The footsteps of that custom still remaining': Medieval memory culture and Thomas O'Sullevane's portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
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‘The footsteps of that custom…still remaining’:
Medieval memory culture and Thomas O’Sullevane’s
portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
Eamon Darcy
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature,
Advance Access, (Article)
Published by Royal Irish Academy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ria.0.0001
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.‘The footsteps of that custom…still remaining’:
Medieval memory culture and Thomas O’Sullevane’s
portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition1
Eamon Darcy*
Maynooth University
[Accepted 5 October 2021. Published 11 April 2022.]
Abstract The preface to the Memoirs…of the Marquis of Clanricarde (1722) is a curious
text. Written by Thomas O’Sullevane, ostensibly in response to the 1720 printing
of the ‘Short view of the state and condition of the kingdom of Ireland’ by Ed-
ward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, the preface challenged ‘Protestant’ narratives of
Catholic butchery in the 1640s. For the most part, O’Sullevane’s claims were sup-
ported by a sustained consideration of historical evidence, an uncommon feature
in the contemporary discourse. His insights have had little impact, however, on
how historians interpret the 1640s. Yet, Celtic scholars frequently invoke O’Sullev-
ane’s preface to describe the schooling of Irish bardic poets—without reference to
its broader purpose. The aim of this article is to historicise O’Sullevane’s work and
to show how contemporary philological and antiquarian-minded investigations
shaped O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish past, especially the Irish bardic world.
Keywords: Memory culture, Irish learned families, Irish manuscript tradition,
Antiquarianism, Battle of the Books
Introduction In 1722, James Woodman, a minor London printer, published the Memoirs…of
the Marquis of Clanricarde.2 Clanricarde (1604–58) was a prominent Catholic no-
bleman and a committed royalist who remained aloof from the Irish confederate
wars until 1648. Yet in 1650, he became lord deputy after the flight to the Conti-
nent of James Butler (1610–88), marquis and later duke of Ormond.3 Clanricarde’s
*Author’s email: eamon.darcy@mu.ie
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3782-3222
1
I would like to thank Diarmaid Ó Catháin, Nollaig Ó Muraíle, James Kelly, and the
two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.
2
Ulick de Burgh, Memoirs of the Right Honourable the Marquis of Clanricarde (London,
1722). There is no reference to Woodman in Henry R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the print-
ers and booksellers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725
(London, 1922); Bibliotheca antiquaria & politica (London, 1723), 56, indicates that
Woodman had only published three books by 1723.
3
Aoife Duignan, ‘Burke, Ulick’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, available at: https://www.
dib.ie/biography/burke-ulick-a1189 (accessed 19 January 2021).
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 122C, 1–24 © 2022 The Author.
This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-
1
No Derivatives 4.0 International License. Open Access funding provided by IReL.Eamon Darcy
Memoirs offered a sympathetic, though not uncritical, account of the confederate
wars, providing a different perspective to that offered by the divisive history of
the Irish rebellion known now as the ‘Short view of the state and condition of the
kingdom of Ireland’ by Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, which was first pub-
lished in Dublin and London in 1720.4 Clarendon (1609–74), like Ormond, was
a key figure in the exiled Stuart court during the 1650s. Their close acquaintance
shaped Clarendon’s narrative, for he defended Ormond’s stance when dealing with
the Irish confederates and emphasised Ormond’s honour and reputation.5
Reflecting on the nature of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-
century printed debates about the 1640s, Toby Barnard has written that this ‘reg-
ular revisiting of 1641, though it owed something to supposed improvements in
historical methods, was usually prompted by, and in turn contributed to, con-
temporary grudges’.6 Concurrently, scholars engaged in (acrimonious) debates
about the ancient Irish past and readers were interested in both controversies.7
Woodman was involved in collecting subscriptions for Dermot O’Connor’s En-
glish translation of Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (which described
the ancient Irish past) and knew there was a market for Irish history. It is likely,
therefore, that Woodman wanted a preface to Clanricarde’s Memoirs that could
reach a broad audience interested in the ancient and more recent Irish past.
Woodman sought the advice of Humfrey Wanley, custodian of the library of
Robert Harley, earl of Oxford and Mortimer. Consequently, Woodman hired
Thomas O’Sullevane, who prepended a 184-page ‘Dissertation’ to the Memoirs.8
Its purpose was to contribute to the two key scholarly controversies in Irish his-
tory that were then ongoing.
O’Sullevane’s ‘Dissertation’ covers considerable ground. It begins with
his views on the duties of historians. While his discussion on their obligation
to discover ‘truth’ was neither new nor surprising, he placed a heavy emphasis
on what would now be called archival research. He equated ‘truth’ in the his-
torical record with gold and encouraged his readers to ‘dig, and fetch it out’.9
O’Sullevane proceeded to discuss the outbreak of the 1641 Irish rebellion; the
inherent weakness of the confederate government in the 1640s; and the negotia-
tions between the duke of Lorraine and the Irish Catholic hierarchy in the 1650s.
4
Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, The history of the rebellion and civil wars in Ireland
(Dublin, 1720); Toby Barnard, Brought to book: print in Ireland, 1680–1784 (Dublin,
2017), 107–9; Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon: a short view of the
state and condition of the kingdom of Ireland (Oxford, 2020), xlvii–liii.
5
Ohlmeyer (ed.), A short view, xv–xviii.
6
Toby Barnard, ‘1641: A bibliographical essay’, in Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), Ulster 1641:
aspects of the Rising (Belfast, 1993), 173–86, 174.
7
Barnard, Brought to book, 104–36.
8
Robin Flower identified O’Sullevane as the author: Robin Flower, ‘A lost MS of the
“Clanricarde Memoirs”’, The British Museum Quarterly 5:1 (1930), 24–5.
9
Thomas O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, in Ulick de Burgh, Memoirs of the Right
Honourable the Marquis of Clanricarde (London, 1722), i–clxxxiv, x.
2Thomas O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
Throughout, O’Sullevane emphasised the importance of consulting manuscripts
and criticised Clarendon for failing to use historical evidence in a sustained way
in the ‘Short view’ and in his history of the English civil wars.10 Fearing that the
same lax and partisan scholarship would characterise discussion of Irish ‘antiq-
uities’,11 he brought the same critical perspective to bear on Geoffrey Keating’s
Irish language history of ancient Ireland, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (1630s), which
circulated widely in manuscript.12 It was in this context that O’Sullevane ad-
dressed the settlement of Ireland, the evolution of the Irish language, the role of
hereditary scholarly families in Ireland, the education of Irish bardic poets and
Irish Brehon law.
Although the issues he engaged with were prompted by ‘contemporary
grudges’ about the wars of the 1640s and the nature of ancient Irish society,
O’Sullevane’s ‘Dissertation’ is based on new advances in eighteenth-century
scholarship. Yet, historians of the 1640s have overlooked O’Sullevane’s contri-
bution.13 By comparison, Celtic scholars regularly cite O’Sullevane’s account of
the training of Irish bardic poets (as part of his broader discussion on the Irish
manuscript tradition). This practice commenced with Osborn Bergin. In 1912,
Bergin quoted extensively from O’Sullevane’s eight-and-a-half-page descrip-
tion of trainee bardic poets composing in dark huts lying on their beds. This
was, Bergin concluded, a ‘relic of some rite or ceremony of divination handed
down from pagan times, long after its original purpose had been forgotten’ as the
bardic order replaced the druids (who wrote nothing down) after the arrival of
Christianity in Ireland.14 Following in his wake, other scholars did likewise and
this section is now identified as the fullest, most valuable and most accurate ac-
count of the bardic schools.15 Despite O’Sullevane’s enduring influence, neither
10
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, lxv.
11
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxviii.
12
Bernadette Cunningham, The world of Geoffrey Keating: history, myth, and religion in
seventeenth-century Ireland (Dublin, 2004).
13
Toby Barnard, ‘1641’, 173–86; Toby Barnard, ‘“Parlour entertainment in an evening?”
Histories of the 1640s’, in Micheál Ó Siochrú (ed.), Kingdoms in crisis: Ireland in the
1640s. Essays in honour of Donal Cregan (Dublin, 2001), 20–43; John Gibney, Shadow of
a year: the 1641 Rebellion in Irish history and memory (Wisconsin, 2013); Ohlmeyer (ed.),
A short view.
14
Osborn Bergin, ‘Bardic poetry’—first published in 1912; reprinted in David Greene
and Fergus Kelly (eds), Irish bardic poetry: texts and translations, together with an intro-
ductory lecture by Osborn Bergin (Dublin, 2003), 3–22, 9; Douglas Hyde, A literary
history of Ireland: from earliest times to the present day (London, 1899), 528–30; Fred
Norris Robinson, ‘Satirists and enchanters in early Irish literature’, in David Gordon
Lyon and George Foot Moore (eds), Studies in the history of religions (New York,
1912), 95–130.
15
Daniel Corkery, The hidden Ireland: a study of Gaelic Munster in the eighteenth century
(Dublin, 1924; reprint 1975), 73–5; Eleanor Knott, Irish classical poetry (Cork, 1978), 52.
3Eamon Darcy
Celtic scholars nor historians of the wars of the mid-seventeenth century have
subjected the ‘Dissertation’ to a sustained analysis.
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to bring greater nuance to our un-
derstanding of O’Sullevane’s ‘Dissertation’ and his contribution to scholarship on
the Irish past. It will do so by focusing on three key themes in the ‘Dissertation’:
first, the wars of the mid-seventeenth century in Ireland; second, the settlement
of Irish society prior to the arrival of Christianity; and third, the Irish manu-
script tradition. It will demonstrate that O’Sullevane’s ‘Dissertation’ was more
than a riposte to Clarendon’s ‘Short view’ and the growing controversy about
pre-Christian Ireland. Histories of the 1641 rebellion invoked the spectre of Irish
barbarity and ‘incivilitie’, themes that pervaded debates about the ancient Irish
past. Such discussions had contemporary political relevance across Britain and
Ireland, particularly at moments of acute political and sectarian tension. O’Sul-
levane feared the anticipated publication of O’Connor’s translation of Keating’s
Foras Feasa ar Éirinn would be exploited by those wishing to portray the Irish
past as excessively barbaric. To counter such allegations, O’Sullevane drew upon
newly emerging scholarly techniques inspired by contemporary philological in-
vestigations. Scholars were beginning to critique and historicise evidence in the
construction of their narratives. Accordingly, O’Sullevane looked to Irish man-
uscripts for evidence about the nature of scholarly learning among the ancient
Irish. His representation of Irish bardic and Brehon learning evokes what Mary
Carruthers describes as medieval memory culture, commonly associated with a
monastic education.16 As will be explained below, O’Sullevane downplayed the
paganism of the pre-Christian society and denied that druids were the intellectual
ancestors of the Irish bardic order.17 His representation of the training of Irish
bards deliberately evoked monastic learning. The great irony is that O’Sullevane’s
work was all but ignored until the early-twentieth century when Bergin claimed
inter alia that the ‘Dissertation’ suggested that druidic influences were still evident
in seventeenth-century bardic practice–which is the very point that O’Sullevane
sought to disprove.
Thomas It is tempting to conclude that O’Sullevane’s 184 page ‘Dissertation’ was just
O’Sullevane, another partisan contribution to debates about the 1640s since it contains a 107-
Clanricarde’s page discussion on the wars of the mid-seventeenth century and it was written
Memoirs, and in the wake of the printing of Clarendon’s ‘Short view’ (1720). Yet, there is some
Clarendon’s sophistication to his approach. O’Sullevane cited specific historical evidence to
‘Short view’ challenge rival accounts, ascribed motivation to historical characters and con-
textualised the production of earlier histories. This style of sustained histori-
cist analysis is not a feature of earlier publications on the subject which were
16
Mary Carruthers, The book of memory: a study of memory in medieval memory culture
(Cambridge, 2008).
17
Robinson, ‘Satirists and enchanters’, 95–130.
4Thomas O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
avowedly partisan.18 The purpose of this section, therefore, is to analyse O’Sul-
levane’s account of the wars of the mid-seventeenth century. It will demonstrate
how he addressed divisive issues by focusing on contemporary evidence and it
will highlight his methodology, which also shaped his investigation of the an-
cient Irish past (the subject of the next section).
One of the key factors that influenced O’Sullevane’s approach was his
friendship with Humfrey Wanley with whom he regularly discussed Irish man-
uscripts and antiquities. Their social interaction contributed to what Joseph M.
Levine has described as a dialogue between the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’.19 His-
tory occupied a particular place in this debate. Those who favoured the continued
imitation of classical authors (i.e., ‘ancients’) clashed with scholars like Wanley
and O’Sullevane (‘moderns’) who employed philology and antiquarianism to un-
derstand the past.20 ‘Moderns’ sought to historicise ancient texts and manuscripts,
and to utilise non-literary evidence such as numismatics and ruins to reinforce their
historical narratives.21 The purpose of O’Sullevane’s ‘Dissertation’ was to apply the
moderns’ approach to the investigation of the 1640s and the ancient Irish past.
Evidence of O’Sullevane’s attempts at historicisation can be seen in his
analysis of Richard Cox’s Hibernia Anglicana (1689). Since 1662, the Church of
Ireland commemorative calendar included a celebration on 23 October of the
so-called deliverance of Irish Protestants from Catholic rebels in 1641. Those in
attendance on such occasions were fed a diet of graphic sermons focused on the
atrocities that occurred during the 1641 rebellion. Such memories were deliber-
ately stoked at moments of political crises such as the Williamite wars, which
provided the context in which Cox wrote.22 In seeking to account for Cox’s par-
tisan description of the 1641 rebellion, O’Sullevane claimed that the narrative
18
Eamon Darcy, ‘Writing the past in early-modern Ireland: Anglesey, Borlase and the
craft of history’, Irish Historical Studies 40:158 (2016), 171–91.
19
Joseph M. Levine, The battle of the books: history and literature in the Augustan Age
(London, 1991). Here I am building upon a point made in Bernadette Cunningham and
Raymond Gillespie, ‘Owners and users: the changing contexts of the Book of Ballymote,
1500-1750’ in Ruairí Ó hUiginn (ed.), Book of Ballymote: Codices Hibernenses Eximii 11
(Dublin, 2018), 251–72, 259. I am grateful to both authors for their helpful and insight-
ful conversations about this topic. While Alan Harrison referred to this dispute briefly
there was no sustained argument made about how this shaped O’Sullevane’s approach.
One chapter is called ‘Cogadh na Leabhar’ [The battle of books] in Alan Harrison, Ag
cruinniú meala (Dublin, 1988), 84–113; Harrison, The Dean’s friend, 105–48.
20
Levine, Battle of books, 7–8.
21
Levine, Battle of books, 75, 92, 164–80.
22
Toby Barnard, ‘The uses of 23 October 1641 and Irish Protestant celebrations’, English
Historical Review, 106:421 (1991), 889–920; Eamon Darcy, The Irish rebellion of 1641
and the wars of the three kingdoms (Woodbridge, 2013), 144–7; Gibney, Shadow of a
year, 44–7; James Kelly, ‘“The glorious and immortal memory”: Commemoration and
Protestant identity in Ireland 1660–1800’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy:
Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature 94:2 (1994), 25–52; Eoin Magennis, ‘A “belea-
guered Protestant”?: Walter Harris and the writing of “Fiction Unmasked” in mid-18th-
century Ireland’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr 13 (1998), 86–111.
5Eamon Darcy
was a product of ‘the unpleasant situation of affairs then’.23 Rather than dismiss
Cox’s arguments, O’Sullevane cited evidence from Clanricarde’s Memoirs that
contradicted Cox (albeit with a partial nod toward Clanricarde’s perspective).24
At their time of publication, Clanricarde’s Memoirs addressed another immedi-
ate political context: the Jacobite rising of 1715 and the rumours of a prospec-
tive Jacobite invasion to be led by James III and James Butler, the second duke
of Ormond, that circulated in 1719. Reprints of the iconic Protestant account of
1641, John Temple’s Irish Rebellion (1646), around this time offer a useful mea-
sure of contemporary fears.25 Addressing this controversy, O’Sullevane argued
that the Protestant celebration and commemoration of 1641 shaped the under-
standing of the ‘vulgar’, whereas to those ‘of impartial good sense’, 1641 was an
event open to scholarly debate based on historical evidence. He sought, in other
words, to encourage authors to separate the writing of history from politics.26
As Toby Barnard has illustrated, by the 1730s, human agency was a
central feature in discussions of the causes of the 1641 rebellion.27 Much of
this centred on the role of James Butler, first duke of Ormond. He was either
regarded as a ‘treacherous coward’ or a loyal servant to the Stuart monarchy.28
O’Sullevane joined in this controversy, dismissing the positive portrayal of Or-
mond in the ‘Short view’. He claimed that the author’s sole purpose was ‘to
justifie’ Ormond’s conduct in the 1640s.29 Challenging the view that Ormond
had behaved with impeccable honour, O’Sullevane attempted to explain the
motives that underpinned Ormond’s actions. He concluded that the war aims
of some of the Catholic clergy in the confederation (namely, the restoration
of Church lands) doomed the movement to failure. Were lands restored to
the Catholic Church, O’Sullevane wrote, Ormond would have lost a consider-
able part of his patrimony, thereby arguing in a measured way that Ormond’s
23
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, xxxvi.
24
See O’Sullevane’s discussion on the negotiations between the duke of Lorraine and
the Irish royalist war effort: Richard Cox, Hibernia anglicana, or, the history of Ireland
(London, 1689), 25; O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, xxxvi–xl; Micheál Ó Siochrú, ‘The
duke of Lorraine and the international struggle for Ireland, 1649–1653’, The Historical
Journal 48:4 (2005), 905–32.
25
Thomas Bartlett, ‘Review article: A new history of Ireland’, Past and Present 116:1
(1987), 206–19; Gibney, Shadow of a year, 29–31, 42–44; Eamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland
and the Jacobite cause, 1685–1766: a fatal attachment (Dublin, 2002), 182–234.
26
Quotations from O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, xxv; see also Darcy, ‘Writing the past’,
171–91; Magennis, ‘Beleaguered Protestant’, 104–5, 110–11.
27
Barnard, ‘Parlour entertainment’, 20.
28
Eamonn Ó Ciardha, ‘“The Unkinde Deserter” and “the Bright Duke”: contrasting
views of the dukes of Ormond in the Irish royalist tradition’, in Toby Barnard and Jane
Fenlon (eds), The duke of Ormond, 1610–1745 (Woodbridge, 2000), 177–93, 178–80.
29
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, lxv; Levine, Battle of the books, 264–5. O’Sullevane did not
believe that Clarendon wrote the ‘Short view’, an opinion worthy of further investigation.
6Thomas O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
actions were guided by self-interest.30 It contrasted with the passionate con-
demnation of Ormond by Nicholas Plunkett, a Jacobite, who excoriated the
duke for his ‘unjust acquisitions’ and jealous guarding of his estate in ‘A light
to the Blind’ (1711).31
Further evidence of O’Sullevane’s scholarly methodology can be found
in his critique of Clarendon’s allegation that on 23 October 1641 a general mas-
sacre of English Protestants occurred throughout Ireland.32 Rather than deny
that a massacre took place to the extent claimed by Protestant polemicists, as
others had done, O’Sullevane pointed to a proclamation dated 8 February 1642
which listed only fourteen counties in Leinster and Ulster affected by the rebel-
lion. Furthermore, he cited a note recorded by Clanricarde on 29 November 1641
that outlined how quiet the situation was in counties Galway and Mayo.33 Clar-
endon’s analysis, O’Sullevane argued, was blinded by ‘passion’, which prevented
him from seeing the ‘truth’ regarding the alleged massacres and death toll. In-
stead, O’Sullevane referred readers to William Petty’s dispassionate calculation
which maintained that the number of Protestant settlers that perished during
the first year of the rebellion was far smaller than generally averred (37,000, as
compared to previous estimates which ranged from 154,000 to 1,000,000).34 De-
spite this, because the events of 1641 had a contemporary political significance
in the 1720s it was difficult to avoid being polemical. Thus, in places, O’Sullevane
uncritically accepted arguments advanced by the confederates, most notably the
claim that their recourse to arms was: ‘merely to rescue the nation from the vio-
lent incroachment of the parliament party [and] to support the Roman Cathol-
ick religion.’35 Despite calling for the impartial examination of the past free from
contemporary political concerns, the climate in which O’Sullevane wrote shaped
his argument.
There are signs of scholarly improvements in O’Sullevane’s method-
ology although they were not applied consistently. On one hand, he accepted
the confederates’ justifications for their actions and was heavily influenced
by Clanricarde’s perspective. On the other, O’Sullevane discredited claims in
other publications from rival viewpoints by citing contemporary evidence.
O’Sullevane was adamant that his scholarship transcended contemporary
30
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, lxxxi, cxiii.
31
Ó Ciardha, ‘Unkinde deserter’, 184.
32
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, xxiv–xxv; Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, The history of
the rebellion and civil wars in England, begun in the year 1641 (2 vols, Oxford, 1702–3),
vol. 1, 237.
33
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, xxviii–xxxiv; Robert Steele (ed.), Tudor and Stuart procla-
mations 1485–1714 (2 vols, Oxford, 1910), vol. 2, 43.
34
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, xxxiv–xxxv; Darcy, Irish Rebellion, 95, 148.
35
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, liii; Eamon Darcy, ‘Political participation in early Stuart
Ireland’, Journal of British Studies 56:5 (2017), 773–96; Eamon Darcy, ‘The confederate
Catholics of Ireland and popular politics’, in Patrick Little (ed.), Ireland in crisis: war,
politics and religion 1641–1650 (Manchester, 2019), 172–92.
7Eamon Darcy
politics, yet he was sympathetic to the plight of Irish Catholics in the 1640s.
In his own words, he admitted that he wished to challenge prevailing nar-
ratives about the Irish past because he deemed them a great ‘slur’ against
the Irish ‘nation’.36 This desire to protect Ireland’s reputation explains why
O’Sullevane (presumably, to his publisher’s delight) spoke to multiple schol-
arly controversies.
The battle of O’Sullevane was prompted to turn his attention to the ancient Irish past (in
the books: order ‘to vindicate the real antiquities of [Ireland]’), which was then a subject
O’Sullevane, of growing interest across Britain and Ireland, by the anticipated publication
O’Connor and of Dermot O’Connor’s English translation of Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éir-
Keating inn.37 Rather than simply denounce Keating’s account, and inspired by the
‘battle of the books’, O’Sullevane engaged in a primitive philological study
of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn and the ‘Celtic’ past. Edward Lhwyd, the pioneer
of Celtic studies, influenced O’Sullevane’s analysis. As Lhwyd said: ‘Old and
Ancient languages are the keys that open the way to the knowledge of antiq-
uity’ (in Lhwyd’s learner’s Irish: ‘atáid an tseinbhearladha eochracha eolaidh
Arsaidheachd’).38 The purpose of this section is to show how O’Sullevane
countered prevailing narratives that the Irish past was barbaric and pagan.
To do so he argued firstly that Ireland was originally settled by Celtic peoples
who came from the East, not Celto-Scythians; and secondly, that Keating’s
Foras Feasa ar Éirinn was a suspect historical source because it repeated oral
traditions.
Scholars across Britain and Ireland contributed to this expanding
field of study. Anthony Raymond, a Church of Ireland clergyman and friend
of Jonathan Swift, employed Dermot O’Connor, a scribe from Limerick, to
assist him with his project of translating Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn into
English. Rather than honour his undertaking to Raymond, O’Connor pub-
lished a translation of Keating’s history in London in 1723. Raymond ac-
cused O’Connor of stealing his work as a significant rift emerged between the
two.39 Alan Harrison agreed with O’Connor’s summation that the cause of
this dispute was ‘professional jealousy’. O’Sullevane and Raymond intended
36
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, xxiv; Clare O’Halloran, Golden ages and barbarous nations:
antiquarian debates and cultural politics in Ireland, c. 1750–1800 (Cork, 2004), 7.
37
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxviii; Ian B. Stewart, ‘The mother tongue: historical study
of the Celts and their language(s) in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland’, Past and
Present 243 (2019), 71–107.
38
Edward Lhwyd, Archaeologia Britannica (Oxford, 1707), 310; Dewi W. Evans and
Brynley F. Roberts (eds), Edward Lhwyd Archaeologia Britannica: text and translations
(Aberystwyth, 2009), 174–5; O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxii, clxiii.
39
Harrison, Ag cruinniú meala, 84–113; Harrison, The Dean’s friend, 105–48; Diarmaid
Ó Catháin, ‘Dermot O’Connor, translator of Keating’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris
an dá chultúr vol. 2 (1987), 67–87; O’Halloran, Golden Ages, 73–96.
8Thomas O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
to publish their own histories of Ireland but O’Connor produced his first.40
Both O’Connor and O’Sullevane traded insults publicly and cast aspersions
on the other’s ability to read Irish manuscripts.41 O’Sullevane’s close friend,
Wanley, recalled somewhat sardonically that O’Connor ‘sett’s up for an Irish
Antiquary…[and] seem[s] to have assurance enough.’42 This claim, O’Sullev-
ane argued, was unsustainable as ‘there was none of that sort remaining in
the countrey’. Sceptics began to believe that O’Connor was a fraud.43 While
neither liked the other it is important to recognise that this was not just a
personal difference. O’Sullevane advocated for the use of more sophisticated
methodologies inspired by philology to unlock the secrets of the past than
those adopted by O’Connor.
Like Wanley, O’Sullevane was interested in the development of writ-
ing across what we now understand to be Indo-European languages.44 To
contemporaries interested in philology, simply translating a manuscript like
Keating’s was not in itself historical investigation. One had to contextualise
manuscripts and to consider the evolution of language over time. This con-
cern can be seen in O’Sullevane’s critique of William Camden’s etymology
of ‘Éire’.45 Camden claimed that Ireland’s language came from the ancient
Britons, in keeping with wider beliefs in English cultural supremacy. To chal-
lenge this, O’Sullevane argued that Irish culture originated with the ancient
Phoenicians because Irish society had more in common with Arabic, Egyp-
tian and Asian cultures than European or Brittonic.46 Both ancient Irish and
Phoenician societies cultivated hereditary learned families which specialised
in medicine, history and poetry. Such practices were not ‘entertained any-
where else in Europe’.47 This was a deliberate attempt to show that the first
settlers in Ireland had little connection to the Greco-Roman world and were
40
Quotation from Harrison, The Dean’s friend, 108, see also 130.
41
Dermot O’Connor, The general history of Ireland (London, 1723); Henry R. Plomer,
‘Dermo’d O’Connor and Keating’s “History”’, Irish Book Lover 3:8 (1912), 125–7.
42
C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright (eds), The diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715–1726
(2 vols, London, 1966), vol. 1, 149.
43
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxviii; Cunningham, Geoffrey Keating, 223–4; Harrison,
The Dean’s friend, 105–48; Ó Catháin, ‘Dermot O’Connor’, 79–85
44
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, iii–v; Humfrey Wanley to [Thomas Smith], 20 June 1697 in
P.L. Heyworth (ed.), Letters of Humfrey Wanley: palaeographer, Anglo-Saxonist, librar-
ian 1672–1726 (Oxford, 1989), letter 34, 61–3; Levine, Battle of books, 356–9.
45
Levine, Battle of the books, 41–5, 148–80; William Camden, Britannia siue
Florentissimorum regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et insularum adiacentium ex intima
antiquitate chorographica descriptio, authore Guilielmo Camdeno (London, 1586), 489–93.
46
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxxiii–cxxxiv; Anthony Raymond was working on a sim-
ilar theory although there is no evidence they spoke about this: Harrison, The Dean’s
friend, 86–7.
47
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, clii, clv–clvii, clvi. Here, O’Sullevane cited Diodorus
Siculus, The historical library of Diodorus the Sicilian in fifteen books (London, 1700),
book 2, chapter 3, 69–70 (incorrectly cited by O’Sullevane as book 3, chapter 8).
9Eamon Darcy
more likely to be of Celtic or Phoenician origin, as opposed to Scythian, an
echo of Roderick O’Flaherty’s arguments.48
O’Sullevane suggested that languages evolved symbiotically when an-
cient cultures and peoples engaged with one another.49 Previously, scholars
had noted that similar words such as ‘Jerin’, ‘Eire’, ‘Jerna’, ‘Hiere’, ‘Iere’
and ‘Ieroi’ denoted either a Western place or Western people who lived in
Ireland, in regions of Spain, or on the mythical island of Cerne off the coast
of Africa, and speculated that these names pointed to the existence of a
hegemonic culture. O’Sullevane believed instead that Phoenician traders
connected these places and peoples.50 Locals and merchants all spoke differ-
ent languages that had a common Phoenician root, he claimed, and could
therefore understand one another and agree upon similar place names.51 In
a significant departure from O’Flaherty, O’Sullevane’s work echoes that of
Samuel Bochart and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who argued that Irish was
the oldest of the Celtic languages.52 O’Sullevane’s belief that Irish had Phoe-
nician roots predates the oft-ridiculed theories of Charles Vallancey by some
fifty years, although his work has been overlooked by those interested in
Irish Orientalism.53 While a primitive form of philological analysis, O’Sul-
levane’s ‘Dissertation’ nonetheless contributed to the ongoing debates on
British and Irish antiquities and challenged claims that Irish people were
descended from Scythians.
In contrast to O’Sullevane’s and Camden’s approach, Keating explained
the etymology of ‘Éire’ by referring to a well-known Irish tale. Because Keating
integrated Irish folklore into his history, O’Sullevane questioned the historical
validity of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. Today, it is recognised that Keating hoped
his history would forge a shared identity between Old English and native Irish
Catholics in early-seventeenth-century Ireland and that he showed a nuanced
48
Roderick O’Flaherty, Ogygia (London, 1685); James Hely (tr.), Ogygia (2 vols, Dublin,
1793); Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A literary and intellectual history (New York,
2004), 78–80.
49
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxxv.
50
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxx–cxlv.
51
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxxviii.
52
Stewart, ‘The mother tongue’, 86, 89; Erich Poppe, ‘Leibniz and the Irish language’,
Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr vol. 1 (1986), 65–84.
53
Joep Leerssen, ‘On the edge of Europe: Ireland in search of Oriental roots’,
Comparative Criticism vol. 8 (1986), 91–112; Joseph Lennon, ‘Antiquarianism and
abduction: Charles Vallancey as harbinger of Indo-European linguistics’, The European
Legacy 10:1 (2005), 5–20; Lennon, Irish Orientalism; Monica Nevin, ‘General Charles
Vallancey 1725–1812’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 123
(1993), 19–58. Clare O’Halloran, ‘An English Orientalist in Ireland: Charles Vallancey
(1726–1812)’, in Joep Leerssen, Adriaan van der Weel and Bart Westerweel (eds), Forging
in the smithy: National identity and representation in Anglo-Irish Literary History (The
Hague, 1995), 161–174; O’Halloran, Golden Ages, 42–50.
10Thomas O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
awareness of the historical record.54 O’Sullevane refused to acknowledge this,
fearful of the potential impact of O’Connor’s English translation of Foras Feasa
ar Éirinn on contemporary perceptions of the Irish past and, consequently, of
Irish people in the present. Thus, O’Sullevane criticised Keating for repeating
the tradition that Ireland became known as ‘Eire’ in honour of the ancient Irish
queen Ériu.55 This story, O’Sullevane argued, was of druidic origin, and there-
fore should be disregarded:
For the druids (like ancient philosophers, who to cover their Ignorance,
or Laziness, set up hidden Qualities, as the only Reasons to be given of
natural Effects, which they could not account for,) meeting with hard
Names of Countries, Rivers, Mountains, and they invented Heroes, or
great Actors, as of remote Antiquity, in affinity of Sound with the same,
pretending they were the true Authors thereof.56
Like O’Flaherty, O’Sullevane was suspicious of the fables disseminated
by druids.57
O’Sullevane’s criticism of Keating’s credulous acceptance of druidic
lore had a deeper significance. Since the sixteenth century, interest had grown
in the ancient druids across Britain, Europe and Ireland.58 Irish manuscripts
were particularly important because they offered vital details that classical texts
lacked.59 Some eighteenth-century writers were uncomfortable discussing the
magical abilities of pagan druids as recounted in manuscripts like Foras Feasa
ar Éirinn but the controversial polemicist John Toland had no such concerns.
He readily integrated Irish sources into broader British and European accounts
and gave equal value to each reference to druids in a manner that moderns like
O’Sullevane deemed careless.60 Toland’s history of the druidic order, which did
not a ppear in print until 1726 but was circulating in manuscript in the early
1720s, was a thinly veiled attack on Catholic (and, to a lesser extent, Anglican)
priesthood. Druids who engaged in corrupt practices to delude the people were
54
Cunningham, Geoffrey Keating.
55
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxlviii; Cunningham, Geoffrey Keating, 132; David Comyn
and Patrick S. Dineen (eds), The history of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating (4 vols, London,
1902–14), vol. 2, 82–5.
56
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxlix.
57
O’Flaherty, Ogygia, 4–5; Hely (tr.), Ogygia, vol. 1, 6–7.
58
T.D. Kendrick, The druids (London, 1996), 18–22; Stuart Piggott, The druids (London,
1994), 124–27; Katharine Simms, ‘Literacy and the Irish bards’, in Huw Pryce (ed.),
Literacy in Medieval Celtic societies (Cambridge, 1998), 238–58, 242; Katharine Simms,
Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages: history, culture and society (Dublin, 2020), 335–76, 360.
59
O’Halloran, Golden Ages, 74; A.L. Owen, The famous druids (Oxford, 1962), 114–15.
60
J.A.I. Champion, ‘John Toland, the druids, and the politics of Celtic scholarship’, Irish
Historical Studies 32:127 (2001), 321–42, 330–3; Piggott, The druids, 32–3.
11Eamon Darcy
equated with contemporary Catholic priests.61 O’Sullevane warned that Toland
played a key role in O’Connor’s translation of Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn
because of his interest in its comparatively rich detail on the druidic world.62 By
this stage, Toland was disgraced and dying.63 Perhaps O’Sullevane sought to cast
further aspersions on O’Connor by drawing attention to his connections with a
political pariah.
By questioning Keating’s methodology, O’Sullevane sought to highlight
the unreliability of his work as a historical source. He claimed that Keating
failed to analyse stories fabricated by ‘the fabulous druids’, overlooking the fact
that Keating admitted that some stories were ‘béaloideas na sean’ (oral tradi-
tions of the ancients).64 Furthermore, as Bernadette Cunningham has noted,
throughout the work Keating preferred to cite manuscript authorities.65 Despite
this, O’Sullevane condemned Keating’s narrative as one ‘blended and interwoven
with fables’.66 These ‘fables’ that druids had invented, O’Sullevane argued, were
considered ‘genuin and good history’ by O’Connor and Toland.67 To scholars
inspired by Lhwyd, such stories were a feature of ‘céadsdairidhe gach én chineal
sa domhan’ (the first histories of every nation of the world) and needed to be
treated cautiously.68
O’Sullevane’s discussion of the settlement of people in Ireland during
the ancient past provided him with grounds to critique Keating’s Foras Feasa
ar Éirinn. His primary concern was that other scholars would use O’Connor’s
translation without considering Keating’s motivations, the context in which
the text was produced, and his scholarly approach. As O’Sullevane perceived
it, Keating’s acceptance of druidic lore circulating in the seventeenth century
undermined the value of his work. As O’Sullevane wished to defend the Irish
‘nation’, he wanted to steer future investigations into the Irish past. It was with
this purpose in mind that he turned to the Irish manuscript tradition and the
learned families that sustained it.
The Senchas Már O’Sullevane sought to demonstrate his knowledge of Irish manuscripts to
and medieval give credibility to his approach. To this end, he briefly highlighted the use
memory cultures of annals as historical evidence before turning his attention to Irish legal
in Ireland and poetic manuscripts. He dismissed the commonly held belief that Irish
61
O’Halloran, Golden Ages, 77.
62
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxiv.
63
Michael Brown, ‘Toland, John’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, available at: https://
www.dib.ie/biography/toland-john-a8584 (accessed 7 January 2020).
64
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxlviii.
65
Cunningham, Geoffrey Keating, 116–7.
66
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxx.
67
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxix; O’Halloran, Golden Ages, 75–7.
68
Lhwyd, Archaeologica Britannica, 311.
12Thomas O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
bardic families were descended from the druidic classes as a ‘pretended trans-
mutation’.69 To establish this, he argued, scholars had to look at the visible
remnants of the bardic world that survived in the 1720s, or as he put it, ‘the
footsteps of that custom, therein formerly established, still remaining’.70 As
will be demonstrated in this section, O’Sullevane used the evidence from these
‘footsteps’ to show that bardic and Brehon families engaged in well-known
medieval European memory culture practices. This highlighted the extent of
their learning, literacy and, by extension, their civility, and the validity of the
historical sources they produced. He deemed their poems necessary to future
investigations of the Irish past.
From the beginning of the eighteenth century, Irish manuscripts attracted
the attention of collectors in England. In 1703, Humfrey Wanley attempted to
purchase some of Sir James Ware’s Irish manuscripts to augment the Bodleian
library’s growing collection.71 In Ireland, a scribal circle existed in Dublin centred
around Seán Ó Neachtain and his son, Tadhg. These scholars transcribed and
translated older manuscripts for those interested in the Irish past, like Anthony
Raymond.72 Wanley was an important part of this network of scholars interested
in the Irish antiquities and manuscripts. Many visited Harley’s library and met
with Wanley who was by this stage a close acquaintance of O’Sullevane. Thus,
O’Sullevane’s brief discussion of key Irish manuscripts sought to offer a scholarly
scaffold to help others interrogate these sources in a more sophisticated way.
A small number of key manuscripts that O’Sullevane read directly, or
encountered through the work of others, shaped his argument. Bede, William
Camden, Roderick O’Flaherty, James Ussher and James Ware provided the
broader historical framework that was selectively manipulated by O’Sullevane
to portray Irish society and its literary tradition as civilised and proto-Chris-
tian even in pagan times. He suggested that readers should look at James Uss-
her’s use of the Annals of Ulster as a good example of what could be achieved
when scholars consulted proper historical evidence concerning Ireland.73 Some
of the more valuable historical sources, in O’Sullevane’s opinion, were bardic
poems, claiming that ‘there was nothing laid in them but matter of fact’.74 To
illustrate this point he cited two examples. First, Roderick O’Flaherty’s use of
the Duan Albanach a late-eleventh- to mid-twelfth-century poem of 27 verses
that discusses the kingship of Scotland from Albanus to the reign of Malcom
69
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxii.
70
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, clxxiii.
71
Heyworth, Letters of Humfrey Wanley, letter 93, 201–3, 202; Lhwyd, Archaeologica
Britannica, 435–6.
72
Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Language, literature, and print in Irish, 1630–1730’, in
Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), The Cambridge history of Ireland (four vols, Cambridge, 2018),
vol. 2, 434–57; Harrison, The Dean’s friend, 67–104; T.F. O’Rahilly, ‘Irish scholars in
Dublin in the early eighteenth century’, Gadelica vol. 1 (1912–13), 156–62, 302–3.
73
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, cxxiii.
74
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, clxxiii.
13Eamon Darcy
III (1058–93).75 O’Sullevane reminded his readers that both O’Flaherty and Ed-
ward Stillingfleet, a well-known theologian, accepted its historical value.76 The
second example is Caithreim Cellachain Caisil, a twelfth-century tract (though
O’Sullevane called it a poem) which describes the victorious military exploits
of Cellachán Caisil, a tenth-century king of Munster (d. 954).77 Although its
validity as a source on Cellachán Caisil has recently been questioned, O’Sul-
levane argued it was of historical value because other (unidentified) manu-
scripts he had read offered similar details.78 Thus, O’Sullevane attempted to
guide future explorations of the Irish past through an analysis of surviving
manuscripts, and to establish a canon of reliable texts with advice on how to
interpret them.
Mindful of criticisms of the historical value of Irish manuscripts, O’Sul-
levane sought to provide a framework for scholars to understand the practices
of Irish learned families, particularly Brehon lawyers and the filí. In recent times,
Celtic scholars have addressed Bergin’s conclusion that bardic poets still followed
druidic practices rooted in the oral tradition. In 1980, Brian Ó Cuív argued that
the bardic poet’s training (c.1100–c.1300) was ‘largely oral’, a point reiterated
by Proinsias Mac Cana.79 Pádraig Ó Macháin and Katharine Simms have pro-
posed that bardic poets operated in a literate world in the late-medieval and
early-modern periods but that some oral techniques, such as memorisation, were
75
Kenneth Jackson, ‘The poem A Eocha Alban Uile’, Celtica 3 (1956), 149–67; Kenneth
Jackson, ‘The Duan Albanach’, The Scottish Historical Review 36:122 (1957), 125–37.
76
O’Flaherty, Ogygia, 463–700; Hely, Ogygia, vol. 2, 225–92; O’Sullevane,
‘Dissertation’, clxxv–clxxvi; Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Britannicae (London,
1685), iv–vi.
77
Francis J. Byrne, Irish kings and high kings (Dublin, 2001), 278; Ailbhe Mac Shamhráin,
‘Cellachán Caisil’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, available at: https://www.dib.ie/
biography/cellachan-caisil-a1588 (accessed 10 January 2020). In the 1720s, there were
several copies at varying stages of completion. Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Clavis Litterarum
Hibernensium (3 vols, Turnhot, 2017), vol. 3, 1631–3. I am extremely grateful to Nollaig
Ó Muraíle for a discussion of this point.
78
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, clxxiv–clxxv; Robin Flower, Catalogue of the Irish man-
uscripts in the British Library (2 vols, London 1926), vol. 2, 402–3, 402; Donnchadh Ó
Corráin, ‘Caithréim Chellacháin Chaisil: History or Propaganda?’, Ériu 25 (1974), 1–69,
69.
79
Proinsias Mac Cana, ‘Praise poetry in Ireland before the Normans’, Ériu 54 (2004),
11–40; Brian Ó Cuív, ‘A medieval exercise in language planning: classical early modern
Irish’, in Konrad Koerner (ed.), From progress in linguistic historiography: papers from
the international conference on the history of the language sciences, Ottawa, 28–31 August
1978 (Amsterdam, 1980), 23–34, 27. For an opposing view see: Liam Breatnach, ‘Satire,
praise and the early Irish poet’, Ériu 56 (2006), 63–84; Pádraig Ó Macháin, ‘Aspects of
Irish bardic poetry in the thirteenth century’, in Caoimhín Breatnach and Meidhbhín Ní
Úrdail (eds), Aon don Éigse: Essays marking Osborn Bergin’s centenary lecture in bardic
poetry (1912) (Dublin, 2015), 91–127.
14Thomas O’Sullevane’s portrayal of the Irish bardic tradition
still used.80 In contrast, Damian McManus rejects this ‘oral tradition theory’.
Poets had to adhere to strict metres, he argues, while referring to well-known
tracts and poems. This required regular access to texts; thus, this was a highly
literate world.81
O’Sullevane would agree with all of these points—members of the
learned families were highly literate, but they also memorised vast quantities
of information. Bardic poems were, in his words, ‘a work of study and time’
and rarely composed extempore.82 As will be shown, O’Sullevane’s portrayal of
bardic training bears a striking resemblance to Mary Carruthers’s description
of monastic study, medieval creative practices, and the production of what she
termed ‘memorative compositions’.83 Composition was, after all, ‘a memorial
activity’ in pre-modern times when becoming ‘literate’ meant that one devel-
oped the ability to process, store and retrieve information which one had read
or listened to at appropriate times.84 Whereas today memory training is largely
seen as a process of learning by rote to regurgitate information, in classical
and medieval times the art of memory ‘was specifically an aid for speakers,
not for learners, for composers, not for readers’, in short, a part of rhetoric.85
O’Sullevane’s discussion of Irish manuscripts suggests that he too viewed the
products of Irish Brehons and bardic poets as medieval memorative composi-
tions, as described by Carruthers, and not based on techniques developed by
the druidic order.
O’Sullevane’s ‘Dissertation’ next turned to Brehon lawyers. Unlike
oral traditions that can become embellished over time, O’Sullevane argued
that Irish legal codes were recorded by memory and by writing in a way
that was ‘unalterably fix’d’.86 Rather than view the oral repetition of Irish
laws as fluid ‘when words or syllables might be easily ras’d away and others
foisted in’, he argued that the rules of Irish poetic performance meant that
the legal code ‘resembled a structure of certain dimensions, built of polish’d
square stones, well put together, and cemented, to which no Addition could
be made, but what would immediately be perceived’. Thus: ‘the composition
being in Metre, it much help’d the memory.’87 Is this a reference to memory
80
Pádraig Ó Macháin, ‘The early modern Irish prosodic tracts and the editing of “bardic
verse”’, in Hildegard L.C. Tristam (ed.), Metrik und Medienwechsel: Metrics and Media
(Tübingen, 1991), 273–88; Simms, ‘Literacy and the Irish bards’, 238–58.
81
Damian McManus, ‘The bardic poet as teacher, student and critic: a context for the
Grammatical Tracts’, in Cathal G. Ó Háinle and Donald E. Meek (eds), Unity in diver-
sity: Studies in Irish and Scottish Gaelic language, literature and history (Dublin, 2004),
97–124.
82
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, clxx.
83
Carruthers, Book of memory, 240.
84
Carruthers, Book of memory, 11–2, 219.
85
Carruthers, Book of memory, 194.
86
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, clxxvi.
87
O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’, clxxvi–clxxvi.
15Eamon Darcy
palaces? These were a form of memory retrieval system in which people used
visualisations of familiar buildings in order to store and retrieve informa-
tion they had read or heard. It was a mnemonic technique developed and
regularly used in ancient Greece and Rome that was later refined in medieval
Europe.88 O’Sullevane claimed that Irish Brehons used ancient memorisation
techniques to record, store and retrieve laws and judgements until the advent
of writing.89 This all underlined, O’Sullevane argued, the extent to which
ancient Irish society was civilised.
The manuscripts that most influenced O’Sullevane’s argument were
British Library, (BL) Harley MS 432, a sixteenth-century copy of what is now
known as the pseudo-historical prologue to the Senchas Már (hereafter: PHP),
and a portion of Cethairshlicht Athgabálae, a treatise on Irish laws concerning
distress.90 O’Sullevane had more than a passing interest in law, boasting of his
degrees from ‘foreign universities…in the civil Law’.91 After his studies on the
Continent, on 17 April 1711, he enrolled in Middle Temple (‘Thomas Sulvan,
second son of William S., of Kiltank[in?], County Tipperary, Ireland, gent.’).
By the 1720s, many Irish Catholic lawyers in London practised as ‘chamber
counsels’, but it is not known if O’Sullevane was one of them or, indeed, if
he was a practising Catholic.92 The fact that on 1 March 1720, Wanley in-
vited O’Sullevane to examine Harley MS 432 in order to compile an entry for
Wanley’s catalogue of Harley’s library indicates that O’Sullevane had been
88
In this regard see Carruthers, Book of memory; Frances Yates, The art of memory
(Chicago, 1966). See also: Fergus Kelly, The MacEgan Legal Treatise (Dublin, 2020),
39–41; Robin Stacey, ‘Learning law in medieval Ireland’, in Fiona Edwards and Paul
Russell (eds), Tome: Studies in Medieval Celtic history and law in honour of Thomas
Charles-Edwards (Woodbridge, 2011), 135–44.
89
This argument was a rebuttal of O’Flaherty, Ogygia, 217; O’Sullevane, ‘Dissertation’,
clxxviii–clxxix, clxxix.
90
D.A. Binchy, Corpus Iuris Hibernici (6 vols, Dublin, 1925), vol. 2, 338–46;
Liam Breatnach, A companion to the corpus Iuris Hibernici (Dublin, 2005), 24;
Standish H. O’Grady, Catalogue of the Irish Manuscripts in the British Library (2 vols,
London, 1926), vol. 1, 146–7; Richard Sharpe, ‘Humfrey Wanley, Bishop John
O’Brien, and the colophons of Mael Brigte’s Gospels’, Celtica 29 (2017), 251–92,
257–8.
91
Ó Catháin, ‘Dermot O’Connor’, 82–3; Plomer, ‘Dermo’d O’Connor’, 126.
92
In 1692, one ‘Sullivan, Thomas’ registered as a student in the legal faculty of the
University of Paris although this may not be the same person: L.W.B. Brockliss and
P. Ferte, ‘A prosopography of Irish clerics in the universities of Paris and Toulouse’,
Archivium Hibernicum 58 (2004), 7–166, 163. I am grateful to Dr John Bergin
for discussing this with me. Register of admissions to the Honourable Society of the
Middle Temple (3 vols, London, 1949), vol. 1, 268; John Bergin, ‘The Irish Catholic
interest at the London inns of court, 1674–1800’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris
an dá chultúr 24 (2009), 36–61; Wright and Wright, Diary of Humfrey Wanley, vol. 2,
209.
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