[Sir] Samuel Ferguson: 1810-1886
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| Life |
| [Sir Samuel Ferguson]; b. 10 March 1810, High St., Belfast, the grandson of John Ferguson of Collen House, Co. Antrim, a man of means who squandered his inheritance; ed. Belfast Academical Institution, Belfast, and afterwards at TCD which he left before graduation due to his father’s declining fortunes; provided for his legal education by writing, beginning with “The Forging of the Anchor”, an industrial poem; contributed more than 90 items to Blackwood’s Magazine and Dublin University Magazine, et al., 1832-1850, promoting a view of Irishness informed by contemporary antiquarianism and Protestant conservative principles; entered the London Bar, and joined N. E. Circuit in Ireland, 1838; worked with members of the Irish Ordnance Survey during the early 1830s; contrib. four-part review articles of Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy (1834) to Dublin University Magazine (April-Nov. 1834), calling it ‘politically malignant and religiously fanatical’ as well as ‘spurious, puerile, unclassical - lamentably bad’; pointed out the militant Catholicism of the more blood-thirstily anti-English poems and in the majority of Hardiman’s notes; criticises the botched translations of the versifiers and provided his own rendering of some originals in an appendix; contrib. “Hibernian Nights’ Entertainments” to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine [1833-34], and Dublin University Magazine [1834-36], later printed piratically in New York (1859) and finally reissued by Lady Ferguson (1887); poss. influenced by earlier Royal Hibernian Tales (Belfast 1832); qualified at King’s Inns and called to the Irish Bar, 1838; practised successfully for many years; enlisted to Council of the RIA at the resignation of Sir William Betham [q,v.], 1840; |
| issued Cromlech on Howth (1841), a poem treating of the death of Oscar son of Finn - and an inspiration to Lady Wilde in naming her second son; withdrew his assistance from the editorship of the Dublin University Magazine, then in Charles Lever’s hands, at the latter’s acceptance of the dedication of Thackeray’s The Irish Sketch Book (1842); his poems prominent in Gavan Duffy’s Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1845); travelled on the continent, 1946-47, sketching Irish ecclesiastical remains; studied painting in Italy; active in Irish Council of 1847; published a “Lament for Thomas Davis” (Feb. 1847), composed earlier; m. Mary Catherine Guinness [b.1823], Aug. 1848; retained by Robert Holmes as part of John Mitchel’s defence team in treason-felony trial of 1848; attended inaugural meeting of Butt’s Protestant Repeal Association as a founding-member, declaring repeal of the Union to be ‘the great principle of self-government to counter the anti-national and servile spirit in the land’ (Warder, 13 May, 1848); he quickly withdrew from the Association in view of its Young Ireland connections; issued Dublin (1849) and Inheritor and Economist (1849), both verse satires; defended Richard D’Alton Williams against treason-felony; |
| took silk [QC], 1859; DL, 1864; issued Father Tom and the Pope; or, A Night in the Vatican (1865), a burlesque in prose, soon after reprinted piratically in New York - his authorship being attested by Lady Ferguson in her biography though previously ascribed to William Maginn by W. B. Yeats (Representative Irish Tales, 1891); published Lays of the Western Gael (1865), containing poems on Irish themes printed over the thirty previous years; also Deputy Keeper of Dublin Records, 1867; lectures on Dublin architecture, 1867; published his poetic version of Ulster epic Congal (1872), based on O’Donovan’s translation but without many supernatural passages, and accompanied by notes acknowledging Macpherson’s ‘grandeur of thought’; Ferguson resisted, with William Wilde, Lord Talbot de Malahide, et al., the attempt to bring RIA antiquities under the control of the British Museum in London; he was elected Vice-President of RIA and Chairman of Manuscript Committee in 1876; wrote preface to facsimile edn. of An Leabhar Breac; knighted 1878; hon degree of LLD (TCD); issued Poems (1880), with ded. to George Fox, his boyhoood friend; elected RIA President, 1882; spoke at the RIA in favour of a tunnel under the Liffey rather than a railway bridge [i.e., Butt Bridge] to preserve a view of the ‘architectural beauties bequeathed to us by that splendid race of men who once inhabited Dublin’; d. 9 Aug. 1886, at Strand Lodge, Howth; |
| his funeral service was conducted in St. Patrick’s Cathedral; bur. Donegore, Co. Antrim; an anonymous obit. [by J. P. Mahaffy], appeared in Athenaeum (14 April 1886); he collected Ogham casts and wrote extensively on Ogham controversies viz., Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland (1887), edited by his widow; also The Remains of St. Patrick (1888), being the “Confessio” translated into blank verse; other posthumous publications were Lays of the Red Branch (1897), with an introduction by Lady Ferguson, and Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson (1917), introduced by A. P. Graves; he was called by Yeats ‘the greatest poet Ireland has produced, because the most central and most Celtic’, and thus a national author ‘unjustly neglected by his fellow-countrymen’; a close friend of Frederick William Burton, Petrie, and others; Padraic Colum issued edited a modern selection as Poems (1963); his house on N. Gt. George’s St., Dublin, bears a plaque, while another was unveiled at his birthplace in 1910, and renewed reinstated on 10 March 2010; the article in the [British] Dictionary of National Biography is by Norman Moore; his best-known songs are “The Coolin” and “The Lark in the Clear Air”, based on Gaelic originals; the Ferguson home was 20 n. Gt. George"s St., from which Lady Ferguson signed her introductioni to the posthum. collection Lays of the Red Branch (1897). CAB PI JMC IF NCBE DIB DIW DIH DIL MKA OCEL FDA DUB OCIL |
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Bibliographical Details
Lays of the Western Gael and Other Poems, ed. & intro. Alfred M. Williams (London: Bell & Daldy 1865), and Do. [2nd Edn.] (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker 1888 [var. 1880]), with sects. entitled ‘Lays of the Western Gael’, ‘Ballads and Poems’, ‘Versions and Adaptations’, ‘Versions from the Irish’. CONTENTS: ‘Lays of the Western Gael’, ‘Congal’, ‘Poems’, ‘Remains of St. Patrick’, ‘Shakespeare Breviates’, ‘Hibernian Nights’ Entertainments’, ‘Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales and Scotland’, &c., &c..Lays of the Red Branch, with an introduction by Lady Ferguson [New Irish Liibrary] (London: T. Fisher Unwin; Dublin Sealy, Bryers & Walker MDCCCXCVII [1897]), 161pp. CONTENTS. Introduction [vii]; The Twins of Macha [1; A Lay of the Western Gael; incl. Introductory note, p.[1]]; The Naming of Cuchullin [4; A Lay of the Western Gael; incl. Introductory Note, p.4]; The Abdication of Fergus Mac Roy [15; incl. Introductory note, pp.15-16]; Mesgedra [23; A Lay of the Western Gael; incl. Introductory note, pp.23-24]; Deirdre [35; incl. Introductory note, p.35]; Deirdre’s Farewell to Alba [87; from the Irish]; Deirdre’s Lament for the Sons of Usnach [89; from the Irish]; Conary [92; incl. Introductory Note, pp.92-93]; The Healing of Conall Carnach [128; incl. Introductory note, p.128]; The Tain-Quest [142; incl. Introductory Note, p.142]. (Initial pages of all pieces show Celtiic designs at top; initial pages of pieces with Introductions are unpaginated.) See Lady Ferguson’s Introduction - as attached.]
Index of publications available at Internet Archive with inks supplied by Clare County Library Lays of the Red Branch., by Ferguson, Samuel Sir
Published: 1897, T. F. Unwin (London)
Statement: with an introduction by Lady Ferguson.
Series: The New Irish Library
Pagination: 161pp.
Available at Internet Archive[ Copy held in California University (Riverside)] The Confession of St. Patrick, translated into blank verse by Sir Samuel Ferguson, LLD, Pres. Royal Irish Academy, Transactions of RIA, Vol. XXVII [Polite literature and Antiquities], VI (Dublin: RIA 1885) [cited in Rev. George Thomas Stokes, DD., and the Rev. Charles H. H. Wright, DD, Writings of St Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland, a revised translation, with Notes, critical and historical (London: James Nisbet & Co.; Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co., publisher o Dublin Univ., 1887]. Ferguson writes: ‘it was the first occasion on which he experienced what he conceived to be the presence of an in-dwelling coercer of his will, to obedience to whose promptings all his subsequent life was to be conformed.’ [Ferg., [q. tit.,] p.113-14; Stokes, p.40.]
Hibernian Nights Entertainments [1st, 2nd, & 3rd ser.] (Dublin: Sealy, Bryer & Walker; London: George Bell 1887 [another edn. 1907]), consisting of 1] “Death of Children of Usnach”; “Return of Claneboy”; “Captive of Killeshin”. 2] “Carby MacGilmore”; “An Adventure of Shane O’Neill”. 3] “The Rebellion of Silken Thomas”; Lays of the Western Gael, with review. notice: ‘Sir Samuel Ferguson is head and shoulders taller than any of the Anglo-Irish poets (Truth). See also endpage advertisements in Congal (Dublin: Sealy Bryers & Walker 1907), indicating that parts of the collection first appeared in Blackwood’s (“The Return of Claneboy”, 1833; and “Shane O’Neill’ Last Amour”, 1834) and in Dublin University Magazine (“The Death of the Children of Usnach”, 1834; “The Captive of Killeshin”, 1835; “The Rebellion of Silken Thomas”, 1835; “Corby Mac Gillmore”, 1835, “Rosabel of Ross”, 1836); first issued jointly, NY 1859; reissued Lady Ferguson, 1887.
Note: Hibernian Nights’ Entertainments first appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine (Edinburgh 1832-33) but was preceded by a collection entitled The Royal Hibernian Tales [Belfast 1823], subtitled a ‘collection of the most entertaining Irish tales now extant’, and compared with the English Nights’ Entertainments. Note also references to a ‘certain volume of the Hibernian Tales’ made by W. H.. Thackeray [q.v.] - ending with an allusion (possible jocose) to the Galway Nights’ Entertainments, with comparisons to the Arabian Nights similar to those made by the editor of Royal Hibernian Tales [see contents as listed in Bibliography of English Fiction, 1830-36- under References as infra].
Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson, ed. A. P. Graves (Dublin: Talbot/London: R. Fisher Unwin [1918]) [vars. 1914, 1917]; port.; Memorial Sonnet by Graves; Biographical and Bibliographical Note, [x]-xv; Introduction, pp.xvii-xxxvii, ; signed as from Red Branch House, Wimbledon; St. Patrick’s Day, 1916. Introduction, LAYS OF THE WESTERN GAEL: “The Burial of King Cormac”; “Aideen’s Grave”; “The Death of Dermid”; “The Welshmen of Tirawley”; “Fergus Wry-Mouth”; “The Gascon O’Driscol”; “The Downfall of the Gael”; “O’Byrne’s Bard to the clans of Wicklow”; “Lament over the Ruins of the Abbey of Timoleague”; “To the Harper O’Connellan”; “Grace Nugent”; “Mild Mabel Kelly”; “The Fair Hair’d Girl”; “Pasteen Finn”; “Molly Astore”; “The Coolun”; “Cean Dubh Deelish”; “Boatman’s Hymn”; “The Dear Old Air”; “The Lapful of Nuts”; “Hopeless Love”; “The Fair Hills of Ireland.” BALLADS AND POEMS: “The Fairy Thorn”; “Willy Gilliland”; “The Pretty Girl of Loch Dan”; “Adieu to Brittany”; “Westminster Abbey”; “The Morning’s Hinges”; “Bird and Brook”; “Three Thoughts”; “Three Seasons”; “The Hymn of the Fisherman”; “The Window’s Cloak”; “Paul Veronese”; “The Little Maiden”; “Dear Wilde”; “To Mr Butt.” LAYS OF THE RED BRANCH: “The Twins of Macha”; “The Naming of Cuchullin”; “The Abdication of Fergus Mac Roy”; “Mesgedra”; “Deirdre”; “Deirdre’s Farewell to Alba”; “Deirdre’s Lament over the Sons of Usnach”; “Conary”; “The Healing of Conall Carnach”; “The Tain-Quest. CONGAL [5 Books].
“Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy” [Part 1], in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVI (April 1834), pp.455-78; “Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy” [Part II], Dublin University Magazine, Vol. IV, No. XX (August 1834), pp.152-67; “Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy” [Part III], Dublin University Magazine, Vol. IV, No. XXII (Oct. 1834), pp.444-67; “Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy” [Part IV], Dublin University Magazine, Vol. IV, No. XXIII (Nov. 1834), pp.514-42 [with trans. from Irish as app., incl. some poems later printed in Lays of the Western Gael, 1864; infra]. Extract reprinted in Mark Storey, Poetry and Ireland since 1800: A Source Book, London: Routledge 1988, pp.34-38.
Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland [Rhind Lectures, Edinburgh 1884] (Edinburgh: David Douglas 1887). Papers incl. ‘Fasciculus of Prints from Photographs of Casts of Ogham Inscriptions’ (RIA Transactions, 1880); ‘Account of Ogham Inscriptions in the Cave of Rathcroghhan, Co. Roscommon’ (RIA Proceedings, 1864); ‘On the Difficulties Attendant on the Transcription of Ogham Legends, and the Means of Removing them’ (RIA Proceedings, 1870-71); ‘On Paper Casts of Ancient Inscriptions in the Counties of Galway and Mayo’ (RIA Proceedings, 1872); ‘On the Ogham-Inscribed Stone of Callan Mountain, Co. Clare’ (RIA Proceedings, 1873); ‘On the Collateral Evidences corroborating the Biliteral Key to the South British Ogham Alphabet’ (RIA Proceedings, 1873); ‘On the Evidences bearing on Sun-worship at Mount Callan, Co. Clare’ (RIA Proceedings, 1873); ‘On an Ogham-Inscribed Stone from Mount Music, Co. Cork’ (RIA Proceedings, 1874); ‘On a Recently Discovered Ogham Inscription at Breatagh, in the Co. of Mayo (RIA Proceedings, 1874); ‘On an Ogham-inscribed Stone (No. 1) at Monataggart, Co. Cork’, and ‘On Further Ogham Inscriptions discovered at Monataggart’ (RIA Proceedings, 1874); ‘Additional Note on Ogham Inscriptions at Monataggart, Co. Cork’ (RIA Proceedings, 1875); ‘On an Ogham Inscription at Mullagh, Co. Cavan’ (RIA Proceedings, 1875); ‘On the Alleged Literary Forgery respecting Sun-Worship on Mount Callan’ (RIA Proceedings, 1875).
Lady Ferguson’s Sir Samuel Ferguson and the Ireland of His Time
(Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker; London: Bell 1897) - Vol. 2 of 2.
- available at Internet Archive online; see also text format, and note that
Vol. 1 is available at Internet Archive in page or text formats.
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Criticism| Obituary & early notices |
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See also incidental references in Máire Mac an tSaoi’s Introduction to James Hardiman, Irish Minstrelsy [rep. of 1831 1st edn.] (Shannon: Irish University Press 1971), pp.v-xii. |
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Bibliographical details
Lady Mary C. Ferguson, Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of His Day, 2 vols. (Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood 1896) - available at Internet Archive - Vol. I [online]; Vol. II [online]; accessed 25.07.2017.Eve Patten, Samuel Ferguson and the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2004) CONTENTS: Acknowledgement [7]; Abbreviations [8]; Introduction [9]. 1: Scotland, Ulster, and the Hibernian nights'entertainments [29]; The Irish Minstrelsy review, 1834 [52]; The Attractions of Ireland' [77]; Thomas Davis and the Protestant Repeal Association [99]; Ireland’s architecture [131]; Culture, antiquarianism and the Royal Irish Academy [155]; Conclusion [181] Bibliography [189]; Index [203]. See cover-notice: ‘Samuel Ferguson (1810-86) was one of nineteenth-century Ireland’s most influential writers, but his politics and cultural agenda have never been fully explored. This book draws on his neglected prose writings to illuminate his layered ideology, and to expose his various determining contexts, including his native Belfast and its Scottish Enlightenment hinterland, the Dublin University Magazine with its fraught literary-political protocol, and the communities of the Ordnance Survey Commission, the Nation, and the Royal Irish Academy. Ferguson’s guiding agenda is shown to be that of a civic idealism - a grassroots alternative to polarized political trajectories and a compelling ethos for a conflicted Irish Protestantism. The result is both a portrait of an individual in his time and a detailed engagement with Irish cultural politics from the Union to the Revival.’ (See COPAC online; see also extracts, infra)
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References
Edward Hayes, The Ballads of Ireland [2 vols. in 1] (Edinburgh & London: A Fullerton 1855) - takes Ferguson’s “the Fair Hills of Ireland”, dated 1842, as its first example of the genre (p.42).
W. B. Yeats included “Father Tom and the Pope” in his Representative Irish Tales (1891) but attributed it to Maginn. Later he corrected attribution in the article “Irish National Literature, IV: A List of Best Irish Books”, published in Bookman (Oct. 1895), reflecting the claim on it made Lady Ferguson’s life of Ferguson (1896) - a fact cited in Helen Mary Thuente, Introduction to rep. edn. of Representatie Irish Tales (Gerrards Cross: 1979).
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction (Dublin: Maunsel 1919) - gives bio-data: Samuel Ferguson, son of John Ferguson, Collen House, Co. Antrim; ed. Acad. Inst., Belfast, and TCD; first deputy keeper of public records; besides the Hibernian Nights, Sir Samuel also wrote a very amusing if not very reverent sketch, “Father Tom and the Pope”, which had the unique distinction of being rep. in Blackwood’s Magazine, 1910, without the author’s name. There was an American ed. which contains stories not included in the Irish edn. Brown lists 7 fiction titles - viz., Hibernian Nights and six tales therein, with pagination from Hibernian Nights, Sealy Bryer & Walker (1887) - contents being: “Children of Usnach”, “The Captive of Killeshin, “Corby MacGillmore”, “An Adventure of Seaghan [sic] O’Neill’s”, and “The Rebellion of Silken Thomas”, all popular in style and treatment.
Note: Hibernian Nights separately listed [note that the following pagination is irrational]: “The Return of Claneboy”, pp.43-98, how Aodh Bui O’Neill regained his territory on the death of William de Burgh”; “The Captive &c.”, pp.98-146, Leinster Clans v. English, esp. the O’Nolans, 14th c.; “Corby MacGillmore”, pp.140 [err.], in which a warlike abbot preaches to a relapsed McGillmore, warring with the Clan Savage, 15th c.; “The Rebellion of Silken Thomas”, pp.278, the real hero is Sir John Talbot; “The Death of the Children of Usnach”, pp.14-92, the beautiful saga; “An Adventure of Shane O’Neill’s”, pp.143-84, Shane and Irish in general appearing in unfavourable light.
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A. W. Ward & A. R. Waller, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, 18 vols. (1907–21), Vol. XIV [“The Victorian Age, Pt. 2”], IX - Anglo-Irish Literature; Sect. 20: “Sir Samuel Ferguson”: ‘[...] The elegy on Davis certainly shows Ferguson at his highest as a lyric poet, and is rightly described by Gavan Duffy as “the most Celtic in structure and spirit, of all the poetical tributes to the lost leader.” Ferguson was held back from his higher literary work by the exigencies of the Irish potato famine and expressed his feelings at its mismanagement in verse full of bitter invective; but he lived to turn his fine satiric gift against the successors of the Young Ireland poets and patriots, with whom he had sympathised, when he found them descending to what he characterised as “a sordid social war of classes carried on by the vilest methods.” In his satiric poems At the Polo Ground, he analyses, in Browning’s manner, Carey’s frame of mind before giving the fatal signal to the assassins of Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish [i.e., Invincibles’ Phoenix Park Murders]; and, in his Dublin eclogue In Carey’s Footsteps, and in The Curse of the Joyces, he unsparingly exposes the cruelties of the Boycotting system. In 1864 appeared Lays of the Western Gael, containing a series of Irish ballads full of much finer work than he had yet achieved. Of these, The Tain Quest is, perhaps, the noblest effort; but the magnificently savage lay The Welshmen of Tirawley is the most striking. In 1872 appeared Congal, a splendid story of the last heroic stand by Celtic paganism against the Irish champions of the Cross, in which the terrible shapes of Celtic superstition, “the Giant Walker” and “the Washer of the Ford,” loom monstrously before us, and in which the contending hosts at Moyra are marshalled with fine realism. But Ferguson’s genius was to break into even finer flower at the last, and, in Deirdre and Conary, published in his final volume of 1880, he reaches his fullest height as a poet. [...]’ Further notes that Lady Ferguson [née Guinness] published a History of Ireland Before the Normans in which she included illustrative poetry by Ferguson prior to their marriage. [See Bartleby.com Great Books Online: link.]
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Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), cites John Pentland Mahaffy, ‘Sir Samuel Ferguson,’ in Athenaeum 88 (1886), 205, an ‘elegant tribute [which] not only conveys a vivid impression of the man but also a neatly summarizes his literary career’; [Fr.] Matthew Russell, ‘In Memoriam,’ Irish Monthly 14 (1886); W. B. Yeats, ‘The Poetry of Samuel Ferguson’, in Dublin University Review, 2 (1886), rep. in Uncollected Prose (1970); also essays by Aubrey de Vere (Irish Monthly, 1887), A. P. Graves (Irish Book Lover, 1910), and Eleanor Hull (New Ireland Review, 1897).
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2, lists works prior to 1850, none of which are in book-form. See also Romanticism, Vol. 1, pp.161-67. Commentaries cited include W. B. Yeats (Uncollected Prose); Irish Book Lover, 1, 9 & 10 (1910); A. Deering (1931); Malcolm Brown (Bucknell 1973); Robert O’Driscoll (1976).
Chris Morash, ed., The Hungry Voice (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989), selects “Dublin, A Poem” [omitting 106-310, exc. 126-150], which appeared in Dublin University Magazine Vol. 34. No. 199 (July 1849); “Inheritor and Economist”, in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 197 (May 1849) [omitting 500-620]
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, selects “A Dialogue Between the head and Heart of an Irish Protestant” (1833) [1177-85]; Hibernian Nights’ Entertainment (1833) [extracts, “The First Night” & “The Death of the Children of Usnach” [1186-91, 1191-1200]. FDA ed. notes that Ferguson’s four-part review of Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy appeared in Dublin University Magazine between April and November 1834 but does not supply extract.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2 selects “The Burial of King Cormac”, “Lament over the Ruins of the Abbey of Timoleague”, “Pastheen Finn”, “Ceann Dubh Deelish”, “Cashel of Munster”, “The Coolun”, “The Death of Dermid”, all from Lays of the Western Gael, and also “Lament for the Death of Thomas Davis” [here 43-51] from Dublin University Magazine (1847). Numerous references passim here and in in FDA3 [see indexes].
COPAC lists An account of further explorations at Locmariaquer, in Brittany [account of inscribed stones in the sepulchral monument, called Mane Nelud, at Lochmariaker, Brittany] ((1863); Aideen’s Grave, etc. (1925); The book of Irish ballads, / edited by D. F. McCarthy.. (1846 Congal. A poem in five books, etc. (1872; 1907); The Cromlech on Howth: A Poem (London: Day 1861);; The Cromlech on Howth: A poem. With illuminations from the Books of Kells and of Durrow, and drawings from nature by M. S. [i.e. Miss M. M. Stokes.] With notes on Celtic ornamental art, revised by G. Petrie. (London: 1864); Fasciculus of prints from photographs of casts of Ogham inscriptions (1881); Father Tom and the pope (1906) The Forging of the Anchor. A poem ... illustrated, etc. (1883); “Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy” (1834); The Hibernian Nights’ Entertainment (1857; 1887); Ireland’s claims to an adequate parliamentary representation of learning in a letter to James Mac Cullagh ...; with an appendix containing correspondence with Mr. Hallam on the claims of Archbishop De Londres to a niche in the new House of Lords; and a letter to Lord Morpeth on the formation of a museum of national antiquities in Dublin (1847); Lays of the Red Branch.... With an introduction by Lady Ferguson (1897); Lays of the Western Gael, and other poems (1865), and Do., With an introduction by A. M. Williams (1888); and Do. (rep. 2001); Leabhar breac: The Speckled book, otherwise styled Leabhar mór dúna doighre, the Great book of dún doighre; a collection of pieces in Irish and Latin, comp. from ancient sources about the close of the fourteenth century: now for the first time published from the original manuscript in the library of the Royal Irish academy (1876); Ogham inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland (1887); The Ogham monuments of Kilkenny, with remarks on certain Ogham formulas, in a letter to John G. A. Prim (1872); On the Patrician documents (1885); On the rudiments of the common law discoverable in the published portion of the Senchus Mor (1867); Our Architecture (1864); Poems (1880); Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson: with an introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves (Dublin: Talbot Press [1918]); Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson (Every Irishman’s Library 1916); The Poems of Samuel Ferguson. Edited with an introduction by Padraic Colum. (1963); The Remains of St. Patrick ... The Confessio and Epistle to Coroticus. Translated into English blank verse (1888); Report to the Council from the Committee of Polite Literature and Antiquities: on inaccuracies of transcription alleged to exist in the Academy’s edition of Leabhar na h-Uidhri / Royal Irish Academy. (1875); Selections [from Samuel Ferguson], edited by A. H. Miles. (1891); Shakespearean Breviates. An adjustment [in verse] of twenty-four of the longer plays of Shakespeare to convenient reading limits, by Samuel Ferguson [1810-1886] (1882); John O’Hagan, The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson (1887); Arthur Deering, Sir Samuel Ferguson, poet and antiquarian. A thesis &.c. (1931); Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of his Day, etc. Lady Mary Catharine Ferguson (1896).
University of Ulster Library (incl. Morris & Hewitt Collections) holds: Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson (Dublin Phoenix [Talbot] [1916; prop. 1918]); Lays of the Red Branch (London: Fisher Unwin 1897); Lays of The Western Gael, and Other Poems (London: Bell & Daldy 1865); Congal by Sir Samuel Ferguson (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker 1907); Congal: A Poem in Five Books [2nd edn.] (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker London: G. Bell 1893); Hibernian Nights’ Entertainments (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker; London: George Bell & Sons 1887) [originally published in Dublin University Magazine and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine]; by Alfred M. Williams, ed., & intro., Lays of The Western Gael And Other Poems (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker 1888) [copy with introduction signed by editor]; oems edited with an Introduction by Padraic Colum ([An Chomhairle Ealaíon series of Irish authors] Dublin: Allen Figgis 1963); Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson, with an introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves [Every Irishman’s Library] (Dublin: Talbot Press 1918). Also, Sir Samuel Ferguson In The Ireland of His Day by Lady Ferguson [Mary Catharine Ferguson (née Guinness)] 1823- (Edinburgh & London: W. Blackwood 1896); Robert O’Driscoll, An Ascendancy of the Heart: Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Irish Literature (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1976); [Congal] The battle of Moira, being the epic poem Congal [by Sir Samuel Ferguson] with an historical introduction by Ian Adamson ([Ian Adamson] Newtownards Chronicle 1980) JORD 821.8; Poems (Dublin: McGee; London: Bell 1880) HEW PR4699.F2A6 18; Terence Brown and Barbara Hayley, eds., Samuel Ferguson: A Centenary Tribute (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy 1987) UUC PR4699.F2ZS2; Peter Denman, Samuel Ferguson: The Literary Achievement [Series: Irish literary studies 39] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1990), UUC PR4699.F2ZD25; Malcolm Brown, Sir Samuel Ferguson [Irish writers series] (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press 1973), HEW PR4699.F2ZB76; JORD 821.8.[Belfast Central Public Library holds poetry but no fiction titles.]
Pearse St. Library (Dublin), holds among the Madden Papers of the Gilbert Collection Samuel Ferguson’s pamphlet letter to James Pim, Jnr., On the Expediency of Taking Stock [ ...] (Dublin 1847) [MS 282].
English Novels 1830-36: A Bibliography of British Fiction (CEIR/Cardiff) lists The Royal Hibernian Tales: Being a Collection of the Most Entertaining Stories Now Extent (Belfast: Joseph Smyth, High St., 1832), 144pp., 18°. Prefatory address ‘To the Reader’ (p.[3]) compares the contents to English Nights, Arabian Nights, and Persian and Chinese Tales emphasising their moral and didactic purpose as ‘tending both to enrich the fancy and improve the mind’ while making claims for the originality of the collection and noting that the stories are ‘adapted to every person of every inclination and disposition’. Contents: “The Black Thief and the Knight of the Glen”, pp.[5]-19; “Will O’ the Wisp”, pp.20-27; “The Apprentice Thief”, pp.28-39; “Manus O’Mallaghan and the Fairies”, pp.40-45; “Fool Tom and His Brother Jack”, pp.46-48; “The Hermit Turned Pilgrim”, pp.48-51; “The Farmer and his Servant”, pp.52-55; “The Three Advices”, pp.56-57; “The Young Priest and Brien Braar”, pp.59-64; “The Spaeman”, pp.65-68; “Donald and his Neighbours”, pp.69-73; “The Priest and The Robber”, pp.74-77; “The Teague Sloan”, pp.78-95 (containing “The Story of Oldemar”); “Peter Megrab and his Brother John”, pp.96-103; “The Jackdaw”, pp.104-07; “The Blacksmith”, pp.108-15; “Mac Turkill”, pp.116-17; “The Fisherman’s Son”, pp.118-25; “The Generous Irishman”, pp.126-32; “Jack Withers”, pp.133-35; “Anne Bonney, the Female Pirate”, pp.136-38; “James Butler”, pp.139-43; “Anecdotes”, p.144.
Another edn.: Copy at TCD Library contains an additional vignette t.p. with printer’s imprint: “Belfast: Printed by J. Smyth, High Street, 1834; end of vol. contains adv. list. National Library of Ireland holds an imperfect, undated copy (IR 82308 r2) bearing the imprint, ‘Dublin: C. M. Warren, 21 Upper Ormond Quay’ which contains fewer stories, running only to 107pp. [English Fiction 1830-36, Ref. 1832: 8 - online; accessed 20.06.2010.]
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Notes
Congal: 22 MSS lines of Congal, dating from 1844, are held in National Archives, Dublin (Cat. No. M6055); MS of the final version, written 1852-58, and published 1872, Linen Hall Library; Congal founded on O’Donovan, The Banquet of Dun na n-Gedh and The Battle of Magh Rath (Irish Archaeological Society 1842), whereas Domnal, high king, is at the centre of the middle Irish text, Congal, therein a minor character, is central to Ferguson; Congal in the original has a squint and one blind eye; the dispute between the two is placed by Ferguson on the more positive grounds that Congal defends the Bardic Order against Christianity, espoused by Domnal, instead of the insult received at a feast when he receives a lowly place. [See Christopher Corr, ‘English Literary Culture and Irish Literary Revival’, PhD Thesis, UUC 1995].
Invincibles: Ferguson’s response to the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882 are encapsulated in the poem “In Carey’s Footsteps” [‘A hideous thought ... such crimes are cowardly, and Irishmen, / Having the true faith, should be bold to act / The manlier part // Yes, here I’m in the Park.’ (Cited in full in Brian Walker et al., eds., Faces of Ireland, 1992, pp.106-07.)
Who fears ...?: Ferguson attempted to suppress some of his patriotic poems ‘lest my any means, the Nationalists should claim them for their own’; but, according to Yeats, ‘The supppression was not carried far enough. We claim him in every line. Irish singers, who are genuinely Irish in thought, subject and style, must, whether they will or no, nourish the forces that make for the political liberties of Ireland.’ [Q. source.]
Influence: W. B. Yeats’s poem “Fergus and the Druid” is based on the then-recent poem “The Abdication of Fergus MacRoy”, in which Ferguson makes the Irish king a poet. See John Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, Vol. II [1972], p.161: ; ‘as the legend was shaped by Ferguson ... he gave up his throne that he might live at peace, hunting the woods’; cited Daniel Albright, ed., Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1992, Notes, p.430), Note further that the story is told in the Book of Leinster, trans. Whitley Stokes, Eriu, IV, p.22 (Jeffares, New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1984, p.24).
Edward Dowden (letter to Ferguson), ‘What seems to me most noteworthy in your poems is the union of culture with simplicity and strength. Their refinement is lage and strong, not curious and diseased; and they have spaces and movements which give one a feeling like the sea or the air on a headland. I had not meant to say anything of Congal, but somehow this came and said itself.’ (McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature, Catholic Univ. of America 1904, p.1,170.)
Aubrey de Vere on Ferguson’s poetry, ‘Its qualities are those characteristic of the noble, not the ignoble poetry - viz, passion, imagination, vigour, an epic largness of conception, wide human wympathies, vivid and truthful description -while with them it unites none of the vulgar stimulants for exhausted or morbid poetic appetite, whether the epicurean seasoning, the skeptical, or the revolutionary.’ (Quoted Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature, Washington 1904, p.1169.)
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Richard Ellmann wrote: ‘Sir Samuel Ferguson had been writing dull narratives based on Irish subjects for many years ...’ (Yeats: The Man and the Masks, Faber 1948).
‘Word cataracts’: ‘Sean Lucy comments that Ferguson’s Congal uses what he calls “the word cataracts of medieval Irish”, viz.: “the deep-clear-watered, foamy crested, terribly-resounding, / Lofty leaping, prone descending, ocean-calf-abounding, / Fishy fruitful, salmon-teeming, many coloured, sunny beaming, / Heady-eddied, horrid thund’ring, ocean-progeny-engend’ring, / Billow-raging, battle-waging, merman-haunted, poet-vaunted, / Royal, patrimonial, old torrent of Eas-Roe.”’ (Congal, 1872; see Loreto Todd, The Language of Irish Literature, 1989.)
Music: The forging of the anchor: dramatic scene for bass solo, chorus and orchestra [by] Sir Frederick Bridge (1901; 1902); Irish countryside songs, written, edited, and arranged by Alfred Perceval Graves and Charles Wood. (1914); Lark in the Clear Air, arranged for music by Havelock Nelson; Edgar Martin Deale, Grayston Ives, Brian Trant, Tom Johnston, Hal Evans, Donald Cashmore, Roger Fiske, Phyllis Tate, Reginald Jacques, Alec Rowley, Henry Geehl P. J. Ryan, Harry Dexter Herbert Hughes ((1926); also The Battle of Moira: being the epic poem Congal (1980), ande Do., an adaptation by Michael Hall (1995); also Five Irish songs: for mixed chorus a cappella / Nicholas Maw (1973.)
“Song of Sorrow” [quoted by Ferguson in Part II of his review of Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy, 1831 -‘If you would go with me to the County Leitrim, / Uilecan dubh O! / I would give the honey of bees and mead as food for you; / Uilecan dubh O! / I shall give you the prospect of ships, and sails, and boats, / Under the tops of the trees, and we returning from the strand, / And I would never let any sorrow come upon you. / Oh! you are my Uilecan dubh O! // I shall not go with you, and it is in vain you ask me; Uilecan dubh O! / For your words will not keep me alive without food: / Uilecan dubh O! / A hundred thousand times better for me to be always a maid, / Than to be walking the dew and the wilderness with you: / My heart has not given to you love nor affection, / And you are not my Uilecan dubh O!’ (See full-text copy of Fergusion’s review of Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy, 1831 - as attached. )
“The Burial of King Cormac” (‘Spread not the beds of Brugh for me / When restless death-bed’s use is done; [...; &c., as supra]) is the object of an exchange between Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom in the “Eumaeus” episode ofUlysses (Bodley Head Edn. p.777), on the score of the poem being included in schoolroom poetry books known to Bloom; and note var. “Rossnaree” in that context.
National Archives: Ferguson’s gave an account of the 14th-18th c. Exchequer Records in his capacity as Deputy Keeper of the Dublin Records - summarised in the 55th Report of the Deputy Keeper, Dublin: 1928, pp.122-23). Its value is enhanced by the fact that the originals no longer exist in consequence of the burning of the Public Records Office in the Four Courts in 1922. See Sean Murphy, Guide to the National Archives of Ireland (2009), at Centre for Irish Genealogical and Historical Studies (Bray) - online [accessed 3.11.2011].
Portraits: A portrait in black chalk heightened with white, signed F. W. Burton and inscribed ‘to his friend Samuel Ferguson, June 1848’, bequeathed to National Gallery of Ireland by Lady Ferguson (printed in Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol. 1, 1980); another by Sarah Purser, signed 1888, in the possession of the RIA; also an oil by Kate Morgan (1880), cited in A. P. Graves, Poems of Ferguson [1916], p.400.
Namesakes, Rev. Samuel Ferguson of Waterside, Londonderry, was the author of works such as Brief Biographical Sketches of some Irish Covenanting Ministers who laboured during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Rev., of Waterside, Londonderry (1897); William Stavely: Brief biographical sketch and other material on the Ferniskey man [1743-1825] known as the Apostle of the Covenanters (1893); Some Items of historic interest about the Waterside. Lecture (1902), and Burt Castle, County Donegal [from Londonderry Sentinel, 5 April, 1906] (1906). See also Samuel Ferguson, Dissertatio medica inauguralis de siphylide (1806).
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