County Louth Archaeological and History Society

Rann Agus Amhrain by Eamonn O TuathailJournal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Dec., 1924), p. 287Published by: County Louth Archaeological and History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27728201 .

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REVIEWS 287

RANN AG US AMHRAIN.

Edited by Eamonn O Tuathail

Brown &> Nolan.

In this scholarly edition of 40 characteristic Oriel poems of the last two centuries, which Mr. O Tuathail has transcribed from the MSS. there are a few references of interest to Co. Louth.

The collection contains pieces by the various Louth poets?O Dornin, MacCubhthaigh, MacCuarta, MacAlinden and of other Oriel writers which have been published already by Mr. Morris and others, some in the Journal of our Society, but twenty-seven of the forty are now printed for the first time. For all he has gone to the MSS. in the R.I.A., T.C.D., the Advo

cates' Library, Edinburgh, and the British Museum, and has made a critical and apparently careful collation of the different versions.

One of the poems is the work of Richard Taaffe of Louth (probably?almost certainly?the Richard Taaffe, d. 1736, whose tombstone inscription was described in Butler's Diary, given in the 1921 Journal) returning a Bible to Father William O Clery of Co. Meath, and the latter

has a verse dialogue with the book in which it tells of Taaffe's fine library in which one could

read for a lifetime, of his noble wife, and his kinsmen?perhaps his brother?James of Rathneety, and apparently his son who has come home after winning distinctions probably as a student in

Seville. A poem on Drogheda by Liam MacGiolla Ciarain of Oristown, who died in 1766, gives great

praise to its people for their learning and hospitality. The same writer's poem on Tailteann

does not give assurance as to whether it was Sliabh na Caillighe or Teltown that he regarded as the site. The descriptive references to hills and lakes would apply to Sliabh na Caillighe, but they may be fanciful embellishments.

THE B AGEN ALS.

Vicissitudes of an Anglo-Irish Family. A Story of Irish Romance and Tragedy, by

Philip H. Bagenal, O.B.E., B.L.

London, Clement Ingleby, 1925.

Mr. Bagenal has made a useful contribution to national as well as family history by his

record of the many outstanding personages of his name and of the events in which they had a

part. He illustrates the circumstances of the times that were the background of their lives by

extracts and information from many sources, and the result is a most readable book for the

general student as well as for the genealogist.

A very full narrative of the battle of Beal an Atha Buidhe, of Sir Peter Carew's scheme

for obtaining an Irish estate, a sketch of James IPs Court at St. Germain and the correspondence and n?gociations of his friends abroad, are some of the important features.

But the careers of the different members of the family are all of rare interest?old Sir Nicholas, the Marshall, Sir Henry and Dudley his sons, Walter the Confederate, Dudley the Jacobite Cavalier, Walter the Conformer and the founder of Bagnalstown, Co. Carlow, and Beauchamp

Parliamentary patriot and duellist. We miss any account of Sir Nicholas's acquisition of Omeath

and Carlingford, where his son Sir Henry was born, and of the connection that gave his name to

Mount Bagnal and Rockmarshall in Cooley. These lands were the possessions of the Abbey of Carlingford, whose confiscated property as well as that of Newry in the town and in

Mourne he had obtained at his first settlement in 1551.

Sir Henry's grandson, Nicholas of Newry, who died without issue in 1712, divided the estates

between the children of his father's two sisters, leaving Mourne and Newry to his cousin Robert

Needham, ancestor of the Earl of Kilmorey, and the Omeath and Carlingford estates to another

cousin, Edward Baylie, ancestor of the Lords Anglesea, in whose hands they remained till the

nineteenth century sale.

The Society is indebted to the Breifny Antiquarian Society and to the Royal Society of

Antiquaries for exchange of their valuable publications.

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