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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Standish O’Grady


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Birth of John Philpot Curran, Orator, Politician, Lawyer & Judge

John Philpot Curran, Irish orator, politician, wit, lawyer and judge, who holds the office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, is born in Newmarket, County Cork, on July 24, 1750.

Curran is the eldest of five children of James Curran, seneschal of the Newmarket manor court, and Sarah, née Philpot. The Curran family are said to have originally been named Curwen, their ancestor having come from Cumberland as a soldier under Oliver Cromwell during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, originally settling in County Londonderry.

Curran is educated at Midleton College, County Cork, before studing law at Trinity College Dublin. He continues his legal studies at King’s Inns and the Middle Temple. He is called to the Irish Bar in 1775. Upon his first trial, his nerves get the better of him and he cannot proceed. His short stature, boyish features, shrill voice and a stutter are said to have impacted his career, and earn him the nickname “Stuttering Jack Curran.”

However, Curran can speak passionately in court on subjects close to his heart. He eventually overcomes his nerves and gets rid of his speech impediment by constantly reciting Shakespeare and Bolingbroke in front of a mirror, becoming a noted orator and wit. His championing of popular Irish causes such as Catholic emancipation make him one of the most popular lawyers in Ireland. He is also fluent in the Irish language which is still the language of the majority at the time. He writes a large amount of humorous and romantic poetry.

The case which cements Curran’s popularity is that of Father Neale and St. Leger St. Leger, 1st Viscount Doneraile at the County Cork Assizes in 1780. Having a passion for lost causes, he represents the priest and wins over the jury by setting aside the issue of religion.

A liberal Protestant whose politics are similar to Henry Grattan, Curran employs all his eloquence to oppose the illiberal policy of the Government, and also the Union with Britain. He stands as Member of Parliament (MP) for Kilbeggan in 1783. He subsequently represents Rathcormack (1790-98) and Banagher from 1800 until the Act of Union in 1801, which bitterly disappoints him, forcing him to contemplate emigrating to the United States.

In 1798, Ireland rebels against the British House of Commons and lack of reforms on Catholic emancipation. The British defeat the Irish rebels in numerous battles and soon establish their control over the country by 1799. Many of the Irish ring leaders are charged with treason and are facing death sentences. Curran plays an important role in court defending the leaders of the United Irishmen.

Curran’s youngest daughter Sarah‘s romance with United Irishmen leader Robert Emmet scandalises Curran, who had tried to split them up. He is arrested and agrees to pass their correspondence on to Standish O’Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, the Attorney-General for Ireland. In the circumstances he cannot defend Emmet. He is suspected of involvement in Emmet’s Rebellion, but is completely exonerated. However, his friend Arthur Wolfe, 1st Viscount Kilwarden, is killed by the rebels, and he loses any faith in the beliefs of the United Irishmen. Emmet is found guilty of rebelling against the Crown and the union between Great Britain and Ireland and is hanged in 1803. Curran disowns Sarah, who dies of tuberculosis five years later.

Curran is appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland in 1806, following William Pitt the Younger‘s replacement by a more liberal cabinet.

Curran retires in 1814 and spends his last three years in London. He dies in his home in Brompton on October 14, 1817. In 1837, his remains are transferred from Paddington Cemetery, London to Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, where they are laid in an 8-foot-high classical-style sarcophagus. In 1845 a white marble memorial to him, with a carved bust by Christopher Moore, is placed near the west door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.


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Birth of Lady Gregory, Writer & Playwright

lady-gregoryIsabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (née Isabella Augusta), Irish playwright, folklorist and theatre manager, is born on March 15, 1852 at Roxborough, County Galway. Her translations of Irish legends, her peasant comedies and fantasies based on folklore, and her work for the Abbey Theatre, play a considerable part in the late 19th-century Irish Literary Revival.

Augusta is the youngest daughter of the Anglo-Irish gentry family Persse. Her mother, Frances Barry, is related to Standish O’Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and her family home, Roxborough, is a 6,000-acre estate located between Gort and Loughrea, the main house of which is later burned down during the Irish Civil War. She is educated at home, and her future career is strongly influenced by the family nanny, Mary Sheridan, a Catholic and a native speaker of the Irish language, who introduces the young Augusta to the history and legends of the local area.

In 1880 Augusta marries Sir William Henry Gregory, a neighbouring landowner who had previously served as a Member of Parliament and as governor of Ceylon. He is a well-educated man with many literary and artistic interests, and his estate at Coole Park houses a large library and extensive art collection, both of which Lady Gregory is eager to explore. He also has a house in London, where the couple spends a considerable amount of time.

Lady Gregory’s literary career does not begin until after Sir Gregory’s death in 1892. In 1896 she meets William Butler Yeats and becomes his lifelong friend and patron. She takes part in the foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 and becomes a director of the Abbey Theatre in 1904, which owes much of its success to her skill at smoothing the disputes among its highly individualistic Irish nationalist founders. As a playwright, she writes pleasant comedies based on Irish folkways and picturesque peasant speech, offsetting the more tragic tones of the dramas of Yeats and John Millington Synge.

Lady Gregory writes or translates nearly forty plays. Seven Short Plays (1909), her first dramatic works, are among her best, vivid in dialogue and characterization. The longer comedies, The Image and Damer’s Gold, are published in 1910 and 1913 and her strange realistic fantasies, The Golden Apple and The Dragon, in 1916 and 1920. She also arranges and makes continuous narratives out of the various versions of Irish sagas, translating them into an Anglo-Irish peasant dialect that she labels “Kiltartan.” These are published as Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men (1904).

Lady Gregory returns to live in Galway after ill health forces her retirement from the Abbey Theatre board in 1928, although she continues to visit Dublin regularly. The house and demesne at Coole Park is sold to the Irish Forestry Commission in 1927, with Lady Gregory retaining life tenancy. Her Galway home had long been a focal point for the writers associated with the Irish Literary Revival, and this continues after her retirement. On a tree in what were the grounds of the house, one can still see the carved initials of Synge, Æ, Yeats and his artist brother Jack, George Moore, Seán O’Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Katharine Tynan and Violet Martin.

Lady Gregory, whom Shaw once described as “the greatest living Irishwoman,” dies at the age of 80 on May 22, 1932 at home from breast cancer. She is buried in the New Cemetery in Bohermore, County Galway. The entire contents of Coole Park are auctioned three months after her death, and the house is demolished in 1941.