ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY:DUBLIN IS LUCKY in its libraries. They range from the monumental to the intimate. From time to time a few of their treasures are displayed to an admiring public. Marsh's Library on Patrick Street, Dublin, annually offers a thematic selection from its rich stocks, writes TOBY BARNARD
In other cases, as in the two current exhibitions at the National Library on Kildare Street in Dublin – one of the Irish in continental Europe and one of the life and work of WB Yeats – the holdings of an institution are supplemented by loans from elsewhere. Yet always it is hard to convey through a single page at which a book or manuscript is open the allure of such materials. Some, such as the Book of Kells, have immediate visual impact. But many yield up their meanings only after the context and content have been outlined.
In order to overcome these obstacles, several institutions – Trinity College Dublin, Maynooth College, the Irish Architectural Archive on Merrion Square, Dublin and the National Library on Kildare Street – have published selections illustrating their most arresting items. Now we have Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library.
Established in 1785, the RIA retains much of the charm and atmosphere of a club, albeit one whose members are among the most distinguished scholars and scientists on the island. Its galleried reading room, with green shaded lights, has resemblances to the library of the King’s Inns and the Armagh Public Library.
Its collections, extraordinarily varied, are known mostly to specialists. So, perhaps the earliest of all surviving Irish manuscripts, a psalm-book, the Cathach, and a succession of later compilations are elucidated. The technicalities of the Stowe Missal, the Books of the Dun Cow, Ballymote, Lecan and Fermoy, and Leabhar Breac are succinctly summarised. An extraordinary diversity from the different provinces of Ireland – poems, genealogies, legends, religious rites and numerous medical treatises – comes into focus.
Here are crucial copies of the compilations that shaped conceptions of Ireland itself: the Annals of the Four Masters and Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. Not only are intricate networks of scribes, patrons and learned men uncovered, but linkages far beyond Ireland. These contacts continued, and are powerfully reflected in the material from later centuries. A gorgeous book of hours was made in Rouen. An Augustinian monk marooned in Lille longed for his Irish home as he copied a Gaelic text. Part of the library of the Co Galway chemist Richard Kirwan was seized by pirates and eventually ended up in the Salem Athenaeum in the US. A servant girl, Eleanor Cavanagh, described her impressions of imperial Russia. Justice is done to the far-sighted and generous who have ensured that these precious records have found a secure home in the academy.
Cynthia Longfield exchanged country-house life in Co Cork for dragonfly hunting in the Pacific. Alexander Haliday, quitting the shores of Belfast Lough, pursued parasitic wasps and thrips, and settled in Lucca. Their specimens, together with Haliday’s beautiful drawings, nevertheless returned to Dublin and the RIA.
The earlier documents have been studied intensively. Arguments will, no doubt, continue about precise dating and place of making. However, it is the abundance of later materials – 400 Irish language manuscripts from the 18th century, another 900 from the 19th, the Forde-Pigot archive of music, and more than 24,000 printed items collected by Charles Haliday – that are most likely to yield future revelations.
With some, such as Haliday, an affluent Dubliner of the 19th century, the collecting verged on an obsession. He moved from one house, Fairyland, to Monkstown Park, which was swiftly replaced by a larger pile to accommodate the library. If obsession sometimes accounted for the forming of a collection, its contents could also provoke eccentric theories. The purposes of round towers were favourites for learned (and impassioned) argument among the founding members of the academy.
THE NECESSARILYbrief accounts of what is to be found in this treasury tantalise. With its many illustrations, ranging from an 18th-century imagining of Cuchulainn's struggle in Scythia or the scene of a street in Dingle soon after the famine of 1848, the collection is a feast for the eyes as well as a stimulus to the brain. The assemblage in the RIA of topographical sketches is equalled only by that in the National Library. These portraits of buildings and relics, accurate and frequently attractive, record much that has subsequently vanished. Similar illuminating detail about particular places runs through the mass of verbal descriptions that arose from the early 19th-century Ordnance Survey. This is yet another example of material affording rare insights into society and popular culture, the value of which is only now being exploited fully. Two dozen essays alert the restless researcher to what awaits fuller exploration. Meanwhile, for the merely curious, the volume is unalloyed delight: a happy matching of expertise to fascinating topics. Several contributors recall the energetic collectors and self-effacing commentators of past generations. Much is owed to them. Some made the treasures; others saved and elucidated them, thereby advancing understanding of the complexities of Ireland. To that illustrious roll-call should now be added the three editors (all librarians within the RIA) of this hugely enjoyable work.
Toby Barnard’s most recent book,
Improving Ireland?,
was published last year. He is an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy
- Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Libraryis edited by Bernadette Cunningham, and Siobhán Fitzpatrick. Picture editor: Petra Schnabel. Royal Irish Academy, 302pp. €55