The name of one of these clerks was Eugene O’Sullivan. He was from a place called Ross-MacOwen, at the Berehaven side of Bantry Bay. I used to call him Eoghain, O Ross-Mac-Eoghain. Here is where I want to make a point in a matter of Irish history. Historians who have written on the siege and surrender of the Castle of Dunboy, say it was a man named MacGeoghegan that set fire to the barrel of gunpowder, that blew up the castle, at the time of the surrender. Some of them write the name “MacGehan,” “MacGeoghan,” “MacEggan,” and “MacGeohan.”
There are no people of the name of Geoghegan or MacGeoghegan in that district. But, there are lots of MacOwens or MacEoghans there; and their surname is O’Sullivan. Owen or Eoghan is Irish for Eugene, and Eugene is a name in the family of every O’Sullivan-Bere. I am strongly of opinion that the man who blew up the Castle of Dunbuidhe was an O’Sullivan and not a Geoghegan; that he was the son of Eugene or Owen O’Sullivan, that he was known as MacEoghain; but that the historians who first wrote up the history—being ignorant of the Irish language—took the pronunciation of “MacEoghan,” and wrote it MacGeoghan; and that blunder was followed up by pronouncing that middle “g” in the word Geoghan—a “g” that is always silent before the letter “h.” Thus comes into Irish history the error of having the defender of Dunboy Castle a MacGeoghegan instead of a MacEoghan O’Sullivan.
And so it happens in one of Charles Lever’s novels of romance. The name of it is “Tom Burke of Ours.” It should be “Tom Burke of Ower.” Ower is the name of a townland in the Parish of Headford, County Galway. It is owned by the Burke family. They are known all around Connaught as “the Burkes of Ower.” They generally took service with the English. It was one of them was killed by the Irish, in the Phœnix Park, Dublin, in the year 1882, the day he was sworn in with Lord Cavendish, to govern Ireland for the English. The book publishers should also correct that error in Lever’s book, and print the name of it “Tom Burke of Ower,” instead of “Tom Burke of Ours.”
I think there is another mistake in connection with the Irish language, in Irish national poetry, that spoils the sense of one of Davis’s poems. That Irish line—
“Is truagh gan oighre na bhfarradh,”
should be—
“Is truagh gan oighre na’r bhfarradh.”
He is lamenting the death of Owen Roe O’Neill, and lamenting there is not an heir of his among us at the present day.
The words “na bhfarradh” in the first line mean “with them”; the words “na’r bhfarradh” mean “with us,” and that is what the poet meant. Some publisher of Davis’s poems should make the correction.
The time I spent in Bantry was a pleasant time enough. I had a bedroom in the hardware store, and I could sleep there, or sleep with the clerks in the drapery store, whichever I liked best. I think I spent most of my nights in the hardware store. William Clarke had a brother who was a ’48 man. He was dead; but all his books were in the house I had charge of, and as all the old “Nation” newspapers, and other interesting papers were here, I spent many of my nights reading them.