James Clarence Mangan: 1803-1849
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| b. 1 May 1803 (‘amid blasphemy and riot’), at 3 Fishamble St., Dublin, son of poor grocer and former hedge-school teacher, a native of Shangolden, Co. Limerick, who married to Catherine Smith of Fishamble St., dg. of a grocer whose business he acquired - her family being from Kiltale, nr. Dunsany, Co. Meath; his father became bankrupt through speculation in house property; tyrannical with his children (‘Me, my two brothers, and my sister, he treated habitually as a huntsman would treat refractory hound’: Guiney, p.8); family subseq. moved to Chancery Lane and then Peter St.; Mangan was educated from 1810 [aetat. 7] at Saul’s Court, a school run by Jesuits in Derby Square [Werburgh St.], and then several other schools before quitting to support family, his father failing to retain a job in ‘eight successive establishments’; worked as clerk [scrivener] in scrivening office of Thomas Kenrick, 6, York St., 1818-21 (‘dull drudgery ... my heart felt as if it were gradually growing into the inanimate material I wrote on’); suffered merciless persecution by fellow-clerks [ODNB ‘peers’], leading to a nervous breakdown during this period; claimed to have contracted ‘a hideous malady, a gangrene of the blood’ at 17; developed fever and lodged in Hardwicke Hospital, Cork St; started learning languages with guidance of Fr. Graham who taught him Latin, Spanish, French and German. |
| contrib. ‘charades, enigmas & riddles’ for almanacs and directories under pseuds. (‘Peter Puff Secundus, Mud Island, near the bog’, in New Ladies’ Almanack; used pseuds. ‘P. V. M’Guffin’; ‘An Idler’; ‘XX-XX’; ‘M.E.’, but also ‘The Ottoman’, and ‘the Coptic’, et al.); fell deeply in love with a certain Frances [Stacpoole or Stackpole], one of three sisters, a coquette who ‘exercised her undoubted perorgative, and whistled him down the wind’ - acc. to Mitchel - and never loved again; but moved by the early death of Catherine Hayes (of Rehoboth Hse.) in 1832, to whom he had taught German, and who died of cholera - issuing “Elegiac Verses on the Death of a Beloved Friend” in The Comet (Feb. 1833; discovered by John McCall); also infatuated with one Anne Exshaw; contrib. Dublin Weekly Satirist and The Friend in early 1830s; later contrib. poetry as “Clarence” and then “J.C.M.” to The Comet, 1831; later also The Dublin Penny Journal (as “Clarence”), The Satirist, Dublin University Magazine, Irish Monthly Magazine, and early editions of The Nation (proving unhelpful in the production of patriotic ballads) and later still moved to the United Irishman, newly-founded by John Mitchel; taken on by George Petrie in the Ordnance Survey. |
| read Swedenborg; abused brandy and opium, spending ‘nights at the round table’ in taverns; suffered from neurasthenia and depression; admired Maturin from a distance, and emulated his wearing of a cloak; briefly met Carleton at a Summerhill picnic; assisted John O’Donovan with Annals of the Four Masters, but also helped Owen Connellan with a rival production; rejected by Ordnance Survey on the grounds of insufficient Latin learning; placed by Petrie with J. H. Todd to work in TCD library, where he was seen by Mitchel (who recorded his impressions in an introduction to the 1859 edition); contrib. “Anthologia Germanica” to Dublin University Magazine, from Jan. 1834; introduced to Charles Gavan Duffy by Carleton in 1836; prevented from contributing to The Nation because of Dr. Todd’s anxiety about his Young Irelander connections; dispute with his publisher about the preface of his translation-versions in the book of Anthologia Germanica (1845); wrote “My Dark Rosaleen”, 1846. |
| contrib. “Anthologica Hibernica” to Dublin University Magazine, from Feb. 1847; John O’Daly engaged him to prepare the translations in The Poets and Poetry of Munster (1849); sacked from TCD Library for refusing to shave off his moustache; latterly suffered hallucinated visions of his dead father (‘human boa-constrictor without his alimentive properties’); visited his mother’s family home, 1847; moved from one comfortless lodging to the next with his brother after his mother’s death, having briefly stayed on [St.] Peter St. as a tenant; wrote a series of begging letters, including one to John Anster accidentally signed with Anster’s name; also begged £1 from James Hardiman, writing from 151 Abbey St., from whence he was later evicted; wrote third-person verse-autobiography as “The Nameless One” [‘Old and hoary at thirty-nine, / from Despair and Woe’ - though actually aged 45), 1848; admitted to Vincent’s Hospital, May 1848, and shortly after to the Richmond after a fall into an empty basement; suffered financial hardship when the Nation’s editors were imprisoned, July 1848; a fund set up for him by the Freeman’s Journal; |
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wrote nine “Sketches and Reminiscences of Irish Writers” for The Irishman, including those of Maturin, Petrie, and Anster (all of whom he knew) as well as Maria Edgeworth, Gerald Griffin, and William Maginn (whom he did not); also wrote on Fr. C. P. Meehan, J. H. Todd, and John O’Donovan; contrib. “The Funerals” and then “The Famine” to United Irishman (March-June 1849); discovered during a cholera epidemic in ‘a state of indescribable misery and squalor occupying a wretched hovel where he had retired to die’ by Board of Health officers [poss. William Wilde]; removed to the North Union sheds but found not to be suffering from the disease; carried into the Meath Hospital; recognised in the hospital Whitley Stokes, who arranged a private room; shortly before his death he appears to have wandered from the hospital and fallen into the foundations of a house, then being built; d. in that hospital very soon after, on 20 June 1849, with Fr. C. P. Meehan reciting penitential psalms, at his request; a sketch in chalk was made by Frederick William Burton, who was summoned by Whitley Stokes; a death mask was also made; |
| his last writings were inadvertently destroyed by a hospital orderly, acc. John McCall (who gathered his poems from Dublin journals); the collected poems were first issued by Haverty in New York, with a preface by John Mitchel (Poems by James Clarence Mangan, 1859); an unreliable autobiography, elicited by Fr. C. P. Meehan and written ‘rather to unburden my own heart than to enlist the sympathies of my readers’, was published in The Irish Monthly, 1882; D. J. O’Donoghue issued a ‘centenary edition’ of the Poems in Dublin, 1904; Mangan was said by Douglas Hyde to have known no Irish (a disputed verdict); he was commemorated by Thomas MacDonagh in verse as the ‘poor splendid Poet of the burning eyes’; called by Yeats ‘our one poet raised to the first rank by intensity’, and by Joyce in an essay of 1907 ‘the failed standard-bearer of a failed nation’, but also ‘one of the world’s most inspired poets’; MacNeice dismissed him as ‘all thump and swagger and syrupy self-pity’; a bibliography of his writings compiled by P. S. O’Hegarty (1941). |
| there is a straight-forward modern life by Ellen Shannon-Mangan (1996), drawing extensively on the correspondence of Capt. Larcom and John O’Donovan; Louis D’Alton wrote an Abbey play about him (The Man in the Cloak, 1937); the bust in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, is by Oliver Sheppard (1906); Mangan has latterly been represented as Ireland’s poète maudit and his melancholia related to the historical condition of colonised and misgoverned Ireland - rather than personal disposition (e.g., endogenous depression); his addiction to opium seems certain but charges of alcoholism have been largely repudiated - in spite of the “butt of Malmsey’; a definitive edition of his poetry and prose was inaugurated by Augustine Martin [d.1995] and completed by Jacques Chuto, Ellen Shannon-Mangan, Peter van de Kamp, et al. (Dublin IAP 1996-2004); there are Mangan papers in the NLI, the RIA, and TCD. CAB ODNB PI JMC DBIV DIW DIB DIH RAF DIL/2 OCEL MKA FDA OCIL |
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| Sketch by Dora Sigerson (1897) | Bust by Oliver Sheppard (1909) |
| For further biographical details, see under Ellen Shannon-Mangan, James Clarence Mangan: A Biography (Dublin: IAP 1996), in References - as infra. |
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[ See also Poems of James Clarence Mangan at CELT Documents - Cork University - online. ]
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Note: Guiney interrogates the identity of the object of Mangan’s romantic affections which occasioned what she calls a calamity of the heart in 1832-35 and finds that she was less likely to be Frances Stacpoole than her sister Margaret; also considers his reaction to the death of Catherine Hayes less melancholy than supposed. Guiney finds the allegation that he was a drinker unsupported by the evidence - quoting George Sigerson’s remarks on the steadiness of his hand in the manuscripts for the The Poets and Poetry of Munster (1849) which Mangan supplied to O’Daly - and which O’Daly claimed were brought to him in different coloured inks, suggesting that he frequented numerous pubs - but concurs with the view that he was an opium-addict, mentioning Mangan’s complaint that Carleton had circulated rumours of his habit. (pp.22-23.) She also writes that Mangan was ‘sensitively grateful’ to the Young Irelanders and that his ‘impressionable mind’ was ‘swept in the wake of Davis, Duffy, Dillon, O’Hagan, Dalton Williams, Pigot, D’Arcy M’Gee, Meagher and Mitchel’ (p.40), and that - consequently - he ‘dedicated to his country a great deal of middling verse’ and ‘offered to become a member of the Irish Confederation [...] and, later, to follow John Mitchel to prosecution and exile’ but that the ‘wise leaders, as gentlemen endowed with humor, very gently dissuaded him’ (p.41.) |
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References
Dictionary of National Biography [ODNB] notes that Hercules Ellis tells a sensational story to the effect that Mangan’s death was caused by hunger not cholera (Introduction, Romances and Ballads, p.xiv); his appearance described by Duffy: ‘blue cloak ... golden hair as fine and silky as a woman’s’ (Young Ireland, 1883, p.297); Duffy offered to bear the expense of a volume of his poems in to be printed in London (1845); 30 poems in Ellis’s Romances and Ballad (1850); Essays in Prose and Verse, ed. C. P. Meehan (1884), does not include interesting set of sketches by him of prominent Irishmen which appeared in Irishman, 1849; item 4 in this bibl., Irish and Other Poems (Dublin 1886) [a small sel.].
Bibl., John McCall’s Life of James Clarence Mangan (Dublin; TD Sullivan 1887), 37pp. [BML]; Poems, ed. Mitchel, with intro. (NY 1859); material in Irishman (23 June 1849); Irish Monthly, p.11. [Notice by ‘DJ O’D’, viz., David James O’Donoghue.]
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Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives the following information: James Mangan assumed name ‘Clarence’ - thus Clarence Mangan, in Mitchel; born Dublin 1803, humble ed. at Derby Square, near his father’s shop [Fishamble St.] and Hoey’s Court; copyist for seven years in scrivener’s shop on small salary; spent two further years in an attorney’s office; learned that ‘a man’s foes are those of his own household’; constant reproaches of mother, sister, and brother; ‘sought to escape from consciousness by taking for bread opium, and for water brandy?’ [O’Donoghue]; in love with “Frances”, and jilted by her; employed in preparing new TCD library catalogue through assistance of Anster, Petrie, Todd [1841-46]; appearance at that time described by Mitchel, ‘It was an unearthly and ghostly figure in a brown garment, the same garment (to all appearance) which lasted till the day of his death. The blanched hair was totally unkempt; the corpse-like features still as marble; a large book was in his arms, and all his soul was in the book. I have never heard of Clarence Mangan before, and knew not for what he was celebrated, whether as a magician, a poet, or a murderer’; employed in Ordnance survey, [c.1833]; a principal contributor to Irish Penny Journal; Mitchel considered his edition does not contain as much as two thirds of his occasional verse, often nameless; his own admission that ‘Hafiz is more acceptible to editors than Mangan’; no active interest in politics; drifting towards what he called ‘the gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns’ [drink]; weeks of absence; Meehan among his friends; siezed with cholera, d. 20 June; ‘a grave in the bosoms of the pitying’ (“The Nameless One”). [Cont.]
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (1904) - cont.: Quotes C. G. Duffy, ‘he has not, and perhaps never had, any rival in mastery of the metrical and phythmicla resources of the English tongue; his power over it is something wholly wonderful’; Lionel Johnson (in A Treasury of Irish Poetry), ‘few poets more imperatively demand to have their lives considered in any estimate of their poems. Over Mangan’s life is writ large the inscription of hopelessness and incapacity to be strong; he let fo the helm, to drift through life and through the worlds of poetry, metaphysics, curious lore of many kinds, finding achorage in any harbour. He squandered his power and mastery over verse upon matter mediocre or worse; and even that in a desultory, capricious fashion, as the humour of the hour took him. An alien in the world, he had desires, but no ambitions; he cared nothing for literary fame, and everything was some indefinable ideal with which his daily life was in fearful contrast. Before his later years he knew no positive definite suffering but such as a firm will could have overcome; but, without incurring Dante’s curse upon those who “willfully live in sadness”, he could seem from the first to have persuaded himself that the valley of the shadow was to be his way through life.’ Also quote Miss Guiney at length, citing in turn Edmund Gosse on the “overflow”: ‘this bad habit of good poets completely ruins several of Mangan’s longer pieces’ maing them impossible to read aloud; ‘his mental strength, crowded back from the highways of literature, wreaked [sic] itself in feats not the worthiest’. [Cont.]
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (1904) - cont.: selects “O Woman of the Piercing Wail” [‘who mournest o’er yon mound of clay / With sigh and groan / Would god thou wert among the Gael! / thou would’st no then from day to day / Weep thus alone’], a lament for the Tyronian and Tyrconnellian princes buried at Rome [6pp.]; “Gone on the Wind” [‘Solomon! where is they throne?’] [after Ruckert - recte Rueckert]; “St Patrick’s Hymn before Tarah” [cf. closer rendering by Stokes]; “Dark Rosaleen” [from ‘the Irish’]; “The Nameless One”; “The Time of the Barmecides”; “Siberia”; “The Bard O’Hussey’s Ode to the Maguire” [‘Where is my chief, my master, this bleak night, mavrone? / Oh cold, miserably cold is this blark night for Hugh; / Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet, pierceth one through and through, / Pierceth one to the very bone // An awful, a tremendous night is this meseems ...’] [ending with an ‘avran’]; “Love Ballad [from the Irish]”; “20 Golden Years Ago”; “Aldfrid’s Itinerary” [translated ‘more closely than was his wont’, according to Hyde]; “Kinkora” [‘O where, Kinkora! is Brian the Great, / And where is the beauty that once was thine? ... Where, O Kinkora?’ [ascribed to Mac Liag, sec. of Brian Boruimha]; “Fair Hills of Eiré O [sic]” [after Donogh Mac Con Mara]; “The Grave, the Grave”; “Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan” [a Jacobite Relic, from the Irish, ‘Long they pine in weary woe - the nobles of our land- / Long the wander to and fro, proscribed, alas! and banned; / Feastless, houseless, altarless, they bear the exile’s brand, / But their hope is in the coming-to of Kathaleeen Ny-Houlahan // think her not a ghastly hag, to hideous to be seen; / Call her not unseemly names, our matchless Kathaleen; / Young she is, and fair she is, and would be crowned a queen, / Were the king’s son at home here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan // &c.’]
D. J. O’Donoghue, Geographical Distribution of Irish Ability (Simpkin &c. 1906), advertises James Clarence Mangan - The Poems of Mangan, Centenary Ed., ed. D. J. O’Donoghue, with the famous introduction by John Mitchel, and a new portrait, the completest collection ever published, 400pp.; notices incl. Freeman’s Journal, ‘This may be considered the final edition of Mangan’s Poems’; also advertised, Prose Writings of Mangan, now first collected, and edited by D. J. O’Donoghue, with an essay by Lionel Johnson, and a new port., nearly 400pp.
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Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol 1, remarks that Mangan’s inaugural poem for The Nation, 15 Oct. 1842, was reprinted in The Spirit of the Nation as “The Nation’s first number”, ‘Tis a great day and glorious, O Public! for you - / Th[is] October Fifteen, Eighteen Forty and Two! / For on this day of days, lo! THE NATION comes forth, / to commence its career of Wit, Wisdom and Worth – / To give genius its due – to do battle with wrong - / And achieve things undreamt of as yet, save in song.’ (The Nation, 15 Oct 1842 [I, 1], p.9 clearly intended to be sung to tune of ‘Rory O’More’ [143, and n.] (See also details of the The Nation, infra.]
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English (1980), Vol. 2, pp.241-69 [Bibliography, with ftn. declaration that it has been ‘revised and updated by Jacques Chuto’, p.341], incls. early contributions to various almanacs (viz., Grant’s New Ladies’), 1818-26; “Schiller’s Address to his Friends”, National Magazine, ‘J. M.’ (1 Oct 1830, p.354); var. contribs. in The Comet, 1832-33; various in The Dublin Penny Journal, 1832; var. in The Dublin Satirist, 1833-34, continued as The Weekly Dublin Satirist, 1834-35; var. in Irish Penny Magazine, 1833, 1842; var. in The Dublin University Magazine, Jan. 1834-May 1849 [incl. Anthologia Germanica, I-XXII; Litterae Orientales, 1-VI; Lays of Many Lands, I-VI; Stray Leaflets from the German Oak, “First Drift” to “Seventh Drift”, and “A Fresh Gathering”, “First Garland”, “Second Garland” [no third Garland], “IV[th Garland]”; et al. indiv. titles and series incl. Anthologia Hibernica, Nos I-III (all in 1847)]; var. in The Vindicator, Belfast, ?1839-1841; var. in The Irish Penny Journal, 1840-41; var. in The Nation, 1842-48 [beginning with “Our First Number”, unsigned, 15 Oct., p.9]; The Nation 1849, n.s., devotes condescending article to Mangan, lately deceased, and quotes poems, also 2 unpublished poems, ‘C. M.’; contributed to The Irish Union Magazine [none cited]; The Irish Monthly Magazine, ?1845-1846, incl “Gleanings from the German”, 4 “Sheafs”, “Loose Leaves from an Odd Volume” I-III, Duffy’s Irish Catholic Magazine, 1847-48 [incl. religious themes such as “Stabat Mater”, “Lamentation of Jeremias”, and “St Patrick’s Hymn Before Tarah”; The United Irishman, 1848 [4 pieces inc. Letter assuring of support to Mitchel at time of prosecution, No. 7, 25 March, p.106]; The Irish Tribune, 1848; The Irishman, 1849-50 [incl. Sketches of Maturin, Petrie, Anster, C. P. Meehan, Miss Edgeworth, G. Griffin, Dr. Todd, John O’Donovan, W. Maginn, and J. C. Mangan, signed E.W. [but by Mangan himself]; also “A Word in Reply to Joseph Brenan”, J.C.M., I, 22, 2 June 1849, p.347, being a poem answering another “Word to James Clarence Mangan” by Brenan in prev. number]. RAF lists works published in book form., viz, Spirit of the Nation; Ballad Poetry of Ireland, Anthologia Germanica; Poets and Poetry of Munster; Romances and Ballads of Ireland, ed. Hercules Ellis; Miscellany (Dublin: Celtic Soc. 1849); Tribes of Ireland; Poems Orig. and Translated by JC Mangan, ed M. R. Leyne, suppl. to The Nation, 25 Dec 1852), 16pp.; Essays in Prose and Verse, ed. Meehan; Irish and Other Poems (Dublin: Gill 1886), 144pp.; J. C. Mangan, Selected Poems, ed. Imogen Guiney; Poems of J. C. Mangan, centenary ed., D J O’Donoghue, with intro. Mitchel (1903); Prose Writings, ed. O’Donoghue, with essay by Lionel Johnson [Centenary Edition] (O’Donoghue / London: A. H. Bullen 1904), xv, 331pp.; Autobiography, ed. James Kilroy (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1969), 36pp; Selected Poems, ed. Michael Smith, foreword Anthony Cronin (Gallery Press 1973).
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English (1980), Vol. 2, pp.241-69, Bibl. of Criticism: incls. D. J. O’Donoghue, Robert Welch, as above; briefly cites commentary by Auden, de Blacam, E. A. Boyd, A[lice] Stopford] Brooke, Corkery, J. S. Crone, R. Farren, A. P. Graves, D[avid] H. Greene, K. W. Heaslip, T., Kinsella, J. McCarthy, T. MacDonagh, D[onagh] MacDonagh, M. Monahan, F. O’Connor, Chas. Read, D. Ryan, G. Taylor, etc.; also Sean O’Casey in Drums Under the Windows (1945, Macmillan paperback I, p.617); W. B. Yeats, remarks in ‘Modern Irish Poetry’, in editorial essay in Vol. III of Irish Literature, ed. Justin McCarthy (1904); Poetry and Ireland (1908) [var. 1909], and Uncollected Prose, passim. Mod. edns. incl. James Kilroy, ed., The Autobiography of James Clarence Mangan (Dolmen Press 1969), 36pp.; Anthony Cronin, Foreword, Michael Smith, ed., Selected Poems (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1973), 96pp.. Studies incl. Francis Thompson, ‘James Clarence Mangan’, in Academy, 25 (Sept 1897), and ‘A bewildered Poet’, in Academy (16 May 1903), and ‘Mangan the Unhappy’, in Academy (15 Aug 1903); D. J. O’Donoghue, The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan (Edin: P. Geddes / Dublin: Gill &c. 1897), xxiv, 250pp., ill; Lionel Johnson, ‘James Clarence Mangan’, in Academy, 5 Feb 1898, pp.142ff, reprinted in Post Luminium (London: E. Matthews 1911), pp.218 seq.; James Joyce, ‘James Clarence Mangan’ (London: Ulysses Bookshop, 1930), 16pp., orig in St Stephen, A Record of Univ. Life, I (6 May 1902), pp.115-17 [rep. in Ellmann, ed., Critical Writings, 1959]; Henry E. Cain, James Clarence Mangan and the Poe-Mangan Question (Washington DC 1929), xi, 83pp.; Padraic Colum ‘James Clarence Mangan’, in Dublin Magazine, VII, no. 2 (Apr-June 1933), pp.32-40; John D Sheridan, James Clarence Mangan [‘Noted Irish Lives’ Ser.] (London: Duckworth / Dublin: Talbot 1937), 128pp.; Louis D’Alton, ‘The Man in the Cloak’, in Two Irish Plays (London: Macmillan 1938); P. S. O’Hegarty, A Bibliog. of J. C. Mangan, rep. Dublin Magazine ([priv.] Dublin: Thom & Co.), 8pp.; Liam Brophy, ‘Poe and Mangan:Twin Souls’, in Ave Maria (Notre Dame: Indiana 16 July 1949), pp.71-75; F. J. Thompson, ‘Poe and Mangan’, in Dublin Magazine, Jan. 1950, and ‘Mangan in America’, idem. July 1952, pp.30-41; A. N. Jeffares, ‘Tribute to a Dublin Poet and Writer, James Clarence Mangan’, in Envoy, IV, No. 14 (Jan 1951), pp.23-32; Rudolph P. Holzapfel, ‘Mangan’s Poetry in the Dublin University Magazine: A Bibliography’, in Hermethena, CV (1967), pp.40-54, and Rudi Holzapfel, James Clarence Mangan, a Check-List of printed and Other Sources (Dublin: Scepter Publ. 1969), 88pp.; James Kilroy, Preface to Autobiography [as above]; also James Clarence Mangan, in Irish Writers series (Bucknell UP 1970), 74pp.; Jacques Chuto, ‘Mangan’s “Antique Deposit” in TCD Library’, in Long Room 2 (Autumn-Winter 1970), pp.38-39; Chuto, ‘A Further Glance at Mangan and the Library’, in Long Room 5 (Spring 1972), pp.8-10; ‘Mangan, Petrie, O’Donovan, and A Few Others, The Poet and the Scholars’, in Irish University Review, VI, 2 (Autumn 1976), pp.169-187; ‘James Clarence Mangan: In Exile at Home’, in Etudes Irlandaises, n.s., 1 (1976), pp.35-40; Giichi Ouchi, ‘On James Clarence Mangan’, in General Studies (Waseda Univ. Tokyo Feb 1974), pp.47-61; Henry J. Donaghy, James Clarence Mangan (NY: Twayne 1974), 141pp.; Robert Welch, ‘“In Wreathed Well”: J. C. Mangan, Translator from the Irish’, in Eire-Ireland XI, 2 (Summer 1976), pp.36-55. [Query: Tom Batdell, Bibliography of J. C. Mangan [?1940- ].]
Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), offers a short article by James Kilroy citing only Poems, ed. D. J. O’Donoghue (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Sons Ltd 1903); Prose Writings, ed. O’Donoghue (Gill 1904); James Kilroy, ed., Autobiography (Dublin: Dolmen 1968); Henry J. Donaghy, James Clarence Mangan (Twayne 1974); James Kilroy, James Clarence Mangan (Bucknell, 1970); D. J. O’Donoghue, The Life and Writings of J. C. Mangan (Edinburgh: Geddes 1897).
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Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), listing Anthologica Germanica ... translations from the most popular of the German Poets (Dublin: Curry 1845); The Poets and Poetry of Munster, a selection of Irish Songs ... with poetical translations (O’Daly 1849); Poems Original and Translated, being a selection from his contributions to Irish Periodicals (Supplement to the Nation, 25 Dec. 1852); Poems by James Clarence Mangan, introd. John Mitchel (NY 1859); Essays in Prose and Verse (Duffy 1884); Irish and other Poems (Gill 1886); Poems of James Clarence Mangan ... ed. David J. O’Donoghue, intro. John Mitchel (Bullen 1903); Selected Poems ... ed. Michael Smith, foreword Anthony Cronin (Gallery 1974); The Prose Writings of James Clarence Mangan, centenary edition, ed. DJ O’Donoghue, essay by Lionel Johnson (Bullen 1904). Many other crit. commentaries incl. Robert Welch, ‘In Wreathed Swell, James Clarence Mangan, Translator from Irish,’ in Eire-Ireland, 11, no. 2 (Summer 1976). Also also James Kilroy, ed. The Autobiography of James Clarence Mangan (Dolmen 1968), 36p. (see Irish Lit. (1978), p. 163).
Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature (OUP 1986), reminds us that his career is reflected in Brian Moore’s The Mangan Inheritance.
Christopher Morash, ed., The Hungry Voice (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989), contains extensive remarks in the introduction; selects “A vision of Connaught in the Nineteenth Century” in The Nation Vol 5, No. 250 (July 17, 1847), Mangan’s self-parody, “A vision of Connaught in the 19th century”, a famine poem ending, ‘It was reading the Freeman - / An’s page sublime, / That opiate speeches made me doze; and I dreamed this dream / Of the terrible time / Of Randolph Roth, of the wine-red nose.’ Under translation-epigraph, ‘Et moi, j’ai aussi aux enfer / And I, I too, have been in the West of Ireland’ (See Morash, p.130); appearing in The Nation, Vol. 5., no. 250 (July 17 1847), with the notice, ‘Mangan, exactly a year ago, wrote ‘A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century’ [central char. Cathal Mór] which, as it may have escaped the memory of some of our readers, we republish. Now, we ask our readers to compare it, line by line, with this graphic composition by a younger Mangan, and pronounce with us in favour of the new comer.’ ‘The Famine’, his last published poem, in The Irishman, Vol 1, No. 23 (June 9, 1849). ‘Lamentations of Jeremias over Jerusalem, in Duffy’s Irish Catholic Magazine April 1847. each stanza corresponding to a verse of the original. ‘The Peal of Another Trumpet’, in The Nation, Vol. 4 No. 186 (May 2 1846). ‘Poempeii, in Duffy’s Irish Catholic Magazine (April 1847). ‘Siberia’, in The Nation, Vol. 4., No. 184 (April 18, 1846). ‘Song of the Albanian’, in The Nation, vol. 5 No. 254 (14 Aug 1847). ‘A Vision, A.D., 1848’, in The United Irishman, vol. 1, No. 3 (26 Feb 1848). ‘A voice of Encouragement - a New Year’s Lay’, in The Nation vol. 6 No. 274 (Jan 1 1848) ‘The Warning Voice’, in The Nation, vol. 4. No. 176 (21 Feb. 1846). ‘When Hearts were Trumps’, in The Irishman, vol. 2 no. 4 (Jan 26 1850). See also ‘Lament for James Clarence Mangan’ by Richard D’Alton Williams, published as ‘Implore Pace for Clarence Mangan’ in The Irishman, Vol. 1, No. 27 (7 July 1849). Morash quotes Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, ‘Personal Memories of James C Mangan, Dublin Review, Vol. 142, No. 285 (April 1908), ‘When he emerged into daylight, he was dressed in a blue cloak, mid summer or midwinter, and a hat of fantastic shape, under which golden hair, as fine and silky as a woman’s, hung in unnkempt tangles, and deep blue eyes, lighted a face as colourless as parchment. He looked like the spectre of some German romance rather than a living creature’. (Duffy, op. cit., p.278; Morash, The Hungry Voice, 1989, p.22).
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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, gives selections pp.23-38: “A Despairing Sonnet”, in The Vindicator 1839; “The Time of the Barmecides”, in Litterae Orientales, IV, Arabian, Persian and Turkish, Dublin University Magazine, April 1840; “The Caramianiam Exile, in Litterae Orientales, V, in Dublin University Magazine, 1844; “The Night is Falling” as part of Loose leaves from an Odd Volume appeared in Irish Monthly Magazine (1845); “Dark Rosaleen”, in The Nation [IV. 190] (30 May 1846), p.521; “Roisin Dubh, from Poets and Poetry of Munster (1849); “O’Hussey’s Ode to the Maguire”, from Specimens of The Early Native Poetry of Ireland (1846), vol. I, ‘Literature in Irish 1600-1800’ [pp.278-79]; “A Vision of Connaught in the 13th Century” (epigraph, “Et moi, j’ai été aussi en Arcadie”, from The Nation, 11 July 1846; “Lament over the Ruins of the Abbey of Teach Molaga”, in The Nation, 8 Aug. 1846; “Siberia”, [in ibid?; no source given]; “The Warning Voice”, from CP Meehan, ed., Essays in Prose and Verse (Dublin 1906); “The Geraldine’s Daughter”, from Poets and Poetry of Munster (1849); “The Nameless One”, from The Irishman (1849); “The Fair Hills of Eire O!”, from Poets and Poetry of Munster (1849); “Twenty Golden Years Ago”, in Dublin University Magazine (1840); “The Lovely Land”, on a Landscape, Painted by M[aclise], in The Nation, 1849; also, “The Twenty-fourth of February”, after the German of Zacharias Werner, appeared in Dublin University Magazine (1837); Anthologia Hibernica commenced in Dublin University Magazine, Feb. 1847.
FDA2 Refs. & rems.: Editorial, pp.2, 3]; The Introduction to Charles Gavan Duffy, ed., The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1845) includes an encomium praising Mangan as being pure Irish in a way that Moore was not [5]; ed. rems [6, 7]; biog. George Petrie, 206 [17]; Rev. John Kenyon, 1812-69, edited poems by Mangan, 267n]; [Heaney, ed., Yeats Section, Introduction, 783, 785]; [Yeats, “To Ireland in the Coming Times”, 794]; [T. W. Rolleston, 973]; [Thomas MacDonagh, ‘On Translation’, in Literature in Ireland (1916), 991]; [Frederick Ryan, 999].
Seamus Deane, gen. ed. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing(1991), Vol. 3, quotes James Joyce: ‘The old national soul that spoke during the centuries through the mouths of fabulous seers, wandering minstrels, and Jacobite poets disappeared from the world with the death of James Clarence Mangan’ (‘Mangan’ essay, 1902, 1907 [10]; allusion to Barmecides in “Cyclops” [73n.]; [bio-note on Joyce, 86]; Denis Johnston’s Old Lady Says “No!” ‘almost entirely from lines of Mangan’, et al. [172], viz, “The Fair Hills of Eire”, in Old Lady &c., Pt. II, [180n]; 20th century Irish nationalist diet of Young Ireland, Mangan, etc, ed. [612]; Kinsella, Mangan, Davis, Ferguson? (1969), originally ‘The Irish Writer’, in PMLA, NY 1966 [625]; bibl. David Lloyd, Nationalism and Minor Literature: J. C. Mangan and the Emergence of Irish cultural Nationalism (Berkeley 1987) [637n]; rems. on Joyce [672]; Mangan cited by Sean Golden (Crane Bag, 1979), as Irish / Anglo-Irish [675]; cite in bio-note on David Lloyd [679].
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Ellen Shannon-Mangan, James Clarence Mangan: A Biography (Dublin: IAP 1996), 493pp.; Chronology, pp.xi-xix; 2nd son of Catherine Smith and James Mangan (m. 1798); No. 3, Fishamble St.; experienced partial blindness resulting from ‘walk in rain’, 1808; ed. Saul’s Court Jesuit School, 1810; father’s name disappears from Directory after 1810; altar boy at SS Michael and John; ed, Michael Courtney’s Academy (Derby Sq.); ed., Arran Quay, princ. Fr. Doyle; family settle in Chancery lane hovel, 1817; contribs. ‘puzzle poems’ to Jones Diaries, 1817; contrib. Grant’s and New Ladies’ almanacs; apprenticed to Kenrick scriveners, No. 6 York St., 1818; dwells with and supports family at Chancery St.; contribs. to almanacs over name James Tynan; hospitalised, 1820; leaves family and continues publishing in almanacs with allowed quota; silhouette and sole portrait of Mangan, 1822; publishes as ‘Peter Puff Secondus’, after James Tighe, 1823; ‘To My Native Land’ [later title], in New Ladies, 1825; concludes apprenticeship, 1825; works for Matthew Frank, 28 Merrion Sq., N., to 1829; writes only eight poems, 1826-31; contribs to the Friend as I.X.M, 1829; falls in love with “Frances”; takes employment at Thomas Leland, 6, Fitzwilliam Sq., 1829-38; participates in Law Clerks’ petition for Repeal of Union meeting, 1831; publishes Parson’s Horn-book in The Comet, Summer 1831; adheres to John Sheehan in Comet split, 1831; contribs. to Comet from Sept., 1832; contribs. to Dublin Penny Journal, pseud. “An Italian Gentleman”, 1832; suffers extremely at death of Catherine Hayes, Oct. 1832; uses nom de plume “Clarence”, Dec. 1832; quits Dublin Penny Journal when Philip Dixon Hardy assumes editorship, 1833; meets Owen Connellan with purpose of learning Irish, 1833; ed. Dublin Satirist, 1833, contributing 41 pieces of prose and verse; contribs. three poems to Dublin University Magazine, 1834; proposes to Margaret Stacpole, aet. 15, and is refused, 1834; contribs. “The Lay of the Bell” to Irish Monthly Magazine of Politics and Literature, 1834; commences “Anthologia Germanica” in Dublin University Magazine, Jan. 1835; phrenological study performed on his head, 1835; br. John dies, 1835; meets Charles Gavan Duffy at Morning Register, 1836; employs pseud. “Johann Theodore Drechsler” in Dublin University Magazine, 1836; commences “Litterae Orientales” in Dublin University Magazine, Sept. 1837; engaged by O’Donovan to copy his MS. translation of Annals of the Four Masters for the printer, 1837; commences to work for Ordnance Commission, March 1838; shows extreme poor health; produces three anthologies, and contrib. two short stories to Dublin University Magazine, 1838; “A Sixty Drop Dose of Laudanum”, in Dublin University Magazine, 1839; reads Swedenborg, Winter 1839; denies having become opium-eater to Duffy, 1839; announces recovery from ‘intellectual hypochondriasicism’ [sic] in Dublin University Magazine, 1839; refuses Fr. Mathew’s abstinence pledge, 1840; contribs. to Vindicator; contribs “Twenty Golden Years Ago” to Dublin University Magazine as ‘“Selber” [Himself], 1840; takes work cataloguing books in TCD Library through good offices of Petrie and J. H. Todd, 1841 and serves as Library Clerk, 1842-44; [employment terminated and] afterwards unemployed; contrib. “Our First Number” to first issue of The Nation (15 Oct. 1842); a single chapter of “Anthologia Germanica” pub. in Dublin University Magazine, 1843; appears in rep. poems in The Nation [i.e., The Spirit of the Nation, 1843]; his father dies, 26 Sept. 1843, and cares for ailing mother, 1844; collaborates with Connellan on translating (‘Englishing’) Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, 1844; meets Edward Walsh, 1844; meets John O’Daly, 1844; issues “Litterae Orientales: Ottoman Poetry [fifth article]”, in Dublin University Magazine, May 1844; resumes work at TCD on half-time, 1846; issues German Anthology, 2 vols. (June-July 1845); meets Rev. Charles Meehan, 1845; contribs. to Irish Monthly Magazine ( Oct. 1845); meets John Mitchel, 1845; contribs. final chap. of “Litterae Orientales” to Dublin University Magazine (Jan. 1846); contrib. “The Warning Voice” to Nation, Feb. 1846; contribs. intensely nationalist poetry (‘hate poems’) to Nation under Mitchel’s editorship, March-April, 1846; contrib. Irish translations to Nation; “My Dark Rosaleen”, in Nation, 30 May, 1846; concludes Anthologia Germanica with 22nd chap. in Dublin University Magazine, June 1846; mother dies, 6 August, 1846; his proposed membership of Irish Confederation rejected by Duffy, 1847; contribs. to first issue of James Duffy’s Irish Catholic Magazine, 1847; declares intention of working soberly and absolutely for the Irish cause to Duffy; homeless after death of mother; visits her family farm nr. Kiltale, 1847; embraces abstinence from alcohol; starts drinking again, Dec. 1847; joins Mitchel and contribs. to United Irishman, Feb. 1848; Mitchel publishes Mangan’s declaration, formerly rejected by Duffy, 25 March, 1848; seeks employment for his br. William through John Anster, April 1848; enters St. Vincent’s Hosp., May 1848; leaves but soon enters Richmond Hospital after a fall, June, 1848; living at Fishamble St.; writes short autobiography at Meehan’s request, together with autobiographical poem, “The Nameless One”, autumn 1848; contribs. “Look Forward” to first issue of Irishman, 13 Jan. 1849; engaged on John O’Daly’s Poets and Poetry of Munster and The Tribes of Ireland, March-April 1849; contribs. ‘impersonal autobiography’ as ‘Gasparó Bandollo’ to Dublin University Magazine, May 1849; contracts cholera and retires to cholera shed; recovers but discovered close to death and admitted to Meath Hospital, 13 June, 1849; d. 20 June; bur. family plot at Glasnevin, with a handful of mourners.
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Catalogues
University of Ulster Library (Central) holds Anthologia Germanica, or a garland from the German poets and miscell. poems by J. C. Mangan 2 vols. (Duffy 1884) PR4973; DJ O’Donoghue, intro. by John Mitchel, Poems of James Clarence Mangan, many hitherto uncollected (Gill 1922), 332pp. [see Mitchel ed., 1857, supra]; ; also ; Mangan, The Prose Writings of J. C. Mangan (O’Donoghue 1904), 329pp.; ; Charles B Quinn, Twenty Gaelic Poems translated by James Clarence Mangan (1960), PhD thesis Fordham Univ., xerox reprint, OS0PB1353; James Kilroy, James Clarence Mangan (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1970), 74pp.
University of Ulster Library (Morris Collection) holds: Irish and Other Poems, with a selection of his translations, new ed. (Gill 1904), 144pp.,; Louise Imogen Guiney, James Clarence Mangan, His Selected Poems, with a study (Boston: Lamson Wolffe, London: John Lane 1897), 361pp.; The Poets and Poetry of Munster, a selection of Irish Songs by Poets of the Last Century, with poetical translations by the late James Clarence Mangan, with the music and biographical sketches of the authors by John O’Daly [3rd edN.] (Dublin: O’Daly 1851), 290pp.; The Poets and Poetry of Munster, a selection of Irish Songs by Poets of the Last Century, with poetical translations by the late James Clarence Mangan, with the original music and biographical sketches of the authors (by John O’Daly) and Irish text rev. by W. M. Hennessy; ed. by C. P. Meehan, 4th ed. (Dublin: James Duffy 1901), 355pp. Aenghus O’Daly, The Tribes of Ireland, a Satire by Aenghus O’Daly, with poetical trans. by J. C. Mangan (O’Daly 1852), 112pp. [English and Irish on facing pages]; Essays in Prose and Verse (Duffy 1884); Irish and other Poems, with a select. of his translations (1904); The Poets and Poetry of Munster ... Irish poets of the last century (Duffy 1901); do. (John O’Daly 1851).
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Notes
Pseudonyms of Mangan incl. Drescher, Sleber, Rerrae Filius, Hi-Hum, The Man in the Cloak, The Out and Outer, Peter Puff, A Mourne-r, Herr Hoppandgoön Baugstrauter, Herr Popandoön, ... (Books Ireland, Summer 2004, p.190.)
“My Dark Rosaleen” was based on Samuel Ferguson’s translation of a Gaelic original, “Roísín Dubh” (Dublin University Review, 1834), in the course of his review of James Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy (1831). Mangan’s version, printed in The Nation (30 May 1846), follows Hardiman’s view of the original as a political poem [viz., an aisling] which Ferguson had disputed, regarding it instead as the love-poem of a Catholic priest who awaits a dispensation from the Pope to marry his Black Rose. Mangan called his poem a free translation of an Irish original that ‘purports to be an allegorical address from Hugh [Red Hugh O’Donnell] to Ireland, on the subject of his love and struggles for her, and his resolve to raise her again to the glorious position she held as a nation before the irruption of the Saxon and Norman spoilers.’ (Quoted in Jarleth Killeen, ‘Woman and Nation Revisited: Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose’, in Critical Ireland: New Essays in Literature and Culture, ed. Aaron Kelly & Alan Gillis, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001, p.143.)
Note: Seán Ó Riada used the original melody as a leit-motif for the score of Mise Eire (Gael Linn 1966), a film celebrating the Easter Rising.
Annie Keary: Castle Daly (1875), a novel by Keary, contains verses of “Roisin Dubh [My Dark Rosaleen]”: ‘Woe and pain, pain and woe, / Are my lot night and noon- / to see your bright face clouded so, / Like to the mournful moon; / [303] But yet will I rear your throne / Again in golden sheen; / ‘Tis you shall reign, and reign alone, / My dark Rosaleen, My own Rosaleen, / ‘Tis you shall have the golden throne, / ‘Tis you shall reign and reign alone, / My dark Rosaleen. // I could scale the blue air, / I could plough the high hills; / Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer / To heal your many ills. / The heart in my bosom faints / To think of you, my queen, / My life, my saint of saints, / My dark Rosaleen, My own Rosaleen; // To hear your sweet and sad complaints / My life, my love, my stint of saints, / My dark Rosaleen. // Oh, the Earn [sic] shall run red / With redundance of blood; / The earth shall rock beneath our tread, / And flames wrap hill and wood, / And gun peal and slogan cry / Wake many a glen serene, / Ere you can fade, ere you can die, / My dark Rosaleen, / My own Rosaleen. / The judgement hour must first be nigh / Ere you can fade, ere you can die, / My dark Rosaleen.’ (pp.303-04; see further under Annie Keary, supra.)
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“Slán Chum Pádraic Searsal”, an Irish poem was translated by Mangan in The Poets and Poetry of Munster, first ser.; also by Douglas Hyde (in Jan. 1888); and a prose version by Lady Gregory, in Poets and Dreamers and in The Kiltartan Poetry Book as ‘A Blessing on Patrick Sarsfield’. (See Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974, p.127; n., 216.)
W. B. Yeats: Yeats wrote two studies of Mangan as ‘Clarence Mangan’ (1886), and ‘Clarence Mangan’s Love Affair’ (1891), rep. in Uncollected Prose 1 (Macmillan 1970), pp.114-19, 194-98.
W. B. Yeats: In his Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats (1984), A. N. Jeffares quotes Mangan’s lines, ‘Theirs were not souls wherein dull Time / Could domicile Decay or house / Decreptitude!’, in connection with Yeats’s phrase ‘bodily decrepitude is wisdom’ (Op. cit., p.316.)
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Frederick Burton: Burton made a chalk portrait of Mangan immediately after his death at Meath Hospital to which he was summoned by William Stokes who recognised him being carried into hospital (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Museum 1965). The smaller sketch in conté and sanguine paper, bequeathed by Miss Margaret Stokes to National Gallery of Ireland is probably a copy of No.2033 in the NGI collection (as in Cruikshank, op. cit.).
Clarence?: Mangan acquired his middle name from his habit of repeating the line, ‘Clarence is come - false, fleeting, perjured Clarence’, from Shakespeare’s Richard III. The character of the Duke of Clarence, remembered only because of his having drowned in a barrel of wine [malmsey], fascinated Mangan.
Margaret Mitchell: Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind shares a - presumably - Biblical echo with the title of Mangan’s poem “Gone in the Wind” - an ubi sunt on a biblical theme: ‘Solomon! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind. Babylon! where is thy might? It is gone in the wind. / Like the swift shadows of Noon, like the dreams of the Blind, / Vanish the glories and pomps of the earth in the wind.’ If this seems improbably, consider that Mitchell substitutes her own Ulster-Irish stock for a native Irish family in the O’Haras of the novel - a family whose attitude reflects the dispossession of the Southern land-owners but reflects more closely those of the Irish famine emigrants.
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Bicentenary Commemoration
A Bicentenary Commemoration of James Clarence Mangan (1 May 1803-20 June 1849) was held in Dublin on 1 May 2003.
Programme: 11 a.m. CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST at THE WRITERS MUSEUM: A Homage to Mangan’s poetry with readings by SEAMUS HEANEY, PAULA MEEHAN, GARRET FITZGERALD, THEO DORGAN, DES GERAGHTY (‘And then he actually breakfasted’, “The Thirty Flasks”). Launch of Selected Poems of James Clarence Mangan, 2 p.m. TURNING-IN at THE CASTLE INN (“Turning-in, or Stopping as a Guest at the Tavern”, Anthologia Germanica, VII: ‘There came into his greenhouse / Many lightwinged guests; / They tripped it freely, and banquetted, / And sang to the best of their ability.’) At home with Mangan in poetry and prose with Evelyn Conlon, Jacques Chuto, Peter van de Kamp and Paddy Finnegan.
Bi-centenary play: A play was written by Gerry McDonnell in commemoration of Mangan’s life at the bi-centenary (2003).
Wine from the good Pope?: Buy4Now.ie was offering the “Róisín Dubh Hamper” for €49 during the Christmas run-up, 2007. The treat includes three delicious Irish cheeses mixed with two French wines making] this a perfect afternoon or evening snack for 3-4 people - Chamarre Cabernet Sauvignon Grenache 75cl (France); Chamarre Chardonnay Sauvignon 75cl (France); Cahill’s Farm Ardagh with Wine Cheese 200g.; Cahill’s Farm Ballintubber Cheese with Chives 200g.; Cahill’s Farm Ballyporeen Cheese with Mixed Irish Herbs 200g.; Ditty’s Irish Oatcakes 150g.; Mrs. Bridge’s Mediterranean Chutney with Flame Grilled Peppers 270g. [available online; 15.11.2007].
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