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Life
[var. d.1810]; b. Clare, TCD & St. Edmund’s Coll., Oxon.; bars, 1788; joined Irish Volunteers and opposed the Act of Union; appt. commissioner of bankruptcy, and police magistrate for Dublin; wrote pol. squibs and pamphlets; his Poems (1811) were published posthumously; erroneously accredited with authorship of “Humours of Donnybrook Fair”, actually by Charles O’Flaherty. PI CAB ODNB RAF
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Quotations
Henry Grattan: “The Man who Led the Van of the Irish Volunteers” [on Henry Grattan]: ‘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 Hyland & Sammells, Irish Writing, Macmillan 1991, pp.45-63, p.61). Coleborne notes 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 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 Cyril J. Byrne and Margaret Harry, eds., Talamh an Eisc: Canadian and Irish Essays, 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].
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