Life
1814-1845 [Thomas Osborne Davis; Osborne is the family name of the Earls
of Leeds]; b. 14 Oct., Mallow, Co. Cork, posthumous son of a British army
surgeon (John Thomas Davis) and Mary Atkins (with O’Sullivan Beare forebears),
his father dying en route to the Peninsular War; moved to Dublin at four
and raised in upper-middle class milieu, being educated with Catholics
of his class; ed. TCD; encouraged in patriotic view by Thomas Wallis,
TCD ‘grinder’ (commenced [grad.] on 16 Feb. 1836); addressed Hist. Soc.
on Cromwellian and Williamite periods, striking a new nationalist tone
in appeals to the honour and intelligence of his audience and citing Lessing
and Herder on the relation between culture and independent nationality,
characterising Swift, Lucas, and Grattan as ‘mind-chieftains’; received
society medals; grad. with poor degree, 1836; lived on small inheritance;
issued The Reform of the Lords, by a graduate of the Dublin University
(1837), pamphlet; Bar, 1838 [var. 1837 DIL]; address to TCD Historical
Society, 1839, offering such apothegms as ‘regenerate Ireland’; ‘Gentlemen,
you have a country’ [vide Lady Wilde]; ‘patriotism is human philanthropy’;
‘the man who now avoids his citizenship has no defence but imbecility’;
Thomas Davis’s contributes to the Citizen (1839-41) articles such
as “The Irish Parliament of James II”, as well as “Udalism
and Feudalism”, a history of European land tenure with special application
to Ireland; joined Repeal Association; sub-ed., with John Blake
Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy, Dublin Morning Register, under
editorship of Michael Staunton, 1840; co-fnd., with Duffy and Dillon,
The Nation, first issue appearing on 15 Oct., 1842, over the banner
‘to create and foster public opinion, and make it racy of the soil’),
acting as editor; and he wrote up to 15,000 words a week in articles,
verses and reviews to a number in excess of 200; his earliest printed
poem printed over the pseud. “A True Celt”, appeared in the
third issue; articles on “The Patriot Parliament of 1689”, later
reprinted by Charles Gavan Duffy in the New Irish Library (1893), called
by Lecky ‘by far the best and fullest account’; railed increasingly against
England’s ‘tottering and cruel empire’ in prose and verse when O’Connell
was imprisoned in Richmond Bridewell; established Young Ireland party,
May 1845, differing from O’Connell over the non-denominational education,
which Davis consistently supported for the sake of an Ireland ‘whose peculiar
curse was religious dissension’; d. 16 Sept., of scarlatina fever, at
his home, 67 Baggot St., while engaged to Anne Hutton (otherwise a ‘thwarted
love affair’); advocated foreign policy for Ireland, reform of House of
Lords, and objected to attempt to run a road through Newgrange; his best-known
poems incl. “A Nation Once Again”; “The West’s Asleep”;
“Fontenoy”; “Lament for the Death of Owen Roe [O’Neill]”;
“Clare’s Dragoons”; "My Land”; Letters of A Protestant
on Repeal, edited posthumously by Thomas Francis Meagher (1847) [var.
1846]; Davis was the author of the phrase ‘moral force’ in its Irish context,
though he was claimed by Patrick Pearse as a prophet of physical force; numerous of his pamphlet
collection on Irish commerce were acquired for the collection at Marsh’s
Library’ called by Gavan Duffy ‘the best man I have ever known’; bur.
Mount Jerome, Rathfarnham, where a monument by J. Hogan was raised; there
is a portrait by Henry MacManus and a pencil sketch from memory by Frederick
Burton (almost certainly copied from a daguerretype of the 1840s); the
modern statue on the former site of William III’s equestrian figure at
College Green by Edward Delaney does not attempt a likeness; the Thomas
Davis Lectures have been transmitted annually on RTÉ since 1953,
followed by a printed outcome published by Mercier Press. CAB
DNB JMC ODQ TAY MKA DIB DIW DIH RAF FDA OCIL WJM
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Published Editions
Speeches of John Philpot Curran (Duffy 1843; edn. enlarged 1845; 1861); The Life of J. P. Curran (Dublin: Duffy 1846); Thomas Wallis, ed., The Poems of Thomas Davis, Now First Collected (Dublin: Duffy 1846), viii, 232pp. [infra]; Literary and Historical Essays, ed. Charles Gavan Duffy [Duffy's Library of Ireland] (Dublin: Duffy 1846; edns. to 1880) [ded. to John Blake Dillon], x[i], 252pp.; Thomas Meagher, ed., Letters of a Protestant, on Repeal [printed for Irish Confederation] (Dublin: Duffy 1847), vii, 36pp.; T. W. Rolleston, ed., Prose Writings: Essays on Ireland by Thomas Davis [The Scott Library] (London: Walter Scott 1889, 1890), xiv, 285pp., and Do. [rep. edn.; The Scott Library] (London: W. Scott 1910), xiv,[2],285,[17]pp.; Charles Gavan Duffy, ed. & intro., The Patriot Parliament of 1689, with its Statutes, Votes, and Proceedings [New Irish Library] (London [Dublin & NY]: Fisher Unwin 1893), 8vo. [rep. of articles in Dublin Monthly Magazine (Jan.-April 1843)]; T. W. Rolleston, ed., Prose Writings: Essays on Ireland by Thomas Davis [The Scott Library] (London: Walter Scott 1889, 1890), xiv, 285pp., and Do. [rep. edn.; The Scott Library] (London: W. Scott 1910), xiv,[2],285,[17]pp., and Do., as T. W. Rolleston, ed., & intro., Thomas Davis: Selections from His Prose and Poetry (Dublin: Talbot Press 1910), x, 367pp. [infra]; Essays Literary and Historical [Centenary Edn.], prefaces and notes by D. J. O'Donoghue and an essay by John Mitchel (Dundalk: W. Tempest 1914), xxiii, 456pp. [infra]; Arthru Griffith, ed. & sel., Thomas Davis: Thinker and Teacher [the essence of his writings in prose and poetry selected, arranged, and edited by Arthur Griffith] (Dublin: Gill 1914), 288pp.; Essays and Poems with a Centenary Memoir, 1845-1945, foreword by An Taoiseach Eamon de Valera (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son 1945), xi, 236pp.; The Love Story of Thomas Davis told in the Letters of Annie Hutton (Cuala Press 1945) [‘Out of Series'; Hyland Jan. 1996]. Also, contrib. verse to C. G. Duffy, ed., Spirit of the Nation (Dublin 1843); M. J. Barry, ed., The Songs of Ireland (Dublin: Duffy 1845) [reps. his ‘Essay on Irish Songs'].
Bibliographical notes
Essays Literary and Historical by Thomas Davis (Dundalk: Tempest 1914). CONTENTS: ‘Udalism and Feudalism' [1841], pp.52-90; ‘Self-Education', pp.90-96; ‘Our National Language I', pp.97-102; ‘Our National Language II', pp.102-07; ‘Absenteeism of Irish Genius', pp.108-11; ‘National Art I', pp.119-23; ‘Irish Topography', pp.129-39; ‘Art Unions', pp.140-43; ‘The Sea Kings', pp.144-51; ‘Irish Music and Poetry', pp.160-63; ‘Irish Antiquities and Irish Savages', pp.167-72; ‘Ireland's People', pp.173-78; ‘The Valuation of Ireland', pp.179-191; ‘Irish Scenery', pp.192-96; ‘Old Ireland', pp.197-201; ‘A Ballad History of Ireland', pp.240-48; ‘A Chronology of Ireland', pp.249-55; ‘Foreign Travel', pp.207-13; ‘The Speeches of Grattan', pp.291-300; ‘The Round Towers of Ireland', pp.312-328; ‘Institutions of Dublin', pp.29-339; ‘The State of the Peasantry', pp.340-343; ‘The Irish Brigade', pp.344-348; ‘"The Library of Ireland"', pp.349-55; ‘The Irish Peasantry', pp.356-58; ‘Wexford', pp.362-65; ‘Ballad Poetry of Ireland', pp.366-76; ‘The History of Ireland', pp.381-385; ‘Commercial History of Ireland', pp.386-391. [So listed by CURIA / March 1999; note lacunae.]
T. W. Rolleston, ed., & intro., Thomas Davis: Selections from His Prose and Poetry (Dublin: Talbot Press 1910), x, 367pp. CONTENTS: ‘The Irish Parliament of James II', pp.1-73; ‘Hints for Irish Historical Paintings', pp.112-15; ‘The History of To-day', pp.134-38; ‘The Resources of Ireland', pp.139-45; ‘The Songs of Ireland', pp.225-31; ‘Influences of Education', pp.232-36; ‘No Redress - No Inquiry', pp.257-61; ‘Foreign Policy and Foreign Information', pp.266-70; ‘Moral Force', pp.271-74; ‘Conciliation', pp.275-78; ‘Scolding Mobs', pp.279-80; ‘Munster Outrages', pp.281-85; ‘ A Second Year's Work', pp.286-90; ‘Orange and Green', pp.291-93; ‘The Right Road', pp.[292-300] Academical Education', pp.294-301 [So listed by CURIA / March 1999; note lacunae.]
Thomas Wallis, ed. & intro., National and Historical Ballads: Songs and Poems by Thomas Davis (Dublin: James Duffy 1846; reps. 1869; new & rev. edn. 1876), 254pp. CONTENTS: 1. National Ballads and Songs; 1. Miscellaneous Songs and Ballads; 3. Historical Songs and Ballads; 4. Do., 2nd ser.; 5. Miscellaneous Poems [contains “Orange and Green”, p.54; “The Banks of the Lee”, p.66; “The Welcome”, p.74; “A Nation Once Again”, p.93, &c.; also ‘Prose Extracts on Irish Nationality'.]
Samuel Ferguson, ‘Our Portrait Gallery', No. 4, Dublin University Magazine (1847).
Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Davis: The Memoirs of an Irish Patriot, 1840-46 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1890) [vars. Unwin 1892; infra]
Charles Gavan Duffy, Short Life of Thomas Davis 1840-46 (Dublin: James Duffy 1895).
J. M. Hone Thomas Davis (Dublin: Talbot Press; London: Duckworth 1934).
J. L. Ahern, Thomas Davis and His Circle (Waterford: Carthage 1945).
M. J. MacManus, ed., Thomas Davis and Young Ireland (Dublin: Stationary Office 1945) [incl. Padraic Fallon, ‘The Poetry of Thomas Davis']
Michael Quigley, ed., Pictorial Record, Centenary of Thomas Davis and Young Ireland (Dublin: Public Sales Office 1945).
[q.auth.,] Love Story of Thomas Davis told in the Letters of Annie Hutton (Dublin: Cuala Press 1945) [ltd. edn. 250].
W. B. Yeats, Tribute to Thomas Davis (Cork UP; London: Blackwell 1947).
Denis Gwynn, O'Connell, Davis, and the College Bill (Cork UP; London: Blackwell 1948).
Kevin McGrath, ‘Writers in The Nation 1842-45, in Irish Historical Studies, 6 (1949), pp.189-223.
Moody, ‘Thomas Davis and the Irish Nation', in Hermethena, CII (1966) [q.pp.].
T. W. Moody, ‘A Select Bibliography of Thomas Davis', in Hermathena, CIII (Autumn 1966), pp.25-31.
W. B. Yeats and Thomas Kinsella, Davis, Mangan, Ferguson? (Dublin: Dolmen 1971).
T. W. Moody, ed., The Fenian Movement (Cork: RTÉ / Mercier Press 1968; rep. 1978).
Alf Mac Lochlainn, ‘The Racism of Thomas Davis', Journal of Irish Literature 5 (May 1976), pp.112-22
Malcolm Brown, ‘O'Connell and Davis in Partnership' and ‘The Nation's First Year' [chaps.], The Politics of Irish Literature, From Thomas Davis to W. B. Yeats (London: George Allen & Unwin 1972), et passim. See also D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982; new edn. 1991), pp.155-59 [&c.].
David Lloyd, Nationalism and Minor Literature (1987).
Barbara Hayley, ‘A Reading and Thinking Nation: Periodicals as the Voice of Nineteenth-century Ireland', in Hayley & Enda McKay, ed., Three Hundred Years of Irish Periodical (Assoc. of Irish Learned Journals: Gigginstown, Mullingar 1987), pp.29-48, espec. p.40-41.
John Nelson Molony, A Soul Came Into Ireland: Thomas Davis 1814-1845 (Dublin: Geography Publ. 1995), 397pp. [incls. extensive bibliography]
David Alvey, ‘Thomas Davis: The Conservation of a Tradition', in Studies (Spring 1996), pp.37-42.
Mulvey, Helen E., Thomas Davis and Ireland: A Biographical Sketch (Washington: CUA Press 2002), 288pp.
See also introductions to collected and selected editions, listed under Works (T. W. Rolleston, Arthur Griffith, et al.).
Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Davis: The Memoirs of an Irish Patriot, 1840-46 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1890) [vars. Unwin 1892]; Do., another edn., introduction by Brendan Clifford (Cork: Aubane Historical Society [2000]), 264pp.; and Do. [facs. rep. of 1890 1st edn.] (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 2002).
Malcolm Brown on Davis’s poetic method, in The Politics of Irish Literature, Allen & Unwin 1972, pp.64-65; quoted in Callum Boyle, Essay, PG Dip., UU 2004.
Stephen Gywnn, Irish Lit. and Drama, 1936, p. 90.
Samuel Ferguson, ‘Our Portrait Galley’, No. XLII, Dublin University Magazine, Vol. 29 (Feb. 1847),pp.190-99.
William Carleton: ‘his [Davis] brief life and appearance here were not a thing of ordinary being, but a miracle and a mystery', quoted in Benedict Kiely, Poor Scholar, 1947; 1972, pp.109ff.
W. B. Yeats, “Modern Irish Poetry”', in Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature, 1904, Vol. III, p.pp.vii-xiii; p.viii-ix.)
W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 1961, pp.312-13; quoted in R. F. Foster, ‘Square-built Power and Fiery Shorthand: Yeats, Carleton and the Irish Nineteenth Century’, in The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland, Penguin 2001, p.122.
W. B. Yeats, Prefatory notes to King of the Great Clock Tower, cited in A. N. Jeffares, A New Commentary to the Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1984, p.334; Alan Warner, A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981, p.22.
W. B. Yeats, Speech made at Thomas Davis Commemoration, 1914, quoted in Dublin Magazine, 1966, infra.
John Eglinton (William Magee), ‘Island of Saints' in Saints and Bards (1906).
John Mitchel, Essays Literary and Historical [Centenary Edn.] (Dundalk: W. Tempest 1914), Preface, xx.
D. J. O’Donoghue, in Preface, Essays Literary and Historical, 1914, p.ix.
Patrick Pearse, speech on Thomas Davis (1916), cited in W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition, 1984.) Note that Pearse was prevented from delivering the speech inside TCD by J. P. Mahaffy.
Padraic Fallon: ‘His poetry served magnificently the only purpose which he allotted to it, that of Nationality' (‘The Poetry of Thomas Davis', in Thomas Davis and Young Ireland, Dublin 1945, p.214.)
Denis Donoghue, ’Yeats and Modern Poetry: An Introduction’, in Donoghue, ed., The Integrity of Yeats, 1964, pp.9-10.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, Vol. 2 (1980)
Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde (1974), pp. 91, 117.
Frank Tuohy, Yeats (Macmillan 1976), p.12.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol. 1 (1980).
Richard J Loftus, Natonalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry, p.6.
Arthur Griffith, ed., Thomas Davis, The Thinker and Teacher, pp.171-2.
J. C. Beckett, Making of Modern Ireland (1966 & eds.), p.332.
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984).
David Cairns & Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture (Manchester UP 1988)
Jacqueline Hill, ‘Nationalism and the Catholic Church in the 1840s: Views of Dublin Repealers', in Irish Historical Studies, Vol. XIX, no. 76 (1975), pp.371-94.
JacquelineHill, ‘the Intelligentsia and Irish nationalism in the 1840s', in Studia Hibernica, No. XX (1980), pp.73-109.
Robert Dudley Edwards, ‘The Contribution of Young Ireland to the Development of the Irish National Idea', in S. Pender, ed., Feilschríbhinn Torna (UUC 1947), pp.115-33.
Samuel Clarke, Social Origins of the Irish Land War (Princeton 1942).
Barbara Hayley, ‘A Reading and Thinking Nation: Periodicals as the Voice of Nineteenth-century Ireland', in Hayley and Enda McKay, ed., Three Hundred Years of Irish Periodical (Assoc. of Irish Learned Journasl: Gigginstown, Mullingar 1987), pp.29-48, pp.40-41.
Seamus Deane, A Short History of Irish Literature (London: Hutchinson 1986), p.75.
Mark Storey, Poetry and Ireland since 1800, A Source Book (1988), p. 53.
Gerard O'Brien, ed., Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, collected Essays of Maureen Wall (1989), pp. 60
R. F. Foster, ‘Varieties of Irishness', in Maurna Crozier, ed., Cultural Traditions in Northern Ireland: Varieties of Irishness [Proceedings of Cultural Traditions Group Conference] (Belfast IIS 1989), p.13.
Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Great Melody (1992), pp 251, 253
David Lloyd, Anomalous State: Irish Writing and the Post Colonial Moment (Duke UP 1993), pp.16, 17.
Jacqueline Hill, review of John Nelson [sic] Molony, A Soul Came into Ireland: Thomas Davis 1814-1845, A Biography (Geog. Publ. 1995), in ILS, Spring 1996, p.9-10.
Rory Brennan reviews John Neylon [sic] Molony, A Soul Came into Ireland: Thomas Davis 1814-1845 (Geography Publ. 1995), in Books Ireland (Feb. 1996), pp.21-22.
S. J. Connolly, ‘Culture, Identity and Tradition: Changing Definitions of Irishness', in Brian Graham, ed., In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography of Ireland (Routledge 1997), p.59.
Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature (London: Pluto Press 1998): ‘Davis opened up the national struggle on a whole new front' pp.70, 71.
Selina Guinness, That Other World: The Supernatural and the Fantastic in Irish Literature, [PGIL Conference] Colin Smythe 1998.)
Desmond M. Clarke & Charles Jones, eds., The Rights of Nations: Nations and Nationalism in a Changing World (Cork UP 1999), Introduction, p.7.
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Oxford Dictionary of Quotations selects two lines from "The Welcome" [‘Come in the evening, come in the mornin', / Come when you're looked for / Come without warning.'
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry 1991), Vol. 1: Bibl., Speeches of John Philpot Curran (Duffy 1843; edn. enlarged 1845; 1861); Literary and Historical Essays, ed. Charles Gavan Duffy (Duffy 1846); The Poems of Thomas Davis, ed. Thomas Wallis (Duffy 1846); The Life of JP Curran (Duffy 1846); Letters of a Protestant, on Repeal (Irish Confederation 1847); T.W. Rolleston, ed, Prose Writings of Thomas Davis (London 1890). FDA2 selects “Lament for Death of Owen Roe O'Neill”; “Song of the Volunteers of 1782” [see infra, quoted by Conor Cruise O'Brien]; “Nationality”; “Celts and Saxons“, “My Grave”; “The West's Asleep” [50-51]. No BIOG marked in Index [ital.], but notes, among most important and worst of Irish poets [Seamus Deane, ed.], [1]; in his Short Life of Thomas Davis 1840-46 (1895), Charles Gavan Duffy tells us that Davis's aims ‘were far away from literary success. All his labours tended only to stimulate and discipline people' ... produced nearly fifty ballads a year ‘used to say that, if he had his will, the songs of the Nation would be remembered in after times, and the authors quite forgotten ..', [2]; Mangan takes Davis's advice to look at the new Ordnance Survey map and identify the territories referred to in the Irish poems, [30]; Duffy, in Young Ireland, A Fragment of Irish History 1840-45 (1880), ‘..nearly all that will be permanently remembered of the labours and sufferings of the men who composed it were events accomplished after the death of Davis and the apparent rout and dispersion of his friends'; Yeats and O'Leary confirm his influence, but his nationalism ineffective against famine conditions [Deane, ed.], [117-18]; , Davis's questionable idea that protective tariffs would have saved Ireland from the worst effects of free trade [ed.], [119]; compared to Mitchel in terms of the vision of a ‘unique Irish destiny' in a racist, British contest, [120]; Mitchel, The Last Conquest (1861), Chap. X, ‘Before the grave had yet closed on Thomas Davis [there] began to spread awful rumours of approaching famine' (Davis d. 16 Sept. 1845), [178]; (in Davitt), [201]; (influence on O'Leary, ‘the fountain and the origin must always be sought in Davis', [252, 253]; (Fr. Meehan, ed. Davis [n.d.], 267n); The title of Eoin MacNeill's “The North Began” [1913] taken from Davis's “Song of the Volunteers”, [286]; Pearse, ‘Mitchel's gospel is part of the testament, even as Davis's is' (“The Sovereign People”, pamphlet of 1916), [294]; (reference to his Protestantism implied by Rolleston, 973); ‘.. the worthy Thomas Davis, who made a great, a noble, and an epoch-making effort to turn the national spirit in the direction of literature' (Eglinton / Ryan, Dana 1904), [976]; Davis's essay “The Irish Language' appeared in 2 pts. in The Nation, 1 Apr. and 30 Dec. 1843; Eoin MacNeill quotes from it the phrase a Nation should guard its language” in his article “Our Whig Inheritance”, in Ireland Today, Nov. 1936 (ed. comments that the phrase was not the beginning of the article as MacNeill claims; [981]; for Thomas MacDonagh, Davis was one of those without the ‘Irish accent of Ferguson' (1916), [990], a political essayists [do.], [991]; John Eglinton, ‘The De-Davisisation of Irish Literature' [995-97; see Eglinton, infra]; (cited in Dana 1904 by Ryan as English-speaking and no worse a nationalist for it, 999); (?Canon Sheehan, 1043). See also FDA3, 748: de Valera quotes Davis in his celebrated radio speech on Patrick's Day, 1943 (‘athletic youths ... and comely maidens, &c'), ‘Our young artisans must be familiar with the arts of design and the natural sciences connected with their trade; and so of our farmers; and both should, beside, have that general information which refines and expands the mind, that knowledge of Irish history and statistics that makes it national and those accomplishments and sports which make leisure profitable and home joyous. / Our cities must be stately with sculpture, pictures and buildings, and our fields glorious with peaceful abundance ... to seek it is the solemn, unavoidable duty of every Irishman (Davis, ‘Foreign Travel', The Nation 17 Aug. 1844). For biog., see Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 1991, Vol. 1, p.1299 [as supra]; also ‘Bibliography of Young Ireland' in FDA2, incl. Thomas Davis and Young Ireland: A Selected Bibliography (Dublin Stat. Off., 1945); R. G. O'Sullivan, The Young Irelanders (1944); D[enis]. Gwynn, Young Ireland and 1848 (1948); R. Davis, The Young Ireland Movement (1987); J[ohn] Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism (1987); David Lloyd, Nationalism and Minor Literature (1987). Also, (TCD address of 1839), ‘The cumbrous state of our literature renders a formal study of metaphysical and moral philosophy essential.' [FDA1]
R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland (London: Allen Lane 1988), p. 311, bio-data: b. Mallow, Co. Cork, ed. TCD, Bar 1838; Repeal Assoc., 1840; co-fnd. Nation, 1842; leader of Young Ireland, 1842-45; stood up to O'Connell over the issue of non-denominatonal education; ballads ‘inspired the nationalism of Mitchel and secularised that of Duffy ... the purest Irish patriot ... ceaseless worker on committees and societies, incl. RIA.
Portraits: An oil portrait of Davis by Henry MacManus, formerly owned by Charles Gavan Duffy and presented by George G. Duffy [with an inscription in Irish] is now held I the Young Ireland Gallery of Aras an Uachtaráin [see Catalogue of College Historical Pictures, &c. est. Douglas Hyde, 1944). Also Davis, by Frederick Burton, pencil, head looking left and head looking right, from memory, presented by the artist in 1872 [National Gallery of Ireland] (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition [Cat.] 1965.)
A life of Tone, projected by Davis for the Library of Ireland, to be published by Duffy, was never actually written; instead Carleton supplying Parra Sastha (1845) for the same series.
Arthur Griffith spoke of Davis in the treaty debate of 1921-22 as ‘the prophet I followed throughout all my life, the man whose words and teachings I tried to translate into practices and policies'. Quoted in Michael Tierney, Daniel O'Connell 12 Centenary Essays (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1949), p.152.
Fintan Cullen, ed., Sources in Irish Art: A Reader (Cork UP 2000), contains Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry; Samuel Madden; Lady Morgan’s Life of Salvator Rosa; David Wilke’s letter from Ireland; Thomas Davis; George Petrie; W. B. Yeats; Elizabeth Thompson, Mainie Jellet, and others.
James Joyce: The plaintiff echo, ‘Shize? I should shee! Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie? [...]’, which is attributed to ‘all the hoolivans of the nation’ in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) [Bk. I.i; p.6] echoes the line ‘Oh! why did you leave us, Owen? Why did you die?” [... &c.]’, in “Lament for the Death of Owen Roe O’Neill”. [See under Quotations, supra.]
Language question: Davis's views on the hierarchy and commensurability of language are derived from and comparable with those of among languages regarding Herder, Fichte, Hegel, the Grimms, and Goethe; see Grattan Fryer, Romantic Literature and the European Age of Revolutions, Renaissance and Modern Studies, Vol. 8 (1964), pp.53-74 (cited in Cairns & Richards, op. cit., 1988, p.44.)
W. B. Yeats, in Poetry and Ireland (with Lionel Johnson, 1908, p. 14), cannot resist ridiculing Davis for reciting before his death ‘one of the worst of the patriotic poems of Young Ireland'. (Cited in Ian Small, ‘Yeats and Johnson on the Limitations of Patriotic Art', Studies, Vol. LXIII, 1974, pp.379-88.)
W. E. H. Lecky wrote to Gavan Duffy that Davis never had an opportunity to sort out his thinking into an ordered body of writing (quoted in review of Helen Mulvey, Thomas Davis and Ireland, 2002, in Books Ireland, Sept. 2003, p.196.
Stephen Brown, SJ. ed., Poetry of Irish History (enl. edn., M. J. Brown, Talbot 1927), refers to his intention as fulfilling Davis's scheme for a Ballad History of Ireland, quoting Davis to that effect.
Winston Churchill quoted Davis in a wartime telegram to Eamon de Valera; ‘In December 1941 came the American entry into the war with the Japanese attach on Pearl Harbour. It was the occasion of a characteristically melodramatic telegram from Churchill to de Valera: “Now or never. ‘A Nation Once Again’. Am very ready to meet you at any time.” The evocative middle phrase was not, it now appears from a recent clarification, a flambouyant promise of unity in return for abandonment of neutrality but rather an emotional appeal to Ireland to recover its lost soul by taking the side of the angels. In any case, it was treated by de Valera as a rhetorical flourish.’, quoted in Murphy, Ireland in the Twentieth Century, Gill & Macmillan, 1975, 1989, p.105.
De Burca Books (Cat. 44, 1997) lists T. F. O'Sullivan, The Young Irelanders (1944); Do., [2nd. Edn.] Thomas Davis Centenary Edn. (1945) [Hyland Oct. 1995; 219]. Thomas Davis: Essays and Poems with a Centenary Memoir 1845 1945. With a foreword by an Taoiseach, Eamon De Valera. Illustrated. Dublin Gill, 1945. Pages, ix, 240. V.good in frayed dj. [£30].
Belfast Public Library holds 12 titles including The Patriot Parliament of 1689 (1893). MORRIS holds Essays Literary and Historical (Dundalgan Press 1914).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)