Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/421

 that it is uncertain whether Octa or Eormenric did not for a time share the kingship. Octa's reign is described as obscure. Having conquered Kent, the Jutes found themselves blocked from an advance westward by the Andredsweald, and from the Thames waterway by the bridge and defences of London, and seem to have remained quiet for a century after their victory of 473. 

O'CULLANE, JOHN (1754–1816), Irish poet, called in Irish O'Cuiléin, and in English often Collins, was born in co. Cork in 1754. He belonged to a family whose original territory was Ui Conaill Gabra (, O'Huidhrin), now the baronies of Upper and Lower Connello, co. Limerick. Many of them still inhabit the district, but the chief family of the clan was driven from his original estate and settled near Timoleague, co. Cork, where the family was finally dispossessed by the Boyles, earls of Cork. Several of the O'Cullanes are buried in the Franciscan abbey of Timoleague. His parents had a small farm, gave him a good education, and wished to make him a priest. He, however, preferred to be a schoolmaster, married, and had several children. His school was at Myross in Carbery.

Many of his poems are extant in Munster, and Mr. Standish Hayes O'Grady has some manuscripts written by him, including part of a history of Ireland and part of an English-Irish dictionary. Two of his poems have been printed and translated—‘An buachaill bán’ (‘The Fair-haired Boy’), written in 1782, published in 1860 by John O'Daly; and ‘Machtnadh an duin e dhoilghiosaidh’ (‘Meditation of the Sorrowful Person’) which is printed in Irish (, Irish Minstrelsy, ii. 234), and paraphrased in verse by Thomas Furlong and by Sir Samuel Ferguson. He also translated into Irish Campbell's ‘Exile of Erin.’ He died at Skibbereen, co. Cork, in 1816. 

O'CURRY, EUGENE (1796–1862), Irish scholar, who is often mentioned early in his career as Eugene Curry (title-page of his edition of Cath Mhuighe Leana, 1855), but was always known in Irish as Eoghan O'Comhraidhe, was born at Dunaha, near Carrigaholt, co. Clare, in 1796, where his father, Eoghan O'Curry, was a farmer, with a good knowledge of some Irish literature and a taste for Irish music. He traced his descent from Aengus, a chief of the fifth century, ninth in descent from Cormac Cas, the son of Oilill Oluim, and was proud of belonging to the Dal Cais. Eugene was slightly lame, but worked a little on his father's farm, and gave much time to Irish studies. In the agricultural distress of 1815 the farm was ruined, and he got some work in Limerick; and his father, who encouraged his literary tastes, went to live with him. In 1834 he obtained employment in the topographical and historical section of the ordnance survey in Ireland. The scheme of the survey was admirable, but after the volume relating to Templemore was published in 1837, the government discharged the staff, and no use was made of the materials. The work had, however, acted as a university education for O'Curry, by bringing him in contact with learned men and with Irish manuscripts in Dublin, Oxford, and London. He next earned his living by copying, arranging, and examining Irish manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, Dublin, and elsewhere. In 1851 he made a translation, with text, of the Irish poems in the beautiful manuscript known as the ‘Codex Maelbrighte,’ which was printed in a memoir on the book by Dr. W. Reeves in 1851 in Dublin. He became a member of the council of the Celtic Society, founded in 1853, and in 1855 the society published a text and translation by him of two mediæval Irish tales: ‘Cath Mhuighe Leana’ (The ‘Battle of the Plain of Leana’) and ‘Tochmarc Moméra’ (‘The courtship of Momera’), the daughter of the king of Spain and mother of Oilill Oluim, the ancestor, according to all Irish writers, of the two ruling families of Munster and their allied tribes. These compositions had never been printed before. A critical spirit was not to be expected in a man of O'Curry's education, but the translation is a faithful reproduction of the original, and the text a good one. In 1849, and again in 1855, he examined the Irish manuscripts in the British Museum, and wrote the useful manuscript catalogue now in that library. He visited the Bodleian Library with Dr. J. H. Todd in 1849, and examined its rich collection of Irish manuscripts. When the Catholic University of Ireland was founded, O'Curry became professor of Irish history and archæology, and delivered his first course of lectures in 1855–6. He did not over-estimate