James Hardiman, who wrote the history of Galway, died on this day, November 13, 1855. He was born in Westport in 1782, the son of Tomás Ó hArgadáin and Marcella Hall. Irish was his first language. The family moved to Galway where his father had a ‘small but respectable shop’. He had hoped to study for the priesthood but he had to give up that idea when he lost his right eye in an accident. He studied law instead in the King’s Inns in 1804, became a solicitor in 1814 and worked in the Public Records Office from 1811-1830.
This job enabled him consult documents and to do research in the Record Tower of Dublin Castle, in the British Museum, in the Town Records of Galway, in the Irish Annals and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, as he was preparing his History of the Town and County of Galway which was eventually published in 1820.
It was a major work which contained facsimiles of primary sources such as charters, maps, engravings, lists of civic officers, a wealth of toponymical and genealogical evidence, all of which were employed to trace Galway’s history from the earliest times to the post-Union era. It was a very ambitious and pioneering publication though he occasionally mixed up fact with folklore as in the case of his description of the legend of Lynch, the Mayor of Galway who supposedly hanged his son. Nevertheless, his history remains a very useful work of reference two hundred years later.
In 1822, he published Annals of Innisfallen. In 1827, he began to travel through Longford and Roscommon collecting Irish verse and songs which resulted in a major anthology titled Irish Minstrelsy: Bardic Remains of Ireland, a collection of Irish language songs which appeared in two volumes in 1831. It was described as ‘an act of love for Ireland’. His aim was to establish the antiquity of Irish verse – he felt it was equal to that of Greece or Rome – and would offer abundant evidence of Gaelic culture. Unsurprisingly, he was criticised in the English press for allowing his Nationalist and Catholic prejudices to cloud his assessment of the contents, but his publication inspired others to follow and collect the songs and stories from the Irish tradition, people like James Clarence Mangan, Samuel Ferguson and Thomas Davis.
He was a founder member of the Irish Archaeological Society in 1840, and they published his edition of Roderic O’Flaherty’s A Chorographical Description of West or h-Iar Chonnacht which had originally appeared in 1684. Hardiman’s edition came out in 1846.
Construction work began on Queen’s College, Galway (now University of Galway ) in 1845 and at the time, Hardiman’s reputation as a history writer and collector of manuscripts meant he was held in high regard. He was offered the Professorship of Irish which he declined but in 1849, accepted the post of (the first ) Librarian of the College.
He became a member of the Royal Galway Institute – later the Chamber of Commerce.
In 1831, he was declared an honorary member of The Galway Commercial Society and later, in 1855, became its President.
In the 1830s he moved into a house – a neat two-storey big house with suitable offices and a garden neatly planted called Theevegarriff House or Taylor’s Hill House. On later maps, it appears as Ardmore. There is a legend that it was here he wrote his history of Galway but it had been published years before he went to live in the house. It is possible that he may have moved subsequently from this house as a letter he wrote later mentioned his address as St Helena rather than Ardmore which might refer to a house which was very close to Ardmore and is known as St Helen’s today.
Our first image is a portrait of James Hardiman, the second shows Ardmore where he lived.
He was known as an urbane and mild-mannered man who enjoyed excellent health until this day 170 years ago, November 13, 1855, when he was suddenly seized by apoplexy and paralysis and died a few hours later. His funeral took place in the Pro-Cathedral and he was buried in the graveyard next to the Abbey Church. There is no mark on his grave. He was predeceased by his wife and survived by a son, James.
If you would like to know more about Hardiman, I can recommend Hardiman and Beyond, The Arts and Culture of Galway Since 1820 edited by John Cunningham and Ciaran McDonough, which should be part of every Galway library. Available in good bookshops
Our thanks to Marie Boran for help with the above.
