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Life
| 1812-1899 [Right Rev. Charles Graves, DD.], b. Dublin, fourth son of John Crosbie Graves; contrib. poetry to Kottabos; mathematician and FRS, Prof. of Maths., TCD, 1843; iss. On the General Properties of Cones of the Second Degree and of Spherical Cones (1841); works in RIA Proceedings; DD in 1851; appt. Dean of Dublin Castle Chapel, 1860; Pres. of the RIA, 1861; preferred to sees of Clonfert, 1864, and Limerick, 1866; awarded Oxford Hon DCL; member of the committee established to translate the Brehon Law; FRS, 1880; he thought that Irish Ogham derived from Germanic runes, now known to be of later and different origin; the father of Alfred Percival Graves [q.v.] and Charles Larcom Graves [q.v.]. PI DIH DIB |
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Works
“Ogam Beith Luis Nin”, in Hermathena 3 (1879) - and note that Robert Graves [q.v.] includes references to ogham in his account of poetic inspiration in The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948).
John Healy [DD], Insula Sanctorum Et Doctorum: Or, Ireland’s Ancient Schools and Scholars (1890) - writes: ‘In connection with the School of Armagh we may appropriately speak of the Book of Armagh. It is one of the oldest, and, beyond any doubt, the most valuable of the ancient books of Ireland. Its contents are singularly varied and interesting, and its history, too, has a melancholy interest for Irish scholars. To Dr. Ch[arles] Graves, Protestant Bishop of Limerick, is due the merit of fixing the date of its transcription. In one place there is an entry asking a prayer for Ferdomnach — pro Ferdomnacho ores — and in another place there is an entry which Dr. Graves deciphered with the use of acids, to this effect — “Ferdomnach wrote this book from the dictation of Torbach, the heir of St. Patrick.” Torbach was primate only for a single year (a.d. 807); and we find from the Annals of the Four Masters that Ferdomnach[,] “a sage and choice scribe of the Church of Armagh” died in A.D. 844. We are justified, therefore, in concluding that Torbach, the primate in A.D. 807 (he died on the 16th of July in that year) had this great work transcribed under his own direction by the choice scribe, Ferdonmach. Moreover, before his elevation to the primacy, Torbach had been himself a scribe of the Church of Armagh, and thus very naturally took an interest in the transcription and preservation of this great treasure of his church.’ (Healy, op. cit., p.103.)
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