By Professor Richard Sharpe

Many things await discovery in the National Library. This was an unusual find, however, a copy of one of the best-known poems in the language printed in a form to deflect the censorious attention that was thought likely to follow its publication. I knew about this first deceptive printing of Brian Merriman’s Midnight Court and had seen copies elsewhere. There are half a dozen of them in public libraries. Its false date has been well known pretty much since it was first published. I even knew what Douglas Hyde said in his Literary History of Ireland, referring to this spurious edition and the bookseller John O’Daly, ‘I found amongst some papers of his the proof-sheets corrected with his own hand!’[1] Forty years later he referred to this edition again in his autobiographical Mise agus an Connradh and again mentioned his having proofs corrected by O’Daly himself.[2] What neither I nor anyone else knew until one morning this summer was that these page-proofs were in the National Library, entirely uncatalogued.

I had requested to see what turned out to be a pamphlet volume, several small items bound together as NLI LO 487. The catalogue had entries for five pieces, but there were six: the fourth piece was not mentioned at all. Here were corrected page-proofs of Cúirt an Mheadhan Oidhche, falling between print and manuscript. The title is in Latin:

Mediae Noctis Consilium, auctore Briano Mac-Gilla-Meidhre, de comitatu Clarensi, in Momonia. AD MDCCLXXX. Poema heroico-comicum, quo nihil aut magis gracile aut poeticum aut magis abundans in hodierno idiomati exolescit. Curtha a gclódh le Tomás mhic Lópuis, ag Loch an Chonblaig Oghair, MDCCC.

[The Midnight Court, whose author was Brian Merriman of County Clare in Munster in the year 1780. A heroic-comic poem, than which nothing more graceful or poetic or more copious has come to maturity in today’s language. Printed by Tomás Mac Lópuis at Loch an Chonablaigh Odhair, 1800.]

On the verso of the titlepage it says, in English, ‘Printed for Private Circulation. T. Mc. L.’ The rest of the book is Merriman’s poem in Irish, printed in the Watts irish type, a type used mainly in London, with corrections in ink on almost every page. And at the foot of the last page the corrector wrote, ‘No imprint here’. It is not a comment but a command: he did not want the printer to add his usual colophon to identify where the printing was done. Here was the curious edition in the making.

The poem is notable for its ribaldry, which Victorian Ireland would have thought very improper, but back at the beginning of the century such bawdy humour was not so shocking. Hence it was misdated and produced pseudonymously. The printer’s name and the place of publication are themselves jokes for the Irish reader. Tomás Mac Lópais signified something like ‘Tommy Commoner’, for Clann Lópais, alias Clann Tomáis, are the plebeian villains of Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis, a popular tale from the seventeenth century. Oghar is no word, but odhar means ‘dun, pale, sallow’, and conablach ‘corpse’ or (in Dinneen’s phrase) ‘a trashy person’, so the place of publication was ‘At the Lake of the Sallow Corpse’: if this carries a specific allusion, it is lost on me. Printing it ‘privately’ with the date 1800 turned attention away from asking who was responsible. John O’Daly, the bookseller who sold the book, promoted it in these terms in his regular catalogues starting in 1873:[3]

Cuirt an Mheodhan-Oidhche, or the Midnight Court; a facetious and humorous Poem, by Bryan Merryman, a Schoolmaster of Sixmilebridge, Clare, 1780, one of 20 copies printed for private circulation, by Thomas MacLopuish, MDCCC. 7s 6d.

From 1876 the number increased to thirty copies. Inside the paper wrapper at the back of the copy in the British Library there is a handwritten note: ‘Only 30 copies printed. Merryman is now the name of the family. J. D. It is scarce and valuable’.[4] Twenty or thirty copies (a very limited number), ‘private circulation’, even the Latin title and humorous imprint—this is all very knowing. He does not say that the poem is in Irish, but one may suppose that its saucy reputation was well known to the target buyer. It was probably a talking-point from its first appearance, and when Hyde said in 1899 that place and date were fictitious, he may have been passing on what was the talk among readers of Irish books. In 1911 the great collector of printed Irish, Séamus Ó Casaide (1877–1943), wrote about the edition in that wonderful magazine, The Irish Book Lover:[5]

Some time about 1850 John O’Daly published anonymously the first edition of Brian Merryman’s great Irish poem “The Midnight Court,” with the date MDCCC on the imprint. Owing to the peculiar vein of humour which permeates this work of the Clare poet, O’Daly was apparently shy about claiming credit for the publication.

The date 1850 has lingered. R. I. Best repeated it in 1913 in his Bibliography of Irish Philology.[6] I have never seen it justified, though it was immediately challenged by another bookman in the Book Lover. D. J. O’Donoghue wrote:[7]

The late David Comyn told me that the true date of O’Daly’s issue of the “Midnight Court” was 1860, and that by selling it very secretly, and one at a time, O’Daly got as much as £1 apiece for the copies. The supercherie was only discovered after O’Daly’s death, when the sheets of the work were discovered in his stock. Messrs M. H. Gill & Son put a new title on the book (1879) and sold the remainder’.

David Comyn (1854–1907) was another collector and old enough to remember O’Daly. It is certainly correct that 210 copies were unsold when O’Daly died and his stock went to auction in 1878.[8] They were bought by M. H. Gill & Son for 32 shillings. And Gill’s reissue of the same sheets can be found still in the National Library and elsewhere.[9] But why did Comyn think 1860? No justification at all. Pádraig Ó Briain, who reprinted the text of the first edition in 1893, would propose a better date, between 1870 and O’Daly’s death in 1878.[10] Now, the page-proofs in my hands carried evidence. The book was printed in four sheets, each forming eight pages. Clearly the printer had counted the number of lines and worked out how many lines per page would produce a convenient number of pages. Proofs were sent to the editor as each sheet was set in type. The editor corrected and returned them. And he wrote a date on the top corner at the front of the second, third, and fourth sheets. On p. 9 we can still read 20/9/72; on p. 17 we read 22/11/ but not the year; and on p. 25, we read 10/12/72. The book was typeset in the closing months of 1872. It was presumably available from early in 1873.

Something else that the proofs may tell us is who edited the poem. On p. 9, three lines are recast as two, as if from a different source of the text, but this change was not actually made. On pp. 12, 14, 15, 16, and 18, whole words are substituted, reflecting textual decisions taken at a late stage, not simply the correction of printer’s error. Many but not all of these changes were implemented, and so too some not marked on the proofs, such as carrying over the last line from pp. 13, 14, and 15.[11] We could investigate the textual sources of altered readings for possible links to manuscripts from this or that context. My first thought was simpler. I have read many of John O’Daly’s letters, and his handwriting is always sprawling and hasty. The hand that corrected the proofs was perhaps not his, despite Douglas Hyde’s assuming it was. Nor are these the corrected proofs that went to the printer. It is possible that more than one person was involved. I am also inclined to think that O’Daly had not the wit to come up with such a bogus edition, still less to carry it out. And the typeface was not one regularly used by any Dublin printer. Peter Roe in 1861 and George Drought in 1863 put their names on books in Watts type, which was also used by the Achill Island press, but it was a type chiefly used by the Bible Society. I doubt whether O’Daly would have dealt with such a printer. O’Daly’s books were usually printed in the Fry type, and in 1868 for a more lavish book he went to the University Press and printed Tadhg Gaelach’s Pious Miscellany in the Petrie type. The use of Watts type points in a different direction.

My own speculative reading of the evidence is that O’Daly was no more than the front man who sold the book in Dublin, where there was a market, but it was produced by a London printer for Standish Hayes O’Grady, living in London in 1872 and 1873. He was a friend of O’Daly, and his interest in the poem was of long standing. He had acquired a copy of a supposedly authoritative manuscript from O’Daly in 1852. O’Daly reflected in a letter dated 24 February 1854 that O’Grady was translating Merriman’s poem: ‘Mr O’Grady is at 18, Clare st. at present and going on with the Cúirt; but I fear Donnchadh Ruadh will put him out of conceit only 30 copies of the whole being sold’.[12] O’Grady’s translation is among his papers in CUL MS Add. 6526; O’Grady’s transcript of the poem is CUL MS Add. 6514, while MS Add. 6527 is a translation in the hand of Patrick Sullivan, 1847, which belonged to O’Grady. He came also to own the late-eighteenth-century manuscript believed to be closest to the author, now CUL MS Add. 6562. O’Grady was a great admirer of the poem and owned manuscripts from which to prepare an edition. Hyde himself had quoted O’Grady’s judgement, expressed in 1857:[13]

In poetry, perhaps the most tasteful piece in the language is, with all its defects, Cuirt an mheadhoin oidhche, or the Midnight Court, written in 1781 by Bryan Merryman, a country schoolmaster of Clare, who had evidently some general acquaintance with literature.

In sum O’Grady had the wit, the skill, the motive, and the means to produce this edition. This is an idea already aired on line by Proinsias Ó Drisceoil, who knows more about O’Daly than anyone else. In an essay in Comhar Taighde from November 2015, ‘Mediae Noctis Consilium—céadfoilsiú Cúirt an Mheán Oíche le Brian Merriman’, § 24, he says, ‘Ní éadóigh gurbh é Standish Hayes O’Grady a chuir an téacs ar fáil agus gur réitigh an Dálach don chló é’. In § 30, he finds no one more likely as editor than O’Grady. I do not think it plausible that O’Grady did it at O’Daly’s behest. He did it because he wanted to, and the wit behind it is his. But he needed a friendly bookseller, willing to play the game and market it to readers of Irish poetry, and O’Daly was the man for that. These page proofs, evidently not the ones returned to the printer, ended up at O’Daly’s shop in Anglesea Street. Where they were in the two years after O’Daly’s death we do not know. Hyde only said, ‘I found among some papers of his’. But at the front of the book of six items bound together he wrote: ‘Fuair me na “brochuras” so ceangailte mur so air scillin. Mi Meadhon-Shamhraidh 1880. D. H.’ Now June 1880 was nearly two years after the auction of O’Daly’s stock on 19 August 1878, which we have reason to think Hyde attended.[14]

These six items remained in Hyde’s possession for 69 years. After his death an auction was held at his house, Little Ratra in Phoenix Park, starting 10 October 1949. Lot 603 comprised these six titles, and the sale number is still pasted on the front of NLI LO 487. Inside there is the recent ownership label of Fr J. Senan Moynihan, Saint Anne’s Hospital, Mount Lawley, Western Australia. I presume this was the same Fr Senan Moynihan who edited the Capuchin Annual in Dublin from 1930 until 1954. Hyde’s book appears to have reached the National Library as recently as 1979. The evidence to show for certain when Cuirt an Mheadhon Oidhche was first printed has lain hid among Hyde’s books and Moynihan’s and in the National Library for nearly 140 years. Brought to light, the page-proofs still tell the book’s own story.


* Grateful thanks to Mícheál Hoyne for his embellishments to this note.

[1]  D. Hyde, Literary History of Ireland (London, 1899), 602.

[2]  D. de hÍde, Mise agus an Connradh (Baile Átha Cliath, 1937), 18–19.

[3]  1873 O’Daly 42/510. It was still one of twenty copies in 1875 O’Daly 44/562; in his later catalogues, 1876 O’Daly 45/922, 1877 O’Daly 46/680, the number had grown to thirty. In a special catalogue of Irish-language books, Bibliotheca Hibernica, or, A Catalogue of Irish language books now on sale by J. O’Daly (1876), item 21 [copy in NLI A28398], it is described as ‘a humorous and sarcastic poem’.

[4]  BL 11595.b.102. This copy is freely accessible via Google Books.

[5]  S. Ó Casaide, ‘Fictitious dates: John O’Daly’s fictitiously dated edition of Brian Merriman’s The Midnight Court’, IBL 3 (1911–12), 13.

[6]  R. I. Best, Bibliography of Irish Philology to 1912 (Dublin, 1913), 212. He was no doubt following Ó Casaide, but his book has remained accessible and authoritative.

[7]  D. J. O’Donoghue, Irish Book Lover 3 (1911–12), 31.

[8]  Catalogue of books and manuscripts on Irish history and antiquities [. . .] collected by the late Mr John O’Daly, bookseller [. . .] to be sold by auction by John Fleming Jones, [. . .] on Monday, 19th August, and five following days (Dublin, 1878), lot 709. Hyde, Mise agus an Connradh, 18, remembered it as two or three hundred.

[9]   Pádraig Ó Briain was at the sale and wrote about it in a letter, printed An Claidheamh Soluis, 7 May 1910: ‘At that auction, the residue or remainder sales of O’Daly’s books were disposed of. M. H. Gill and Son purchased some of the remainder sales, and amongst them were copies of the Midnight Court. They got them covered, and had their own imprint on the cover with Price, Two Shillings and Sixpence’. There are copies in NLI AA10525, TCD 116.r.124.(No. 1), QUB, and NLW XBP 1398 M145.

[10]  An Claidheamh Soluis, 7 May 1910.

[11]  Oddly the single erratum printed on the last page of the book was already printed in the proofs, but the correction was not made when it obviously could have been.

[12]   NLI MS 5454, no. ??. O’Daly had himself published O’Grady’s pseudonymous edition of Adventures of Donnchadh Ruadh Mac Con-Mara, a slave of adversity, written by himself (Dublin, 1853). O’Grady used the name S. Hayes on that book.

[13]  S. H. O’Grady, Toruigheacht Dhiarmuda agus Ghrainne, Transactions of the Ossianic Society 3 (1857), 36; quoted by Hyde, Literary History of Ireland, 602.

[14]  An entry in his diary for 14 August 1878 shows him planning to go to the O’Daly sale on the Saturday (D. Ó Dálaigh, ‘Printíseacht An Chraoibhín i litríocht na Gaeilge’, Éigse 14 (1971–2), 39–51, at p. 42).

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Post by Claire Dantin, Conservation intern 2016-17

(NLI’s conservation internship programme is jointly run with the Heritage Council)

For a conservator, understanding the original materials of an item before any conservation treatment is essential. I recently conserved 4 albums containing beautiful prints and drawings of Irish castles by James Stark Fleming (1834-1922), a Scottish watercolour artists and architectural historian. Some of the earliest depictions of Ireland’s built heritage and landscape are found in these albums in the Library’s Prints and Drawings collection.

At some point, Fleming’s drawings were assembled into these albums, possibly by the artist himself. However poor materials and an unusual book structure meant the albums were very fragile and degraded. It was therefore important to conserve the album and not just the drawings within.

ALBUM STRUCTURE

A traditional binding is based on several sections of folded paper sewn together with thread. These 4 albums have a very different binding structure; instead of folded papers sections, there are guards hinged to pages with textile. The guards and the pages are made of very thick stiff card.

Unusual binding structure of the albums, before conservation treatment

There is no sewing; layers of thin textile and paper were then applied with animal glue to edges of the guards to form a spine. The front and back boards are attached to the spine by the lining. This structure is in fact more similar to photograph albums which were commercially available from the 1850s.

Diagrams showing the structure of one album ‘section’ (left)  and these sections assembled with a spine lining (right).

CONDITION

During conservation; securing the album structure with pamphlet style stitching.

The albums were in very poor condition. The binding structure was made from poor quality materials. These were now acidic and brittle – a common issue for 19th century items. Handling the album pages further damaged them. The drawings within were discoloured due to contact with acidic pages of the albums.

Following documentation, the challenge began to preserve the working parts of each album, while intervening in the most appropriate way. My conservation treatments aimed to enable safe handling of the items during the digitisation process and for future consultation or exhibition.

CONSERVATION

Adapting the binding structure

The structure of the album was the main reason for its decay. One album (TX2) required an interventive treatment approach. Its spine was completely detached, the textile hinges were torn and brittle and many pages were loose or detached.

I applied a treatment solution that respected the original structure and materials of the album. The textile hinges were delicately removed with a scalpel and replaced with a 100% unbleached cotton textile, its strength and thickness matching the original textile. The acidic spine lining was removed and replaced with flexible Kozo paper linings. The heavy boards were attached with a strong yet thin textile. The text block was then secured with a pamphlet style stitch, sewn through every two sections of the replaced textile hinges.

Flattening distorted pages

Distorted album pages and a diagram of the humidification ‘sandwich’ created to flatten them

The condition of another album (TX1) was rather unusual as it had distorted pages. The adhesive used to apply the drawings had caused the album’s pages to distort.

As a treatment solution I introduced enough moisture vapour to the album’s pages to relax the papers fibres and adhesive layers. As the binding was intact, this meant I needed to create humidification ‘sandwich sleeves’ to slip over the albums pages. The pages were then gently dried under pressure to flatten the album pages. I gradually worked through the volume, by systematically humidifying and pressing each page until it was all flat.

Brittle papers

The album’s pages, made from wood pulp paper, were so brittle the edges had snapped. To make the pages strong enough to be turned, I infilled the losses with several layers of Japanese papers orientated in different fibre directions. I then gently rounded the edges of the repairs to match the original pages.

The conserved albums are now stored in a bespoke archival box and digital images are on the Library’s online catalogue. With the stabilisation of the binding structure, the book can be handled and opened easily without further damage.

Brittle album pages before and after conservation treatment

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Post by Heraldic collection conservator Louise O’Connor

Science plays a central role in modern conservation of cultural heritage. By understanding the chemical structure of materials, a conservator can document the condition and potential degradation of historic objects, as shown in our last post. Now we’d like to show how conservators address damage in heraldic manuscripts through conservation treatment, making them accessible for digitisation.

To treat or not to treat 

Conservation treatment is a more specialised intervention than the preservation of paper collections. Once damage to a manuscript is identified and documented, conservators evaluate potential treatment options. The condition of the heraldic manuscripts prioritised for treatment was complex; tight bindings, corrosive iron gall ink, fragile pigments and many disfiguring stains and old repairs. A conservator’s decision-making process considers not only the chemical degradation of the object, but also its historical integrity. In collaboration with our library colleagues, the object’s function for today’s user is also considered prior to treatment. Ethically, conservation treatments follow the principle of minimal intervention, similar to the concept of ‘first do no harm’. The choice of materials and techniques follows the idea of ‘retreat-ability’. The choice to intervene is never taken lightly, yet given the immense fragility of the heraldic manuscripts – treatment was urgent.

 Selecting a conservation treatment

By consulting the collected body of conservation research, the treatments we choose for the heraldic manuscripts included disbinding, removal of surface dirt, chemical stabilisation of iron gall ink with calcium phytate process, removal of disfiguring stains and old repairs, pigment consolidation, tear repair and loss infill, and applying a conservation binding. Each unique manuscript was treated individually and we documented all processes. Here we show some of the steps from these conservation treatments, which resulted in an easily legible manuscript, preserved for present and future generations of the curious.

paper conservation, manuscript conservation, iron gall ink Before and after conservation treatment images of genealogical manuscripts. Orange staining is visible on folio before conservation and text is hidden due to poor binding on the left. On right after treatment, the discoloration is reduced and script is easily legible.

 

Treatments – step behind the scenes

The manuscript was first removed from its damaging binding. This involved removing degraded layers of glue and textile from its spine. Proteinaceous adhesives react to moisture. Applying a water-based poultice to the glue, allows it to slowly absorb the moisture. As the adhesive film starts to swell, it’s possible to mechanically remove it from the paper. As the adhesive rehydrates it also stinks to high heaven!

A thick layer of animal glue was found on the spine during conservation treatment. The glue has discoloured and is very brittle.

 

Grey dirt particles, loosely held to the surface of the paper by intermolecular forces, were removed by gently rubbing a soft eraser across the paper’s surface. This improves both the look and feel of the manuscript. The ink is not affected by this action; and utmost care and skill is needed to surface clean very fragile surfaces, such as mould damaged papers.

Surface dirt is visible on left, before treatment. On right, the dirt has removed.

 

The ink was then tested for iron components. Indicator papers impregnated with a dye confirmed the presence of soluble iron (II) ions in the ink. The paper turns pink if it’s a positive result.

      Ink testing: the indicator strip turns pink if soluble iron ions are present in the ink.

 

Washing paper removes acidic degradation products and reforms the hydrogen bonds of its cellulose structure, making it stronger. The paper sheets were floated in a sequence of specially prepared aqueous solutions.

Each manuscript folio is treated in a special cycle of washes to stabilise the paper and the ink.

 

After a few minutes, chromophores, which cause paper to discolour, solubilised into the bath water. The calcium phytate/calcium bicarbonate treatment cycle converted the remaining iron (II) ions into a stable chemical state and increased the pH of the fibres by leaving an alkaline reserve of calcium carbonate in the folio.

Washing paper! Each paper folios releases yellow discolouration into the bath water, turning it yellow.

 

While the folios were still slightly humidified following this aqueous treatment, old paper repairs, previously held in place with starch or protein glues that have solubilised, were gently removed inch-by-inch. This task is a precise skill, too much tension and original fibres can be disturbed.

Paper folios with pigments are very delicate. Damaged pigment layers were secured using a dilute cellulose ether consolidant. Using magnification, it was applied locally to the affected areas using a thin brush or with a nebuliser as an aerosol.

Removing discolouration from paper with colours is a delicate and precise treatment. The sheets cannot be treated in a bath, as the pigment could be damaged. Instead, moisture was applied to the areas of discolouration using a rigid hydrogel. The gel was made from a polysaccharide derived from seaweed. It was cast into sheets and cut to the size of the stained area. The soluble discolouration diffuses into the gel through capillary action of water.

   Yellow discoloration is removed from the paper folio using a hydrogel.

 

Tears and losses in the papers were repaired and infilled on a light-box. This transmits the light through the paper, making it easier to see the damaged areas. The folios were then guarded into new sections for a new conservation binding.

paper conservation Tears and losses of each folio are repaired using Japanese paper.

 

Rebinding the manuscript volume was chosen to keep its historic integrity and its place in upright storage of the collection. The new conservation binding structure is a creative and skilled solution for the manuscripts. It has the look of an 18th century binding yet it also has a flexible spine and no adhesive. This means the binding can be easily reversed in the future. The new binding opens flat and this allows easy viewing of the manuscript folios for digitisation.

conservation binding of manuscripts  Creating a new conservation binding for the conserved manuscripts.

 

Though selective conservation treatment, the Heraldic Manuscript Conservation Project reduced the risk of damage to fragile and deteriorated folios. New information gathered during the treatments give greater understanding of these unique cultural items. These valuable manuscripts are now freely available online to researchers world-wide.

 

manuscript conservation The conserved manuscript opens flat and the script can be easily read.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

The conservation project (2015-2017) was supported by the Department of Heritage, Culture and the Gaeltacht. For more detailed information on the conservation treatments mentioned, see  ‘Heraldic manuscripts at the National Library of Ireland: Implementing the conservation of complex volumes’ by Louise O’Connor and Élodie Lévêque, presented at the Care and Conservation of Manuscript 16 seminar.

Project conservators: Élodie Lévêque, Noureen Qureshi, Elizabeth Randell, Claire Dantin.

Heraldic collection conservator: Louise O’Connor

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