Advent at Archives and Special Collections

To celebrate advent we will be uploading an image a day from various collections across archives and special collections here at the James Hardiman Library - which celebrate Christmas. Our item for the first day of advent features a hand-written copy of poem "Mi Nodhlaic", 1879. Written by Doglas Hyde in a book he had acquired the previous year, John O'Daly, Reliques of Irish Jacobite Poetry by John O'Daly, published by John O'Daly, Rose-Inn-Street, Kilkenny in 1844.

This book, along with many others, arrived in with the Eamon de Buitlear collection - which, along with the archival material, cover a range of cultural topics, as well as the landscape and countryside of Ireland and elsewhere. Eamon's father would have served as aide-de-campe to An Craoibhin during his time as first President of Ireland. The poem itself shows the early efforts of An Craoibhin to compose in Irish, and to gather books on the literature and language of Ireland.