Life
?1715-1795 [Gaedhealach Ó Súilliobháin]; b. Limerick, d. Waterford; early life as wandering poet in Waterford and Cork, a Jacobite poem earning him imprisonment in Cork City; settled in middle age in Dungarvan,
becoming deeply religious; Bishop of Raphoe in 1802 or poss. one of his parish clergy collected Timothy O’Sullivan’s Pious Miscellany;
to which is added a poem on the Passion of Our Saviour, by the Rev. Dr. Coyle, Roman Catholic Bishop of Raphoe (Clonmel 1802); immensely popular,
reprinting 40 times in Clonmel, Cork and Dublin; set to music; republished with additional matter by John O’Daly (Dublin 1858); his poems were edited by Fr. Patrick Dineen as Amhráin Thaidg Gaedhealaigh Uí Súilleabháin (1903) while Richard Foley [Risteárd Ó
Fughludha] edited the Miscellany in issues of The Gaelic American (NY, Oct 1910-Feb 1911), under pen-name ‘Fiachra Eilgeach’. DIW OCIL
Works
Pious Miscellany ( Limerick [1832]), and Do. [6th edn.] (Cork 1817); Patrick Dineen, ed., with notes, Amhráin Thaidg Gaedhealaigh Uí Súilleabháin iar n-a gcruinniughadh is a gcur i n-eagar leis an Athair Pádraig Ua Duinnín (Dublin 1903); Padraig J. Daly, ed., Furnace of Love: A Selection from the Religious Poetry of Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin (Dublin: Dedalus Press 2002), 44pp.
Notes
Seamus Ua Casaide, ‘Some Missing Books’, in Irish Book Lover (Oct. 1909), seeks to learn about T. O’Sullivan (Tadhg Gaolach), Pious Miscellany, with edns. in Limerick ante 1832; Clonmel circa 1804-1811 and another 1816, and ‘any edition prior to 6th edn. (Cork 1817)’, adding parenthetically: ‘Vide Father Dineen’s Edition of T. Sullivan’s Poems (Dublin 1903), and bibliographical article in Irishleabhair no Gaedhilge, Dublin Dec. 1905.)
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