The United Irishman and his brother, the Lexicographer
Jonathan Smyth's latest Times Past column recalls Edward O'Reilly who wrote an Irish dictioary in 1817...
The title of this week’s column, might raise a question or two, such as, what is a lexicographer? Or where would I find one? The trusty Miriam-Webster dictionary defines it to mean ‘an author or editor of a dictionary’, while if we wanted to delve further into the world of words, we can enter the realm of something called etymology, which is the study of the origin and meaning of words.
To compile a dictionary must take a lot of time, tonnes of patience and a passion for words. There are two people with Cavan links who have written dictionaries, and they are Thomas Sheridan of Quilca and Edward O’Reilly.
In a previous Times Past column, the life of Thomas Sheridan featured whereas this week we explore the work of a scholar, who was self-taught in the art of speaking Irish. His name was Edward O’Reilly, otherwise known as Éadbhard Ó Raghallaigh.
Edward O’Reilly was born in 1765 and both of his parents were said to have come from Cavan. Accounts vary, with one stating that Edward was born in Cavan in 1770. The Ulster Dictionary of Biography suggested that he left Cavan at the age of twenty and then settled in Dublin; while Lesa Ní Mhunghaile’s essay on O’Reilly in the ‘Dictionary of Irish Biography’ noted that he was born on December 6, 1765, ‘probably in Harold’s Cross, Dublin’ but acknowledged the possibility of his birthplace being either in the County of Cavan or Meath.
Therefore, I wondered if born in Cavan, then whereabouts did the family live. But the truth of his birthplace remained unsolved. In another publication it was said that Edward’s father worked as an apothecary and moved from Cavan to Harold’s Cross, Dublin.
However, one thing is for certain, the surname O’Reilly is beyond doubt a Cavan name and, in her essay, Lesa Ní Mhunghaile drew attention to a reference in the Irish Booklover, which noted that Edward ‘was a descendant of the O’Reilly’s of Breifne’.
Perhaps, some of the many genealogy books on the O’Reilly clan may offer further clues about Edward’s elusive parentage and, in addition to this mystery, it would be interesting to discover who his own children were, since his obituary in 1830 indicated he and his wife had a large family.
Even, in the odd absence of his parents’ names, there is one name we do at least know of and that is Andrew O’Reilly, his brother.
Following the Irish rebellion of 1798, Andrew O’Reilly, himself being a United Irishman, moved to Paris for his own safety, and into exile.
While there, he found work in journalism and served as the city’s ‘correspondent for The Times,’ where his sharp reporting skills came to the fore in exposing a major fraud.
According to David Ryan in his book, ‘Blasphemers and Blackguards: The Irish Hellfire Clubs’, Andrew’s efforts received recognition in the form of a tablet erected in the Lloyd’s Marine Office.
Andrew evidently enjoyed writing and wrote a memoir ‘Reminiscences of an Irish Emigrant Milesian’. Robin Flower, a.k.a. Bláithín (little flower) an English author, famous for his love of the Irish language, noted in the ‘Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum,’ volume two, that the O’Reilly brother’s grandfather was Eoghan O’Reilly from Corstown, Co Meath.
In John Warburton’s ‘The History of the City of Dublin,’ volume 2, we learn that Edward O’Reilly was educated in Dublin, but his schooling did not involve learning the Irish language.
However, his love for the native language began in earnest after he bought a large library of Irish books from a scholarly young man called Wright who moved abroad.
In recent times, De Burca rare books were offering to sell an 1821 edition of the dictionary, which had been privately printed for O’Reilly, and they valued the book at €275, adding that it contained ‘upwards of twenty thousand words’ that up to that time had ‘never appeared in any former Irish lexicon’, with lots of ‘copious quotations from the most esteemed ancient and modern writers, to elucidate the meaning of obscure words and numerous comparisons of Irish words, with those of similar orthography, sense, or sound, in the Welsh and Hebrew Languages.’
The names of ‘indigenous’ Irish plants are listed in English and Latin too.
The font appears in the ancient typescript, which kept the purists happy and then, for the present day reader, they appeared in italics, since they lacked the skills to decipher the original text.
In the preface, O’Reilly directly spoke out against England’s anti-Irish act, which attempted to eliminate spoken Irish. Under early English rule, it was the intention ‘to extinguish their (Ireland’s) sinister traditions and customs’ and in 1537 the Statute of Ireland, otherwise, an Act for the English Order Habit and Language, banned the use of Irish in the Irish Parliament.
A later edition of O’Reilly’s dictionary from 1877 is to be found at the National Famine Museum, Strokestown House: the first copy appeared in 1817.
A fine account of its author appears on the Irish Heritage trust website, which provides the reader with some interesting information.
The Irish language and its preservation occupied much of O’Reilly’s thoughts and on Richmond Street, Dublin, both he and a County Cavan schoolteacher named Edward Farmer, opened a school for teaching Irish.
O’Reilly and Farmer had other shared interests and were known to collect ‘old country airs and tunes’.
We must be thankful to people like Edward O’Reilly who spent years recording Irish words to save them from extinction for future generations to enjoy.
When explaining what a Lexicographer was, Samuel Johnson simply wrote, ‘a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words’.
For further details on the life and work of Edward O’Reilly, see Lesa Ní Mhunghaile’s account in the ‘Dictionary of Irish Biography’.
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