Life
1761-1810 [J. C. Walker; var. 1762]; prob. b. Dublin; ed. school of Thomas
Ball, Dublin, and TCD; returning to Ireland from Italian travels made
in search of health occasioned by asthma; collected art and manuscripts
at his home, St. Valerie, Bray, Co. Wicklow; Dublin treasury official;
fnd. mbr. RIA; collaborated with Vallancey on Collectanea de rebus
Hibernicis (1770-1804); contributed to RIA Transactions and
issued Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786), as well as
appendices publishing the communications of other scholars to him including
the earliest biography of Carolan, excepting only Goldsmith’s comments,
and translations by Charlotte Brooke, and an account of trumpets found
in a bog near Cork; d. St. Valerie, 12 April. RR CAB DNB JMC RAF FDA
OCIL.
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Works
Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, Interspersed with Anecdotes of,
and Occasional Observations on the Music of Ireland; also, an Historical
and Descriptive Account of the Musical Instruments of the Ancient Irish,
and an appendix containing several biographical and other papers with
select Irish melodies (Dublin: Luke White; 1786; London 1786; J. Christie
1818), ded. to Henry Theophilus Clements [Dep. Vice-treasurer of Ireland],
and Do., rep. edn. (NY: Garland Publ. Inc. 1971); Historical
Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish, to which is Subjoined
a Memoir of the Armour and Weapons of the Irish (Dublin: George Grierson
1788; new edn. London 1818); Historical Memoir on Italian Tragedy
(London 1799); Historical and Critical Essay on the Revival of the
Drama in Italy (Edinburgh 1805); An Essay on the Origin of Romantic
Fabling in Ireland (Trans. RIA, X, 1806); ‘Anecdotes on Chess
in Ireland’, in Charles Vallancey, Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis
[1770-84], Vol. 5 (MDCCXC [1790]), pp.365-68; Memoirs of Alessandro
Tassoni, with a memoir of J. C. Walker by his brother, S. Walker (London
1815). Also, ‘An Historical Essay on the Irish Stage’, The
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, ii (1788) [var. 1787], p.5f.
[cited in W. S. Clark, Clarendon Press 1955, p.217].
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Criticism
R. A. Breathnach, ‘Two Eighteenth-century Irish Scholars: Joseph
Cooper Walker and Charlotte Brooke’, in Studia Hibernica 5
(1965), pp.88-97.
Ann de Valera, ‘Antiquarian and Hist. Investigations in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century’ (unpublished MA these, NUI 1978).
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.620.
Seamus Deane, A Short History of Irish Literature, p. 63].
Charles Burney, ‘Review of Walker’s Irish Bards’, in Monthly Review, 77 (December 1787) [cited in Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature, London: Pluto Press 1998, bibl.]
Russell K. Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to
1798 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP [1943] 1959), p.109.).
R. E. Ward & C. Ward, eds., Letters of Charles O’Conor of Belanagare (Cath. Univ. of America Press 1988), pp.451, 469, 481, n.1).
Terence Brown, Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Dublin: G&M 1975), pp.14-15.
Robert Welch, A History of Verse Translation from the Irish 1789-1897 (Gerrards Cross 1988), Chap. 3, ‘Walker and Brooke’, [pp.28-43].
Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam 1986), pp. 424-35.
Gerry Smyth, ‘Amateurs and Textperts, Studying Irish Traditional Music’, in Irish Studies Review (Autumn 1995), pp.2-10.
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Notes
Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic
Univ. of America 1904), bio-data: b. St Valerie, nr. Bray; appt. to place
in Treasury; travelled in Europe for health; RIA, 1787; Sec. of Committee
for Antiquities, a little later; Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards
(1786); Historical Essays on Dress of the ancient and Modern Irish,
incl. Memoir on the Armour and Weapons of the Irish (1788); Historical
Memoir of Italian Tragedy ...[&c.], by a Member of the
Arcadian Academy at Rome (London 1799), rep. as An Historical and Critical
Essay on the Revival of the Drama in Italy (Edin. 1805); d. St. Valerie,
12 Apr. 1810; Memoirs of Alessandro Tassoni, ed. by his brother
Samuel Walker (1815). The extract from Historical Dress concerns
the bodkin, ‘bodkins must have been worn by Irish ladies several
centuries before the Christian Era; also on the aiccde cited in
Brehon Laws, which he translates as ‘broach’, making connections
back and forth between Pope’s Ariel (‘wedged whole ages in a
bodkin’s eye’) and memories of a Mary Morgan, a Mrs Power,.
‘the Queen of Credan’ [Waterford]. He quotes Farquhar in an
unnamed play, ‘Our ignorant nation imagine a full wig as infallible
a token of wit as the laurel’; also The Spectator, in an equally
English context; also Swift, describing the dress of Goody Baucis. ‘I
have been informed that some Irish ladies of this reign [Anne] affected
the dress in which the unfortunate Queen of Scots is usually depicted,
so that we may presume the ruff now occasionally rose about the neck of
our lovely country-women.’; ‘... from the accession of George
I to the present day fashion has been such a varying goddess in this country,
that neither history, tradition, nor painting has been able to preserve
all her mimic forms ...’.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, selects The Life of Turlough O’Carolan [976-77] and An Historical Essay &c. [977-79], with notes at 962, 980, and 1008.
Belfast Central Library holds holds Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (2nd ed. 1818). MORRIS holds An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish, to which is subjoined a memoir on the armour and weapons of the Irish (C. Grierson 1788) 180p.; Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786, 1818).
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Notes
In Historical Essays on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish’,
Joseph Cooper Walker quotes Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle (1698):
‘Our ignorant nation (says Farquhar, in a comedy written in this
[William & Anne] reign), our ignorant nation imagine a full wig as
infallible a token of wit as the laurel’./The head-dress which, The
Spectator says, "made the women of such enormous stature, that
we appeared as grasshoppers before them" now prevailed here. This
information I owe to the inquisitiveness of Lucinda, in the comedy I have
just quoted./ Lucinda: "tell us some hews of your country; I have
head the strangest stories, that the people wear horns and hoofs."
Roebuck: ‘Yes, faith, a great many wear horns; but we have that,
among other laudable fashions, from London; I think it came over with
your mode of wearing high top-knots; for ever since the men and wives
bear their heads exalted alike. They were both fashions that took wonderfully."’;
he proceeds to quote Swift [‘Instead of hume-spun coifs were seen/Good
pinners edged with colberteen [... &c.]’ (From extract cited
in Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature, 1904, p. Vol IX,
p.3496.)
Russell Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (Phil: Pennsylvania UP 1959), incls. account from Walker of Queen Elizabeth’s amorous visits to O’Rourke while she was retained in London, shown to be spurious in view of the real record of events. (pp.77-78.)
C. G. Duggan (Stage Irishman) notes: J. C. Walker in his Dress of the Irish, printed in Dublin in 1788, has taken pains to find contemporary descriptions. [The same that wrote on the Irish stage.] (p.167).
Charles O’Conor’s unpublished [and uncompleted] ‘History of Ireland’ contains comments on Walker (see also under O’Conor, supra.)
‘Life of Turlough O’Carolan’ (1786), appears as an appendix to Walker’s Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, and is excerpted in FDA1, 976; also his ‘Historical Essay on the Irish Stage’ (1788), appearing in the RIA Transactions. Note that the account of the ‘Druith Righeadh, or Royal Mimics or Comedians’ at Tara, referred to in this essay [cited in FDA1 977-79], has its source in Vallancey’s [Col. de. Re. Hib., vol. iii, p.531.] And see FDA1, 1008, BIOG.
Anthologica Hibernica contains a description of the inflow of the Liffey to Crampton Court (‘An arm of the Liffe[y] came through to Crampton Court ... so that this ancient rath - the predecessor of Dublin castle - was peninsulated, and formed a slough about 800 feet on each side.’), Harris, also quoted in Walker, History of the Irish Bards [n.p.] (See George A Little, Dublin Before the Vikings, 1957 p.84.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)