Edward Lysaght

Life
1763-1810 [var. 1811; freq. “Pleasant Ned Lysaght”]; b. Co. Clare; son of land-owner with seat at Brickhill (Clare) and Jane Eyre Lysaght [née Dalton], dg. of Edward Dalton of Deerpark, Co. Clare, and a cousin of Lord Eyre of Eyrecourt; ed. by Rev. Patrick Hare at his school in Cashel, Co. Tipperary; grad. TCD (BA) and St. Edmund’s Coll., Oxon. (MA); entered Middle Temple; called to English and Irish bars, 1788; supported Irish Volunteers and later opposed the Union with Henry Grattan [q.v.], whom he venerated in his ballads, and described its ill-effects in verse; practised on the Munster circuit and settled in Dublin from 1793; appt. commissioner of bankruptcy, and ultimately became a police magistrate for Dublin; wrote political squibs and pamphlets; his posthumously-published Poems (1811) omitted some of his pieces; sometimes accreditederroneously with authorship of “Humours of Donnybrook Fair”, actually by Charles O’Flaherty [q.v.], and likewise “Kitty of Coleraine” (actually by Charles Dawson Shanly [q.v.]. PI CAB ODNB RAF RIA/DIB

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Quotations

Henry Grattan: “The Man who Led the Van of the Irish Volunteers”: ‘Opposed by hirelings sordid, he broke oppression’s chain; / On statue-books recorded his patriot acts remain; / The equipose his mind employs of Commons, Kings, and Peers, / The upright man, who led the van of Irish Volunteers.’ (Quoted in Bryan Coleborne, ‘“They Sate in Counterview”: Anglo-Irish Verse in the Eighteenth Century’, in Irish Writing, ed. P. Hyland & N. Sammells, Macmillan 1991, pp.45-63; p.61). Note: Coleborne observes that this song was omitted with some others from his Poems (Dublin 1811).

More Grattan: ‘A British constitution (to Erin ever true) / In spite of state pollution, he gained in ’82 [Eighty-Two]; / He watched it in its cradle, and bedew’d its hearse with tears / This gallant man, who led the van of Irish Volunteers …’]; to be sung to “The British Grenadier”. (Quoted in Norman Vance, ‘Irish Literary Traditions and the Act of Union’, in Talamh an Eisc: Canadian and Irish Essays, ed. Cyril J. Byrne and Margaret Harry, Halifax: Nimbus Publ. Co., pp.29-47; p.31.)

References
Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78), cites Lanigan D.D. as a contemporary of Edward Lysaght [‘Ned’] at Cashel school in the 1760’s. Also in Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature, gives extracts for Edward Lysaght.

Anthologies, John Cooke, ed., Dublin Book of Irish Verse (1909), selects ‘The Man who led the Van of Irish Volunteers’, and ‘Garnyvillo’. Geoffrey Taylor, Irish Poets of the 19th century (1951), selects “Pleasant Ned Lysaght”, &c.

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol 2 (1980), b. Brackhill, Co. Clare, ed. TCD; godfather of Lady Morgan; Poems, by the late Edward Lysaght, Esq., Barrister at Law (Gilbert and Dublin 1811). Comm, also Rafroidi (1980), vol. 1, Edward Lysaght, Poems (1811), includes ‘To Adeline’ (p.5), and the very pretty ‘On Lovely Kitty’s Singing’ (p.57-8)

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, “Sweet Ned”, notable wit and song-writer (p.870).. Note also Lysaght referred to with John Philpot Curran in Lady Morgan, O’Briens and the O’Flahertys, ‘We shall have it all in the Freeman’s Journal, with an epigram from Curran, or Lysaght.’ [?FDA 37].

Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA/Cambridge UP 2009) - article by Patrick Egan: ‘[...] While “pleasant Ned Lysaght”, as he was known, enjoyed a great reputation during his time as a wit and bon vivant, the other side of the coin was that he was a sot, a hard man, a ne’er-do-well who skulked for some time in Trinity College so as to be out of the way of bailiffs and duns. His collection of verse contains a likeness of him. He died in 1810 in such straitened circumstances that a subscription had to be organised for his widow and children.’

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