Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

James Clarence Magna, who was born on May 1st, 1803, is now probably one of the most overlooked and misunderstood of Irish poets. For many his “fame” rests on one poem, which I do not consider his best.

 He was a self-taught polymath. Although he worked in a solicitor’s office, and an assistant in Trinity College Dublin’s library, he nevertheless taught himself seven languages: Irish, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Icelandic and Persian, to such a standard that he was able to make viable translations.

 Mangan was a man whose learning and erudition were too great for the increasingly blinkered world of nineteenth-century Ireland. Work and money were always in short supply. In order to assuage the pangs of hunger and frustration, Mangan turned to alcohol and laudanum. He died at the early age of forty-six in Dublin’s Meath Hospital, a location which was still as forbidding in the early 1980s when I had my tonsils extracted there, as it must have been in 1849.

 This is a personal opinion, but I think that Mangan is to be seen at his best not in the long declamatory odes but in the shorter, more intimate pieces, such as “And Then No More”.

 I saw her once, one little while, and then no more:
‘Twas Eden’s light on Earth awhile, and then no more.
Amid the throng, she passed along the meadow-floor:
Spring seemed to smile on Earth awhile, and then no more:
But whence she came, which way she went, which garb she wore
I noted not; I gazed awhile, and then no more!

He was very much a poet of the Romantic nationalist school, whose verses were inspired by a dram-like vision of Ireland’s past.  looking back to a dreamy Hibernian past which had never anything much to do with reality. One of the poems from this vein was “A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century”

I walked entranced
Through a land of Morn;
The sun, with wondrous excess of light,
Shone down and glanced
Over seas of corn
And lustrous gardens aleft and right
Even in the clime
Of resplendent Spain,
Beams no such sun upon such a land;
But it was the time,
‘Twas in the reign
Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red hand.

The poem was taken up by the godfathers of Independent Ireland’s education. Appearing in numerous schoolbooks earning a near permanent spot on curricula. Its subject,  Cathal crobhdhearg O Conchobhair (died 224), was the brother of Ruaidhri, the so-call “last high king of Ireland”. It is fair to say that its picture of Connacht bore little link to reality. Mangan had only limited access to historical sources so his attitudes towards some historical figures like Cathal Crobhdhearg was imperfect. One in particular, gives an alternate, though no less praiseworthy description of Cathal crobhdhearg. It is his obit or death notice from the Annals of Connacht., in which he was described as

The king most feared and dreaded on every hand in Ireland; who carried out most burnings and plunderings on Gael and Gael who opposed him, who was the fiercest and harshest against his enemies that ever lived, who most killed, blinded and mutilated rebellious and disaffected subjects, who built most monasteries and houses for religious communities…

In his lifetime Mangan was viewed as a social outsider. He contributed to this outcast role through his behaviour, often dressing in a long black coat, wearing green spectacles and a blond wig. He underwent something of a bloated canonisation in the twentieth century, as he joined the pantheon of nationalist poets. But his new respectability was easily given once he was dead. It also failed to take account of his wide erudition, and the complexity and richness of his poetic vision which was never confined solely to Ireland. . 

Stamp issued by Irish post office on the 100th anniversay of Mangan's death in 1949