Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/422

 his own qualifications as a professor. He always felt, he declared, the want of early mental training, and had always expected to transcribe and translate manuscripts, not to publicly discuss them. John Henry (afterwards Cardinal) Newman attended every lecture, and constantly encouraged the lecturer. The lectures were published in 1860, at the expense of the university, and fill a volume of more than seven hundred pages. The twenty-one lectures give a full account of the chief Irish mediæval manuscripts and their contents, drawn from a personal perusal, and often transcription, of them by the lecturer. The chronicles, historical romances, imaginative tales and poems, and lives of saints are all described. The appendix contains more than 150 extracts from manuscripts, with translations, all made from the originals by the author. Any one who reads the book will obtain a better knowledge of Irish mediæval literature than he can by the perusal of any other single work. Three further volumes of lectures, delivered between May 1857 and July 1862, ‘On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,’ were published in 1873, after O'Curry's death, edited by Dr. W. K. Sullivan, and contain a vast collection of information bearing on social and public life in Ireland in past times, and three texts, with translations, besides many smaller extracts from manuscripts. In 1860 was printed, in Dr. Reeves's ‘Ancient Churches of Armagh,’ O'Curry's text and translation of that part of the ‘Dinnsenchus,’ or history of the famous places of Ireland, which refers to Armagh, taken from the manuscript known as the ‘Book of Lecan,’ in the library of the Royal Irish Academy. His transcripts were numerous and exact. In 1836 he made a facsimile copy, for the Royal Irish Academy, of a genealogical manuscript of Duald Mac Firbis, belonging to Lord Roden. The execution of the copy is perfect, and its extent is shown by the fact that if printed it would cover thirteen hundred quarto pages. In 1839 he made for the Royal Irish Academy a facsimile copy, of marvellous beauty, of the ‘Book of Lismore,’ a fifteenth-century manuscript of 262 large pages. He made facsimile copies for the library of Trinity College, Dublin, of the ‘Book of Lecan,’ of the ‘Leabhar Breac,’ and of several other manuscripts. He transcribed, in a distinct and beautiful handwriting in the Irish character, eight large volumes of 2,906 pages in all of the ancient Irish law tracts. The brehons were fond of commentary, and mediæval Irish legal writings are marvels of complicated interlinear and marginal annotation. He also wrote out thirteen volumes of a rough preliminary translation. Some of this has unjustifiably been published; it was in reality only the author's first step to a translation. A precise translation was perhaps beyond his powers, and can only be accomplished by a special study of the intricate and often enigmatical writings of the hereditary lawyers of mediæval Ireland, who never aimed at being understanded of the people. His health was injured by close application to work, and he died in Dublin in July 1862, a fortnight after the delivery of his last lecture, the subject of which was ‘Ancient Irish Music and Dancing.’ The difficulties which O'Curry overcame were extraordinary, and his industry enormous. He was devoted to his subject, and added much to the knowledge of it. His greatest friend was John O'Donovan [q. v.], who married his sister.

His brother, called in English Malachi Curry, and in Irish Maolsheachlainn O'Comhraidhe, was a good Irish scholar and poet. The British Museum collection contains two of his poems in Irish: (1) an epistle in verse from him to Thomas O'Shaughnessy, a Limerick schoolmaster, beginning ‘Taisdil o mhéraibh mo chaolchroibhe a sgríbhinn’ (‘From the fingers of my slender hand, oh writing, travel!’). It was written on returning a copy of an Irish prose composition; (2) a reply to some verses of O'Shaughnessy on the loss of one of his poems by a drunken messenger. He died in 1849. 

O'DALY, AENGUS (d. 1350), Irish poet, called in Irish Aenghus Ruadh O'Dálaigh, belonged to the sept of O'Daly of Meath, and was related to Cuchonacht O'Daly, who died at Clonard in 1139, and was the first famous poet of the O'Daly family. Aengus was poet to Ruaidhri O'Maelmhuaidh, chief of Fearcall, King's County, and when drunk offended that chief. He wrote a poem of 192 verses to appease O'Maelmhuaidh's wrath, ‘Ceangal do shioth riom a Ruadhri’ (‘Confirm thy peace with me, O Ruaidhri!’), in which he urges him to attack the English and make friends with his own poet. He was already in practice as a poet in 1309, when he wrote a poem of 192 verses on the erection by Aedh O'Connor in that year of a castle on the hill of Carn Free, ‘An tu aris a raith Theamhrach’ (‘Dost thou appear again, oh earthwork of Tara’). 