O'DONOVAN, John (1806-1861): Scholarship (History, Topography): b.

Atateemore, Slieverue, 1806 to poor parents; his father died in 1817

and John, aged 11, went to live with his older brother William, who

leased a 40-acre farm in an adjoining townland. John spoke and studied

Irish and received a basic education at a Waterford school. When

William moved to Dublin in 1822, John, aged 16, started his own

school, where some of his pupils were older than he was. After

considering the priesthood, he decided to move to Dublin to join his

brother, and went to a Latin school there for some years before

securing a position as an assistant in the Office of the Commissioner

of Public Records, which was headed by ?? Hardiman, author of a

History of Galway. Here he worked for three years, transcribing Peter

Connell's Irish Dictionary and also giving classes in Irish in his

free time. In 1830 he fell into bad health, and was offered the

opportunity to convalesce at the home of his friend Myles O'Reilly

near Portlaoise. There he established his scholarly base, translating

the Book of Fenagh, and transcribing extracts from the Annals of the

Four Masters relating to the O'Reillys. One of his students of Irish

then helped him secure a position on the staff of the Irish Dictionary

following the death of its editor Edward O'Reilly, and he worked on

producing a supplement to O'Reilly's work. After a further brief

consideration of the priesthood, he moved to the Ordnance Survey where

he was given the task of reviewing historical and topographical

records. It was to become his life's work, and for the next ten years

he travelled the country, speaking to elderly natives of localities

and transcribing their observations in a series of letters and field

notes. He was joined on the staff of the Ordnance Survey in 1834 by

Eugene O'Curry, a Clareman who was later to become his brother-in-law.

O'Curry was ten years older than O'Donovan and had already worked on

Irish manuscripts in the British Museum. In 1836 they began the first

major assessment of the Irish manuscripts in the collection of Trinity

College and in 1840 founded the Archaelogical Society ??? together.

During this period O'Donovan published The Circuit of Ireland (1841),

The Battle of Magh Rath (1843), The Tribes and Customs of Hy Many

(1843), The Tribes and Customs of Hy Fiachrach (1844) and A Grammar of

the Irish Language (1845). In 1847 O'Donovan was called to the Irish

Bar, and in the same year he produced The Book of Rights followed in

1849 by the Book of Corca Laoidhe. From 1848 he produced his

six-volume edition of The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four

Masters in Irish and English (on facing pages). In 1850 he was

appointed the first Chair of the Department of History and Archaeology

at the new Queen's College in Belfast, and in the following year he

was appointed to the commission for the translation of the Senchus, or

compendium of the ancient laws of Ireland. In 1860 he produced his

last contemporaneous work Three Fragments of Ancient Irish Annals. He

died in 1861 at the age of 56 in his house at Marlborough Street,

Dublin. His The Irish Topographical Poems of Sean O'Dubhagain and

Giolla-na-Naomh O'hUidhrin was published in 1862 and Martyrology of

Donegal in 1864. His letters were edited and published by Fr. Michael

O'Flanagan, Professor of Irish at Maynooth, in fifty volumes between

1924 and 1932. An account of his life was written by Fr. Richard

Aylward, a native of Glenmore and one-time teacher of Irish and later

President at St. Kieran's College, Kilkenny, but has never been

published.