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October 12, 2024
To mark St Patrick’s Day, we thought we’d highlight a remarkable volume of Irish songs and poems that is in the University’s donated collections (ref. Coll-1366). The book was copied and compiled by Peter Gallegan or Peadar Úi Gealcáin (1792-1860) who was a scribe and a hedge school teacher in Moynalty parish, in County Meath.
‘This is a Mayo song, Bridget lived about
the middle of the 17th Century, and was the
most beautiful female in Connaught. Her
father resided at Rohard, near Ballinrobe,
in Mayo, the song was the Joint Composition
of two contemporary bards, McNally & Fergus,
the latter having composed the 3rd. & 4th. Stanzas.’
The care with which Gallegan copied the material indicates the value he saw in its preservation. On one page (p. 488) he wrote:
‘This large, and comprehensive M.S.
is worth 5 £ Sterling, if ever it be
sold at all, which I think it will not.’
Unfortunately, Gallegan’s employment as a teacher was precarious and he had to move schools quite regularly to maintain an income (see Dictionary of Irish Biography). In the end, his poverty obliged him to sell the books he’d compiled.
Throughout the volume Gallegan regularly wrote notes about himself asserting his position as the scribe of the volume, in some ways indicating a sense of his own mortality in comparison to the book’s own anticipated longevity.
‘I doubt much if any of our National School=
masters have the talent perseverance or patriotic feeling
that this poor poor fellow possessed. I trust that
I have to a certain extent rendered him independent
and happy in his latter days without his applying
to any society whatever for his support (of which he
had the greatest abhorrence).’
Other similar volumes by Peter Gallegan are now held in repositories like University College Cork, the Royal Irish Academy, University College Dublin and Queens University Belfast, institutions a far cry from hedge school origins, but where they deservedly take their place among the richness of Irish cultural traditions.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh! – Happy St Patrick’s Day! – Là Fhèill Pàdraig sona dhuibh!
Kirsty M Stewart/Ciorstag Stiùbhart, Scottish and University Collections Archivist