Life
1818-1895 [pseud. “Donall-na-Glanna”]; b. Cork; ed. TCD, and close friend of Thomas Davis; contrib. The Nation; imprisoned for four months in 1848; later director of Cork Gas Works, and business concerns including railway; President of Cork Literary and Scientific Society, who aroused antagonism of Douglas Hyde at an Irish-language meeting in 1893. PI JMC DBIV DIH RAF OCIL
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Commentary
W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (London: 1894), notes that Denny Lane, MA, is one of the few survivors of the original Nation writers, and one who has identified himself with every movement calculated to benefit his native city [Cork], particularly in a literary or social direction [161]. Note small engraving of Lane in leftwards profile, op. cit., facing p.162.
Brian McKenna, Irish literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), cites ‘Then and Now, A Literary Retrospect’, in Irish Monthly, 13 (1885), in which Lane reminisces about ‘what we read, what we wrote, and what we thought of, in Cork 50 yrs ago’, touching on J. J. Callanan, J. Sheridan Knowles, Samuel Lover, Daniel Owen Madden, William Maginn, and Francis Sylvester Mahoney. Also, ‘The Irish Accent in English Literature’, Irish Monthly, 21 (1893), address to National Lit. Soc. urging continuation of work of Thomas Davis ‘to encourage good literature and above all things to make it Irish.’
Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde: The Dawn of the Irish Revolution and Renaissance, 1874-1893 (Shannon: IUP 1974): Denny Lane is in the chair at the meeting to promote the national Literary Society to which Count Plunkett, Yeats and Hyde, ‘in top form’ by his own account, journeyed to speak (23 Jan 1893). [160] Further: Lane, a prominent Young Irelander, spent four months in prison; released without trial; president of Cork Literary and Scientific Soc., chairman of two local railway companies, and mng. direcor of Cork Gas Co.; a couple of poems in The Nation [n., 220]
Léon Ó Bróin, Protestant Nationalists in Revolutionary Ireland (1985): ‘At a large meeting in Cork early in 1893, Lane of Young Ireland renown, said that if we had to have about us the chain of a foreign language he was happy it would be English, “the jewelled key that opened to us the storeroom containing the wealth of centuries from the time of Chaucer and Shakespeare down to the present day.” Hyde reacted as he had done in Dublin. He said that the GAA had done more for Ireland in the five years since it was established than speakers like Lane had done in sixty.’ (p.10.)
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References
John Cooke, ed., The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1909), gives bio-dates 1818-1896; selects “Kate of Araglen”; “Lament of the Irish Maiden” [‘I am alone, for he is gone, / My hawk has flown, ochone machree ... my Donnell Dhu!’].
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), ‘One of the poets of Young Ireland days.’
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (1904)., calls him a successful merchant in Cork for whom a few poems have won wide popularity; the best known, cited here, appeared in The Nation in 1844 and 1845 over the signature “Donall-na-Glanna”; his ‘Recollections’ appeared in The Irish Monthly. gives ‘Kate of Arraglen’ and ‘The lament of the Irish Maiden’.
Colm O’Lochlainn, Anglo-Irish Song-Writers Anglo-Irish Songwriters (Dublin: 3 Candles 1958), cites “The Lament of the Irish Maiden”; “There’s a bower of Roses by Bendemeer’s stream” ... now forgotten.
James E. Doherty & D. J. Hickey, A Chronology of Irish History since 1500 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989) cites “Carrig Dhoun”.
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