The West Limerick Man Who Wrote a Dictionary

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Second t2
and Aisling Nic an tSionnaigh
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to ring the local primary schoolwhich led to Liam Ó Loineacháin
getting me to contact Tadhg Ó Maolchatha who had always been
ot to meet Tadhg, he tht in showing me around ht
that first meeting, we also arranged for her 'o

ureen had always hoped that the neglected books could be given
scholarly books and notation in English, en français, as Gaeilge, and auf
books. These books, along with documents gathered from people
such as T. O'Neill Lane's great-grandnephew John O'Sullivan and T.
O'Neill Lane's grand-daughter Patricia Gilbert (via her husband), now

T. O'Neill Lane, the present work was initially prepared to be part of
of May 2015, when the great man was finally afforded the decency of
till Lane are to making the event
the tremendous success that it proved to be, and also for having
contributedfinancially to the realisation of the present work.

Cathasaigh's time and energy inspire(d) me; Tony Lyons and Maura
atricia Gilbert in Fresno, who sadly was by 2008 not quite well
enough to write to me herself, but whose American husband, the
the late lbert , her stead to be a
most articulate and informative penpal. Tadhg Ó Maolchatha and John
O'Sullivan (who proofread this work) gave me a guided tour of West
Limerick and North Kerry, underwent interviews, and provided many

Béarla. Very special thanks also go to two of my very best friends;
to Aisling Nic an tSionnaigh (my sister) for complementing the only
pre-existing portrait of T. O'Neill Lane with the image of the man
traditional declaration of outright responsibility for any such errors as
persist in this, the revised second print of The West Limerick Man Who
Wrote a Dictionary.
Montréal, June

IV: Aeneas O'Neill's walking stick
V: T. O'Neill Lane's final resting place

th t
T. O'Neill Lane's grandfather had come from Mountcollins, was
ht t and inherited a bit of land in Templeglantine
a lifelong friendship with his mother's nephew, his first cousin Aeneas
ner1, p.1
11

a clever brother of Mary's who went on to become the engineer that
supervised the construction of the main road from Banteer to Cork,
teacher W. J. Mne an icle entitled Timothy O'Neill-Lane
Lexicographer 1852-1915 which he first published in Fáilte go Tournafulla,
Lane's life. McEnery's article has the advantage of being written by
e e viii. Aeneas O'Neill's walking stick appears in Appendix IV.
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e1: 2.
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as soon as the local committee hat the
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which included mensuration, natural philosophy,
geography, and English grammar, etc., the clever man had doubtless
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down in with him ne, however,
ner
ommn nn
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O'Neill, his mother's nephew, had secured him that job, sorting him
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and he revelled in it. W.J. McEnery relates a story which illustrates the
t,giving us at the same time an important insight into the man's
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e1: 2. I heard a similar story from Mr. Con Curtin at the T. O'Neill
Lane commemorationinMay 2015; T. O'Neill Lane allegedly once spenta night in a
West Limerick pub relentlessly soliciting Irish translations for a sentence along the
lines of "I went to the fair with my two cows and they won the two first prizes".
Over a hundred years later, at the commemoration, Con did the exact same thing.
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and despite er conjecture that his recreational time was
e 1972: 2.
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ter that had married twice
e that an tt
t t ery hatt
thateht t that
the daughter of Willliam Ayley of Charlton, Kent. The media attention
around a ceremony taking place in the Kensington 'cathedral'iii suggests
e71: 2.
The T However, his marriage certificate, as John O'Sullivan
reminds me, reads "marriedinthe Church of Our Lady of Victories, according to the
Rites and Ceremonies of the Catholic Church".
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cousin ht t theht
hhtain that thisette
ttttauct . H
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h ertht th
. te thtt the
t 2008.
e1: 2. John O'Sullivan believes that Dorette died around 1902,
around which time Timothy Ayley Lane was sent to Tournafulla, and his sister
Dorothy to Kent, to live with her grandparents.
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tthy was 19 years of age
ibid, 2015. John was able to tell me that this boat departed London for Brisbane
in early 1911, and was called 'The Rippingham Grange'.
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tht wh hht should we
e71: 2.
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multi t th thet
Gilbert, B., 2008.
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had actually emigrated y thts
older t that John was the brother that hosted him,
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h .
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the Thomonds. O'Neill Lane, however, was not amongst them
he O'Neill Lane has appeared in the
Limerick Leader on a few occasions since his death, most recently in the West
Limerick edition which on the 16th of May 2015 featured Norma
Prenderville's report on the O'Neill Lane commemoration.
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having initially travelled to work
recent prominent
mentionedneither the predecessor
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the man who wrote an article called 'West wh t
a t th on this
ct he th heh,
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te to thtlth hh
e1: 1.
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Ener sle and hearty with plexion
which led him to likening O'Neill Lane to Sir Sultan Muhammed Shah,
at s ng snality, the late s tal
1980s; his walking stick, and a camera, an exciting new gadget of which
he, remarkably, had been in possessionii. McEnery used to meet him
outgoing lettersiii. The following is the content of one such letter dated
Kelly, M., 2008. Aeneas O'Neill's walking stick, however, remains in
Ireland. See Appendix IV for a photo and for more details.
iiiMcEnery, W., 1971: 3.
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of J
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hen viewing what h
he h 1th The Irish Book Lover in the obituary
published on the 16th of July 1915 also dated his death to the 8th of June 2015. The
new gravestone in Brosna, however, indicatesthat T. O'Neill Lane died in May.
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ith grandfather Aeneas Lane and uncle Bartholomew Lane. There is
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th He was th when buried in Brosna in June
1915hh hg hgh, g
tt h in March 2015.
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trt Timothy Ayley Lane as a

herht
Thanks to Press Association Images for permitting the use of this photo

th tt hh t
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presentation entitled "The Irish Language" on the 17th of November
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how he had prfirst ti the second edition of
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headmaster when O'Neill Lane himself was a pupil there. And O'Neill
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t he wah
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fittingly recognised with an occasion culminating in a visit from
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is ationhe W was that
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,thh . A
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attempt to create his own dictionary club in defiance of the solitude
nth tt he fact he did not do so
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, 2000: 69. 'A Little Cloud' was written in 1906, two years after
the publication of T. O'Neill Lane's first dictionary.
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thth thBrothers"
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'publication committee' sprang up with the following members
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t that he did not get anything near the
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fht h that he ttatt
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ththtth ht
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his book collection. Informing the English readership that 'Good
n h becameht
that t h t t th
hich the Latin twas on which in turn was
th e that he kept in
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tttteid that this
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ith an at best orecentlyliterate
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tatht
th thattht tt t
h th
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Ellen Collins, rather curiously said as recently as in 1956 to be a niece of the "late"
T. O'Neill Lane, reports that a copy of Lane's Larger English-Irish Dictionary itself is
to be found amongst the "best books" in a reading room in the British Museum.
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t ht his lexicographical
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the closest Ih t t
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' h h th h moret
Oriel than to Donegal, which was in all probability the strongest
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how I a h thers ha h
debut ttt tht
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th odtt th tht
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s
information of this kind did not necessarily render O'Neill Lane's
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material in the Begley MacCurtin dictionary was due to the fact that,
as in the case of O'Neill Lane, the headwords had been obtained
h h Egh this is t h
tionary with heas such as '
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n hgg27)
by more than a decadeii, L ger English-h w
iiIn response to Brian Ó Súilleabháin's letter published in the Irish Times on the 7th of May,
2015: Dinneen called his 1927 dictionary a "new work". It was by no means a "second edition"
of the dictionary published in 1904, the plates of which were destroyed during theDublin fires
of 1916. The 1927 dictionary proved to be almost 600 pages longer than its 1904 predecessor,
yet still around 400 pages short of Lane's Larger English-Irish Dictionary's 1748 pages.
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to this conviction the foundation of the scholarly committees after
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cEner,. J. (xic
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(12) Letter to St. John Flynn regarding Lane's Larger English-Irish
Dictionary, 14th of June, 1912. MS 13,683 in the National
Library of Ireland.
--- (1913a)'"Bucca-Boo', Notes an Queries, Oxford Journals, 2(176), 378.
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tyt t tcat tyr
((
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(e c
--- (2015) Email correspondence pertaining to the proofreading of 'The
West Limerick Man Who Wrote a Dictionary'. May-June 2015.
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Appendix IV: Aeneas O'Neill 's Walking Stick
(shown to me at the T. O'Neill Lane commemoration by
Peggy Fitzgibbon, niece of John D. O'Kelly who hosted
T. O'Neill Lane towards the end of his life)

Appendix V: Coiste T. O'Neill Lane
(This photo was taken at the O'Neill Lane commemoration.
The men facing the camera are, from leftto right, Michael
Lane, John O'Sullivan, Mícheál de Liostúin, and Éamonn Ó
Liatháin, chairman of Coiste T. O'Neill Lane. Members of the
committee not in view are Tadhg Ó Maolchatha, Anne-Marie
Dennison, Larry Begley, Seamus Lane, Séamas Ó Súilleabháin,
Liam Ó Loineacháin, and Noreen Lomasney)

Appendix VI: T. O'Neill Lane's final resting place
(in Brosna graveyard, Co. Kerry)