John Banim (1798-1842)

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Bibliographical details
The Denounced. By the Authors of “Tales by the O‘Hara Family”. In Three Volumes. (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1830), I: viii, 309pp.; II: 315pp.; III: 292pp., 12°, boards [31s 6d]. Dedication to ‘His Grace Arthur, Duke of Wellington’ (p.[iii].), with epigraph: ‘bright o’er the flood / of her tears and her blood, / Let the rainbow of hope be her Wellington’s nam.’ - Thomas Moore. [Prefatory ‘To the Reader’, pp.[v]–viii, precedes main text in Vol. 1; contents: ‘The Last Baron of Crana. Tale I’, vols. 1 & 2 (up to p.187), and ‘The Conformists. Tale II’, Vols. 2 (from p.[189]) and 3. Printer’s marks and colophons of Samuel Bentley, Dorset Street, Fleet Street. Further edns. incl. The Denounced; or, the Last Baron of Crana (Dublin 1866) and Do. (NY 1830). [Source: British Novels 1830-36 at CEIR Cardiff online.]

The Mayor of Wind-Gap and Canvassing. By the O’Hara Family. In Three Volumes. (London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street, 1835), Vol. I: 336pp.; Vol. II: 401pp.; Vol. III 316pp., 12°. [boards, 31s. 6d.; first noticed Jan 1835; held in 13 libraries incl. BL. The Mayor of Wind-Gap sometimes attributed to Michael Banim alone; Canvassing attrib. to Harriet Letitia Martin (1801–91) of Ballynahinch, Co. Galway, by Sadleir (Item 147a) and Wolff (Item 230).

CONTENTS: ‘The Mayor of Wind-Gap’, vols. 1 & 2 (up to p.222), and ‘Canvassing’, vols. 2 (from p.[223]) & 3; Printer’s marks and colophons of B. Bensley. Further edns: ‘new edn.’, revised (Dublin & London 1865); The Mayor of Wind-gap [solo] (New York [also Philadelphia] 1835); Canvassing [solo] (Philadelphia 1835). French trans. of ‘Canvassing’ [alone?] attributed to Banim as Le candidat: Moeurs irlandaises (1836). [See English Novels 1830-36: A Bibliography of British Fiction (Cardiff) - online.]

The Bit o’ Writin’ and Other Tales by the O’Hara Family, 3 vols. (London: Saunders & Otley 1838); comprising Vol. 1: “The Bit o’ Writin”; “The Irish Lord Lieutenant and his Double”, and “The Family of the Cold Feet”; Vol 2: “The Hare and the Witch”; “The Soldier”s Billet”; “The Hall and the Castle”; “The Half-brothers”; “Twice Lost but Saved”; “The Faithful Servant”; “The Roman Merchant” [orig. pub. in Dublin Penny Journal, I, 8, 18 Aug 1832, pp.61-63]; “Ill Got, Ill Gone”. Vol 3: “The Last of the Storm”; “The Rival Dreamers”; “The Substitute”; “The White Bristol”; “The Stolen Sheep”; “The Publican’s Dream”; “The Ace of Clubs”. Do [another edn.; reiss. (Dublin: Duffy 1865), with a foreword and notes by Michael Banim, also containing “A Peasant Girl”s Love” [prev.in Dublin Penny Journal, 25 Aug 1832, pp.66-67; here immed. after “The Soldier”s Billet”].

The Boyne Water, by John Banim, ed. by Bernard Escarbelt [CERIUL Anglo-Irish Texts, Gen. Ed. Patrick Rafroidi] (Univ. of Lille 1976), 564pp., with notes, glossary and maps. Escarbelt’s ‘Notes on the Text’ makes no allusion to the American printing of 1869, but reports that the 1865 edn. of The Boyne Water was reprinted by Saddlier [sic err.], New York, in 1881, and translated into French in 1829 by A. J. B. Defauconpret as La Bataille de la Boyne, ou Jacques II en Irlande. Present text from the 1865 ed. in 1 vol, with intro. and notes by Michael, giving an idea of the co-operation of the brothers; orig. ed. 1829 from Simpkin & Marshall (xxxix, 375pp, chaps. 1-XIII; 421pp, chaps. 1-XIV [equiv. of XIV-XXVII in single vol. ed.]; 436pp., chaps. I-XIII. [See bibliography, infra.]

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The Life / of / John Banim, / The Irish Novelist, / author of “Damon and Pythias”, &c. and one of the writers of “Tales by the O’Hara family”. / with / Extracts from his Correspondence, / General and Literary / by Patrick Joseph Murray (London: William Lay, King William Street, Strand / 1857), 3, l., 334pp., ill. [front. port.; printed by R. Clay, Bread Street Hill], 17cm. [expanded from a serial in the Irish Quarterly Review, 1854-6]. Available at Google Books - online.

Other editions, as The Life of John Banim, in the 10th and last vol. of The Works of the O’Hara Family, collected by Michael Banim (NY: D. & J. Sadlier 1869), 355 [1]; [2], 90pp., ill. [1 pl., port.) [18.5cm; incls. The Celt’s Paradise, with sep. t.p. and pag. though first leaves are printed in same gathering as last leaves of the Biography - the Biography ded. to Richard Armstrong; the The Celt’s Paradise ded. to Valentine B. Lawless, 2nd. Baron Cloncurry]; and Do. [facs. rep.], introduced by Robert Lee Wolff, as The Life of John Banim (New York: Garland 1978), lii, 334pp.

Bernard Escarbelt, ed., The Boyne Water by John Banim (1976) provides a bibliography (pp.26-29), listing William Carleton, ‘John Banim’, The Nation (23 Sept. 1843), pp.794-95; M[ichael] Banim’s preface to Town of the Cascades; P. J. Murray, The Life of John Banim, the Irish Novelist ... with extracts from his correspondence, general and literary (London: William Lay 1857); M. A. Steger, John Banim: Ein Nachahmer Walter Scotts (Erlangen: Karl Dores 1935); M. R. Mitford, Recollections of a Literary Life, or Books, Places, and People, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1852), p.33ff. [see Notes]. M[aurice] Goldring, Le Drame en l’Irlande (Paris: Bordas 1972); Patrick Rafroidi, bibliography of Banim’s plays, in L’Irlande et le Romantisme (1972); Hugh Maxton [i.e., W. J. McCormack], ‘Tales of Two Extremes’, in Hibernia (21 Sept. 1973), [n.p.]. Also Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists (1958). For history see MacKenzie, Siege of Londonderry, 1690 [q.d.]; C. D. Milligan, History of the Siege of Londonderry (Derry: Carter 1951), and and J. G. Simms, Jacobite Ireland (Routledge 1969).

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Commentary
See separate file, infra.

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Quotations
See separate file, infra.

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References

Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: CUA 1904), Vol. 1, calls Banim ‘a bright-hearted, true-souled Irishman’ [this phrase also quoted by Patrick Murray, in Life of John Banim, facs. rep. of 10th vol. of Sadlier 1869 edn. of Works, New York: Garland 1978, p.9]; b. 3 April 1798; son of farmer and trader who gave his sons a good education; wrote precocious poetry and prose at ten; entered Kilkenny College at 13; developed talent as sketcher and painter; chose between art and [?]law; trained RDS, Dublin, in 1814; returned after two years; drawing teacher; contrib. poems and sketches to local periodicals; death of a young lady to whom he was engaged permanently affected his mind and health, passed some years in aimless and hopeless manner akin to despair; moved to Dublin in 1820, relinquishing art for literature; numerous contributions to periodicals from this time, mostly hurried; sketches on theatrical topics, pseudonym ‘A Traveller’ appeared in Limerick journal, considered v. clever; published The Celt’s Paradise in 1821; gained friendship of Sheil; tragedy Turgesius offered to Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and rejected; composed Damon and Pythias, produced at Covent Garden through recommendation of Sheil, and well received; [engraved portrait of Banim facing p.44, Vol. I]; revisited Kilkenny in the summer of 1822 [sic]; planned O’Hara tales; m. Ellen Ruth [sic], prior to his return [sic] to London for several years; commenced first of his O’Hara Tales in April 1823; John Doe and The Fetches [order sic], his sole works in the first series; The Boyne Water [n.d.]; 2nd ser. Tales by the O’Hara Family (1826) includes The Nowlans, severely criticised; The Anglo-Irish (1828); the concluding series of the Tales appeared in 1829, commencing with The Disowned [recte The Denounced], by John, and ending with Father Connell by Michael (1842) [note that this denomination of a third series is irregular, since there was no such corporate issue]; declining health; wrote pieces for the English opera-house [see Balfe]; returned home in 1835; d. 13 Aug. [1842; ?err. 1844]; provision made for his widow, a daughter dying a few years after her father. The authorship of the Tales series is here ascribed as follows, John Doe, Fetches, Smuggler, Peter of the Castle, The Nowlans, Last Baron of Crana, and Disowned [recte The Denounced], all by John. A lengthy quotation from Chamber’s Cyclopaedia of English Literature follows invoking comparisons with Crabbe, Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, and using epithets such as ‘passion’, ‘crime’, ‘turbulence and misery’, ‘overmastering energy’, ‘sustained and harrowing interest’, ‘murders’, ‘abductions’, ‘pursuits’, ‘escapes’, ‘spirit’, ‘raciness’, ‘truth of costume and colouring’. D. J. O’Donoghue, author of Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 1912), is quoted as saying, ‘Where his songs are at all tolerable, they are full of fire and feeling’, with further reference to his disregard of ‘metrical laws’ as the ‘chief defect’.

Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: CUA 1904) - selects: “An Adventure in Slievenamon” from John Doe [Lieutenant Howard’s discovery of illicit whisky distilling presided over by Jack Mullins; in the course of it Mullins shows classical learning (viz., ‘.. remembering my poor old Horace’s aversion to garlic’), and quotes ‘Parentis olim si quis impia manu, / Senile guttur [sic] fregerit–’, but soon reverts to the colloquial in ‘Thonamon duoul’]. Also the poems “Soggarth Aroon” [‘Loyal and brave to you, / Soggarth Aroon / Yet be not slave to you / Soggarth Aroon / Nor, out of fear to you, / Stand up so near to you- / Och, out of hear to you / Soggarth Aroon! // ... Knelt by me, sick and poor ... on the marriage day ... friend only ... And for this I was true to you / Soggarth Aroon / In love they’ll never shake, / When for Old Ireland’s sake / We a true part did take, / Soggarth Aroon!’]; “Aileen” [‘And I go to brave a world I hate, / And woo it o’er and o’er, / And tempt a wave and try a fate, / Upon a stranger shore, / Aileen; / Upon a stranger shore. // Oh, when the bays are all my own, / I know a heart will care, / Oh, when the gold is wooed and won, / I know a brow shall wear .. /; and ‘He Said that he was not Our Brother’, styled a ‘ferocious attack provoked by some utterance of Wellington about Ireland’ [JMC], and continuing: ‘The mongrel! he said what we knew. / No, Eire! our dear mother-island, / He ne’er had his black blood from you!’ Stanza 2 of the same ‘tarnishes’ various English kings and conquerors in Ireland; Stanza 3 explains the conquest, ‘No! falsehood and feud were our evils, / While force not a fetter could twine’ and ends with the asservation, ‘[...] And no traitor among us or nigh us- / Let him come, the Brigand! let him come!’

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Dictionary of National Biography [UK] remarks that the O’Hara tales (1st series 1825), to some extent succeeded in doing for the Irish what the Waverley novels [of Walter Scott] had done for the Scottish people. Note: the entry is by Charles Read.

Catholic Encyclopaedia [New Advent]: Poet, dramatist, novelist, b. 3 April, 1798, at Kilkenny, Ireland; d. 31 August, 1842. His father, following the double occupation of farmer and storekeeper, was in easy circumstances. John’s literary efforts began very early; at ten he wrote some verses and a tale of considerable length. After a preparatory training in private schools he entered Kilkenny College in 1810. Having a taste for painting and drawing he went to Dublin in 1813 to study art. In two years he was back in Kilkenny, became a drawing teacher, and fell desperately in love with one of his pupils, a girl two years his junior. The girl’s father refused his consent, wit the result that in two months she died of a broken heart. Her lover almost followed her example. An entire disregard of self at the time of the funeral caused paralysis and left him a victim of spinal disease, which afflicted him almost incessantly and finally caused his death. At the end of a year he set out for Dublin with a literary career in view. It was not long before he made his reputation. In 1821, when only twenty-three years old, he wrote the tragedy Damon and Pythias, which was played at Covent Garden with Macready and Charles Kemble in the principal parts. After his marriage, which took place during a visit to his parents, he planned with his brother Michael, The Tales of the O’Hara Family. These were to be written in collaboration, each brother to submit his work to the other for revision. As a result, it is impossible to distinguish from internal evidence the work of each. Their ambition was to do for Ireland what Scott, by his Waverley Novels, had done for Scotland - to make their countrymen known with their national traits and national customs and to give a true picture of the Irish character with its bright lights and deep shadows. To London, a wider field for literary work, Banim went in 1822 “without friends and with little money to seek his fortune”. The next ten years were a fruitful season, during which he contributed frequently to various periodicals, and produced a considerable number of operative pieces, dramas, essays, and novels, but always at the expense of “wringing, agonizing, burning pain”. Writing of this period to his brother, he says: “Of more than twenty known volumes I have written, and treble their quantity in periodicals, no three pages have been penned free from bodily pain.” The little crumbs of comfort he received he generously shared with his countryman, Gerald Griffin, who wrote of his early struggles in London: “What would I have done if I had not found Banim?” In 1829 John Banim was ordered to France in the hope that he might repair his shattered health, but the journey was of no avail. In a few years a stroke of paralysis “deprived him of the use of his limbs and brains”. In 1835 he returned to Kilkenny by slow stages. Dublin and his native city showed him signal honour by demonstrations that moved him deeply. A public appeal for assistance met with such generous response that his financial troubles were ended. The Government, in recognition of his literary work, granted him a pension of £150, and an additional sum of £40 a year for the education of his daughter. His last work was the revision of a story which he had inspired and encouraged his brother to write, Father Connell, the picture of his beloved parish priest of Kilkenny. He died in his own Windgap Cottage, just outside Kilkenny, at the early age of forty-four. His principal works are: the poems, “Soggarth Aroon”, “Aileen”, “The Celt’s Paradise”; the dramas, Damon and Pythias and The Prodigal; and the novels, John Doe, The Fetches, Peter of the Castle, The Mayor of Windgap, and The Boyne Water, the last a political novel. (Online; accessed 98.04.2010.) Note similar entries on Michael Banim and Gerald Griffin.

Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), lists Banim brothers, viz, “The O’Hara Family”, John Doe, or The Peep o’ Day (1825; rep. Simms & M’Intyre 1853, then Routledge [n.d.]), young man joins Shanvests for revenge, terrible to landlord, proctor, and priest; The Fetches (Duffy [1825]), the influence of superstition - the spirit of a person about to die - on two susceptible minds; The Nowlans ([1826] 1853), 256pp., temptation and fall of a young priest; Peter of the Castle (Duffy [1826]), 191pp.; The Boyne Water (Duffy [1826] & eds.), 564pp., chars. incl. Sarsfield, George Walker, Galloping Hogan, the Rapparee, Carolan the Bard and others; The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Century 3 vols (Colburn [1828]; rep. in 1 vol. as Lord Clangore (Duffy 1865), opening in London with Lord Castlereagh and J. W. Croker; the son of a peer, Gerald Blount, flees after a duel with all his anti-Irish prejudices, exciting adventures with Rockites; double identity; Catholic association meeting with O’Connell and Sheil debating, Scott’s son appears at dinner party [see Notes, infra.]; The Conformists (Duffy [1829]), a Catholic under George II determines to conform and oust his father; The Denounced, or the Last Baron of Crana (Duffy [1826; err.], Colburn 1830; New York: Benziger [n.d.]), 235pp; The Changeling, 3 vols (London 1848), anon., 315, 350, 414pp. [Galway and Connemara, including Aran; mystery surrounding heir of Ballymagawley got out of the way by present owner, Mr. Whaley, returns in disguise to claim rights; Whaley hides his secret from his high-minded daughter Clara; the empty-headed Fosters; petit bourgeois, vulgar Mrs. Heffernan of Galway, matching-making Mrs. Flanagan, and other chars. such as Considine the butler and Capt. O’Connor, peasants.] See also under ‘Anon’: The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Century, rep. anonymously as Gerald and Augusta, or The Irish Aristocracy (Cameron & Ferguson [n.d.]), in which Gerald, orphan son of Lord Glangore is brought up in London while his sister is raised in Ireland by Mr. Knightly [sic], their characters being respectively anti-Irish and Ireland-loving; wrecked off the Irish coast, Gerald is captured by ‘Captain Rock’; adventures and amusing situations result in his eventually being won over to Ireland’s side. Note that Brown’s attribution of first editions to Duffy Dublin are erroneous.

Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: Kerryman 1946), lists Turgesius, unacted and unprinted [see Dublin University Magazine, No.558, Nov. 1855]; Damon and Pythias (CG 28 May 1821), with help from Sheil, based on Polyaenus Bk. 5, Chp. 25, a success; The Prodigal, never acted; The Death Fetch (Eng. Op. Hs., c.1825); The Last Guerilla (Eng. Op. Hs., c.1826); The Sargeant’s Wife (Eng Op. Hs., 24 July 1827) ?1855; the last three, adpt. from Banim novels. The Sister of Charity (Eng. Op. Hse. 1830), approved; The Conscript’s Sister (Eng. Op. Hse. 1832); The Irish Widow, farce (Th. Royal, Dublin, 21 July 1825), author’s benefit, The Ghost Hunters (Surrey 26 Mar 1833); The Duchess of Ormond (DL 20 Oct. 1836), and Sylla (Th. Royal, Dublin, 18 May 1837).

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol 2, lists poetry, and the fiction: The Fetches (London: Simpkin & Marshall 1825), in Tales, ser. 1; The Boyne Water, 3 vols. (London: Simpkin & Marshall 1826); The Nowlans (Colburn 1826); The Anglo-Irish of the XIXth Century (Colburn 1828), anon.; The Denounced, 3 vols. (Colburn & Bentley 1830), consisting of The Last Baron of Crana, Vol. I, viii+309pp. (comp.), Vol. II, pp.1-189, and The Conformists, Vol II, pp.189-315, Vol. III, 292pp. (comp.); The Smuggler (Colburn & Bentley 1821); also dramatic works, Damon and Pythias (1821); The Sargeant’s Wife, 2 acts ... taken from Tales of [recte by] the O’Hara Family (Lacy eds. 1824), and copies the unprinted titles from Nicoll and Kavanagh, Turgesius; The Prodigal; The Death Fetch (1825); The Last Guerilla (1826); Sylla (1826); The Sister of Charity (1830); The Conscript’s Sister (1832); The Ghost Hunter (1833); The Irish Widow (1835); The Duchess of Ormond (1936). Revelations of the Dead Alive (London: Simpkin & Marshall 1824), 376pp [presented in novelistic framework, subsequently printed as London and Its Eccenticities in the Year 2023, or Revelations of the Dead Alive [1845]; also Life of John Banim, the Irish Novelist ... with extracts from correspondence, Patrick Joseph Murray (London: William Lay 1857 [sic]), 334pp., port.; Ann Steger’s John Banim ein Nachahmer Walter Scotts ... &c (1935), bibliographically devoid of scientific value. Note that Rafroidi misreads the passage in Ethel Mannin’s Two Studies in Integrity dealing with Chaunt of the Cholera and attributes this to Gerald Griffin rather than Banim (see Romantic Period, Vol. 1). Note that Rafroidi misreads the passage in Ethel Mannin’s Two Studies in Integrity dealing with regarding Chaunt of the Cholera, attributing it in error to Griffin rather than Banim.

A. N. Jeffares & Anthony Kamm, eds., An Irish Childhood: An Anthology (Collins 1987), gives extract on Kilkenny Grammar School from The Fetches.

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), remarks that John Banim’s heart was broken by the death of his beloved, and cites only two novels, Clough Fion (1852) and The Town of the Cascades (1864), both overlapping the Victorian period. Further, Father Connell (1842), despite artificial murder plot, has vivid pictures of suffering Irish humanity. ‘The Banims claimed attention as folklorists, Irish nationalists, and pioneer of regional authenticity.’ [q.p.]

James Cahalan, Great Hatred, Little Room: The Irish Historical Novel (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1983), lists The Boyne Water; A Tale by the O’Hara Brothers, 3 vols (London: William Simpkin & R Marshall 1826; New York: D. & J. Sadlier 1866; 3 vols rep. edn. New York: Garland Publishing Co. 1979); The Denounced, 3 vols (1830; New York: Garland 1979) [onsisting of The Last Baron of Crana and The Conformists].

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols. (Derry: Field Day Publications 1991), Vol. 1: selects The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Century (pp.1139-49); biography (pp.1171-72), with notes in conjunction with Michael. See also Vol. 2, bio-notes and remarks at pp.3, 990, 999, & 1022.

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Notes
M. R. Mitford, Recollections of a Literary Life, or Books, Places, and People, 3 vols. (London: Bentley 1852), p.33ff: remarks of ‘John Banim, the founder of the first school of Irish novelists that if it were possible to suspect Messieurs Victor Hugo, Eugène Sue and Alexander Dumas of reading the English, which they never approach without such ludicrous blunders, one might fancy that many-volumed tribe to have stolen their peculiar inspiration from the O’Hara Family. Of a certainty, the tales of Mr. Banim were purely original ... they reflect Irish scenery, Irish character, Irish crime, and Irish virtue, with a general truth which, in spite of their tendency to melo-dramatic effects, will keep them fresh and life-like for many a day ...’ (p.35.)

Thomas Crofton Croker takes some verses from Banim’s Celt’s Paradise as an epigraph to the last section of Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, Pt. II (London: Murray 1828), viz.,

[T. C. Croker] Fairy Legends / Rocks and Stones: “Forms in silence frown’d, / shapeless and nameless; and to mine eye / Sometimes they rolled off cloudily, / Wedding themselves with gloom - or grew / Gigantic to my troubled view, / And seemed to gather round me.” Banim’s Celt’s Paradise. (Croker, op. cit., p.273.)

W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), lists Irish classical plays including J. Banim, Damon and Pythias (1821) [Stanford, 110]. But note also a play, Damon and Pythias, by Richard Edwards (?1565), written in ‘long doggerel’ and turning on the legendary character Grim, the Collier of Croyden. Edwards was Master of the Children of the Queen’s Chapel. (See Saintsbury, Short History, [1898], 1922 edn., p.231.)

Robert Lee Wolff, ed., The Denounced, by the O’Hara Family, 3 vols. [facs. edn.] (NY: Garland 1978), ded. Wellington; consists of two novels, The Last Baron of Crana, and The Conformists [pl. sic], the latter set near Coleraine and featuring a fanatically anti-Catholic bishop in the historical person of Anthony Dopping, Bishop of Meath (1643-1697) as an example of savage prejudice of Protestant Ulstermen [Wolff]. The novel bears an epigraph from Moore: ‘- bright o’er the flood / Of her tears and her blood, / Let the rainbow of hope be Wellington’s name’. The dedication reads, ‘Addressed to His Grace Arthur, Duke of Wellington, these tales most gratefully, and most respectfully, are enscribed.’ The Preface of three pages speaks briefly of the commencement of writing and the ‘old laws ... at that time debated’ which had since ‘became unexpectedly decided’ (p.[v]), and defends the author against “continuing prejudices” and “opening wounds afresh”, possibly language used by Wellington. In his introduction, Wolff refers to the dedication in the light of the fact that Wellington was castigated in The Anglo-Irish of the XIXth Century. The implication is that the dedication must be ironically intended, even that The Denounced is none other than Wellington himself. Vide the lines, ‘He Said that he was not Our Brother’, occasioned by a ‘ferocious attack provoked by some utterance of Wellington about Ireland’ according to McCarthy (ed., Irish Literature, 1904; cited in Refences, supra). And note also the occasion when Wellington attacked the Catholic mayor of Kilkenny, as reported in Cabinet [?], who may have been Michael Banim.

Banim’s widow: Charles Gavan Duffy (Young Ireland, 1896) writes: ‘History and historical poetry, which elsewhere are the food of patriotism, were wholly excluded from public teaching in Ireland, and it was well entitled to be regarded as a notable event when professors of Trinity College and professors of Maynooth, Protestant and Catholic clergymen, Conservative and National barristers and journalists, were seen side by side in the Rotundo while Moore Stack recited ballads and speeches alternately from the classics of Irish literature and the recent writings in the Nation? A little later a similar combination took place on behalf of the widow of John Banim, a writer intensely national in his scope and spirit, and whose name at an earlier period would certainly have frightened away Conservatives. A committee, selected alternately of Repealers and Conservatives or Whigs, was organised to purchase her an annuity, but was relieved from the duty by the frank concession of a pension by Sir Robert Peel, impressed perhaps by the unprecedented phenomenon of such a combination. (Op. cit., Vol. I, p.65; available at Internet Archive - online.)

[Ftn.: The names of the committee deserve to be recorded: — Daniel O’Connell, M.P., John Anster, LL.D. (the translator of Faust), Smith O’Brien, M.P., Isaac Butt, LL.D. (then leader of the extreme Conservatives), Dr Kane (afterwards Sir Robert Kane), John O’Connell, M.P., Charles Lever (the author of Harry Lorrequer) Torrens M’Cullagh, LL.B. (later M’Cullagh Torrens, M.P.), Thomas Davis, Samuel Ferguson (afterwards Sir Samuel Ferguson, Deputy- Keeper of the Records in Ireland), Thomas O’Hagan (who became Lord O’Hagan), William Carleton (author of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry), E. B. Roche, M.P. (since Lord Fermoy), Joseph Le Fanu (author of The House by the Churchyard, &c.), Charles Gavan Duffy, Hubert Smith, M.R.I.A., Thomas MacNevin, Dr Maunsell (editor of the Evening Mail) Gray Porter, James M’Glashan (proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine}, and M. J. Barry.] (Idem.)

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