Erinagh House, birthplace of Standish Hayes O'Grady "the last of the grand old scholars of Ireland"(Eleanor Hull) is situated on the west bank of the river Shannon just 1.5 km North North West of Castleconnell, Co. Limerick. Consequently many worthy publications including Worthies of Thomond by Herbert, A Concise Dictionary of Irish Biography by Crone, the Oxford Concise Companion to Irish Literature, by Robert Welch and a Dictionary of Irish Biography edited by Henry Boylan have noted that Standish is a Limerick man, born in Castleconnell, but as he was born west of the Shannon he is undoubtedly a Clare man.
To paraphrase Oliver Goldsmith from his poem the Deserted Village "he (O'Grady) claimed his kindred there (in Castleconnell) and had his claim allowed".
Erinagh House a late eighteenth-century two-storey dwelling was home to at least three generations of the O'Grady clan, namely James Smith O'Grady who modernized the twenty-one roomed house in 1863 and Admiral O'Grady who owned five hundred and one acres with a ratable valuation of £261.00 in 1878.
His son Standish Hayes was to follow in the footsteps of his cousin novelist Standish James O'Grady and turn to Celtic Literature, but more of that anon.
Standish Hayes O'Grady, son of Admiral Hayes O'Grady and nephew of 1st Viscount Guillamore, was born in 1832 at Erinagh House into an Anglo-Irish naval family. He was educated at Rugby School in England before attending Trinity College Dublin.
On speaking of his Ascendancy education, he stated 'At school and in Trinity College I was an industrious lad and worked through curriculums with abundant energy and some success; yet in the curriculums never read one word about Irish history and legend, nor even heard one word about these things from my pastors and masters. When I was twenty-three years of age, had anyone told me - as later on a professor of Dublin University actually did - that Brian Ború was a mythical character, I would have believed him.
I knew nothing about our past, not through my own fault, for I was willing enough to learn anything set before me, but owing to the stupid education system of the country.' (Quoted in William Irwin Thompson, The Imagination of An Insurrection, Dublin, Easter 1916: A Study of an Ideological Movement [OUP 1967] Harper & Row 1972. But he was soon to rectify those misconceptions.
Standish Hayes O'Grady had sought out the bookseller and publisher John O'Daly as well as the leading scholars of the period, namely Eugene O'Curry and John O'Donovan. He worked under the guidance of O'Curry and O'Donovan in copying old Irish manuscripts in the library of T.C.D. This interest was instinctive as he had spent his formative years wandering the county Limerick countryside collecting folk-tales and learning about customs.
He described the Irish language as "his sweet mother tongue", not surprising when ones reads "he was brought up and fostered in the Irish speaking barony of Cloonagh" (A Dictionary of Irish Biography, Edited by Henry Boylan, 1998).
According to Robert Welch in his book "Oxford Concise Companion to Irish Literature" Standish Hayes O'Grady was a founding member of the Ossianic Society in 1853, becoming its president in 1855-'7.
"The aim of the new society was to collect and publish the poems and tales of Oisín and the Fianna, especially those preserved in extant manuscripts in the Irish language. The Ossianic Society felt the need to emphasise the Irish language….. To later observers it would seem inexplicable that both the Celtic and Ossianic Societies, with their large and influential membership, [including William Smith O'Brien and John O'Daly] together with the eminent Irish scholars who edited and published their texts, should collapse.
The Ossianic Society did collapse, but not before it had managed to survive for nine years; during this period it published six volumes of its Transactions and had another six more in preparation.
The Cork antiquarian and leading member of the Society, John Windele, believed that the Irish language as a tool for historical research had been aided greatly by the publications of the Ossianic Society which had contributed to this "auspicious movement" alleviating "the prejudices which were once arraigned against its [the Irish language] cultivation and use".
(Taken from The Ossianic Society 1853-1863 Robert Somerville-Woodward
Department of Modern Irish History http://www.ucd.ie/pages/99/articles/somewood.html)
