Life
1835-1918 [var. William Hugh; W. H. Patterson]; b. Belfast, ed. Belfast
Acad. Institution, and QUB, worked from sixteen in family linen business;
fnd. member Belfast Naturalist Field Club, and Belfast Natural History
and Philosophical Society; President of both societies; MRIA, RHArchaeol.
Assoc. of Ireland; Hon. Sec. Ulster Soc. for Prev. of Cruelty to Animals;
exhibited paintings Belf. Arts Soc.; published A Bibliography of Anglo-Irish
Dialects and A Glossary of Words and Phrases used in Antrim and
Down [London: Trubner 1880), 118pp.
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Notes
Linenhall Review, article on W. H. Patterson et al.: member of
Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club, issed glossary of Antrim and Down
dialect (A Glossary of Words in use in the Counties of Antrim and Down,
1880); his daughter Clara M. Patterson took a long sequence of photographs
of local children playing traditional games. The club formed a BNFC committee
for Ulster, starting with a lecture by F J Bigger on ‘Local Folk-Lore’;
on 1 Nov 1893, Yeats addressed them on folklore, the folk and their relationship
to poetry, calling Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Shakespeare, et al., products
of folktalks from which ‘rose up a gentle and harmonious influence
which filled all their poetry like a far-off murmur of fairy bells.’
In subsequent ventures Clara and the photographer Robert Welch organised
photographic records; Prof. A. C. Haddon (‘soon it would be too late’)
from Dublin revisited; Hyde lectured on Celtic language and literature
in Nov. 1894. The Patterson family had been associated with cultural activities
since the early century, when Robert Patterson (1802-1872) participated
with Dr. Drennan in founding the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical
Society; Patterson wrote The Insects Mentioned in Shakespeare (1838),
and On the Study of Natural History as a Branch of General Education
(1840), then then hugely popular schoobooks Zoology for Schools
(2 Pats., 1846-48), and First Steps to Zoology. He married
Mary Elizabeth Ferrar, dg. Belfast magistrate, whose father in turn was
John Ferrar, printer of Limerick Chronicle and author of The
History of Limerick (1787), and A Tour from Dublin to London (1796).
Other marriages connected the family with Francis Ward of the firm Marcus
Ward; William Emlius Praeger, whose son was Robert Lloyd Praeger, author
of 25 books. (q. auth. Linenhall Review, Winter 1993).
Kate Newmann, Dictionary of Ulster Biography (Belfast: QUB/IIS 1993) lists Robert Patterson (1802-1872), RIA; FRS, author of Zoology for Schools, &c.; and Robert Lloyd Patterson (1836-1906); President of Chamber of Commerce, and recurrent President of Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society; knighted 1902; The Birds, Fishes, and Cetecea of Belfast Lough; bequeathed art collection to Belfast city.
Hyland Cat. (1997) lists Belfast Natural History & Philosophical Society Proceedings & Reports; 1930-2, 1934-45, 1948-50, 1959-70, 1977-82 [19 issues plus spare 1949-50] [£75].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)