[An tAthair] Peadar Ó Laoghaire

Life
1839-1920 [anglice Fr. Peter O’Leary]; b. Liscarrigane, parish of Clondrohid, Co. Cork; ed. Carriganima Nat. School;, Macroom, Kanturk, St., Colman’s College, Fermoy, and Maynooth, 1861; ord. 11 June 1867; curate and priest in parishes of diocese of Cloyne ( Glountane, 1862-72 and 1882-84; Rathcormac, 1872-78, Macroom, 1878-80, Charleville, 1880-82, Doneraile, 1884-89, and Castlelyons, PP, 10 Feb. 1891; Canon, 1906); supported Michael Davitt and the Land League; founded small libraries and administered schools; a native speaker, his faith in the literary potential of the Irish language was encouraged by Archbishop John MacHale who reproached him for failing to mention Irish writers in a prize-winning essay on literature; fnd-mbr. Gaelic League, 1893, and began writing in Irish soon after; issued Ar nDóithín Aroan (1894) for young readers; became chief advocate of the use of the living speech (‘caint na ndaoine’), quarrelling with Eoin MacNeill devoted to a pseudo-classical style, though Bergin and others later chose his approach as a model for the emerging modern literary Irish, and greet enthusiastically by Pearse (‘here at last is literature’) and others; a play in Irish by Ó Laoghaire was performed in Macroom, 13 May 1900; contrib. frequently to Irish-language periodicals; stories in Séadna (1904), first published as a serial in The Gaelic Journal for 1894-97, tells of a cobbler’s adventures in conflict with the devil, and Niamh (1907); declared for a specific Irish essance and criticised the ‘Pan -Celtic humbug’, even in An Claidheamh Soluis, which he deemed to be ‘possess of a dumb devil’ on the subject; also modernisations of tales from the older literature, carefully bowlderised for young readers, An Craos-Deamhan (1905), Eisirt (1909), An Cleasaidhe (1913), Lughaidh Mac Con (1914), Bricriu (1915), and Guaire (1915); translations of Classics, Aesop a Tháinig go hEirinn (1900-1902, 1903), Caitilína (1913), Aithris ar Chríost (1914), Na Cheithre Soisgéil as an dTiomna Nua (1915), Don Cíchóté (1921), Gníomhartha na nAspol (1922), and Lúcián (1924); also Ag Séideadh agus ag ithe (1918); Críost Mac Dé (1925), and the Imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis; also a number of plays and the autobiography Mo Sgéal Féin (1915); received the freedom of Dublin and Cork in 1912; d. 21 March, Castlelyons; a bibliography of his writings itemising 487 pieces appeared in Celtica in 1954. DIW DIB DIH FDA OCIL

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Works
Papers on Irish Idiom by the late Canon Peter O’Leary, PP. ed., Thomas F. O’Rahilly, MA (Dublin 1929) [rep. of articles printed in the 1890s. incl. ‘The Irish of Keating’s Time’ pp.86-87, et al.]; Mion-chaint: An Easy Irish Phrase-Book (q.d.); O. J. Bergin, ed., Aesop a Tháinig go hEirinn: Aesop’s Fables in Irish, trans by Peter O’Leary (Dublin: Irish Book Co. 1911), 61pp. trans [Rev. Peter O’Leary, P.P.,] An soísgéal ar leabhar an Aifrinn [The Gospel from the Missal] (Dublin: Irish Book Co. [Cahill & Co.] 1902), [4], 107, [1]pp.;

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Criticism
"Maol Muire", An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire agus a Shoathar (Dublin 1939).

Cristóir Mac Aonghusa, ‘an that. Peadar Ó Laoghaire’, in Ros Muc go Rostov (Dublin 1972), pp.178-88.

Tomás de Bháldraithe, ‘An tAthair Peadar agus an Craobhín: Conspóid faoi Phádraic Ó Conaire’, in de Bháldraithe, ed., Phádraic Ó Conaire, Chocha ar a Charn (Dublin 1982), pp.101-06.

Peter O’Leary, Séadna, The Classic Modern Irish Tale, trans. Cyril and Kit Ó Céirín, foreword by Kieran R Byrne (Dublin 1989).

Michael Cronin, ‘Peadar Ua Laoghaire and the Speech of the People’, in Translating Ireland: Translations, Languages, Cultures (Cork UP 1996), pp.146-50.

Seán Ó Tuama, ‘The Other Tradition: Some Highlights of Modern Fiction in Ireland’, in Patrick Rafroidi, ‘A Question of Inheritance: The Anglo-Irish Tradition’, in Rafroidi and Maurice Harmon, eds, The Irish Novel in Our Time, Université de Lille 1975-76, p.31-45; espec. p.32f.

Alan Titley, An tÚrscéal Gaeilge (1991), bibl, Pádraig A Breathnach, ‘Séadna, Saothar Eilaíne’, in Studia Hibernica 9, (1969), pp.109-24

Patrick Pearse, quoted in Brian Ó Cuív, ‘Irish Literature and Language, 1845-1921’, in William Vaughan, ed., A New History of Ireland, Vol. VI: 1870-1921, OUP 1996, p.420.)

Alan Titley, review of Séadna, The classic modern Irish tale, Peter O’Leary (An tAthair Peadar) trans. by Cyril and Kit Ó Céirín (Glendale Press), in Books Ireland (Dec. 1989).

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Notes

Kieran R Byrne, Doherty and Hickey, A Chronology of Irish History Since 1500, (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989) cites Byrne's comment, ‘It was not till the start of the Gaelic League that I really began to live in a worthy sense’ (The Irish Peasant, July 1906).

W. P. Ryan, The Pope’s Green Island, 1912, p.92ff; extensive remarks on him, indicating both his cultural contributions, as well as his occasional outbursts of public intolerance, and his deep personal tolerance, in Viz, ‘his Seádna ‘began in a spirit of revolt against Anglo-Irish fiction - not the faithful and penetrative work of writers like Miss Barlow and Shan Bullock, but earlier varieties, which critics and others had begun to believe were even as Irish life’ [95]; O’Leary’s ‘greatest literary raid’ in 1908, with the article, ‘Is the English Language Poisonous?’, a question which he decides in the affirmative [96]. In the Battle of Portarlington, 1905, concerning mixed classes in the Gaelic League, O’Leary was at loggerheads with Douglas Hyde in appearing to suggest that the young ladies would be passing their time elsewhere if the streets were well enough illuminated. ALSO, ‘Canon O’Leary himself wrote a play about sheep stealing, making, if I remember rightly, rather a hero of the sheep stealer; what I distinctly remember is that the sheep was brought on the state’ [300]. SEE also W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival (1894): [Peter O’Leary] ‘a son of the people, belonging to an earlier generation, and deep in ideas upon ancient Ireland [24]. Further [ibid.], Chp. VII: ‘Ecclesiastics, Eve and Literature’: ‘Canon O’Leary suggests a man who came out of an old saga, but after sixty years or more of rural Munster experience, has grown homely and racy without losing anything of the saga spirit, while at the same time he has acquired a veneer of conservative Irish ecclesiasticism.’ (And note that it was in Ryan’s The Irish Peasant, that O’Leary declared, ‘It was not till the start of the Gaelic League that I began to live in a worthy sense. (O’Leary’s bibliography runs to 487 items.) [Quoted in Field Day anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed. Seamus Deane, 1991, p.364.).

Seán O’Tuama [sic], ‘The Other Tradition: Some Highlights of Modern Fiction in Ireland’ (1975-76): ‘The basic story of Séadna is the international type folktale ... The writing ... is somewhat uneven: it contains some longueurs and a few awkward passages as well as many beautiful stretches of lucid folktale type narrative. But what is most impressive is the manner in which the author, while observing the folktale conventions, manages to sustain a complete development of theme and character from beginning to end. ... Fr. Ó Laoghaire in his voluminous writings never again achieved the creative level reached in Séadna. It is probably that the main reason for whatever success he had with Séadna was that the only mode of narration he felt comfortable with was the traditional folktale type which he had inherited naturally by his own fireside. His efforts at more orthodox novel-writing or fiction were consequently a failure.’ (In Patrick Rafroidi & Maurice Harmon, eds., The Irish Novel in Our Time, Université de Lille 1975-76, p.31-45, espec. p.32f.; p.33).

DIAS Catalogue (1996) lists Shán Ó Cuív, Materials for a bibliography of the Very Reverend Peter Canon O’Leary, 1839–1920 (DIAS 1954) [First published as a supplement to Celtica 2 pt 2 1954], 39 pp. pbk.

Hyland Books (Oct. 1995) lists Peter O’Leary, Papers on Irish Idiom (2nd Edn. n.d.)

Kieran R Byrne, foreword to 1989 trans. ed. of Séadna, The classic modern Irish tale, Peter O’Leary (An tAthair Peadar) trans. by Cyril and Kit Ó Céirín (Glendale Press).

Yeats, Autobiographies (1955), p.411 [in London Yeats meets Gaelic Leaguers with ‘an obvious look of the country’ who ‘told me with wonderful brogues that they were on their way to the Paris Exhibition, and wanted to shake hands with me. They had a great deal to say about the Movement and talked very fast for fear I might go before they had said it. What they said was chiefly about a play in Irish to be acted in Macroom next Monday’ [here Yeats is copying a letter to George Pollexfen]. ‘It is by one Father Peter O’Leary, and is about a man who lived in Macroom and arranged his own funeral to escape the bailiff. There was immense local enthusiasm over it, and deep indignation among the descendents of the bailiff.’

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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)