents of 17, principally a recension of fellow-Clareman Brian Merriman’s late eighteenth-century poem, The Midnight Court, also attested in manuscript 9 (a), discussed above, and other north-Munster verse exemplify the copyist’s mainstream literary concerns. Both 15 and 17 were accessioned on the same day, June 11, 1907, and are possibly to be identified as the items intended under the heading Bought Vols 2 Massey.¹³² The two codices were obtained with financial assistance from the Ernest Blaney Dane gift fund. Payment to the Cork bookseller was made from this donation on June 25, 1907, in the amount of £3 3s. 0d., or $15.35, the sum at issue appearing consistent with previous costs for multiple acquisitions.¹³³ It is difficult to tell from either compilation what other owners, if any, might have held them prior to Massey’s time. Curiously, the documents were given non-sequential library numberings, ‘ARf 4.45.5’ (15) and ‘ARf 4.46.18’ (17). This rubrication suggests the former was put in a different setting to the latter, a unique instance of the employment of an alternative Rarities and Manuscripts Closets shelving during the collection’s Gore Hall phase. Manuscript 17 does not continue on immediately from when the subcoding (‘ARf 4.46.16’) of the latest 1906 acquisition, 16, ends.

Item 18, 1907’s third arrival, differs from codices considered thus far by being more obviously rooted in the spoken tradition. Each of the four anecdotes that it includes is shown to represent versions of tales well attested in Irish and international oral narration.¹³⁴ Vernacular dialectal influences and surnames present appear characteristic of southwest Munster, suggesting the episodes’ or their creator’s background lies in Co. Kerry’s Iveragh peninsula.¹³⁵ Although the scribe, Thomas Clifford, assuming his forename’s abbreviation is to be read accordingly, is otherwise unknown to me, his personal and family name combination is often seen in the area of Kerry in question. Clifford’s employment of Gaelic script, historic spelling, and standard manuscript contractions demonstrates acquaintance with scribal usage, but it remains unclear whether the writer had memorized the tales or took them down directly from recitation. While the document itself does not reveal the timing of its completion, it must have been finalized by 1907 at the latest, because the latter is noted within that codex as the year of its reception into Harvard Library.

Further annotation, taken at face value, states 18 came from the possessions of Harvard graduate and student of divinity and philosophy William Wells Newell (1839–1907).¹³⁶ He is best known as a pioneer in the development of folkoristics in the United States, a role that could account for his interest in 18’s substance. Where Newell obtained the latter is not determined. The work’s inclusion among Gore Hall’s Irish manuscripts may possibly be explained by William’s prior acquaintance with Fred Norris Robinson, both having been colleagues in various scholarly enterprises.¹³⁷ There appears to be no notice in Harvard archives of 18’s registration as a gift, should it have come to the institution in the form of a donation rather than a purchase.¹³⁸ On the day, July 17, 1907, of its acceptance into the library, institutional sources claim the following: Bought Vols 1 Massey.¹³⁹ That accessions note might refer to the purchasing of a printed book from the Irish trader rather than a handwritten product. Other unusual features must equally be borne in mind. Manuscript 18’s old designation (‘ARf 4.46.17’) paradoxically precedes the previous shelf number of 17 (‘ARf 4.46.18’), although the latter was already at Harvard the month before the Clifford source came to the university, whatever the implications of this situation may be.¹⁴⁰

A break of some five years occurred until 1912, when 12, a collection of stories principally relating to legendary historical or other figures was acquired. The document is the work of Peadar Ó Longáin,¹⁴¹ older brother of Joseph Long, copyist, in part, of 4 (a). Peadar was involved in creating some 130 manuscripts, suggestive of an assiduous scribal career. Many volumes he generated were made-to-order copies for ecclesiastical or lay purchasers. Item 12 was completed on behalf of Aindrias Ó Súilleabháin, a Cork-based patron of Kerry descent who supported the Ó Longáin family extensively.¹⁴² This was the last codex obtained for Gore Hall, arriving on June 12, 1912, during the year that library would be decommissioned. It was shelved as ‘ARf 4.46.19’, which is, consequently, the final number of the