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| 1860-1922 [Thomas Johnson Westropp]; b. 16 Aug., at Attyflin, nr. Patrickswell, Co Limerick; son of substantial landowner, John Westropp (d.1866), and Charlotte [née Whitehead], a second wife to whom Thomas - her only surviving son (though he had several half-brothers and sisters) was strongly attached, espec. in view of his father’s death when he was six; educated at home by his mother herself and later by a private tutor; grad TCD (BA 1882; afterwards commuted to MA); qualified in civil engineering, 1885; worked briefly as an asst. surveyor in Co. Meath but turned full-time antiquarian dedicated to archaeology and folklore from 1888, supported by private means; |
| published his archaeological papers in Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy and the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Irish Antiquarians - usually as the record of lectures given at each, to which he sometimes added appendices and ‘notes’ in subsequent publications; also published in the journal of the Limerick Archaeological Society and similar organs in Cork and Galway; his folklore and mythology research mainly appeared in Folk-lore: Transactions of the Folk-lore Society (London), during 1910-13; the materials for which were scrupulously recorded without any resort to ‘leadng questions’ he also wrote official guides to the antiquarian collections of the Science and Art Museum, Dublin; a series of his papers was published in book-form by the RIA as The Ancient Forts of Ireland (Dublin Univ. Press 1902); he also wrote a short life of Brian Boru as King Brian, the Hero of Clontarf (1914); |
| he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1893 and served as vice-president for two terms in 1902–5 and 1913–16 before becoming President in 1916; he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy [MRIA] in 1894 and became a Council Member and Editor of the Proceedings of the RiA in 1988; he photographed many of the monuments and remains he wrote about and he also recorded the damage caused in Dublin by hostilities during the 1916 Rising in photos which were published contemporaneously; his strict preference for oral folk-lore records over literary redactions inlfuenced James Delargy [q.v.] and others connected with Bealoideas and the Irish Folklore Commission - with its recording machines - in the 1940s; |
| d. 9 April 1922, of intestinal nephritis, and bur. in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross (Dublin); several of his folklore studies of Co. Clare have been collected and edited by the Ennis-based publisher Clasp and there is a biographical study bt Mairéad Ashe FitzGerald (UCD). RIA/DIB |
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Works| Full-length studies |
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| Articles, Papers & pamphlets [sel.] |
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Note: a longer list of Westropp"s articles as offprints and bound pamphlets is given in the COPAC/Discovery Hub of UK Libraries - a rough copy of which is available here - as attached. |
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Bibliographical details
Folklore of Clare: A Folklore Survey of County Clare and County Clare Folk-tales and Myths, intro. by Gearóid Ó Crualaoich (Ennis: Clasp Press 2000), iv, 130pp., ill. [originally publ. in Folk-lore: Transactions of the Folk-lore Society, 1910-13. CONTENTS - Chaps. 1. The Gods; 2. The Red Branch Heroes; 3. Finn Cycle; 4. Semi-historical Tales; 5. Early Christian Period; 6. The Danish Wars and King Brian; 7. Other Traditions up to A.D. 1270; 8. Period 1318-1500; 9. The Sixteenth Century; 10. The Seventeenth Century; 11. The Eighteenth Century; 12. Undated Tales; Notes.Folklore from Clare, intro. by Gearóid Ó Crualaoich (Ennis: Clasp Press 2001), 144pp., 130pp. CONTENTS: Chaps. 1. Place Names and Legends of Places; 2. Banshees; 3. The Death Coach; 4. Fairies and Fairy Forts and Mounds; 5. Will o the Wisps and Corpse Lights; Underground Folk; 6. Water Spirits and Mer-folk; 7. Ghosts and Haunted Houses; 8. Supernatural Animals; 9. Spectral Lands and Cities; 10. Charms, Amulets and Magical Sites; 11. Lucky and Unlucky Deeds; 12. Omens, Dreams & Divination; 13. Calendar Customs; 14. Wells and Well Customs; 15. Patterns and Religious Rites; 16. Religious Objects and their Legends; 17. Animal and Plant Superstitions; 18. Rocks, Caves and Stones; 19. Earthworks and Buildings; 20. Miscellanea and Addenda. (Full-text available Co, Clare Library online; accessed 26.12.2025.)
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Criticism
Mairéad Ashe FitzGerald, Thomas Johnson Westropp: (1860-1922): An Irish Antiquary [UCD Dept. of Archaeol.; Seandálaíocht Monograph Ser., No. 1] (Dublin: UCD [2000]), 133pp., ill., maps.
Commentary
George A. Little, Dublin Before the Vikings (1957), notes that ‘Westropp points out the sensitiveness of the early Irish to landscape coloration. as examples he instances some names of forts [lios] (I give his spelling), Lisderg, Redford; Lisbuy, Yellowfort; Caherbreac, Speckledfort, Lisglass, Greenfort; Rathduff, Blackfort. (The Ancient Forts of Ireland, TRIA, vol. XXXI, pt. 14 (1902), p.591.’ (Little, p.26). Further, Westropp notes that ‘in our literature the word (dún) is frequently equated with city’ (Ancient Forts in Ireland, TRIA, Vol. XXI, 1902, p.590). ALSO, Westropp, Early Italian Maps, PRIA Vol. XXX, Sec. C. no.16, p.401, remarks on the Norse settlement in Wicklow (Wiking-luc; Viking Beach, or properly flame, from lue) being imposed on an earlier promontory fort. [37]. ALSO, Westropp, Early Maps of Ireland, PRIA, vol. xxx, sect. c, no.16, refers to wine refreshments given guests by Diarmait Mac Carbhaill, ‘the king for whom wine was served in splendour’, after the Battle of Magh Rath. (p.66) [80]. Further, Little quotes an extensive passage from Westropp, dealing with the location of St. Patrick’s well outside the cloister walls, ‘So far from endeavouring to secure unfailing supply of water within their walls, the fort builders were careful rather to exclude any well or spring that rose near the site selected for their enclosure. Strange to say, this curious fact was not confined to Ireland; it has left its mark on the greatest literature of the world. We recall the pathetic incident of the Well at the gate of Bethlehem whence intruders, though with risk of bloodshed, could draw water; or those springs before the gates of Ilium, where the ladies had washed their robs in peace before the Achaeans came, and to which the fated Hector ran, pursued by his deadly foe. Schliemann found two springs 400 ft. east of Mycenae, which fortress had to trust to a water-supply outside its walls. Hirtius also records how Uxellodunum was reduced by the Romans, because its only spring lay outside the walls. The same fact appears in Irish literature. Columba, Adamnan tells us, prophesied that the well near Dún Ceithern would be defiled with human blood. The Colloquy of the Ancients mentions ‘a hidden ell to the south side of the fortress’ and apparently its fosse. / This peculiarity sprang from a wish to avoid the pollution of the water-supply; there was, too, comparatively little risk of blockade.’ (The Ancient Forts of Ireland, [n.p.]). ALSO, Westropp, Irish Motes, JRSAI (pp.39-30), ‘The great mounds in Denmark are not similar to Irish motes’; ‘the negative evidence is strongly against the Danish origin of high motes.’ Little regards the Thingmote as of Irish origin, if also employed by Scandinavians for meetings. [128-29] Bibl, Westropp, T.J., The Ancient Forts of Ireland.
Liam de Paor, ‘The Folks on the Hill’, in The Irish Times (30 Jan 1993), writing of the complex of hillforts at Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, remarks: ‘hillforts in Ireland seem to be comparatively few, and often aberrant in type, but they were sufficiently interesting to attract attention since the early days of archaeology. Round the turn of the century that great field-worker T. J. Westropp strove to record as many as possible, in association with his work on raths and other earthworks and monuments ...’].
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References
Hyland Books (Cat. 214) lists Hodder M. Westropp, ‘Pre-historic Phases, or Introductory Essays on Prehistoric Archaeology (1872).
Notes
Kith & Kin (1): Col. George O’Callaghan Westropp, is portrayed in David Fitzpatrick, Politics of Irish Life as ‘an Anglo-Irish type still too little noticed by historians ... in whom love of place transcends divisions based on origins, religion, politics’, and is briefly mentioned also in R. F. Foster, Paddy and Mr Punch (1993), p.30.
Kith & Kin (2): Stackpoole Westropp wrote of the Burren and the distinctive Clare-Galway landscape that ‘the joints in the rocks have been so opened up that a man could go down bodily into some of them and disappear from the face of the earth.’ And further: ‘Although there is an abundant fauna of corals and branciopods in the limestone, fossils are seldom seen clearly on the surface of the rock. Large productid brachiopods (gigantoproductids) often catch the eye where the stone has been used for building.’ (Quoted in John Feehan & Grace O’Donovan, The Magic of Coole, [Dublin:] OPW 1993, p.49.)
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